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

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Book cover The Local Configuration of New Research Fields

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook ((SOSC,volume 29))

Abstract

Contemporary science is typically conceived as an international endeavor. Especially the natural and technical sciences are seen as internationally constituted with their adoption of English as a lingua franca as well as widespread cooperation and mobility of researchers across national borders and continents. Such an international perspective on science, however, should not neglect that the configuration of individual research fields may vary considerably between locations, regions, and national contexts. Variation is particularly noticeable in the case of research fields in their nascent and early stages such as current nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and the neurosciences. It is this locally specific character of new research fields and how they come into being that this chapter and the present volume move into the spotlight.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In an introductory text, Shinn and Ragouet observe that the sociology of the sciences has perpetuated a largely “productivist and ‘economicist’ understanding of science” (2005: 48, our translation from the original French). The same holds true, or so it seems, for current research policy, based on performance measurement, including biblio- and scientometrics of all kinds (see Weingart 2005 for a programmatic critique).

  2. 2.

    Elsewhere, we have noted a “practice U-turn” (Sormani et al. 2011) in current STS, a U-turn that seems related to the foregrounding of normative issues in the field’s mainstream (cf. Lynch 2014; Sismondo 2008).

  3. 3.

    For a more extensive discussion, cf. Doing (2008), Merz (2006), Sormani (2014).

  4. 4.

    The tricky relationship between “workflow from within and without” (Bowers et al. 1995) happens itself to be a feature of laboratory work – in short, a “vexed issue in flux” (Hackett 2005: 800).

  5. 5.

    The still “contentious” character of Laboratory Life may be tied to its constructivist outlook, as we briefly elaborate below.

  6. 6.

    As Lynch noted in 1993, “[laboratory] studies do not empirically demonstrate that ‘scientific facts are constructed’, since this is assumed from the outset” (Lynch 1993: 102, emphasis added). In similar vein, see also Hacking (1999: 37).

  7. 7.

    For space considerations, we have not given a detailed account of the empirical interest in scientific practices in the history and philosophy of science. For a recent collection of historical studies that investigate pedagogical practices, rather than scientific theories, see Kaiser (2005). For a recent appraisal of neo-experimentalist approaches in the philosophy of science, see Soler et al. (2014b).

  8. 8.

    For a technical introduction to the “underdetermination” thesis and its philosophical variations, see Zammito (2004, chap. 2). For an ethnomethodological respecification, see Sormani (2011).

  9. 9.

    On the tension between “global nanotechnology promises and local cluster dynamics”, for example, see Robinson et al. (Chap. 7). On umbrella terms as mediators in the governance of emerging science and technology, including invoked processes of “nationalization and denationalization” (Crawford et al. 1993a, b), see Rip and Voss (2013). On the role of “buzzwords” in agenda-setting and the attempt to create consensus, see Bensaude Vincent (2014).

  10. 10.

    For an empirical account of the “transepistemic arenas” and “resource-relationships” (Knorr-Cetina 1982) that the latter may involve and rely upon, see Merz and Biniok (Chap. 6).

  11. 11.

    Framed competition, rather than topical imposition, is the distinctive hallmark of an “ordoliberal” position. For a historical study on the politics of research policy of related interest, see Nye (2011).

  12. 12.

    Incidentally, it is perhaps no coincidence that recent work on the “places of science” (e.g., Gieryn 2000; Livingstone 2003) is not quoted in the volume edited by Jasanoff (2004c). For a related discussion on the (still) “neglected situation”, see Quéré (1998).

  13. 13.

    This second interest marks our empirical interest in the mediated character of any situated mutual construction of research “contexts” and scientific “trends” – that is, mediated by participants’ manifest understandings of their unfolding situations, whichever temporal and spatial extension these situations may turn out to have (see also Knorr-Cetina 1983).

  14. 14.

    Another “fundamental tension” of science is associated with the “fact that the objects originate in, and continue to inhabit, different [social] worlds”, raising the issue of “how (…) findings which incorporate radically different meanings [can] become coherent” (Star and Griesemer 1989: 392, emphasis deleted).

  15. 15.

    In organizational theory, such a perspective is known as a “relational or process conception” (Scott 2004) and has been intimately associated with the work of Weick (1969).

  16. 16.

    For an exploration of the circumstances under which facts travel “well”, cf. Howlett and Morgan (2011).

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Acknowledgements

Most of the contributions to this volume were first presented at an international workshop, entitled The Local Configuration of New Research Fields: On Regional and National Diversity, which was held at the Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne, Switzerland, from June 14 to 16, 2012. We would like to thank all workshop participants and subsequent contributors to the volume for their respective contributions, as well as their patience regarding the editorial process. The initial workshop was financially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Research Committee of the University of Lucerne, and the Swiss Association for the Studies of Science, Technology, and Society (STS-CH). Acknowledgments are thus also due to these institutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Schottenfeldgasse 29, A-1070, Vienna, Austria

    Martina Merz

  2. Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (TINT), University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Martina Merz

  3. Istituto Svizzero di Roma, 00187, Rome, Italy

    Philippe Sormani

  4. Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, A-1070, Vienna, Austria

    Philippe Sormani

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  1. Martina Merz
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  1. Institute of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Vienna, Austria

    Martina Merz

  2. Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Philippe Sormani

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Merz, M., Sormani, P. (2016). Configuring New Research Fields: How Policy, Place, and Organization Are Made to Matter. In: Merz, M., Sormani, P. (eds) The Local Configuration of New Research Fields. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22683-5_1

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