scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Book

Science of Science and Reflexivity

01 Jan 2004-
TL;DR: Bourdieu's "Science of Science and Reflexivity" as mentioned in this paper argues that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit.
Abstract: Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. "Science of Science and Reflexivity" will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal "An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology." In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in "Science of Science and Reflexivity" are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths; he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century; and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, "Science of Science and Reflexivity" is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology."
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual model of scientists' social mobility is presented that reflects their dependence on the social processes that take place in an academic community and their connection with scientific capital.
Abstract: Changes in financing structures of science and education foster the restructuring of scientific personnel market and its mobility. The author presents a conceptual model of scientists’ social mobility that reflects its dependence on the social processes that take place in an academic community and their connection with scientific capital. This model allows a complex analysis of doctorate holders. There are core trends in scientists’ social shifts in the professional sphere (inter-sectoral, institutional, international, etc.), their second employment and their shifts in specialization.

4 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...It is a matter of characteristics that are defined as socially significant resources for further academic production that return interest, which are established by means of game stakes within the present production, to an agent [32, 33]; besides, these resources exist over a long period of time....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The institutional context in which “water intoxication” was developed as a diagnostic category is considered and the impact of this diagnosis on the regulation of asylum patients is examined.
Abstract: In this article, we examine the regulation of psychiatric patients becoming intoxicated from drinking excessive amounts of liquids at a large psychiatric asylum in Canada. We analyze how medical staff created a formalized diagnostic category and a specialized ward for its treatment. We consider the institutional context in which “water intoxication” was developed as a diagnostic category and we examine the impact of this diagnosis on the regulation of asylum patients. Finally, we discuss the patients’ opposition to treatment as well as the impact of “water intoxication” on their self-identity and institutional status.

4 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...Conrad and Schneider ( 1992 :275) write that “medicalization increases with its economic profitability” and may also intensify when tied to chances for the advancement of doctors’ “scientific capital” (Bourdieu 2004 :55) in the medical field....

    [...]

  • ...Conrad and Schneider (1992:275) write that ‘‘medicalization increases with its economic profitability’’ and may also intensify when tied to chances for the advancement of doctors’ ‘‘scientific capital’’ (Bourdieu 2004:55) in the medical field....

    [...]

28 Feb 2013
TL;DR: Artykuł przedstawia możliwości analizy dyskursu w oparciu o socjologiczną teorię Pierre'a Bourdieu as discussed by the authors, wyodrębniono wątki, które mogą znaleźć szczególne zastosowanie przy badaniu różnego rodzaju tekstów zarówno pisany
Abstract: Artykuł przedstawia możliwości analizy dyskursu w oparciu o socjologiczną teorię Pierre’a Bourdieu. Zestawiając tę perspektywę z innymi ujęciami, które zbiorczo określa się mianem krytycznej analizy dyskursu (KAD), wyodrębniono wątki, które mogą znaleźć szczególne zastosowanie przy badaniu różnego rodzaju tekstów zarówno pisanych, jak i mówionych. Dotyczy to w równej mierze procesów produkcji, jak i recepcji poszczególnych dyskursów. Kluczowym kierunkiem dociekań w tym względzie powinno być poszukiwanie znaturalizowanych kategorii organizujących ramy dyskursów i kształtujących subiektywne schematy ich percepcji. Równie ważne jest zlokalizowanie i zrekonstruowanie pól społecznych, gdyż pozostają one fundamentalnymi przestrzeniami produkcji symbolicznej. Analiza pól oraz relacji między nimi pozwala ponadto na zupełnie nowe podejście do centralnego tematu KAD-u, jakim jest analiza intertekstualna.

4 citations


Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"

  • ...Przykładem może być typowy akt seksualny w społeczeństwie patriarchalnym, który, jako społecznie skonstruowany, wzmacnia klasyfikacje wysokie/niskie, aktywne/ Tomasz Warczok pasywne, odpowiadające dychotomii męskie/żeńskie (Bourdieu 2004a)....

    [...]

  • ...Bourdieu 2004a)....

    [...]

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take a step back, well outside methodological convention, to holistically and critically reflect on the lessons learned during the planning and execution of the CINHEKS comparative study.
Abstract: Comparative research design, at its best, in an international project focused on a complex topic, is a dynamic, iterative and on-going process. In the CINHEKS study this proved to be the case, both by design and in several ways our team did not, nor could not, anticipate. The tensions between purposeful planning, inevitable setbacks and serendipity turned out to be one of the most interesting aspects of CINHEKS and the purpose of this chapter is to take a step back, well outside methodological convention, to holistically and critically reflect on the lessons learned during the planning and execution of the CINHEKS comparative study. This chapter is an analysis of our efforts regarding the complexities of the evolution of an international research project from its genesis to its conclusion. The authors, both members of the primary grant-writing team focus on research design and the relationship between successes beyond our wildest expectations and serious challenges we did not always fully appreciate or anticipate: And the ways in which the two ends of this spectrum are inextricably bound together.

4 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that researchers become much more productive due to the accumulation of human capital and third party funding, while individuals who go to universities of excellence do not become more productive.
Abstract: Using a unique panel dataset of virtually all German academic political scientists, we show that researchers become much more productive due to the accumulation of human capital and third party funding. We also show however, that while universities of excellence have more productive researchers, individuals who go there do not become more productive. Finally, we show how women publish only 9 percent less than men with the same level of prior publication experience, but are about 26 percent less productive over their entire career, as early productivity leads to later productivity, so that women increasingly fall behind. These results cannot be explained through the influence of childbearing. Rather, they support the ‘theory of limited differences’, which argues that small differences in early productivity accumulate to large differences over entire careers, as early success encourages later success. Apart from generally showing why political scientists publish more or less, we specifically identify accumulative advantage as the principal reason why women increasingly fall behind men over the course of their careers.

4 citations