What is a contribution?
Dear AIME platform users,
Since last week all of the functionalities that we had planned to have fully functioning, function and in particular, the last column on the right ‘C’ for contributions. This column allows readers to become co-inquirers and gives meaning to the whole Inquiry.
To accompany you in your role as a co-inquirer we have assembled a group of mediators who will edit, modify and expand upon and publish your contributions.
Below, you will find the information that you need if you wish to contribute.
A Tutorial will take you to a tutorial that will guide you through the most common difficulties co-inquirers face when starting out.
Having resolved most of the technical issues (of which a few remain but nothing too terrible) we can now get back to the heart of our inquiry and are delighted to count you among our potential co-inquirers.
On behalf of the team,
Bruno Latour
What is a contribution?
Contributions are absolutely necessary to the success of the survey. All relevant contributions will be incorporated into the final versions - paper and digital - with each time, an acknowledgement of the author.
We cannot extract ourselves from our current difficulties unless we work together. We seek to share the research experience and as such we are very open. However, we only do so according to very specific protocols and rather demanding expectations and as such, we remain very closed! If we dare to maintain this paradox it is only because experience is sharable and because the protocols that are so strictly adhered to render themselves a source of concern and open to debate. In the meantime, metalanguage becomes entirely ‘disposable’.
A contribution is a not a comment. It is not enough to simply ‘like’ or ‘not like’. Nor is it like editing a wiki or reviewing. A contribution works in such a way that it subjects the Inquiry to the trials for which it was designed.
A contribution is an operation. It is a maneuver attempted during a diplomatic game. It is a practice that is both informed and free, operating within the intellectual machinery of the Inquiry. The co-inquirer can reformulate, complete and apply but he or she can also correct, test and protest. In every instance, it remains with the context of an empirical investigation.
Inasmuch as it is possible each contribution should attempt to build upon something new and be in the form of an annotated document that develops an argument or line of thought. The role of the mediators is to direct the work behind the contribution towards those beings that are less well represented.
The process of selecting contributions is performed with the mediators always keeping an eye towards the final phase of the Inquiry where the diplomatic operations and face-to-face rewriting sessions will take place. In this respect, the online platform serves as a kind of draft or preparatory document for these final meetings.
The AIME team
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant ‘IDEAS’ 2010 n° 269567.