Regimes of Knowledge Production in Society: Towards a More Political and Social Reading

The `co-productions' of science and society have undergone dramatic changes in recent decades. However, contrasts between `Mode 1' and `Mode 2' are not compelling inhistorical terms. This essay will argue that, in fact, they offer too naturalistic and a-political a picture.     

Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science

Building on recent theories ofscience in society, such as that provided bythe `Mode 2' framework, this paper argues thatgovernments should reconsider existingrelations among decision-makers, experts, andcitizens in the management of technology.Policy-makers need a set of `technologies ofhumility' for systematically assessing theunknown and the uncertain. Appropriate focalpoints for such modest assessments are framing,vulnerability, distribution, and learning.     

Gender,Science and Technology in Brazil

This essay considers gender in relation toBrazilian science and technology. It reviewsleading studies in the field, and offers briefbiographies of pioneering women in science.While there is still much room for improvement,the essay suggests that the situation of womenin science experienced significant progressduring the closing decades of the twentiethcentury.     

China Looks Abroad: Changing Directions In International Science

This essay describes China’s participation in international science organizations during the past two decades. It argues that, whilst progress has been made, serious problems remain. It concludes that increased attention to communication and exchange, and the creation of a favourable international image in science and technology are important priorities for China.

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The Public Understanding of Science and Public Participation in Regulated Worlds

This article discusses studies and politicalinitiatives concerned with enhancing publicinvolvement in major technological decisions.It argues that such decisions should include asignificant role for the mass media, andrespect for the diverse relations betweenscience and governance. The notion of`regulated worlds' is proposed as a startingpoint in a discourse that brings together themass media, science management, anddeliberative democracy.     

Science Policy in Action: Policy and the Researcher

Government policies for science, usually incorporatingeconomic and social aims, are increasingly influencing the contentand management of university research. This essay discusses theinfluence of selected science policies on individual researchersand group leaders. Within the limitations of a case study, itargues that policies that steer the content of research have agreater influence on research behaviour, than do policies relatedto overall research management. Increasing pressures for compliancewith mission-objectives point to the need for closer discussionbetween those who make policy decisions, and the wider researchcommunity.     

Science indicators as reliable evidence

Science indicators are increasingly used in policy-making. However, failure to relate interpretations of specific measures to the historical development of science can lead to errors in assessing past investments and in prioritizing future investments. This article outlines some of these sources of error, and argues for the more systematic use of historical evidence in the formulation of science policy. Irwin Feller, an economist, is a Senior Visiting Scientist at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research includes studies of the economics of academic R&D, the assessment of interdisciplinary research, and the relationship between performance measurement and science and technology policies. George Gamota, a physicist, is President of STMA, LLC. He has written extensively on technology assessment and forecasting, emerging technologies, and science policy. Recently, he led a review of New Zealand’s New Economy Research Fund (NERF), and is a foreign reviewer of the Japanese Science & Technology (JST) Corporation’s research programmes.     

Migration Currents Among the Scientific Elite

Many countries today have policies to encourage outstanding scientists to remain, or return, ‘home’. To date, the cumulative effect of these policies remains unclear. This essay argues that we need a new approach to studying elites in science. It draws upon three studies to suggest that migration is field-specific; that migration occurs more among potential, rather than among established elites; and that policies aimed simply at attracting eminent scientists may prove inadequate to the task of sustaining national scientific communities.     

Science,Technology and Democracy

Science and the institutions of science are far from democratic systems,and yet they are the most democratic of regimes. This essay examinesthe demand for transparency and public participation. One can distinguishseveral levels of public influence. Their function suggests thatdecision-makers, both scientists and technocrats, are being obligedto accept and work with rules which are no longer laid down by themselves.     

