ABSTRACT

The political economy of research and innovation (R&I) is one of the central issues of the early twenty-first century. ‘Science’ and ‘innovation’ are increasingly tasked with driving and reshaping a troubled global economy while also tackling multiple, overlapping global challenges, such as climate change or food security, global pandemics or energy security. But responding to these demands is made more complicated because R&I themselves are changing. Today, new global patterns of R&I are transforming the very structures, institutions and processes of science and innovation, and with it their claims about desirable futures. Our understanding of R&I needs to change accordingly.

Responding to this new urgency and uncertainty, this handbook presents a pioneering selection of the growing body of literature that has emerged in recent years at the intersection of science and technology studies and political economy. The central task for this research has been to expose important but consequential misconceptions about the political economy of R&I and to build more insightful approaches. This volume therefore explores the complex interrelations between R&I (both in general and in specific fields) and political economies across a number of key dimensions from health to environment, and universities to the military.

The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science offers a unique collection of texts across a range of issues in this burgeoning and important field from a global selection of top scholars. The handbook is essential reading for students interested in the political economy of science, technology and innovation. It also presents succinct and insightful summaries of the state of the art for more advanced scholars.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

Beyond crisis in the knowledge economy

part I|98 pages

From the ‘economics of science’ to the ‘political economy of research and innovation’

chapter 1|11 pages

The Political Economy of Science

Prospects and retrospects

chapter 6|18 pages

US Pharma's Business Model

Why it is broken, and how it can be fixed

chapter 7|16 pages

Research & Innovation (And) After Neoliberalism

The case of Chinese smart e-mobility

part II|94 pages

Institutions of science and science funding

chapter 9|12 pages

Open Access Panacea

Scarcity, abundance, and enclosure in the new economy of academic knowledge production 1

chapter 12|13 pages

Financing Technoscience

Finance, assetization and rentiership

part III|92 pages

Fields of science

chapter 15|11 pages

Genetically Engineered Food for a Hungry World

A changing political economy

chapter 16|13 pages

Biodiversity Offsetting

chapter 17|12 pages

Distributed Biotechnology

chapter 18|14 pages

Translational Medicine

Science, risk and an emergent political economy of biomedical innovation

chapter 20|14 pages

Renewable Energy Research and Development

A political economy perspective

chapter 21|14 pages

Synthetic Biology

A political economy of molecular futures

part IV|62 pages

Governing science and governing through science

chapter 26|14 pages

Reconstructing or Reproducing?

Scientific authority and models of change in two traditions of citizen science

part V|86 pages

(Political economic) geographies of science

chapter 28|12 pages

Postcolonial Technoscience and Development Aid

Insights from the political economy of locust control expertise

chapter 29|15 pages

World-System Analysis 2.0

Globalized science in centers and peripheries

chapter 31|13 pages

Traveling Imaginaries

The “practice turn” in innovation policy and the global circulation of innovation models