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Claire Waterton
Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Institute of Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy, Furness College, Lancaster University
Lancaster
United Kingdom
e-mail: c.waterton@lancs.ac.uk

Negotiating identity in commodified science

This paper argues against the view that scientists, caught in an inevitable commodification of knowledge, have become 'blinkered', or that they 'place a higher value on research grants than on the lives with which they toy' (George Monbiot in The Guardian 25.2.99). It suggests, rather, that scientists are adapting to new ways of doing science, involving new relationships, contracts and interactions with the world. The paper considers how this process of adaptation and change involves a change in the identity and self-image of scientists themselves. Using evidence drawn from over 50 interviews with scientists in the environmental domain, we can see that this changing self-image has repercussions for the planning of scientific trajectories, for the contemporary understanding of science more generally, and for what society can expect of science in the current climate.

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Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006