2023 - Leo S. Olschki
Article
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Challenging science's autonomy : the "critique des sciences" in France
P. 313-334
- This article examines the emergence, development, and demise of the ‘critique des sciences' in France in the aftermath of May 1968. Initially, the critique of science in France was inspired and influenced by other radical science movements abroad. The critique of science and technology led to counter-expertise and the questioning of hierarchies and inequalities in the scientific institution. Ephemeral political journals appeared during this period, in which scientists, engineers and technicians published articles about ecology, feminism, and the power of ‘Mandarins' in the scientific laboratory, for example.
- In France, the movement evolved in a singular way during the 1970s and 1980s since it disappeared slowly. The French critique of science was pursued in the 1980s in the field of popularization and expertise. Considerations about the role of science in society also converged with the renewal of the study of science in academic disciplines. I suggest that the understanding of the critique of science in France requires that we consider the political context of the 1970s, and the relationships between the critique of science and the disciplines dedicated to the analysis of science and technology. [Publisher's text]
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Information
DOI: 10.1400/294941
ISSN: 2038-6265
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In this issue
- Science goes radical : towards a history of social movements
- From 'state' science to 'peoples' science : science movements in post-colonial India (1947-1980)
- Challenging science's autonomy : the "critique des sciences" in France
- The socialist patient collective, the printing press, and anti-psychiatry in Heidelberg in the 1970s
- "An attempt to look out of the ecxological depression" : Samizdat and alternative ecological journalism in communist Czechoslovakia, 1969-1989
- The visible technician : scientist, technicians, and the neutrality of science in 1960s and 1970s Italy
- The social and political roots of the institutionalization of the history of physics in Italy
- The scientia case : scientific censorship and ideological struggles, 1973-1975
- "Science gave us nothing" : women and technology in Italian feminism as a radical science movement (1970s-1980s)