Responsible science? On the discursive and everyday practical constitution of the social responsibility of science between academic generations

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Susanne Maria Weber
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions ; Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 457876539

The research project will reconstruct the discursive-practical production of social responsibility of science from an organizational education point of view. Current social transformations and situations of crisis, the increasing political involvement of science as a societal instance of knowledge production, but also new politicized forms of scientists' intervention – such as the Scientists for Future initiative – refer to a change in scientific responsibility practices. This is expected to have consequences for the relationship between science and society, for the subjectivation of responsible scientists, but also for everyday scientific practice, i.e. for the production of scientific knowledge. The research project examines the forms of the discursive production of the social responsibility of science as well as the subjectivation of 'responsible scientists' and investigates how the university – as a scientific organization – enables such a subjectivation of responsibility.Responsibility is understood as a practical concept that is crucial for science: It structures scientific thinking, perception, and action in a normative way, but also represents an essential action-leading and organizational principle of explorative, creative, and thus open-ended doing. We can assume that different modes of scientific responsibility practices exist, which are discursively produced within and between scientific organizations and internalized in specific forms by scientists working in those organizational contexts. For the empirical reconstruction of these processes, the research project uses two approaches: First, the discursive production of the social responsibility of science is to be analyzed at eight universities. Second, at four of these universities group discussions with scientists are to be conducted to reconstruct the subjectivation of responsible science. Finally, in a third step, both approaches will be interlinked to work out the relationship between different subjective orientations of responsibility and the discursive organizational production of scientific responsibility. By doing so, the research project will contribute to the empirical investigation of the current conditions of the production of scientific knowledge and will also further develop a discourse- and practice-theoretical perspective in organizational education.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants