Bourdieu’s Cleft Sociology of Science

The paper examines Pierre Bourdieu’s extensive writings on the production of scientific knowledge. The study shows that Bourdieu offered not one but two - significantly different - approaches to scientific knowledge production, one formulated in his theoretical, or programmatic, writings on the subject, the other developed in his empirical writings. Addressing the question as to the relevance of Bourdieu’s work for science studies, the analysis argues that the former of these two approaches is at once very visible in Bourdieu’s work but characterized by limitations from the standpoint of scholarship in STS, whereas the latter approach is less conspicuous but of broader empirical value.     

Visions of International Scientific Cooperation: The Case of Oceanic Science, 1920–1955

This work explores the attitudes of American scientists towardsinternational scientific activity, with particular respect to theoceanic sciences, during the three decades after the First WorldWar. In the mid-1950s, the Eisenhower Administration favouredthe thesis that increased international collaboration wouldstrengthen the Free World, ease Cold War tensions, and promotethe growth of science. This essay analyses elements in thatthesis, namely, scientific chauvinism, humanitarianism, andscientific interdependence. The narrative traces these themesthrough key episodes in the history of international cooperationin oceanic science, revealing how this experience shapedstrategies and expectations for cooperative scientific research.     

The Universal Values of Science and China’s Nobel Prize Pursuit

China does not seem to believe the existence of universally acknowledged values in science and fails to promote the observation of such values that also should be applied to every member of the scientific community and at all times. Or, there is a separation between the practice of science in China and the values represented by modern science. In this context, science, including the pursuit of the Nobel Prize, is more a pragmatic means to achieve the end of the political leadership – the national pride in this case – than an institution laden with values that govern its practices. However, it is the recognition and respect of the latter that could lead to achievement of the former, rather than the other way around.     

Shanghai Science and Technology Museum

Shanghai Science and Technology Hall was for the first time unveiled in October 2001. As the main venue for APEC where global leaders were to meet, the museum instantly drew the attention from the world over. One of the landmark buildings in Shanghai, the museum is Shanghai's new name card to the world. Since the APEC, the museum has become a huge tourist attraction. People have been flocking to tour the avant-garde     

Serving Science and the State: Mining Science in France, 1794–1810

The revolutionary period in France marked a turning point in the history of the profession of mining engineering and its relation to the State. This essay outlines the changing requirements of the revolutionary government, and describes the ways in which the State and its engineering professionals responded to the challenge of combining science and practice.

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A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.

University vs. Research Institute? The Dual Pillars of German Science Production, 1950–2010

The world’s third largest producer of scientific research, Germany, is the origin of the research university and the independent, extra-university research institute. Its dual-pillar research policy differentiates these organizational forms functionally: universities specialize in advanced research-based teaching; institutes specialize intensely on research. Over the past decades this policy affected each sector differently: while universities suffered a lingering “legitimation crisis,” institutes enjoyed deepening “favored sponsorship”—financial and reputational advantages. Universities led the nation’s reestablishment of scientific prominence among the highly competitive European and global science systems after WWII. But sectoral analysis of contributions to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical and health journal publications (1950–2010) finds that Germany’s small to medium-sized independent research institutes have made significant, growing contributions, particularly in publishing in higher impact journals proportionally more than their size. Simultaneously—despite dual-pillar policy implications—the university sector continues to be absolutely and relatively successful; not eclipsed by the institutes. Universities have consistently produced two-thirds of the nation’s publications in the highest quality journals since at least 1980 and have increased publications at a logarithmic rate; higher than the international mean. Indeed, they led Germany into the global mega-science style of production. Contrary to assumed benefits of functional differentiation, our results indicate that relative to their size, each sector has produced approximately similar publication records. While institutes have succeeded, the larger university sector, despite much less funding growth, has remained fundamental to German science production. Considering these findings, we discuss the future utility of the dual-pillar policy.

     

Boundary-Work in the Health Research Field: Biomedical and Clinician Scientists’ Perceptions of Social Science Research

Funding agencies in Canada are attempting to break down the organizational boundaries between disciplines to promote interdisciplinary research and foster the integration of the social sciences into the health research field. This paper explores the extent to which biomedical and clinician scientists’ perceptions of social science research operate as a cultural boundary to the inclusion of social scientists into this field. Results indicated that cultural boundaries may impede social scientists’ entry into the health research field through three modalities: (1) biomedical and clinician scientists’ unfavourable and ambivalent posture towards social science research; (2) their opposition to a resource increase for the social sciences; and (3) clinician scientists procedural assessment criteria for social science. The paper also discusses the merits and limitations of Tom Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work for studying social dynamics within the field of science.

