CASTI

[Godin, Benoît]

Researchers from different countries launch an international network on the conceptual history of science, innovation and technology: see www.casti.org<http://www.casti.org>. Do not hesitate to contact me for more information.

Scholars and policy makers depend on key concepts such as "innovation" and "technology", the distinction between "basic and applied research", as well as more recent notions like "transdisciplinarity", "translational research" or "frontier research". These concepts serve as analytical categories to describe the organization of research and the role that science, innovation and technology play within modern societies. But these concepts are also contested in the course of struggles over the proper means and ends of scientific knowledge. Even scholars and policy makers themselves question the analytical value of these concepts, contesting the very terms at the heart of their claims to expertise.

The research network aims to examine how these terms are used in order to communicate ideals, interests and expectations related to science and technology. We are interested in their historical legacy, their multiple meanings, their divergent discursive functions, and how they become social facts within institutional settings. The network comprises scholars from the fields of history, sociology, political science, and, more generally, science and technology studies. Our research strategies are interdisciplinary in character. By "conceptual approaches" we mean methodological strategies from different disciplines, among them conceptual history, intellectual history, historical semantics, studies of metaphors, discourse analysis, sociology of knowledge, and sociological systems theory. The research network aims to popularize these "conceptual approaches" within science and technology studies in order to gain a more reflexive understanding of our own categories, the concepts we use to analyze and measure science, innovation and technology.
Benoit Godin
Professeur
INRS (Montréal)
Courriel: benoit.godin at ucs.inrs.ca<mailto:benoit.godin at ucs.inrs.ca>
Site web: www.csiic.ca<http://www.csiic.ca/>


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