The Local Configuration of New Research Fields

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Configuring New Research Fields: How Policy, Place, and Organization Are Made to Matter

   • Martina Merz, Philippe Sormani

   Pages 1-22

3. Policy: Nationalizing Science

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 23-23

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   2. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Impact of Generic Governance on the Emergence of Research Fields

      • Jochen Gläser, Grit Laudel, Eric Lettkemann

      Pages 25-43

   3. Building Multidisciplinary Research Fields: The Cases of Materials Science, Nanotechnology and Synthetic Biology

      • Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent

      Pages 45-60

   4. Placing a New Science: Exploring Spatial and Temporal Configurations of Synthetic Biology

      • Morgan Meyer, Susan Molyneux-Hodgson

      Pages 61-77

4. Place: Mobilizing Regions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

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   2. The Local Configuration of a Science and Innovation Policy: A City in the Nanoworld

      • Dominique Vinck

      Pages 81-97

   3. The Local Articulation of Contextual Resources: From Metallic Glasses to Nanoscale Research

      • Martina Merz, Peter Biniok

      Pages 99-116

   4. Nanodistricts: Between Global Nanotechnology Promises and Local Cluster Dynamics

      • Douglas K. R. Robinson, Arie Rip, Aurélie Delemarle

      Pages 117-133

5. Organization: Managing Tensions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 135-135

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   2. Epistemic Politics at Work: National Policy, an Upstate New York Synchrotron, and the Rise of Protein Crystallography

      • Park Doing

      Pages 137-151

   3. Ecology Reconfigured: Organizational Innovation, Group Dynamics and Scientific Change

      • Edward J. Hackett, John N. Parker

      Pages 153-171

   4. Co-producing Social Problems and Scientific Knowledge. Chagas Disease and the Dynamics of Research Fields in Latin America

      • Pablo Kreimer

      Pages 173-190

6. Mobility: Changing Contexts

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 191-191

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   2. Patterns of the International and the National, the Global and the Local in the History of Molecular Biology

      • Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

      Pages 193-204

   3. Recasting the Local and the Global: The Three Lives of Protein Sequencing in Spanish Biomedical Research (1967–1995)

      • Miguel García-Sancho

      Pages 205-228

   4. Practicing Innovation: Mobile Nano-training, Emerging Tensions, and Prospective Arrangements

      • Philippe Sormani

      Pages 229-247

This new Yearbook addresses the question of how policy, place, and organization are made to matter for a new research field to emerge. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and organizational researchers on science and technology, the volume answers this question by offering in-depth case studies and comparative perspectives on multiple research fields in their nascent stage, including molecular biology and materials science, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. The Yearbook brings to bear the lessons of constructivist ethnography and the “practice turn” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) more broadly on the qualitative, comparative, and critical inquiry of new research fields. In doing so, it offers unprecedented insights into the complex interplay of national research policies, regional clusters, particular research institutions, and novel research practices in and for any emerging field of (techno-)science. It systematically investigates national and regional differences, including the variable mobilization of such differences, and probes them for organizational topicality and policy relevance.

• Contemporary Technoscience
• Local Configuration
• Local Shaping
• Nationalizing Science
• Science Dynamics
• Science Governance

• Institute of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Vienna, Austria

  Martina Merz

• Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome, Italy

  Philippe Sormani

Policies and ethics