ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some sociological responses to audit culture within educational research, noting some limitations in the way that the problem has been posed. It suggests the value of critically exploring the concept of appropriation. The chapter presents an example of how social theoretical terms can themselves be subject to translation within a policy context, and considers ways in which this is theorized. It considers the possibility that translation is an intrinsic feature of knowledge production and how this might be understood in theoretical terms. The chapter offers to Basil Bernstein's important and insightful work on the translation of knowledge, work which can be located within the classical sociological tradition, and concludes by looking at some very different work on translation from outside this tradition. It suggests Latour and, especially, Derrida provide valuable resources to start developing a different problematic on this specific issue, and to raise important questions about the place of theory and the process of theorizing.
