Political Sociology Of Science Research Articles

Researching Cities, Transforming Ecology

Abstract In the last two decades, new academic journals, textbooks, and research networks attest to ecologists’ rising interest in cities. How did ecologists come to enter cities and to view them as places worth studying? To what extent does this new interest launch a broader redefinition of the type of knowledge that matters in ecology? Drawing on the new political sociology of science, and using a review of publications in urban ecology, we argue that the politics of urban ecological knowledge does not merely correspond to the promotion of a new subfield of ecology dedicated to cities: it has launched instead a broader, contested redefinition of the goals, practices, and relevance of ecology as a whole. We unpack the tensions between a “city-driven agenda” aiming to integrate ecological science into the interdisciplinary field of urban sciences, and an “ecology-driven agenda” aiming to research cities as part of ecological discipline.

The discursive practices of the research program of B. F. Lomov in promotion of Soviet engineering psychology

The article discusses a series of publications by B.F.Lomov from the 1960s aimed at promoting engineering psychology, with the analysis based on discourse analysis and political sociology of science and using articles grouped and examined in terms of print to appeal to different audiences: party elite, midlevel administrators, academia, and psychologists. The emphasis is on practices used to associate engineering psychology with the interests of relevant groups. The rise of the cybernetics movement, which aimed to consolidate scientific disciplines and to expand the political influence of science, is considered as a general context for the application of Lomov’s discursive practices. In this situation, engineering psychology had the advantage of being the branch of psychological research that was closest to the approaches of cybernetics and had the best growth opportunities in the context of the expanding influence of the latter. This trend met with natural resistance from groups that initially found themselves disconnected from cybernetics. These included groups in the humanities involved in political campaigns in science of the 1940s–1950s, including the anticybernetic campaign, as well as part of the bureaucracy that dealt with economic planning, a task that could be most affected by the rise of computer technology. Lomov built his discursive strategy in such a way as to anticipate possible critical attacks. The practices he worked out in publications under examination largely predetermined the practices that he used to promote psychology, acting as director of the Institute of Psychology in the next two decades, and thus had a noticeable impact on the development of Soviet psychology as a whole.

Ignorance

For over twenty years, ignorance has been a thriving research topic in sociology, philosophy, history, and anthropology, leading to a rich body of literature. This article critically rethinks the contributions and limitations of ignorance studies. It aims to provide an account of findings from studies of ignorance from agnotology, the new political sociology of science, and the study of strategic ignorance, and to document developments in their research questions and what they excluded or left in the shadows. Based on this analysis, the article then proposes overcoming their limitations by further pursuing some paths opened by ignorance studies and by widening the focus to renew and expand the study of ignorance, working to clarify the complex dynamics that connect ignorance, knowledge, and uncertainty in a variety of configurations.

Magicians at Work: Modellers as Institutional Entrepreneurs in the Global Governance of Agriculture and Food Security

Global models of agriculture act as the epistemic basis for quantitative foresight, which guides international policymaking and research on agriculture. With the new political sociology of science as a backdrop, this article studies the actors who develop and use these models through the lens of field theory. Contributing to the dialogue between the neo-institutionalist field theory and its Bourdieusian version, it describes the structure and the dynamics of the strategic action field of modelling organizations, using the Bourdieusian notions of “succession” and “subversion” to refine the characterization of challengers. It also discusses the insights of the Bourdieusian concept of “homology” to analyse the relations between the field of model producers and the field of model users. Whereas Bourdieu provides a primarily descriptive account of homologies, which are close to a “social magic without magicians” for Roueff, the present text describes magicians doing the work of producing homologies. Some modellers use intercomparison to reduce competition and to have their models used in the field of global governance, thus strategically producing homologies, while resolving the main modelling conflict of the field. These actors benefit from the recent change in the modelling field under the influence of climate change, to behave as what Fligstein and McAdam have called “institutional entrepreneurs”. The article concludes that this amended version of field theory makes it possible to describe the co-construction of a range of models developed by competing organizations and the controversial making of global agricultural governance. Doing so, it complements the co-production framework, which often focuses on a given site of expertise production and a site of global governance.

