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: In this article, the authors explore the idea of academic collaboration from a perspective that places knowledge in the centre of the inquiry, and consider the extent to which collaboration maintains its intrinsic salience for the academy, despite the proliferation of external incentives and injunctions.
Abstract: This conceptual article explores the idea of academic collaboration from a perspective that places knowledge in the centre of the inquiry. It considers the extent to which collaboration maintains its intrinsic salience for the academy, despite the proliferation of external incentives and injunctions. As scientific and socio-economic progress has been associated with collaboration, this has come to be viewed as a carrier of scientific and social returns, thus worthy of policy and institutional support. At the same time, though, the value of collaboration has been questioned. What are the dangers and the potentials attributed to collaborative arrangements? Why is collaboration a well-embraced but also a contested notion? Despite various degrees of adherence to the idea of collaboration, a progressive shift from the lone scholar to collaborative formations can be traced, making collaborations an embedded feature of the changing face of higher education and research. Although the role of research funding and ...
13 citations
Cites background from "Science of Science and Reflexivity"
...As paradoxical as it may sound, because ‘the demands of scientificity’ (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 41) inscribed in the autonomous field of symbolic production have to be satisfied, ‘the pursuit of private scientific interests ... continuously operates to the advantage of the progress of science’…...
[...]
Book•
13 Mar 2017
TL;DR: In this article, a mix of renowned academics and newer voices reflect on some of the realities of international research partnerships and highlight the agency of academics, donors and research institutions in the geopolitics of knowledge and power.
Abstract: Since the 1990s, internationalisation has become key for institutions wishing to secure funding for higher education and research. For the academic community, this strategic shift has had many consequences. Priorities have changed and been influenced by new ways of thinking about universities, and of measuring their impact in relation to each other and to their social goals. Debates are ongoing and hotly contested. In this collection, a mix of renowned academics and newer voices reflect on some of the realities of international research partnerships. They both question and highlight the agency of academics, donors and research institutions in the geopolitics of knowledge and power. The contributors offer fresh insights on institutional transformation, the setting of research agendas, and access to research funding, while highlighting the dilemmas researchers face when their institutions are vulnerable to state and donor influence. Offering a range of perspectives on why academics should collaborate and what for, this book will be useful to anyone interested in how scholars are adapting to the realities of international networking and how research institutions are finding innovative ways to make North?South partnerships and collaborations increasingly fair, sustainable and mutually beneficial.
13 citations
TL;DR: Associations between peer exposure and academic specialization on public declarations about research involving potentially pandemic pathogens are examined, suggesting that different social processes might drive support compared with opposition.
Abstract: What drives scientists' position taking on matters where empirical answers are unavailable or contradictory? We examined the contentious debate on whether to limit experiments involving the creation of potentially pandemic pathogens Hundreds of scientists, including Nobel laureates, have signed petitions on the debate, providing unique insights into how scientists take a public stand on important scientific policies Using 19,257 papers published by participants, we reconstructed their collaboration networks and research specializations Although we found significant peer associations overall, those opposing "gain-of-function" research are more sensitive to peers than are proponents Conversely, specializing in fields directly related to gain-of-function research (immunology, virology) predicts public support better than specializing in fields related to potential pathogenic risks (such as public health) predicts opposition These findings suggest that different social processes might drive support compared with opposition Supporters are embedded in a tight-knit scholarly community that is likely both more familiar with and trusting of the relevant risk mitigation practices Opponents, on the other hand, are embedded in a looser federation of widely varying academic specializations with cognate knowledge of disease and epidemics that seems to draw more heavily on peers Understanding how scientists' social embeddedness shapes the policy actions they take is important for helping sides interpret each other's position accurately, avoiding echo-chamber effects, and protecting the role of scientific expertise in social policy
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the phases and their inherent steps to forming a tourism business cluster resulting from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study where stakeholders formed a tourist business cluster in a regional destination in Queensland, Australia.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of interviews with forty-two migrants from twenty-seven countries in five Finnish universities revealed a surprising degree of stratification, in a society normally associated with the absence of social stratification.
Abstract: This multiple case study features interviews with forty‐two migrant scholars, from twenty‐seven countries, in five Finnish universities. In Finland, an aging, culturally homogeneous population is experiencing a rapidly transforming labour force and uncertainties about migration dynamics. This analysis illuminates a surprising degree of stratification, in a society normally associated with the absence of stratification. The framework presented in this study draws on higher education theory to highlight tensions between societal expectations of equity, in an age of global academic capitalism. The implications for stakeholders center on assessing higher education's capacity for explaining change within higher education, as well as society.
12 citations