How do specialties reproduce their epistemic regimes?

• In Event: Regimes of Knowledge Production

Abstract

We consider epistemic regimes as systems of distinct epistemic practices that are maintained by a specific social structure, and ask how the stability of these arrangements can be explained. We compare four scientific specialties – experimental atomic and molecular optics, plant biology, early modern history, and mechanical engineering – in order to identify the mechanisms that reproduce the arrangements of epistemic practices and social structures. Our analysis extends Whitley’s approach by comparing specialties’ epistemic practices, the ways in which the interdependence of researchers is mediated by theory, methods, and empirical objects, the internal authority distribution in specialties and their external authority sharing through their embeddedness in society. We identify two interlinked processes through which epistemic regimes are reproduced. First, specialties create particular epistemic careers in which researchers are socialised and trained. We will demonstrate that each epistemic regime is linked to a particular career pattern in which highly standardised organisational positions are arranged in sequences that support field-specific ways of learning and gaining independence. Second, specialties enable, promote and select research programmes that reproduce their epistemic practices. The two major mechanisms through which research programmes are reproduced are the control of external funding and recruitment. In the case of the mechanical engineering, control over the reproduction of epistemic practices is shared with external actors, namely the industrial companies that form the dominant audiences for academic engineers.

Authors

• Jochen Glaser, TU Berlin

• Grit Laudel, TU Berlin

• Chris Grieser, TU Berlin

• Uli Meyer, TU Munich