Integrating knowledge in the face of epistemic uncertainty: Dialogically drawing distinctions
基于对新型生物反应器开发团队的民族志研究，揭示了跨学科合作中知识整合并非单一过程，而是通过对话不断划分和检验新区分来应对认知不确定性。
In this article, we contribute to a processual understanding of knowledge integration in interdisciplinary collaboration by foregrounding the role of dialogue in dealing with epistemic uncertainty. Drawing on an ethnographic study of collaboration among scientists involved in developing a highly novel bioreactor, we suggest that knowledge integration is not a homogeneous process but requires switching between different knowledge integration practices over time. This is particularly notable in the case of ‘epistemic breakdowns’ – deeply unsettling events where hitherto-held understandings of the nature of problems appear unworkable. In such cases, it is not sufficient to deal solely with coordination issues; collaborators need to find ways to address generative knowledge integration processes and to venture, collectively, into the unknown. We demonstrate how this generative quest of knowledge integration is achieved through a dialogical process of drawing and testing new distinctions that allows actors to gradually handle the epistemic uncertainty they face.