Knowledge Producing of the Doctoral Thesis: Between Scientific Utility and Social Usage

AbstractThis contribution focuses on the logics of the reflexive momentum which leads the doctoral students to self-insight through a constant back and forth reflection between knowledge production, its utility and its usage. To what extent do scientific utility and social usage condition knowledge production? The study of knowledge production contexts is illustrated here by three distinct cases referring to the circumstances motivating the doctoral students’ registration, their route all along their thesis and the use they wish to make, and/or make, of it, once their research work is achieved, thus giving a biographical dimension to the mode of knowledge re-production