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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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Journal ArticleDOI

‘States’ of Scarcity: Water, Space, and Identity Politics in Israel, 1948–59

TL;DR: In this article, the authors tell the story of how the water resources of Israel came to be constructed as scarce and how the dismantling of a network of water abundance and the emergence, instead, of water scarcity and centralization, which helped to construct all of the following: water resource scarcity as 'fact'; centralized policy-making institutions as most efficient; centralized technologies as 'appropriate'; the national space as the only source of identity; a strong and centralized state as 'legitimate'; legal precedents for the use of state apparatus for surveillance, discipline, and control
Journal ArticleDOI

Translational science and the hidden research system in universities and academic hospitals: a case study.

TL;DR: This paper explores what has been called the 'hidden research system' that connects hospitals, universities, and their resources, with the clinical and scientific actors who make the linkages possible, and examines the individual interactions and dynamics involved in a particular example of the biomedical innovation system at work.
Journal ArticleDOI

Building an Interdiscipline: Collective Action Framing and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology

TL;DR: In this paper, the case of genetic toxicology and drawing on framing theory is used to examine how interdisciplines are made and why these researchers made the rhetorical case for GA by amplifying, extending, and translating a set of interrelated collective action frames and why framing processes were integral to the rapid consolidation of a new and intensely interdisciplinary environmental health science.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Monarch Butterfly through Time and Space: The Social Construction of an Icon

TL;DR: This study finds that engagement with narratives of beauty, natural wonder, scientific discovery, conservation imperatives, and civic duty has allowed the monarch to enroll actors in a broad network that gives rise to surprising, emergent properties.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Politics of Ideology: The Papal Struggle with Liberalism

TL;DR: In the 19th-century Europe, the papacy was forced to avoid sociopolitical issues if it was to avoid persistent conflict between the Church and the State as mentioned in this paper, and the popes subordinated sociopolitical concerns to more purely religious and moral issues while constructing an ideological opposition to liberalism.
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.