Academic Freedom: Impressions of Australian Social Scientists

This article reinterprets a recentexploratory study of the academic freedom ofAustralian social scientists in an increasinglycommercialised university environment. Thestudy revealed that academics are experiencingseveral conditions that undermine academicfreedom: the intensification of work at theexpense of quality; pressure to choose `safe'research topics; the erosion of intellectualcapital and student standards; and increasingcorporate governance. We position thesefindings within the transition to `Mode 2'knowledge production, arguing that thisprovides a more appropriate basis forreconceptualising the traditional concept ofacademic freedom and renegotiating its socialpractice.     

American Influence on British Higher Education: Science,Technology, and the Problem of University Expansion, 1945–1963

The increased support of science andtechnology were fundamental factors in theexpansion of university education in post-warBritain. American technical assistance toWestern Europe, exemplified by the MarshallPlan, also focused upon the role of appliedscience and technology as a means of boostingproductivity and competitiveness. This commonconcern for science and technology led Britainto consider the adoption of American models,specifically a British version of MIT, in thesearch for an effective higher education policyfor applied science and technology. However,this paper argues that, whilst America offeredimportant models for change, British policieswere ultimately shaped by British traditions.     

Of `Small Men', Big Science and Bigger Business: The Second World War and Biomedical Research in the United States

The Second World War is commonly said to have ushered in theera of `big science' in the United States. However, at least inpractically-oriented biomedical research, the American governmentadopted modes of sponsorship that were commonplace between scientistsand industry before the war. Furthermore, many life scientistsleading wartime projects were already familiar with industrialcollaboration. This essay argues that the new federal regimes introduced in the late 1940s and 1950s were more important than wartime experience in shaping the character of biomedical `big science' in the United States during the second half of thetwentieth century.     

Beginning Science Policy Research in Europe: The Studiengruppe für Systemforschung, 1957–1973

Translator’s note*: I am pleased to offer this translation of a lecture by Helmut Krauch, both because he is an old friend, whom I have known for more than forty years, and because it fills a gap in the history of science policy research. As this lecture makes clear, the Studiengruppe, led by Krauch, was the first in Europe to measure the share of nuclear and military research in total R&D expenditure and to make systematic technology assessments to guide government policy. Moreover, its Project ORAKEL opened the way to wider public debate on major policy issues in science and technology. Krauch’s book on Computer Democracy remains an outstanding contribution to the reform of Western democracy. I commend this essay warmly to all concerned with the history of science and technology policy. This is an edited translation of a lecture delivered at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at the Research Centre for Technical Change and the Environment in Karlsruhe, 10 April 2000. We are grateful to the Institute for permission to publish the essay, to Professor Christopher Freeman, for generously preparing a translation, and to Dr. Reinhard Coenen for helping to prepare the final version.     

Disciplinary Networks and Bounding: Scientific Communication Between Science and Technology Studies and the History of Science

This article examines the communication networks within and between science and technology studies (STS) and the history of science. In particular, journal relatedness data are used to analyze some of the structural features of their disciplinary identities and relationships. The results first show that, although the history of science is more than half a century older than STS, the size of the STS network is more than twice that of the history of science network. Further, while a majority of the journals in the STS network are connected by weak ties, about half of the history of science network consists of strong ties. The history of science network is thus more cohesive than the STS network. The relatively strong cohesion within the history of science network is associated with comparatively high degrees of intra-disciplinary communication, but comparatively weak ties to only a few related disciplines. The analysis also shows that very few members of the history of science cliques are situated on the shortest path between both specialties. Moreover, given the relatively impermeable nature of the history of science network, the latter partially depends on STS to reach some of the neighboring disciplines.     

New Forms of Complementarity in Science

New sciences born or developed in the 20th century (information, materials, life science) are based on forms of complementarity that differ from the past. The paper discusses cognitive, or disciplinary, institutional, and technical complementarity. It argues that new sciences apply a reductionist explanatory strategy to complex multi-layered systems. In doing so the reductionist promise is falsified, generating the need for multi-level kinds of explanation (e.g. in post-genomic molecular biology), new forms of complementarity between scientific and non-scientific organizations, and new forms of experimental and informational facilities. The paper develops the argument in theoretical terms, comparing it with the STS literature, and offers preliminary evidence based on the experience of Networks of Excellence.     

