Equality in the networks? Some are more equal than others. International Scientific Cooperation: An Approach from Latin America.”

KREIMER, PABLO; MEYER, JEAN-BAPTISTE

Universities as Centers of Research and Knowledge Creation: An Endangered Species?

Sense Publishers

Lugar: Rotterdam; Año: 2008; p. 121 - 135

The importance of knowledge in contemporary society is today a given, even if itslevel of priority remains open to argument (Bindé, 2005; Carton and Meyer, 2006).Research, done for the most part in universities, is the major activity in the productionof this knowledge. We expect from it, more and more urgently, that it contributesto sustainable development for humanity and the planet (Panorama duDéveloppement Durable, 2005). Yet the risks keep growing as the situation deteriorates,on the global scale and particularly in developing countries (Panorama duDéveloppement Durable, 2004). One fundamental reason for this is the dislocationof research capacities, which are principally concentrated in the North and thereforebuffered from the most keenly felt development needs in the South. Internationalscientific cooperation could contribute to the resolution of this disequilibrium,but in practice it is not succeeding.This article addresses the problem from the following starting point: scientificresearch and its role in development play an increasingly important role. Howeverthere is nowadays only rare, and recent, productivity on the part of scientists andintellectuals from peripheral countries concerning development issues. An explanatoryhypothesis in this regard will be proposed here. The inadequacy of local, peripheralresearch (Kreimer and Zabala, 2007) vis-à-vis social, economic and environmentalproblems is not unrelated to the world of science: for example, certainclassic analyses point to the incapacity of industrial actors to appropriate locallyproduced knowledge. To the contrary, this inadequacy is tied to scientific practice,itself determined by the norms of international cooperation; these in turn are derivedfrom research that emanates from the core. In this sense scientific pertinencemay coexist with social irrelevance, a contradiction summarised in the term “abstraction”.