Institutional expansion and scientific development in the periphery. The structural heterogeneity of Argentina?s academic field (1983-2015)

BEIGEL, FERNANDA; GALLARDO, OSVALDO; BEKERMAN, FABIANA

Minerva A Review of Science, Learning and Policy

Springer

Lugar: London; Año: 2018 vol. 56 p. 305 - 331

0026-4695

The main task of this paper is to analyse the current state of the research capacities resulting after the expansion of Argentina?s scientific-universitary field, in order to explore its impact in the historical asymmetries of its heterogeneous structure. Even if there are other institutions that develop scientific research and teaching in the country, this work is focused on the public National Universities (UUNN, for its Spanish acronym) and the CONICET because these are the main pillars of a dominantly public scientific field.In the first section, we briefly explore the concept of structural heterogeneity in the Latin American tradition in order to propose its application to the case study. Afterwards, we outline the historical path of professionalization of scientific research in Argentina and the structural nature of the hinge between National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and the national universities. Thirdly, we describe the current expansion and its impact in disciplinary and institutional distribution of researchers and research centers. Finally, we propose a classification of eight academic regions in order to examine the results of the expansion in terms of geographical inequalities.