50.2 - Empirical Theory of Science / Economic Experts & Expertise

Special Issue – Hubert Knoblauch, Nina Baur, Silke Steets & Séverine Marguin (Eds.): Towards an Empirical Theory of Science? Challenges and (Possible) Standards of Scientific Research Across Disciplines and Cultures.

This HSR Special Issue addresses the current reconfiguration of science, its increasing fragmentation, and the growing importance of collaborative research. It critically reflects on the challenges and opportunities that these contexts offer for producing knowledge, paying particular attention to knowledge transfer processes and innovative forms of collaboration. It therefore suggests and discusses the potential of an Empirical Theory of Science. An Empirical Theory of Science is based on the normative orientation of the philosophy of science, on the one hand. While it addresses fundamental problems in the philosophy of the social sciences, such as 'objectivity' and 'value judgements', it also seeks to establish a systematic connection with the more descriptive and analytical empirical science studies, such as the social studies of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies. Given its emphasis on a social concept of knowledge and knowledge production, this special issue focuses particularly on the tensions and negotiation surrounding scientificity and scientific legitimacy in interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and cross-cultural research. This is reflected in the diversity of contributions and contributors.

HSR Forum - Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg & Vincent Gengnagel (Eds.): Economic Experts and Expertise: Dynamic Relations between Academia, Government, and Economy.

Covering Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Switzerland, and Germany, the contributions to this HSR Forum illustrate the insights that a genuine sociological perspective can offer within the broader social studies of economics. As the introduction points out, economic practices are entangled not only in political and economic, but also in academic power relations: Asserting economic expertise in national contexts does not constitute a top-down process but unfolds differently in transversal and transnational social constellations of academic, political, and economic fields. The specific interplay, relative autonomies, and interdependencies have to be cautiously traced through empirical material, which the case studies show in paradigmatic fashion.