Abstract
The relationship between “marginal” and “mainstream” science has, in recent decades, become a matter of discussion. Traditional perspectives must be reexamined in the wake of transformations in the international circulation of knowledge and the subsequent diversification of scientific “peripherality”. Argentina represents an interesting case with which to explore the structure of “peripheral centres” and new forms of scientific development. While it has recently experienced an expansion in terms of institutionalization, professionalization, and internationalization, that process has been coupled with entrenchment of existing institutional asymmetries and persistent intra-national inequalities; academic prestige is distributed according to opposite principles of legitimation (local/international). Our main task is to explore the current state of research capacities pursuant to that expansion in order to analyze the diverse styles in which knowledge is produced. In our analysis, we make critical use of Bourdieu’s concept of field and the Latin American category of “structural heterogeneity,” while also focusing on the question of circulation. The paper outlines how professionalization has developed locally over time, and the historical tension between the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and the public universities. It describes the current structure of the scientific field in terms of researchers, institutes, publishing circuits, and institutional evaluative cultures. It focuses on geographical asymmetries in order to assess the distribution of new human and material resources throughout the country. Finally, it addresses the current situation under the new government, and raises concern over recent regressive actions.
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Notes
Counts in the UNESCO World Report (2016) are made on all publications. We made our own count in Web of Science, considering this time only published papers in journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and the general growth of papers by Argentinian authors in 2005–2015 is doubled (112%), while the growth of Brazil reaches 192%, and Chile 191%.
Notorious momentum was the conflict between social scientist Susana Torrado and the minister of Economy, Domingo Cavallo, when he publicly sent Torrado to “wash the dishes”. This became a symbol for academic resistance and nowadays many “dish washing” public interventions were performed by the social movement against cutbacks.
In fact, professors based exclusively at private universities can’t participate in the national program of universities research evaluation (Programa de Incentivos).
In December 2016 the results of the annual announcement for tenure at CONICET were published and the research positions offered by the new government decreased in 50%, a severe cut that provoked a national movement of the scientific community and the seizure of the headquarters of the MINCyT and the CONICET buildings in several provinces.
There are several limitations in the available data to analyze public investment by institution in Argentina. The flow of funds to the universities come from two main sources: the S&T public resources distributed through the national budget and the funds granted by PIDI and received by the researchers as a supplementary salary.
We are not including doctoral or postdoctoral fellows without teaching posts in the analysis although they are a relevant universe of agents whose final expectation is to be a researcher at CONICET, but an analysis of this universe is outside the scope of this paper.
When we refer to professors we intend to distinguish researchers that have a teaching post at a national university but are not researchers at CONICET. In the Argentinian higher education system they are “teacher-researchers”.
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Acknowledgements
The construction of the databases analysed here was possible thanks to the support of the following funds: (a) PICT 2013-1442 Agencia Nacional de Promoción Cientifica y Tecnológica (Argentina), (b) the European Project INTERCOSSH GA 319974 (7° program of the European Commission) and (c) PIP 2014-0157 CONICET (Argentina). The authors wish to thank the peer reviewers for their relevant observations and Hebe Vessuri for her generous and productive comments to the first version of this paper. Also to Facundo Rojas for his help in building Fig. 7.
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This paper discusses part of the studies on Argentina’s academic field conducted within the Research Program on Academic Dependency in Latin America (PIDAAL), directed by Fernanda Beigel in the frame of CONICET and the National University of Cuyo, at Mendoza, Argentina.
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Beigel, F., Gallardo, O. & Bekerman, F. Institutional Expansion and Scientific Development in the Periphery: The Structural Heterogeneity of Argentina’s Academic Field. Minerva 56, 305–331 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9340-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9340-2