Competencias disciplinares como construcción de nicho

AGUSTIN F. MAURO

Puebla, México

Congreso; congreso conjunto entre la Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) y la Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia (ESOCITE); 2022

Universidad Iberoamericana de Puebla

Disciplinary competencies are a key issue in STSstudies: how is the competence of a discipline established? Whatprocesses determine its area of expertise? How does it arrive at"true" discourses on a givenphenomena? These questions are not only relevant for STS theory butbecome pressing questionswhen constructing interdisciplinary spaces of knowledgeproduction or in scientific controversies, spaces that bringcompetencies into tension. In this theoretical work I seek to showthe possibilities available when conceptualizing the processes ofproduction of disciplinary competences as analogous to the evolutionand construction of niches (Odling-Smee et al. 2003; Jablonka andLamb 2005). The concept of "niche" wasoriginally used in ecology and later used in various social sciences.In STS has beenparticularly relevant forthe study of technical change and inevolutionary economics (Schot& Geels, 2007), but has not beensystematically used inthe study of science, disciplines, orexpert communities. In this analogicalextrapolation I intend to make explicit how the local actions ofepistemic agents to manipulate theirenvironment and the availabilitiesobjectified in more global aspects of the scientific productionsystem, both in terms of conditions and resources, guide theevolution of disciplines and lead scientistto construct and occupy certain configurations of aknowledge space over others. During thepresentation of thisperspective I argue what are the benefits with respect to otherconceptualizationssuch as "fields" (Bourdieu, 1994), "trans-systemicarenas" (Knorr Cetina, 1996) or?linked ecologies? (Abbott, 2005).In the conclusion I point out how this reconceptualization ofdisciplinary competences allows for adifferent approachto the productionof interdisciplinary knowledge.p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 115%; background: transparent }a:visited { color: #800000; so-language: zxx; text-decoration: underline }a:link { color: #000080; text-decoration: underline }a.cjk:link { so-language: zxx }a.ctl:link { so-language: zxx }