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Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists
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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.read more
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Scientists Negotiate Boundaries between Religion and Science
TL;DR: This paper conducted interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at 21 elite U.S. research universities and found that only a minority of scientists see religion and science as always in conflict, and that scientists selectively employ different cultural strategies with regards to the religion-science relationship: redefining categories, integration models, and intentional talk.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Agora and the Role of Research Evaluation
TL;DR: The authors investigates how recent societal developments - epitomized by the concept of the agora - influence research evaluations and how we perceive them and how they are more to be understood as a result of a social rationale.
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Verging on the polemical. Towards an interdisciplinary approach to medieval religious polemic
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take stock of the different definitions and connotations of the concept of religious "polemic" in order to encourage a more interdisciplinary debate on this topic and argue that the interdisciplinary research fields engaging with religious polemics could generate important historical perspectives on current conflict cultures, and appear to be on the verge of an expansion of the horizon towards the global, connecting an extant, highly active research field on religious encounter in the Euro-Mediterranean area to the study of Asia and Africa.
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Representing and regulating nature: boundary organisations, portable representations, and the science–policy interface
Abstract: The interaction between science and policy in transboundary environmental regulation is dynamic. By elaborating on the concepts of boundary organisations and portable representations, I shed light on how science-based policy and policy-relevant science are co-produced. This perspective is then put to use in an analysis of the scientific representation and political regulation of two different environmental issues: ground-level ozone and biodiversity. Portable representations function as a link between experts and policymakers. By means of portable representations, nature is not only measured and represented but also made governable. Portable representations seemed to strengthen the credibility of both scientific assessments and policy. Science makes itself matter by formally separating itself from policy considerations, although the two are at the same time integrated through portable representations from boundary organisations.
Book
Networking Knowledge for Information Societies: Institutions & Intervention
TL;DR: This comprehensive volume includes state-of-the-art analyses of the problems of and prospects for information societies and the work of William H. Melody features centrally in this volume, compiled in his honour.
References
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Book
The Interpretation of Cultures
Richard Fenn,Clifford Geertz +1 more
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.
Ellsworth Faris,Talcott Parsons +1 more
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
Karl Marx,Friedrich Engels +1 more
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.
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Labor and Monopoly Capital
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.