The Social Magic of Science in Public: Fields, Boundaries, and the Resolution of Curriculum Controversies

• In Event: 340 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Paper Session. What Would Bourdieu Do? New Approaches to Field Studies in Science, Knowledge and Technology

Abstract

Research on the “culture wars” over K-12 public education often considers the influence of politics and/or religion into scientific matters. These battles are seldom look at from the vantage point of scientists and spokespeople for the natural and human sciences to see how they respond when their credibility and scholarly autonomy are publicly challenged. Shifting our focus to the practice of making claims, however, helps us better understand these contentious episodes by throwing into sharp relief how fields of knowledge production structure the conditions of possibility for the people who speak on behalf of mainstream science. By comparing two controversial science and social studies K-12 curriculum adoptions in Texas, I show that knowledge fields shaped the different ways competing stakeholders (a) engaged in boundary-work, (b) performed expertise, and (c) struggled over legitimacy through claims-making. The human sciences’ lack of autonomy from politics (relative to the natural sciences) limited liberal claims-makers’ ability to secure credibility during State Board of Education debates and thus their ability to fend off conservative challenges to the social studies curriculum. The opposite process occurred during the natural science curriculum adoption. Successful defense depended on actors’ ability to discursively create “science,” which I argue is a necessary condition for asserting epistemic authority. This “social magic” was possible in part because state board meetings are “spaces between fields” where, unregulated by the normal rules of scholarly knowledge-production, social entrepreneurs from adjacent fields could take advantage of the unsettled social space that made upset victories possible.

Author

• Christopher Robertson, Northwestern University