Salmon, science, and conservation: Organizational power and the listing and recovery planning of an endangered species

Following the New Political Sociology of Science, I use co-citation analysis and social network analysis to examine the structures that undergird the determination and deployment of ‘the best available science’ in the listing and recovery planning of the Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon. The analyses reveal that the COSEWIC and SARA reports prioritize non-peer reviewed, government science over peer reviewed science and that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ central position in the organizational network may account for the multi-stakeholder committees’ legitimation of government research over the more influential research on Atlantic salmon conservation. I suggest that a tension between the SARA mandate to employ the best available science and to follow the precautionary principle creates opportunities for conservation committees to employ science selectively (and strategically) in the listing and recovery process and that organizations that hold advantageous network positions may benefit the most from this selective use of science.

Outsourcing Regulatory Decision-making: “International” Epistemic Communities, Transnational Firms, and Pesticide Residue Standards in India

How do “international” epistemic communities shape regulatory contests between transnational firms and civil society organizations in the Global South? With the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), member states committed to basing trade-restrictive national regulations on science-based “international” standards set by “international” standard-setting bodies. Yet we know little about how the WTO regime has shaped the operation of epistemic communities within standard-setting bodies and, in turn, how standard-setting bodies articulate with national policy-making processes in the Global South. Building on work in the new political sociology of science, I argue that neoliberal globalization and the establishment of the WTO have created incentives for Western epistemic communities to at once cast themselves as “international” under the WTO regime and orient their scientific agendas toward the priorities of transnational firms. Moreover, this transformation of epistemic communities has created opportunities for transnational firms facing contentious policy environments in the Global South to effectively outsource regulatory decision-making to “international” epistemic communities that can claim legal status under the WTO regime. Empirically, I focus on the case of one Western epistemic community—the Association of Analytical Communities International—and its claim to epistemic jurisdiction over pesticide residue standards for soft drinks in India.

The Impossible Sustainability of the Bay of Brest? Fifty Years of Ecosystem Changes, Interdisciplinary Knowledge Construction and Key Questions at the Science-Policy-Community Interface

In this contribution, the study of the Bay of Brest ecosystem changes over the past 50 years is used to explore the construction of interdisciplinary knowledge and raise key questions that now need to be tackled at the science-policy-communities interface. The Bay of Brest is subject to a combination of several aspects of global change, including excessive nutrient inputs from watersheds and the proliferation of invasive species. These perturbations strongly interact, affecting positively or negatively the ecosystem functioning, with important impacts on human activities. We first relate a cascade of events over these five decades, linking farming activities, nitrogen and silicon biogeochemical cycles, hydrodynamics of the Bay, the proliferation of an exotic benthic suspension feeder, the development of the Great scallop fisheries and the high biodiversity in maerl beds. The cascade leads to today’s situation where toxic phytoplankton blooms become recurrent in the Bay, preventing the fishery of the great scallop and forcing the fishermen community to switch pray and alter the maerl habitat and the benthic biodiversity it hosts, despite the many scientific alerts and the protection of this habitat. In the second section, we relate the construction of the interdisciplinary knowledge without which scientists would never have been able to describe these changes in the Bay. Interdisciplinarity, first among natural sciences (NS) and then, between natural sciences and human and social sciences (HSS). We finally ask key questions at the science-policy interface regarding this unsustainable trend of the Bay: How is this possible, despite decades of joint work between scientists and fishermen? Is adaptive co-management a sufficient condition for a sustainable management of an ecosystem? How do the different groups (i.e. farmers, fishermen, scientists, environmentalists), with their diverse interests, take charge of this situation? What is the role of power in this difficult transformation to sustainability? Combining natural sciences with political science, anthropology and the political sociology of science, we hope to improve the contribution of HSS to integrated studies of social-ecological systems, creating the conditions to address these key questions at the science-policy interface to facilitate the transformation of the Bay of Brest ecosystem towards sustainability.

