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A Cultural Political Economy of Research and Innovation in an Age of Crisis

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Abstract

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power.

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Notes

  1. Throughout the paper, for brevity and to avoid irritating repetition, I will use the terms ‘science’ and/or ‘science policy’ to stand, mutatis mutandis, for ‘science and technology policy’.

  2. Though neoliberal thought is explicitly comfortable with monopoly, see e.g. Crouch (2011).

  3. In particular, it highlights the limitations of experts and the capabilities and potential contributions of publics, not because of an absolute epistemic superiority but on the critical, relational basis that ‘“publics know better than you think they do” and that “they know some salient things better than you”’ (Wynne 2008:28, original emphasis).

  4. Though there is a growing body of work associated with co-productionist perspectives that highlights the problems, not just benefits, of citizen engagement (e.g. Lezaun & Soneryd 2007).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dan Sarewitz, Arie Rip and Kean Birch for comments on earlier versions of this paper and Niklas Hartmann for discussion of some key issues.

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  1. Sociology Department, Bowland North, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YT, UK

    David Tyfield

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Tyfield, D. A Cultural Political Economy of Research and Innovation in an Age of Crisis. Minerva 50, 149–167 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-012-9201-y

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