| Theory of scientific fields Pierre Bourdieu |
It comprises scientific work as a social practice that takes place in a specific field, product, and producer of this practice. The theory of scientific fields highlights the relationships of domination and denounces the implicit codes, habits, and routines that govern the scientific world (Dortier, 2008Dortier, J.-F. (2008). Les idées pures n’existent pas. In J. F. Dortier (Org.), Pierre Bourdieu: Son oeuvre, son héritage. Sciences Humaines Éditions.). |
It focuses on the structures that guide scientific practices, different from merely interactionist or rationalist approaches. It emphasizes the notion of the scientific field as a space of dispute in which agents confront each other to maintain or modify the current power relations. “The agents defined by the volume and structure of capital they have, determine the structure of the field that, in turn, determines these same agents” (Bourdieu, 2001Bourdieu, P. (2001). Para uma sociologia da ciência. Edições 70., p. 69, our translation). On the other hand, agents are a product of their environment, prisoners of action routines. They are prisoners of habitus that, above all, emerge from a learning process that often becomes unconscious and translates into an apparently natural attitude reproduced in their environment (Dortier, 2008Dortier, J.-F. (2008). Les idées pures n’existent pas. In J. F. Dortier (Org.), Pierre Bourdieu: Son oeuvre, son héritage. Sciences Humaines Éditions.). |
Scientific capital; symbolic capital; habitus; autonomy and heteronomy of scientific fields; domination. |
| Strong program David Bloor |
Conceptions of the natural order of things exist as long as there are different social interests. The opposition between two scientific theories is expressed not only in the researchers’ divergent points of view on a given phenomenon but also in the divergence of interests rooted in the diversity of internal cultural systems of a scientific community (Dubois, 2001Dubois, M. (2001). La nouvelle sociologie de sciences. Presses Universitaires de France.). |
1) Principle of causality - considering that no belief is true per se (justification is not intrinsic, self-explanatory). One must look for the (social) conditions that produce the states of knowledge. 2) Principle of impartiality, concerning truthfulness or falsity, of rationality or irrationality. Do not use a priori. 3) Principle of symmetry: follow the actors in real-time and reconstruct the historical complexity of the moment and the elements that contribute to the construction of convictions. 4) Principle of reflexivity: requires the sociology of knowledge to apply its principles. |
Experimental culture; the importance of the know-how and practice in science; analysis of scientific controversies; non-separation of the logic of researchers and the reality where they are located; scientific knowledge in flux; scientists are in constant debate; multiple rationalities (Pestre, 2006Pestre, D. (2006). Introduction aux science studies. La Découverte.). |
| Socioanthropology of science and technology Bruno Latour Michel Callon |
Science is produced from scientific practices observed in a situation. There is no dissociation between science’s technical, economic, social, and cognitive dimensions. Science as a device that produces multiple conceptual and social orders (rhizomatic development) and not as a device that reveals the “hidden order” of nature (Pestre, 2006Pestre, D. (2006). Introduction aux science studies. La Découverte., p. 48) |
It proposes another way of demarcating social reality that is seen not as a special domain, an exclusive sphere, or a particular object but as the result of a particular movement of reassociation and reaggregation between beings and objects. Scientific facts are disputed and are the subject of controversy in both the natural and social sciences. |
Actant or actor-network; agencies and flows, the principle of symmetry between humans and non-humans, cartography of controversies, black box, translation, and the relationship between micro and macro scales. |
