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3 The Institutional Sociology of Science Social scientists who redeveloped the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) in the 1970S and 1980s did so in opposition to two other, more established fields: the philosophy of science and the "sociology of science" (or, perhaps more accurately, the institutional sociology of science ). From the perspective of the SSK researchers, the institutional sociology of science failed because it did not analyze "content" sociologically. In other words, the traditional sociology of science did not examine how social factors shape or permeate relatively technical questions such as design choices, methodologies, theories, the interpretation of observations, and decisions about what to observe in the first place. Therefore, the sociologists of scientific knowledge tend to view as passe or undertheorized any analyses that focus on institutional aspects of science. This dismissive stance is unfortunate. The institutional sociology of science deserves to be recognized as a dynamic field of its own, and the research of this field needs to be incorporated into any complete, transdisciplinary study of science and technology. At the same time, the interdisciplinary field of science studies may help prod the institutional sociology ofscience to ask new and different research questions. There are several reasons why the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), as it was formulated in the 1970S and early 198os, failed to interest and influence significantly the institutional sociology of science.1 Whereas SSK was largely British and European, the latter was a largely American endeavor. This alone would not have prevented a productive dialogue, but the groups published in different journals. The institutional sociology of science developed from the sociology of occupations, and from this perspective science was seen as another occupation. Sociologists in this tradition tended to view with suspicion the argument that a good sociology of science required an understanding of the content of science, just as, for 52 The Institutional Sociology ofScience I 53 example, one might argue that an adequate sociology ofreligion required a deep understanding of religious experience or theology, or a sociology of medicine required a practitioner's level of medical knowledge. In contrast, SSK developed largely in dialogue with the philosophy of science, for which the question of the content of science-especially claims of the unique status of scientific knowledge-was central. Another factor that accounted for the lack of communication between the SSK researchers and the institutional sociologists of science was that in the United States the sociologists ofscience were probably more concerned with their internal divisions. One group-the Columbia "school" ofRobert Merton, Harriet Zuckerman, Jonathan Cole, and Stephen Cole-had a favorable view of science as a relatively just institution that worked well. Another group-a Wisconsin-Berkeley-Cornell network that included Paul Allison, Randall Collins, Warren Hagstrom, Lowell Hargens, and their students-produced more critical studies of science as an institution with significant gender and race inequalities.2 The two networks shared a concern with the study of stratification and status attainment issues, and both tended to use the quantitative methods for which the empirical tradition of American sociology is known. However, the differences between them were significant enough that the SSK criticisms were less salient. Perhaps a more important reason for the lack of dialogue between the American sociologists and the SSK networks was that some of the theoretical arguments raised in the early SSK studies of the 1970S had already been rejected by the American sociologists. For example, the SSK critique ofthe normative nature of science was already old hat by the 1970S, and the SSK application of interest theory in the late 1970s-as well as the criticisms that followed in the SSK community-had already appeared in American sociology circles in other forms, such as C. Wright Mills's use of interest theory (1959) and criticisms ofhis work.3 Although the analysis of scientific norms had been superseded in the American sociology of science circles by the late 1950S, and in the SSK circles by the early to mid-1970s, it is still a useful starting point for a review of the institutional sociology of science. The distinction between universalism and particularism has continued to provide one theoretical reference point for the stratification studies that characterized the institutional sociology ofscience from the 1960s to the present. Furthermore, discussions ofnorms and values provide a common ground for the range of STS disciplines from philosophy and sociology to anthropology and history. Therefore, a historical appreciation of Merton's contri- [18.216.83.240] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15...

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