Scientized politics and global governance in the cotton trade: Evaluating divergent theories of scientization

ABSTRACT Science has been institutionalized as a legitimate basis for decision-making at the World Trade Organization (WTO). This raises a critical question: how does the scientization of decision-making shape the construction of new governance arrangements? Using the case of negotiations between the Chinese state and the US state over the harmonization of cotton quality classification, I consider three approaches to scientization in world politics: the world polity approach, the world-systems approach and the political sociology of science. Evidence from the case demonstrates the need to largely reject the world polity approach while integrating the world-systems approach with the finer-grained analyses of the political sociology of science. This analysis yields two key arguments regarding the implications of science-based decision-making as an institutionalized global norm. First, scientization can formalize existing power inequalities given the uneven historical terrain of research legacies. Second, as scientization channels politics through science, powerful actors are better situated to legitimate their own interests in scientific terms and to define what makes science legitimate.

Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting

"Undone science" refers to areas of research that are left unfunded, incomplete, or generally ignored but that social movements or civil society organizations often identify as worthy of more research. This study mobilizes four recent studies to further elaborate the concept of undone science as it relates to the political construction of research agendas. Using these cases, we develop the argument that undone science is part of a broader politics of knowledge, wherein multiple and competing groups struggle over the construction and implementation of alternative research agendas. Overall, the study demonstrates the analytic potential of the concept of undone science to deepen understanding of the systematic nonproduction of knowledge in the institutional matrix of state, industry, and social movements that is characteristic of recent calls for a "new political sociology of science."

The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power

The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power

The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. Edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Pp. 487. $60.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewThe New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. Edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Pp. 487. $60.00.Erin LeaheyErin LeaheyUniversity of Arizona Search for more articles by this author University of ArizonaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 113, Number 1July 2007 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/520890 Views: 95Total views on this site © 2007 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge

When in 1989 Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi sought asylum for months in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, later escaping to the West, worldwide attention focused on the plight of liberal intellectuals in China. In Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China H. Lyman Miller examines the scientific community in China and prominent members such as Fang and physicist and historian of science Xu Liangying. Drawing on Chinese academic journals, newspapers, interviews, and correspondence with Chinese scientists, he considers the evolution of China's science policy and its impact on China's scientific community. He illuminates the professional and humanistic values that impelled scientific intellectuals on their course toward open, liberal political dissent. It is ironic that scientific dissidence in China arose in opposition to a regime supportive of and initially supported by scientists. In the late 1970s scientists were called upon to help implement reforms orchestrated by Deng Xiaoping's regime, which attached a high priority to science and technology. The regime worked to rebuild China's civilian science community and sought to enhance the standing of scientists while at the same time it continued to oppose political pluralism and suppress dissidence. The political philosophy of revolutionary China has taught generations of scientists that explanation of the entire world, from subatomic particles to galaxies, falls under the jurisdiction of natural dialectics, a branch of Marxism-Leninism. Escalating debates in the 1980s questioned the relationship of Marxism to science and led some to positions of open political dissent. At issue were the autonomy of China's scientific community and the conduct of science, as well as the validity and jurisdiction of Marxist-Leninist philosophy-and hence the fundamental legitimacy of the political system itself. Miller concludes that the emergence of a renewed liberal voice in China in the 1980s was in significant part an extension into politics of what some scientists believed to be the norms of healthy science; scientific dissidence was an unintended but consequence of the Deng regime's reforms. This thoughtful study of science as a powerful belief system and as a source of political and social values in contemporary China will appeal to a diverse audience, including readers interested in Chinese politics and society, comparative politics, communist regimes, the political sociology of science, and the history of ideas.

Toward a Political Sociology of Science.

Toward a Political Sociology of Science.

Toward a Political Sociology of Science

Toward a Political Sociology of Science

The Political Sociology of Science: A Critique of Current Orthodoxies

The Political Sociology of Science: A Critique of Current Orthodoxies