Science on the Periphery. The spanish Reception of Nuclear Energy: an Attempt at Modernity?

During the Cold War, Franco’s dictatorship attempted to use technological transfer and nuclear technology to strengthen the geopolitical influence of his Government in Spain. This paper studies this process, with particular reference to the role played by German scientists as advisers to the Spanish nuclear project.     

“The Ennobling Unity of Science and Technology”: Materials Sciences and Engineering, the Department of Energy, and the Nanotechnology Enigma

The ambiguous material identity of nanotechnology is a minor mystery of the history of contemporary science. This paper argues that nanotechnology functioned primarily in discourses of social, not physical or biological science, the problematic knowledge at stake concerning the economic value of state-supported basic science. The politics of taxonomy in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the 1990s reveals how scientists invoked the term as one of several competing and equally valid candidates for reframing materials sciences in ways believed consonant with the political tenor of the time. The resulting loss of conceptual clarity in the sociology of science traces ultimately to the struggle to bridge the disjunction between the promissory economy of federal basic science and the industrial economy, manifested in attempts to reconcile the precepts of linearity and interdisciplinarity in changing socio-economic conditions over a half century.     

Cross-Field Effects of Science Policy on the Biosciences: Using Bourdieu’s Relational Methodology to Understand Change

This paper is based on a study that explored the responses of bioscientists to changes in national science policy and research funding in Canada. In the late 1990s, a range of new science policies and funding initiatives were implemented, linking research funding to Canada’s competitiveness in the ‘global knowledge economy’. Bourdieu’s theory of practice is used to explore the multi-scalar, cross-field effects of global economic policy and national science policy on scientific practice. While most science and educational policy studies use Bourdieu’s concepts ontologically, as “thinking tools” to theorize power, this study adopted Bourdieu’s relational epistemology, empirically linking objective positions of power (capital) with position-takings (rooted in habitus) towards market-oriented science. A relational epistemology made it possible to explore what forms and weight of capital scientists brought to bear on symbolic struggles over the legitimacy of a market and scientific logic. By empirically investigating how power shaped bioscientists’ responses to market-oriented science policy, this study was able to identify key mechanisms of change within the scientific field and between science, politics and the market. First, it identified the rise of a new form of entrepreneurial capital and a market-oriented logic that coexists alongside a traditional scientific logic within the scientific field in a bipolar system of stratification. Second, it illustrated changes in scientific practice, which contribute to change in the structure of the distribution of capital within the scientific field. This study challenges Bourdieu’s emphasis on a single dominant logic or symbolic order and challenges science and technology scholars to both use and extend his theoretical contributions.     

Balfour’s Mission to Palestine: Science,Strategy, and the Inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

In 1925, A.J. Balfour, first Earl Balfour and author of the famous ‘Balfour Declaration’, attended the inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His education and experience of foreign policy equipped him to take a prominent role. However, the conditions of strife-torn Palestine weighed heavily upon him, and raised wider interests of imperial concern. This essay recounts the circumstances leading to his visit, and suggests that, whatever the region’s political destiny, Balfour’s vision of science-based economic development would play an essential role in crafting its future.

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Meanings and Policy Implications of “Transformative Research”: Frontiers, Hot Science, Evolution, and Investment Risk

In recent times there has been a surge in interest on policy instruments to stimulate scientific and engineering research that is of greater consequence, advancing our knowledge in leaps rather than steps and is therefore more “creative” or, in the language of recent reports, “transformative.” Associated with the language of “transformative research” there appears to be much enthusiasm and conviction that the future of research is tied to it. However, there is very little clarity as to what exactly it is and what criteria might be used to design policy instruments to make more of it happen. In this paper, we contribute to the construction of a framework within which some conceptual clarity might be gained. We develop four analogies, or metaphors, that are found in the discourse about “transformative research” and show what they imply for the meaning of the notion and, as a result, both the phenomena that might be associated with it and the levers that would be available to design policy instruments. The analogies serving as theoretical metaphors that we propose, and also document to be present either explicitly or implicitly in the discourse about “transformative research,” are the stock market highlighting risk; the process of evolution and its selection mechanisms; the process of popular culture and the power of “hot” events; and exploration of the frontier of the unknown. No single analogy covers all the relevant issues. Together they help identify a field of phenomena and the potential and challenges “transformative research” presents to policy.     

Chinese Science and the ‘Nobel Prize Complex’

China's scientists have so far failed to win a Nobel Prize. Political interference, certain aspects of cultural heritage, and a problematic value system have arguably been major contributing factors. This essay examines the ways in which these factors have operated, and discusses why there is a growing Nobel Prize mania in China today.