The peripherization of science and the elements of the regime of management of irrelevance

Abstract

This article discusses the constitution and reproduction of regimes of management of irrelevance in science. In contexts of scientific production considered peripheral, the produced knowledge is reduced to a condition of inferiority before other contexts. V Values and procedures, which one can be aware of or ignore, guide the daily practice of science that results in peripherization. In other words, the scientific process with its own pragmatic and value content, whose constituent elements this paper will present. Field research in laboratories and interviews with crucial interlocutors (research leaders) of biotechnology groups in Brazil facilitated the identification of these elements. It is a question of not taking the center and periphery difference as an objective structure of the scientific system, a common approach in the social studies of science and technology, but as expectations with practical repercussions.