Basic Research Ideology: The Postwar Consensus on Fundamental Research in the United States and the Invention of National Interests in Academic Science, 1945-1957 (original) (raw)

The post-WWII era represents the genesis of science policy, as we understand it today. Its importance is augmented on account that other nations took the United States as a standard to which they measured their own efforts. In this thesis, I hypothesize that (1) the shape of postwar science policy in the US was a result of ‘basic research ideology,’ a coherent set of interrelated propositions regarding the university system, government-science relations, and an economic theory of basic science. As corollaries, I also hypothesize that (2) the primary impetus behind the first successful development of a national science policy was WWII and that (3) the notion of national interests in university-based science was a result of basic research ideology. The core tenets of basic research ideology became a post-war consensus, while its operational extensions were debated and negotiated between groups of political and academic rivals. In explaining this, I also introduce the concept of the ‘bureaucrato-scientific field’ to demonstrate the unique paradoxical logic of science policy. To carry this out, I principally rely on Bourdieu’s field theory, focusing on the shifting boundaries of fields and how these have changed the social structure. In this regard, the thesis is one of the rare attempts to bring Bourdieusian relationalism to science and technology studies.