How to Oscillate from a Fixed to Fluid Science Governance?

• In Event: Disrupting from the Inside: Towards a Research System Change - II

Abstract

The relationship between Science and State is typically described from a top-down perspective. This hiecherical assumptions mismatch with the fragmented, polyvocal and uncertain nature of research enterprises. This paper propose the inversion of a macro-level concept of National Innovation Systems (NIS), going from “the national institutions, their incentive structures and their competencies, that determine the rate and direction of technological learning” (Pavel and Pavel, 1994) to emerge as a set of dynamic processes and agendas where national and international interconnected support the creation, permeation and maintenance of agencies of institutions of knowledge governance.

Grounded in feminist contributions of Haraway, Harding, Butler, and Barad, our approximation propose a series of principles and definitions which oscillates between the normativeness of NIS into flexible and situated categories, which includes observing research programs, agendas and instruments from the researcher’s positionality. We exemplify those definitions speculating about the recent transformation of Chilean knowledge organization, describing the organizational consequences of fluid science governance. The new Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation has a contradictory identity, which is a product of the merge of unjoint fixed paradigms, which replicate international molds instead of fitting a governance proposal which could overcome mistaken assumptions of linear innovation, science as economic growth, disciplinarity and male-centric careers. The proposed principles could enact a new relationship between sciences and state, as well as with communicators, citizens and others actors in the knowledge production and reproduction. Finally, this dynamic framework is a way to describe knowledge governance as a sentient, vulnerable and adaptable network of researchers and non-researchers share geographically. In consequence, the proposal can guide national research assemblages in the generation of caring, flexible and decentralized performances, practices and politics in knowledge governance.

Authors

• Soledad Quiroz, Ciencia al Congreso, Chile

• Martin Andrés Perez Comisso, SFIS - Arizona State University