IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

13

Knowledge Production and Circulation in an Unequal World

Abstract Submissions Closed

Language: English, Spanish and French

Session Type: Oral

Invited Session

At the beginning of the 1990s, when the "globalization" spread worldwide there was an extended belief that nation-state limits had been erased once and forever. But some time later we realized that the phenomenon only applied for peripheral nation-states, while the central countries were increasingly protectionist. Within the scientific realm something similar occurred. International publishing, networks, invisible colleges were supposed to replace national attachments and this was also going to blur traditional academic powers such as the US, UK or France. “Mainstream” journals were universalized as synonymous of “global science” while it was the result of a particular style of writing forged by bibliometrical indicators that boosted journals published in English. In this process, Citation Indexes, Impact Factor and mainstream databases were globalized as means to evaluate institutions and individual careers, fading the fact that these databases, created on the basis of ISI-Web of Science, were highly endogamous. The “mainstream” was successfully identified with the top universities selected in World University Rankings which became progressively more dependent on “citation impact” along with its central role in funding competitions. This particular form of universality didn’t increase cosmopolitanism but inequalities and segmented circuits of circulation.
During the second half of XXth century, the opposition between scientific centers and peripheries was reinforced by indicators that were considered objective and neutral, such as public investment in research and development. Publishing became one of the most valuable assets to affirm centrality and, at the same time marginalize “peripheriality”. The classification/peripheralization of the non-mainstream communities was fulfilled through its displacement from the worldwide publishing reports. As a result, the mainstream-periphery dichotomy was successfully “globalized” –being the first the autonomous/universalist and the latter the dependent/parochial. This session will analyze these inequalities around the circulation of knowledge and the potential of Sociology for its understanding and boosting alternative kinds of circulation.

Common Session endorsed by RC08 History of Sociology, RC10 Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management, RC56 Historical Sociology