Boundary work in contemporary science policy: A review

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of boundary work in contemporary science policy. The paper argues that one of the consequences of policy efforts to bridge gaps between science and society is the proliferation of boundary work as new categories have to be constructed and reified in order to make room for particular policy initiatives. In this process of eroding and remaking boundaries, the power to divide, categorise and classify forms a significant starting point for a re‐structuring of social, economic and political relations between science and policy.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• boundary
• user
• science policy
• knowledge

Notes

S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History of Our Times, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000, pp. 379–423.

Department for Education and Skills, 21st Century Skills, Realising our Potential: Individuals, Employers, Nation, HMSO, London, 2003; Committee for the Review of Swedish Research Policy, Findings, Fritze, Stockholm, 1998 (available in Swedish only); European Commission, Towards a European Research Area, Science Technology and Innovation: Key Figures 2002, Brussels, 2002; Industry Canada, Science and Technology for the New Century: A Federal Strategy, Government of Canada, Ottawa, 1996.

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National Academy of Engineering, The Impact of Academic Research on Industrial Performance, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 2003.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Science and Innovation Policy: Key Challenges and Opportunities, OECD, Paris, 2004a; L. K. Mytelka and K. Smith, ‘Policy learning and innovation theory: an interactive and co‐evolving process’, Research Policy, 31, 2002, pp. 1467–79.

H. Nowotny, M. Gibbons and P. Scott, Rethinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty, Polity Press, Oxford, 2001.

The main arguments of the Triple Helix thesis are (i) that knowledge is now being produced in tripartite coalitions that include representatives from the state, industry and the university, and (ii) that these institutions are not playing their traditional defined roles (e.g. universities are creating firms, and firms and the public sector are creating joint ventures). According to the Triple Helix account of the development of universities, the current focus on entrepreneurship in universities is not a policy push, but an evolutionary development in the historical role of universities in society. H. Etzkowitz and L. Leydesdorff, ‘The dynamics of innovation: from national systems and Mode 2 to a Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations’, Research Policy, 29, 2000, pp. 109–23; H. Etzkowitz and A.Webster et al., ‘The future of the university and the University of the Future: evolution of ivory tower to entrepreneurial paradigm’, Research Policy, 29, 2000, pp. 313–30.

R. Nelson (ed.), National Systems of Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993.

The normative and descriptive forms of the verb are deliberately used here to indicate that many of these arguments conflate these two positions. This ambiguous ontological status of collaborative knowledge production is also reproduced in the sphere of research policy praxis where policymakers argue that knowledge production should be collaborative because it is the prevailing trend and ensures utility. See, for example, OECD, Science, Technology and Industry Outlook, OECD, Paris, 2004b.

M. Gibbons et al., The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Society, Sage, London, 1994. Mode 2 refers to the concept outlined by Gibbons et al., op. cit. and subsequently developed in Nowotny et al., 2001, op. cit. According to this argument, science has undergone a radical transformation which includes a shift from disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity, a focus on solving problems in the context of application, and user evaluations of utility as one of the validity criteria for scientific knowledge.

For example, Gibbons et al., op. cit. write in a descriptive mode so that much of science has already undergone the transformation described. Policy texts, however, often argue that the changes described in Mode 2, such as collaboration with practitioners, are necessary in order to support the knowledge economy or society.

OECD, 2004a, op. cit., p. 6.

T. Gieryn, ‘Boundary work and the demarcation of science from non science: strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists’, American Sociological Review, 48, 1983, pp. 781–95.

V. Bush, Science: the Endless Frontier, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1945; J. D. Bernal, The Social Function of Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, New Left Books, London, 1981 (revised and extended 1991).

Gieryn, op. cit.

S. Leigh Star and J. R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional ecology, “translations” and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1907–1939’, Social Studies of Science, 19, 1989, pp. 387–420.

O. Edqvist, ‘Layered science and science policies’, Minerva, 41, 2003, pp. 207–21.

H. Nowotny et al., ‘“Mode 2” revisited: the new production of knowledge’, Minerva, 41, 2003, pp. 179–94.

The Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) has just approved funding for one such centre of excellence, provided that the university and industrial partners can come up with matching funding. MISTRA internal newsletter, January 2005 (available in Swedish only). More information about MISTRA is available in English at http://www.mistra‐research.se/mistra/eng/.

B. Balmer, ‘Managing mapping in the Human Genome Project’, Social Studies of Science, 26, 3, 1996, pp. 531–73.

David Collingridge and Colin Reeve, Science Speaks to Power: The Role of Experts in Policy‐making, Frances Pinter, London, 1986.

P. Weingart, ‘Scientific expertise and political accountability: paradoxes of science in politics’, Science and Public Policy, 26, 3, 1999, pp. 151–61.

A. Elzinga, ‘Research bureaucracy and the drift of epistemic criteria’, in B. Wittrock and A. Elzinga (eds), The University Research System: The Public Policies of the Home of Scientists, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1985, pp. 191–220; S. Funtowicz and J. Ravetz, ‘Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of post‐normal science’, in S. Krimsky and D. Golding (eds), Social Theories of Risk, Praeger, London, 1992, pp. 251–74.

J. van der Sluijs, J. van Eijndhoven, S. Shackley and B. Wynne, ‘Anchoring devices in science for policy: the case of consensus around climate sensitivity’, Social Studies of Science, 28, 2, 1998, pp. 291–323.

Lakatos argues that scientific theories contain a hardcore of hypotheses which, unlike the rest of the theory, are not subject to refutation. I. Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 4, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965, pp. 91–196.

Fisher et al., op. cit., p. 301.

These findings are durable in so far as they have been replicated by several STS studies, but they remain controversial among disciplinary communities outside of STS. See P. R. Gross and N. Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997; and A. Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, Saint Martin’s Press, New York, 1999.

A. Weinberg, ‘Science and trans‐science’, Minerva, 10, 1972, pp. 209–22; L. Salter, E. Levy and W. Leiss, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making of Standards, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordtrecht, 1988; Funtowicz and Ravetz, op. cit., pp. 251–74.

D. Demeritt, ‘The construction of global warming and the politics of science’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 9, 2, 2001, pp. 307–37.

David Guston and K. Keniston, The Fragile Contract: University Science and the Government, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994; D. Demeritt, ‘The new social contract for science: accountability, relevance, and value in US and UK science and research policy’, Antipode, 32, 2000, pp. 308–29.

Bush, op. cit.

This view suffers from a similar degree of idealism as the earlier social contract arguments. Two of the most obvious limitations are that science cannot specify its outcomes in advance in the same way that a baker can guarantee the production of a loaf of bread. The second is that both the buyer and the seller in science often suffer from imperfect knowledge of what is practically possible.

B. Latour, ‘From the world of science to the world of research’, Science, 280, 5361, 1998, pp.208–10.

E. Shove and A. Rip, ‘Users and unicorns: a discussion of mythical beasts in interactive science’, Science and Public Policy, 27, 3, 2000, pp. 175–82.

N. Morris, ‘Science policy in action: policy and the researcher’, Minerva, 38, 2000, pp. 425–51.

T. Hellström and M. Jacob, ‘Taming unruly science and saving national competitiveness: discourses on science by Sweden’s strategic research bodies’, Science, Technology and Human Values, forthcoming.

N. Pollock, ‘The “self‐service” student: building enterprise‐wide systems into universities’, Prometheus, 21, 1, 2003, pp. 101–20.

MISTRA internal newsletter, January 2005 (available in Swedish only). INNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, also holds courses for public sector managers in something the agency calls ‘Triple Helix management’.

Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this aspect of the dynamic of the relation between users, councils and researchers.