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The outcomes of information behaviours have traditionally been conceptualised as use or effects. The adoption of a sociological stance, based on a practices approach, provides the opportunity to challenge these understandings. The non-Western setting further enhances the possibilities for conceptualising the outcomes of information practices as forms of capital.

This ethnographic study uses a Bourdieusian approach to investigate the information practices of diasporic devotees and monks of a Theravada Buddhist Temple in Sydney, Australia. The insider position of one researcher brought strong insights into the data, while the theoretical approach shared with the other researchers reinforced an outsider perspective.

The Temple’s online sources and personal communication with other devotees provide a diverse range of sources that devotees use in information-based cultural practices and everyday life information practices. These practices lead to outcomes that can be identified as economic, social and cultural capital. Pin or merit emerges as an important outcome of practices which is not easily accommodated by the concept of outcome, nor by Bourdieu’s categories of capital.

Adding to the small number of studies concerned with information practices in a spiritual context, this study shows the value of a Bourdieusian approach in identifying the outcomes of information practices as capital, but highlights the shortcomings of applying Western concepts in non-Western settings. It proposes the possibility of a new form of capital, which will need to be tested rigorously in studies in other spiritual settings.

This chapter analyses the emergency policy responses that the European Union made during the summer of 2015 to manage the significant numbers of migrants entering Europe. The chapter employs Broadbent’s (1998) ideas of ‘accounting logic’ to analyse these policy actions. The chapter argues that there are multiple and complex reasons why people migrate, and why in this instance people are prepared to risk their lives by taking perilous journeys. An ‘accounting logic’ leads to decisions being based mainly on financial inputs and expected outputs rather than on the social and humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees. Despite the significant amount of resources provided by the European Union, the crisis continues. The risks associated with employing an accounting logic are that it may preclude a full understanding of situations by silencing other values and logics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a close, detailed analysis of the frequency, nature, and depth of visible use of two of Foucault’s classic early works, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things, by library, and information science/studies (LIS) scholars.

The study involved conducting extensive full-text searches in a large number of electronically available LIS journal databases to find citations of Foucault’s works, then examining each citing article and each individual citation to evaluate the nature and depth of each use.

Contrary to initial expectations, the works in question are relatively little used by LIS scholars in journal articles, and where they are used, such use is often only vague, brief, or in passing. In short, works traditionally seen as central and foundational to discourse analysis appear relatively little in discussions of discourse.

The study was limited to a certain batch of LIS journal articles that are electronically available in full text at UCLA, where the study was conducted. The results potentially could change by focussing on a fuller or different collection of journals or on non-journal literature. More sophisticated bibliometric techniques could reveal different relative performance among journals. Other research approaches, such as discourse analysis, social network analysis, or scholar interviews, might reveal patterns of use and influence that are not visible in the journal literature.

This study’s intensive, in-depth study of quality as well as quantity of citations challenges some existing assumptions regarding citation analysis and the sociology of citation practices, plus illuminating Foucault scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to engage knowledge management (KM) researchers and practitioners with Foucault’s power/knowledge lens as a way of thinking about and recognising the central role of power in organisational knowledge cultures.

The empirical illustrations in this paper are drawn from two qualitative studies in different professional and institutional contexts (insurance and theatre work). Both studies used in-depth interviews and discourse analysis as their principal methods of data collection and analysis.

The empirical examples illustrate how practitioners operate within complex power/knowledge relations that shape their practices of knowledge sharing, generation and use. The findings show how an application of the power/knowledge lens renders visible both the constraining and productive force of power in KM.

Researchers may apply the conceptual tools presented here in a wider variety of institutional and professional contexts to examine the complex and multifaceted role of power in a more in-depth way.

KM professionals will benefit from an understanding of organisational power/knowledge relations when seeking to promote transformational changes in their organisations and build acceptance for KM initiatives.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature around theoretical and empirical discussions of power as well as offering an alternative to prevailing resource-based views of power in KM.

Purpose – To develop a broader understanding of sense-making as an embodied process of social construction.

Methodology/approach – Extended conversational interviews (Seidman, 1991) were undertaken with 35 prominent theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom exploring the events and relationships that shaped their relationship with Shakespeare and his work. Inductive analysis was carried out inspired by a variety of theoretical lenses, including Dervin's Sense-Making and Foucauldian discourse analysis.

Findings – Participants’ sense-making was quintessentially social in that it was not only linked to their social connections and relationships with other members of the company but also a process of social construction drawing on a variety of disparate, and sometimes contradictory, established discourses. In contrast to prevailing approaches in information behaviour, the findings emphasise the importance of understanding sense-making in a more holistic way: as a process involving emotions as well as rationality, bodies as well as minds.

Research implications – Information researchers need to adopt a more holistic approach to understanding the relationship between people and information: to recognise that atomistic approaches focussing on the purposive information seeking of individuals reflect an implicit systems-centrism rather than people's lived experience.

Practical implications – Information researchers and practitioners need to consider the social affective and embodied nature of sense-making and consider, for example the ways in which online social networking sites build on centuries-old communal knowledge-sharing practices.

Originality/value of paper – The study extends our understanding of the importance of affect and embodiment for people's sense-making, while at the same time demonstrating that they, like language, are the products of social construction, both the object and generator of discourse.

Marit Kristine Ådland is a Ph.D. student at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science. Her research interests and activity is within knowledge organization, information behavior, information retrieval, and information architecture. Her current research explores users’ tags and tagging behavior in the field of cancer information. She teaches classification and indexing to students training in librarianship.

The purpose of this book is to collect current research representing different aspects of social information with emphasis on the new innovations supporting contemporary information behavior. To begin with, we need to define what we mean by social information in general and in the area of information science in particular. It is interesting to notice that social information is a concept used and researched in many different disciplines. Besides information science, the concept of social information has been studied in biology, psychology, and sociology among other disciplines.