Monies, transactions, and relationship-building among Japanese academic bio-scientists – reconsidering the “economic logic” of commercialization

• In Event: Disrupting, Broadcasting and Commercializing Science

Abstract

This paper depicts the multiple ways through which Japanese academic bio-scientists enacted commercialization practices as both monetary and non-monetary exchanges. While some exchanges can be understood as straightforward monetary transactions, other exchanges acted simultaneously as exchange, relationship building, boundary work between academe and commerce, and the purchase of legitimacy in scientists’ professional life. Interviews with scientists reveal thatcommercialization activities, usually thought of as pure economic pursuits and capitalization of university knowledge, have often been understood as normative, relational, and organizational projects for the scientists. By showing the non-economic aspects of university research commercialization the study contributes to our understanding of how more entrepreneurial academia may be moralized, and how we can understand variations in discourses and practices of "the entrepreneurial university" in different national contexts.

Author

• Nahoko Kameo, New York University Department of Sociology