Descrizione del progetto
Il ruolo regolatorio delle società scientifiche nella scienza
Le società scientifiche hanno un impatto estremamente rilevante sulla comunità scientifica, che assume diverse forme, dall’organizzazione di conferenze alla pubblicazione di riviste di settore. Il progetto GLOBAL ACADEMIES, finanziato dall’UE, si propone di comprendere e mappare tale impatto. Per farlo, utilizzerà le società scientifiche come una lente attraverso la quale analizzare i rapporti sociali in continua evoluzione tra scienziati su scala globale. In particolare, si concentrerà sul XX secolo, un periodo di cambiamenti sociali e geopolitici intensi, quali la decolonizzazione e la guerra fredda. Il progetto svilupperà una serie di strumenti concettuali utilizzabili dagli studiosi per comprendere le società scientifiche e darà vita a un nuovo quadro storico per comprendere il ruolo di tali società nel mondo scientifico.
Obiettivo
Science has become a global enterprise. To produce knowledge, scientists with different nationalities, gender backgrounds, ethnicities and socio-political views engage in debate and adopt shared codes of conduct (e.g. leaving out personal bias when evaluating each other’s work). This project conducts historical research into the mechanisms that structure these global social relations within science by using 20th century scientific societies as its lens. It hypothesizes that these hitherto unstudied societies have played a regulatory role in the globalization of science by acting as ‘gatekeepers’, simultaneously opening up and limiting access to (sub)groups, such as women scholars or scholars from the Global South, by organizing (massive) conferences, selecting speakers, allocating prizes, electing boards etc. Building on studies of gender and ethnicity in science and on sociological analyses of evaluation in science, GLOBAL ACADEMIES innovates the concept of scientific sociability to include unspoken codes of conduct that could establish divisions within scientific groups, allowing the study of societies’ mechanisms of in- and exclusion, of setting (implicit) standards, and their strategies for coping with (political) dissent. The project innovates methodologically by engaging in multi-sited research into scientific societies in the USA, France, India and Brazil, and at the international level, and by using multiple research methods (journal analysis, archival research and oral history), in which present-day scientific societies are involved as stakeholders. The project aims (1) to develop a conceptual toolkit for scholars across the humanities and social sciences to understand scientific societies’ formats, standards and customs in relation to scientists’ group behavior and (2) to set a new historical framework for understanding the role of scientific societies in science, foregrounding issues of gender, ethnicity and geopolitics in an era of decolonization.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsIstituzione ospitante
3000 Leuven
Belgio