Scientific Production Re-Configurations Under a Global/Local Perspective: The Case of Applied Physics in Southeast Mexico

This paper presents a preview of an on-going doctoral research project with the aim of studying the conditions that sustain knowledge production and reproduction processes within research groups which notably stand-out in the development of scientific activity and research-training in Mexico. Our interest is focused on studying foundational processes and subsequent developments undergone by the first Department of Applied Physics in southeastern part of the country, established by the National Polytechnic Institute´s Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav-IPN, for its acronym in Spanish) in the eighties under a national climate that favored the decentralization of scientific institutions and researchers.

It is the goal of this work to discuss that this group´s type of choices and the alignment of its research themes and threads can be understood from the interrelationships between the department members´ careers, the institutional development and the research demand forces at international, national and regional levels. Drawing on qualitative methodology that includes the use of multiple primary (in-depth interviews) and secondary information sources (analysis of scientific production and co-authorship networks, hemerography, documentary analysis) we propose an analysis of three configuration moment of the scientific production at the department during the period from 1980 to 2013. We will shed light on permanence, elimination, addition and reorientation of research lines and the ways in which researchers organize and structure their scientific activity. We will analyze the tensions and implications that these movements have generated over time in regards to the group´s role at participating and responding to knowledge production demands emerging from its own region before those derived from global science trends.