Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies Content Type Journal Article Pages 263-273 DOI 10.1007/s11024-011-9174-2 Authors Mathieu Albert, Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street , Eaton-South 1-581, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada Daniel Lee Kleinman, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 348 Agricultural Hall 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA Journal Minerva Online ISSN 1573-1871 Print ISSN 0026-4695 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, Number (...) 3. (shrink)

Funding agencies in Canada are attempting to break down the organizational boundaries between disciplines to promote interdisciplinary research and foster the integration of the social sciences into the health research field. This paper explores the extent to which biomedical and clinician scientists’ perceptions of social science research operate as a cultural boundary to the inclusion of social scientists into this field. Results indicated that cultural boundaries may impede social scientists’ entry into the health research field through three modalities: (1) biomedical (...) and clinician scientists’ unfavourable and ambivalent posture towards social science research; (2) their opposition to a resource increase for the social sciences; and (3) clinician scientists procedural assessment criteria for social science. The paper also discusses the merits and limitations of Tom Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work for studying social dynamics within the field of science. (shrink)

Universities in North America and Europe increasingly provide financial incentives to encourage collaboration between faculty in different disciplines, based on the premise that this yields more innovative and sophisticated research. Drawing from a wealth of empirical data, the contributors to Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration put that theory to the test. What they find reveals how interdisciplinarity is not living up to its potential, but also suggests how universities might foster more genuinely collaborative and productive research. Chapter 10 is available Open Access (...) here: https: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK395883/. (shrink)

A new approach in science policy making named the innovation system approach has been developed during the past three decades. Its primary goal is to better understand the processes through which scientific knowledge is produced and transferred to businesses to improve their competitiveness and develop national and/or regional economies. This approach has been adopted as an analytical framework and guideline for science policy making by numerous public sector organizations around the world. Using a case study of the Canadian and Québec (...) public sectors, our research seeks to understand why the IS approach has gained the adherence of government employees and how it has been disseminated from international organizations down to regional civil servants. Findings show that adherence to the IS approach stems from the prestige of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and its associated epistemic community, and from the cultural authority science exerts on government employees; these two factors bestow cultural authority onto the IS approach. The perceived scientific validity of the IS approach also leads government employees to consider its underlying economistic worldview as an unquestionable reality. (shrink)