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  • Global Networking:The Core-Fringe Problem
  • Roy H. W. Johnston

1 Background

The 2010 STEP (S&T at the European Periphery) event, which took place 17–20 June in University College Galway, Ireland, was of key cultural significance for me, perhaps an important opportunity to develop East-West and North-South networking with a view toward discussing regional aspects of the center-periphery and peripheral brain-drain problems in science policy. I thank EASTS for publishing this article, as it gives me a chance to express a critical view of the way science has developed in Europe and to further the argument that there is a serious need for science-in-society studies to address the problems generated in postcolonial situations, in most cases by the cultural identification of scientists with the imperial cultures of the states that had earlier been their oppressors.

These problems were adumbrated in the 1930s, and later in the 1950s, by J. D. Bernal, FRS (McCartney and Whitaker 2003),1 but due to Bernal's basically Marxist position and the negative experience of the corrupt pseudo-Marxist influence from the Soviet Union, his work became sidelined. Currently, however, there is a revival of interest in Bernal; a commemorative event in Limerick in 2006 was organized by the Irish section of the Institute of Physics, giving me the opportunity to publish an article2 in which I outlined a possible organized approach to science-in-society studies appropriate to Ireland as a postcolonial fringe nation. Bernal was born in 1901 in Nenagh, near Limerick, and a plaque in his memory was unveiled there in October [End Page 267] 2005; this aroused the interest of Limerick University and resulted in the commemorative conference.

2 Conference Overview

The Galway STEP conference began with four papers dealing with historical topics in Ireland: Susan Mullaney on eighteenth-century hospitals, Clara Cullen on industrial applied science in the 1850s, Miguel DeArce on Irish contributions to Victorian science debates, and Laura Kelly on body snatching and anatomy teaching in the nineteenth century.

This was an initial nod in the direction of Irish participation in the STEP network, an innovative link indicating the scope of the potential field for center-periphery studies in Ireland as a European postcolonial emergent peripheral nation still grappling with sovereignty and identity problems. There are some indications that an active node in the STEP network may emerge in Ireland, as a focus for science-in-society studies.3

The opening session was followed by a series of sessions, mostly with four papers, sometimes three, on a variety of topics, all with explicit comparative objectives, in some cases implicitly or explicitly linked with contemporary or historic political issues. In what follows I attempt to outline some aspects of the issues raised in key comparative studies.

3 Comparative Histories, in General Terms

From Josep Simon we got a comparative study, from a Spanish perspective, of the teaching of physics in schools in England, France, and Spain; from Monica Blanco, the introduction of calculus in French and Spanish educational systems; from Gabor Palio, an assessment of the role of the "assistant" to a prominent researcher in Hungary in transition to the United States; and finally, from Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, an assessment of the trajectory of the chemist Edwards Divers (1837–1912) in a career that led from London to Tokyo via Galway.

In a second session on this theme we got some critical reflections on the validity of the transnational approach to the study of science history from Nestor Herran (Strasbourg) and Simone Turchetti (Manchester); in a detailed paper they abstracted from the core-fringe problem and concentrated on the problems posed in the context of the cold war and the positive roles of the various international scientific organizations. We then heard a comparative study of how the role of the "nuclear engineer" evolved in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, from Sean F. Johnston in Glasgow, followed by a comparative study of how nuclear programs evolved in Spain and Portugal, from Julia Gaspan in Lisbon. Finally in this group we heard a comparative study of how governments in nineteenth-century Europe responded to famines, comparing [End Page 268] Ireland...

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