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

preface

 Many edited volumes begin life as a set of conference papers that get revised , edited, bundled together, and presented to readers as an organic product, the outcome of scholarly debate and synthesis. This collection is not one of those. It arose from our conversations with Daniel Kleinman about the structural inequalities flowing from globalization and neoliberal reforms, which appear to have complex and deepening influences across the sciences as well as among producers and consumers of knowledge. From the beginning we conceived the volume as an explicit attempt to infuse sociological and science studies scholarship with analyses of science policies and practices, the political and economic decisions behind them, and the ecological and social impacts that science continues to create downstream. In doing so, we intended to draw attention to questions of power, including why some knowledge doesn’t get made, for example, or why some groups lack ready access to useful knowledge. To remain broadly relevant, we firmly believe that our scholarship must attend to the task of explanation. To that end, we invited contributors to tender individual or comparative case study analyses that explain why events and processes in science happen the way they do. All of them complied, most of them happily. In our introduction, we spell out the basic contours of a new political sociology of science. In developing and organizing this framework, we hope to put into sharper focus the political and institutional dynamics that shape the funding, administration, and practice of science, doing so in a way that is engaged with broader social change processes as well as central elements of cultural science studies—particularly in its emphasis on meaning and networks. Contributors to this volume are working at these very intersections, and collectively their work speaks to the dynamic tensions that accrue from conceptual interaction. A similar dynamism shaped the evolution of this volume itself. Coediting was an vii vii intensely collaborative process, from early discussions of our vision for the volume, through several drafts of the introduction, to the final editing and indexing. There is little in this volume that does not bear the imprint of our combined hand, and so our names are listed in alphabetical order. In the process of editing this volume, we were pleased to find that demand for critical institutional analyses of science is up, if the two well-attended and lively sessions we organized at the Society for Social Studies of Science conference in November 2003 and the American Sociological Association conference in August 2004 are any indication. We think they are. The conference sessions provided opportunities for us and for contributors to the volume to flesh out the common—and distinct—themes and forms of analysis with each other and the audiences that attended these sessions. viii Preface ...