Subproject 7: Observing Cooperation and Competition: The Emergence of Science Studies in the Age of the Life Sciences (1970s-1990s)

• Principal Investigator: Dr. Christoffer Leber

Since the 1970s, the life sciences were undergoing fundamental epistemic, social, and institutional transformations: New technologies like recombinant DNA opened up opportunities for commercial applications of biomedical research and strengthened university-industry collaborations. The commercialization of molecular biology not only raised concerns about environmental hazards, secrecy of information, and the “sellout of science” but also challenged long-established norms of cooperation within the scientific community. In light of these changes, Science Studies (short STS) emerged as an interdisciplinary field that was supposed to analyze the complex interrelations between science, politics and society. I argue that the close observation of the life sciences (and biotechnology in particular) strongly influenced the epistemic and institutional development of Science Studies: The early STS community, for instance, observed dynamics of cooperation and competition in laboratories as sites of knowledge production; at the same time, STS scholars responded to the “biotech boom” of the 1980s and 90s in critical studies. As part of the DFG Research Group, this project analyses cooperation and competition as categories of observation within the field of Science Studies.