Description
Winner of the Harald Kaufmann Prize for Senior Researchers, 2018
This book examines the question of whether the process of European integration in research funding has led to new forms of oligarchization and elite formation in the European Research Area. Based on a study of the European Research Council (ERC), the author investigates profound structural change in the social organization of science, as the ERC intervenes in public science systems that, until now, have largely been organized at the national level.
Against the background of an emerging new science policy, Europe’s New Scientific Elite explores the social mechanisms that generate, reproduce and modify existing dynamics of stratification and oligarchization in science, shedding light on the strong normative impact of the ERC’s funding on problem-choice in science, the cultural legitimacy and future vision of science, and the building of new research councils of national, European and global scope.
A comparative, theory-driven investigation of European research funding, this book will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of knowledge.
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The problem: Establishing ‘excellence’ in socially stratified science
Chapter 3. State of research: Controversial ideas on science and public research in a global marketplace
Chapter 4. Explaining social change by Europeanization of science: An analytical approach
Chapter 5. Methodology: Judging scientific ‘excellence’
Chapter 6. The social structure of the European Research Area: A country comparison
Chapter 7. Knowledge of ‘European excellence’: The grant-winning research
Chapter 8. The cultural structure of the European Research Area at supranational level: The case of the European Research Council
Chapter 9. The sampling: What is a scientific elite?
Chapter 10. The grantees: Social choice and mechanisms in elite career trajectories
Chapter 11. The panellists: Social choice and mechanisms in grant peer review
Chapter 12. Social consequences and conclusions: Cumulative advantage and the case of the European Research Council
Appendix
Index
