The Causes and Consequences of Collaborations between Scientists and Non-Scientific Groups

Abstract

In the summer of 1983, when we started to formulate our ideas about a comparative study of the “bottom up” initiatives of scientists who wanted their research to be more socially relevant and hence had sought collaboration with non-scientific groups, we acted primarily from our concern with social reform, having both been active members of the science shops movement in the Netherlands. We knew from these experiences that the process of translating social demand from public interest groups into the science system, the feedback of expertise on social action, and the resistance and receptivity of the science system to such demands were aspects of a much more complex and multiform process than had previously been described in the literature. The available models had either taken a linear perspective (1) — allowing sometimes for feedbacks as well — or had then been elaborated into an inter-actor perspective (2). In other cases the relations of the science system with its environment had been conceptualized as resource-relations among which the researchers involved had to make selections (3).