Science,Politics/Policy and the Cold War in Argentina: From Concepts to Institutional Models in the 1950s and ’60s

Minerva - This paper analyses how the Cold War influenced the discourses on basic research and on Science and Technology Policies (STPs) of some leaders of the Argentine research community. It...     

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.

---

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.

---

Modelling and the Nation: Institutionalising Climate Prediction in the UK, 1988–92

Minerva - How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently...     

European Action Plans for Science–Society Relations: Changing Buzzwords,Changing the Agenda

Minerva - This project began with the changes in the names of the European Commission’s action plans for the relationship between science and society. Analysing the main relevant documents in...     

Science and Engineering Doctoral Student Socialization,Logics, and the National Economic Agenda: Alignment or Disconnect?

This study explores the institutional logics and socialization experiences of STEM doctoral students in the context of the current American economic narrative that is specific to science and technology. Data from qualitative interviews with 36 students at three research universities first reveals a disconnect between a well-established national science and technology policy narrative that is market-oriented and the training, experiences, and perspectives of science and engineering doctoral students. Findings also indicate science and engineering doctoral students mostly understand entrepreneurship and innovation in the contexts of funding research activities and creating social impact, which parallel rather than oppose dominant academic values and norms. Based on the findings, we contend that it is both possible and prudent for universities and graduate programs to pursue strategies that align science and engineering doctoral education with the current national economic agenda and support the personal, professional values and perspectives of students without coming in conflict with the scientific core of the academy.     

From a Means to an End: Patenting in the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ and its Effect on Research Practice

This paper examines the potential pitfalls for academic research associated with goal displacements in the implementation of goals and indicators of research commercialization. We ask why patenting has come to serve as the key policy indicator of innovative capacity and what consequences this has for the organization of academic research. To address these questions, the paper presents a case study from Denmark on, firstly, why and how the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ introduced patenting as a central instrument to Danish science policy and, secondly, the effects the Act has had on Danish university organization and research practices. We trace why and how commercialization was introduced as an important objective in Danish science policy since the 1980s. The increased focus on patents is explained as an isomorphic adjustment to an international ‘science policy field,’ manifested in particular through OECD statistics, where patenting has come to serve as a key metric in international rankings. In a second step, we examine what effects the patenting requirements have had on organization and research practice at a Danish university. We show that in practice ‘number of patents’ changed from serving as an indicator of innovative capacity to being a policy goal in itself, thus in effect producing a goal displacement that is potentially damaging for both academic research and innovation capacity of the surrounding society. As a consequence of this goal displacement, active scientists now increasingly engage in patenting primarily as a means to fulfill organizational targets and to increase their ‘fundability,’ rather than to promote commercial applications of their research. In conclusion, we discuss how these unfulfilled policy ambitions have led to a retrospective redefinition of policy goals rather than an adjustment of the actual policy tools.     

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.

From the Triple Helix to a Quadruple Helix? The Case of Dip-Pen Nanolithography

In this article, we propose four modifications to the standard Triple Helix innovation model, which consists of the three strands: university, government, industry. First, in view of recent economic, cultural, organizational and ideological changes in many countries, it is now important to introduce a fourth strand to the standard model, namely society. Second, we observe that strands occur in doublets which we refer to as binomials. Examples of doublets include university/society, university/industry, industry/society, etc. Third, the binomials are organized in a hierarchic mode; for example in the university/society binomial, university may be dominant and the society secondary. The hierarchy arrangement proves decisive. Fourth, Helix-driven innovation processes take the form of temporary segmented phases. Using the case study of Dip-Pen nanolithography, we identify four phases where each phase is characterised by specific binomials accompanied by a hierarchy: academic instrument research (university/society); from instrument to tool; company start-up (university/industry); the mature firm and commercialization (industry/society); confirming the societal strand “nanofication”(society/industry). The government strand operates as a recessive component in phases one and four.     

From finding to making: Jacques Rancière,Richard Rorty,and the antifoundationalist story of progress

What is the contemporary significance of the modern antifoundationalist story of progress? By offering a critique of foundationalism and representationalism, pragmatists like John Dewey and Richard Rorty elucidate the far-reaching implications of this question. This article argues that Jacques Rancière’s critique of traditional philosophy and of Louis Althusser’s version of Marxism can be regarded as an important part of the antifoundationalist story of progress. Furthermore, it highlights suggestive affinities (and some differences) between Rorty’s postmetaphysical scenario of a poeticised culture and Rancière’s notion of the aesthetic regime of art. This article seeks to prepare the ground for a comparison between Rancière’s topographical and horizontal critique and Rorty’s pragmatist humanism as nominalist historicism.     

Hope for the Future? Early Exposure to the Arts and Adult Visits to Art Museums

This paper employs logistic regression to explore the relationship between art lessons and art history and appreciation classes as a child with adult visits to art museums. The regression-based technique allows for control of other influences such as demographic indicators of tastes and preferences. The results are generally consistent with the hypothesis that early exposure results in later participation, although exposure seems to have strongest influence in the pre- and post-teen years.     

From the Obligation of Birth to the Obligation of Care: Esposito’s Biophilosophy and Recalcati’s ‘New Symptoms’

This essay addresses the controversial status of subjectivity in Esposito’s affirmative biopolitics and articulates it using Recalcati’s psychoanalytical theory, with the aim of promoting a non-vitalistic affirmative biopolitics. In biopolitical theory in general, and in Esposito’s especially, subjectivity has a problematic status: while life precedes intersubjectivity, it is not clear whether subjectivity is regarded as a consequence or as the precondition of intersubjectivity (and thus of life). Esposito acknowledges such an aporia, the subjectum suppositum, but fails to recognise it in his own reasoning, ultimately envisioning a powerful interpretative and transformative paradigm – affirmative biopolitics – whilst leaving at its core a life-less subject. In this essay, I read Esposito’s affirmative biopolitics through Recalcati’s clinical approach to the ‘new symptoms’, with the aim of envisioning a subjectivity compatible with the ontogenetic primacy of life posited by biopolitical theory. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to suggest that an affirmative biopolitics, grounded on the promotion of neither a pre-subjective bare life, nor of a lifeless subject, but of a fully subjective life, a living subject is possible.     

Mission Completed? Changing Visibility of Women’s Colleges in England and Japan and Their Roles in Promoting Gender Equality in Science

The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue on international or national agendas, women’s colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities, the raison d’être of women’s universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women’s universities in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women’s universities embedded in their institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women’s universities, with their tradition of fostering a ‘good wife, wise mother’ image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on gender policies.     

What does it take to survive in a digital world? Resource-based theory and strategic change in the TV industry

Journal of Cultural Economics - Traditional linear television has been a long-standing success story. However, the digital revolution is rapidly transforming the TV industry, in terms of...     

Willingness to pay: how stable are the estimates?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the stability of WTP estimates when discrete choice models are applied in cultural valuation studies. This valuation technique has recently emerged and is expected to be more widely applied in cultural economics. However, little is known about whether or not WTP estimates that are derived using different functional forms and structures in the same valuation study are stable enough to be within an acceptable range. This paper tries to examine the stability of estimated WTP values when uncertainty remains in the selection of best choice models. A more careful selection of choice models might be needed to improve the valuation reliability.