Associations and other groups in Science: an historical and contemporary perspective

Scientific societies or associations are quite an under-researched issue. Science studies have historically paid much more attention to nonformalised collectives in science: the “republic of science” of Polanyi (1962), the “scientific community” of Hagstrom (1965) and Merton (1973), the “invisible colleges” of Crane (1972), the “scientific field” of Bourdieu (1975), or the “transepistemic arenas” of Knorr-Cetina (1982). Theories of the Mode 2 production of knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1995; Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons 2001) postulate that in contemporary science there is a wider array of institutions taking part in the construction of scientific knowledge, but scientific associations are barely mentioned. Recent literature has devoted considerable attention to the “triple helix” formed by universities, government and industry (Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 1996; Shinn 2002), but leaving out all other actors involved in science. Most of the existing literature on scientific associations focuses mainly on the historical dimension of scientific societies, such as their role in the birth of modern science (see Merton 1938 or Shapin 1996, for instance) or the genealogy of individual institutions, such as the Royal Society (Hunter 1989). Just a few noteworthy exceptions can be found: for instance, an indepth case study of the Society of German Chemists authored by Rilling (1986), Schimank’s (1988) survey of German scientific associations, the studies on the development of international scientific associations by Shofer (1999, 2003). Some published research also deals with particular aspects of scientific associations’ activities, such as publishing (Levitan 1979), policy advice (Teich 2002), ethical regulation (Levine and Iutcovich 2003), award giving (Crosland and Galvez 1989), public understanding of science (Rogers 1981), or membership profiles (Mackie 2000). And yet, scientific societies in Europe seem to be gaining momentum both in individual countries (see, for instance, Guinovart 2009 on the Spanish Federation of Scientific Societies) and on a transnational level. This is apparent, for instance, in the Initiative for Science in Europe - ISE,a platform of European learned societies and scientific organisations created in 2004, which led to the creation of the European Research Council (Zaragoza 2007). Overall, there seemed to be a gap in the social studies of science concerning the role of scientific societies in contemporary science. In 2008, a team of social scientists sought to bridge this gap with a research project,1 focusing on the case of the Portuguese scientific system, which intended to explore both the functions and activities of scientific societies and the associative behaviour and representations of scientists