Research infrastructures: the European way to Big Science
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Research infrastructures: the European way to Big Science Katharina C. Cramer, and Olof Hallonsten, (Eds.), Big Science and Research Infrastructures in Europe, Northampton, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020, 288 pp., $145, ISBN: 9781839100000 Eugenio Petrovich1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
When introducing the history of science in the second half of the Twentieth Century, talking of Big Science has become a commonplace. Bolstered by an unprecedented stream of public investment and the Cold War competition between the superpowers for world supremacy, science grew big in a number of respects: number of researchers, output of publications, magnitude of the scientific organizations, and, most notably, size of the scientific equipment involved in scientific projects. The Manhattan project leading to the first atomic bomb, the construction of large-scale particle accelerators, and the space race are among the most vivid images of the “bigness” of Big Science. On the other hand, the term “research infrastructures,” with its bureaucratic flavor, does not frequently pop up in the scholarly literature on science. It has become, however, a buzzword in current science policy discourse, especially in Europe. Defined as “facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct top-level research in their respective fields” (European Council 2009), research infrastructures and related initiatives were funded in Horizon 2020, the current framework program of the European Union, with €2.5 billion. And they should receive the same amount in the next EU program. Thus, “Big Science” and “research infrastructures” belong to different discursive universes: the former to the scholarly study of science, the latter to the world of science policy and administration. The volume edited by Katharina Cramer and Olof Hallonsten is a valuable attempt to put the two concepts in dialogue, focusing in particular on Europe, the context where the term “research infrastructures” has gained most of its current policy currency. Building a fruitful dialogue between concepts with such different pedigrees, however, is not an easy task, as the editors, together with Isabel Bolliger and Alexandra Griffiths, point out in the first chapter of the book, one of the most interesting of the collection. Research infrastructures is a concept of policy origin, and as the authors * Eugenio Petrovich [email protected] 1
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
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note, its definition is political rather than analytical. Essentially, its main function is to “consecrate” some research facilities in Europe, rather than individuate a clearly marked organizational field. Hence, almost anything can become a Research Infrastructure if the necessary political conditions hold, with the result that, as an analytical tool, the concept is rather empty. Big Science, although its origin lies in history of science, had undergone a process of “conceptual dilution” that
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