Mysticism and Marxism: A.S. Eddington,Chapman Cohen,and Political Engagement Through Science Popularization

This paper argues that that political context of British science popularization in the inter-war period was intimately tied to contemporary debates about religion and science. A leading science popularizer, the Quaker astronomer A.S. Eddington, and one of his opponents, the materialist Chapman Cohen, are examined in detail to show the intertwined nature of science, philosophy, religion, and politics.

Resisting Whiteness: Mexican American Studies and Rhetorical Struggles for Visibility

In late 2012, Santino J. Rivera published a collection of Chicana/o literature as a cultural and political response to the closure of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. This essay argues that Rivera's text invites critical interrogation of the whiteness ideologies underlying critiques of MAS in an attempt to make spaces for Chicana/o sensibilities. Such sensibilities, this essay argues, include In Lak'ech and mestiza rhetorics, which emphasize cultural empowerment, identification, spiritual love, and humanization.     

Gender,Science, and Scientific Organizations in Germany

This article considers the situation of women in science in Germany. We argue that scientific organizations play a crucial role in shaping science careers, often with different consequences for men and women. To sustain the argument, we offer a study of the careers of male and female scientists in the Max Planck Society. Our findings show that external support increases career options and opportunities for men, but not for women scientists.     

Birth of the Suicidal Subject: Nelly Arcan,Michel Foucault,and Voluntary Death

Abstract

Michel Foucault argues that it is not sex but death that is the true taboo in the modern, biopolitical era. The result is that regular death has been privatised and institutionalised, wars are waged in the name of life, capital punishment has become a scandal, and suicide has become a problem for sociological and psychiatric analysis rather than law. In contrast to the dominant view, Foucault portrays suicide not as a mark of pathology but as a form of resistance (tragic or pleasurable) to disciplinary power, and argues for an aestheticisation of voluntary death as part of a beautiful life. Through a reading of the writings of Québecoise author Nelly Arcan, this essay presents but also critiques and expands upon Foucault's accounts of suicide, exploring the thesis that the pathological model of suicide produces the subjects that it intends to treat.     

Research Prioritization and the Potential Pitfall of Path Dependencies in Coral Reef Science

Studies of how scientists select research problems suggest the process involves weighing a number of factors, including funding availability, likelihood of success versus failure, and perceived publishability of likely results, among others. In some fields, a strong personal interest in conducting science to bring about particular social and environmental outcomes plays an important role. Conservation biologists are frequently motivated by a desire that their research will contribute to improved conservation outcomes, which introduces a pair of challenging questions for managers of science and scholars of policies governing science: 1) How do scientists integrate that goal into their processes of research priority evaluation, and 2) How can managers and funders of science utilize that knowledge in designing and administering funding programs? I use Q method to uncover four distinct schools of thought amongst researchers and knowledge-users about the merits of possible research priorities for coral reefs; one of the axes along which these schools of thought differ is in their interpretation of how science can and should interact with policy. The results reveal that perceived severity of reef stressors plays a role for some participants. Disciplinary training does not appear to be a major influence on research priority evaluation, but individual participants indicated professional expediency does prevent some researchers from pursuing or advocating that others pursue topics outside of that disciplinary specialty. Influences on and processes in research prioritization uncovered in this study have the potential to lead to counter-productive disciplinary path dependencies. From these results and building on outside literature, I conclude that better coordination and communication about research priorities across disciplines and with broader stakeholders – including knowledge users – could improve the research enterprise’s ability to contribute to meaningful societal and conservation goals. These findings are relevant to researchers and research administrators across disciplines that seek to conduct or fund science that is useful in addressing specific goals.