Fields of Knowledge

Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age

Scott Frickel, David J. Hess, Scott Frickel, David J. Hess

• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783506682
• eBook ISBN: 9781783506675
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This issue of Political Power and Social Theory explores the changes in science associated with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s. The neoliberalization of science has complicated interactions among states, markets, and civil society, often in ways that challenge major assumptions underlying decades of research. The articles collected here break with older Mertonian sociologies of science and constructivist microsociologies of scientific knowledge to examine the mesolevel problem of the changing institutional contexts of "the scientific field" as originally identified by Pierre Bourdieu. Papers presented in Part I extend Bourdieu's relational approach to the broader set of interactions among scientific, regulatory, industry, and social movement fields. Part II extends Bourdieu's concern with order and the scientific habitus to the changing patterns of scientific practices under neoliberalism. By reconceptualizing the central problem for the social studies of science as the political sociological problem of field and interfield dynamics, the collected papers chart an important theoretical agenda for future research in the study of sciencesociety relations.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Senior Editorial Board
• Student Editorial Board
• Editorial Statement
• Series Editor’s Introduction
• Introduction: Fields of knowledge and theory traditions in the sociology of science
• Part I: Interfield Relations
• Part II: Institutional Logics