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Journal ArticleDOI

Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists

Thomas F. Gieryn
- 01 Dec 1983 - 
- Vol. 48, Iss: 6, pp 781
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TLDR
The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities is an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists and is examined as a practical problem for scientists in this article, where a set of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied.
Abstract
The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.

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DissertationDOI

Cultures of forecasting : volatile and vulnerable nature, knowledge, and the future of uncertainty

Adam Bobbette
TL;DR: Support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada, Cambridge Trust, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Canada as mentioned in this paper and the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Journal ArticleDOI

Climate state: Science-state struggles and the formation of climate science in the US from the 1930s to 1960s.

TL;DR: The article reconstructs the historical formation of a US climate science field, with an analytic focus on inter-field dynamics and heterogeneous networking practices, to understand the co-production of climate science and the state and to provide a test case for Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory.
Dissertation

The Psychotechnics of Everyday Life: Hugo Münsterberg and the Politics of Applied Psychology, 1887-1917

TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between experimental psychology and everyday life through the prism of Hugo Münsterberg and the Harvard Psychological Laboratory during the Progressive Era is examined, and it is argued that the psychotechnical movement represented a radical new view of the psychologist as an expert in modernization responsible for identifying, measuring and controlling the "human factor" mediating all human activity.
Journal ArticleDOI

'Becoming accepted': The complementary and alternative medicine practitioners' response to the uptake and practice of traditional medicine therapies by the mainstream health sector.

TL;DR: This Australian study sought to understand how practitioners of the traditional systems of what is now termed complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are responding to the adoption of their traditional medicine therapies by the mainstream health care system, and the practice of these therapies by mainstream health Care practitioners.
Journal ArticleDOI

Spooks and spoofs relations between psychical research and academic psychology in Britain in the inter-war period

TL;DR: The authors describes the relations between academic psychology and psychical research in Britain during the inter-war period, in the context of the fluid boundaries between mainstream psychology and traditional psychical studies.
References
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Book

The Interpretation of Cultures

TL;DR: The INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ Books files are available at the online library of the University of Southern California as mentioned in this paper, where they can be used to find any kind of Books for reading.
Book

The Social System

TL;DR: In the history of sociological theory, Talcott Parsons holds a very special place. as discussed by the authors presents a major scientific and intellectual advance towards the theory of action first outlined in his earlier work.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Social System.

TL;DR: In the history of sociological theory, Talcott Parsons holds a very special place. as mentioned in this paper presents a major scientific and intellectual advance towards the theory of action first outlined in his earlier work.
Book

The German Ideology

TL;DR: The authors made easily accessible the most important parts of Marx's and Engels's major early philosophical work, The German Ideology, a text of key importance for students, making it easily accessible.
Journal ArticleDOI

Labor and Monopoly Capital

Harry Braverman
- 01 Jul 1974 - 
TL;DR: In this paper, the structure of the working class and the manner in which it had changed in the United States were investigated. But the details of this process, especially its historical turning points and the shape of the new employment that was taking the place of the old, were not clear to me, and since these things had not yet been clarified in any comprehensive fashion, there was a need for a more substantial historical description and analysis of the process of occupational change than had yet been presented in print.