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
TL;DR: Two principal means for improving research are presented: intensifying collaboration between PhD’s and clinicians, and encouraging the diversification of perspectives brought to bear on research in medical education.
Abstract: Since the latter part of the 1990’s, the English-speaking medical education community has been engaged in a debate concerning the types of research that should have priority. To shed light on this debate and to better understand its implications for the practice of research, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with “influential figures” from the community. The results were analyzed using the concept of “field” developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The results reveal that a large majority of these influential figures believe that research in medical education continues to be of insufficient quality despite the progress that has taken place over the past 2 decades. According to this group, studies tend to be both redundant and opportunistic, and researchers tend to have limited understanding of both theory and methodological practice from the social sciences. Three factors were identified by the participants to explain the current problems in research: the working conditions of researchers, budgetary restraints in financing research in medical education, and the conception of research in the medical environment. Two principal means for improving research are presented: intensifying collaboration between PhD’s and clinicians, and encouraging the diversification of perspectives brought to bear on research in medical education.
191 citations
Cites methods from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...The results were analyzed using the concept of ‘‘field’’ developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu....
[...]
...At a theoretical level, our study draws on the concept of ‘‘field’’ developed by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1991; 1993a; 2004)....
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science and develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology and draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence.
Abstract: The political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. In this article, we examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science. To do so, we develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology and that draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence amid several countervailing processes. Specifically, we explore three fundamental changes since the 1970s: the advent of the knowledge economy and the increasing interchange between academic and industrial research and development signified by academic capitalism and asymmetric convergence; the increasing prominence of science-based regulation of technology in global trade liberalization, marked by the heightened role of international organizations and the convergence of scientism and neoliberalism; and the epistemic modernization of the relationship between scientists and publics, represented by the proliferation of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization.
183 citations
Cites background or methods from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...Our view springs from a third perspective, which assumes that science is a quasiautonomous field of power that is subject to influence from other fields but also possesses a degree of self-governance (Fournier et al. 1975; Bourdieu 2001)....
[...]
...Following Bourdieu (2001, 2005), we approach the problem by looking for homologies or parallels in the transformation of the scientific and political fields and for causal links between actors and the structures of the fields in which they operate....
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use Bourdieu's concept of social fields to develop theories about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalization, and they argue that the concept can be and indeed has to be, stretched beyond the nation to take account of the emergent global policy field in education.
Abstract: This paper uses Bourdieu to develop theorizing about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalization. Use is made of Bourdieu's concept of social field and the argument is sustained that in the context of globalization the field of educational policy has reduced autonomy, with enhanced cross-field effects in educational policy production, particularly from the fields of the economy and journalism. Given the social rather than geographical character of Bourdieu's concept of social fields, it is also argued that the concept can be, and indeed has to be, stretched beyond the nation to take account of the emergent global policy field in education. Utilizing Bourdieu's late work on the globalization of the economy through neo-liberal politics, we argue that a non-reified account of the emergent global educational policy field can be provided.
182 citations
Book Chapter•
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provided important insights that helped in the writing of this paper and used these insights to improve the performance of their paper. But they did not discuss the authors' methodology.
Abstract: for providing important insights that helped in the writing of this paper.
178 citations
Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...There is the further complication that early works such as (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Bourdieu, 2004) made extensive use of economic metaphors, while essentially ignoring any substantive economic structures....
[...]
TL;DR: Sociologists have long recognized that cultural differences help explain the perpetuation of inequality by invisibly limiting access to elite cultural norms as discussed by the authors, however, there has been little investig...
Abstract: Sociologists have long recognized that cultural differences help explain the perpetuation of inequality by invisibly limiting access to elite cultural norms. However, there has been little investig...
172 citations