Göran Streiffert: Om akademins frihet och nytta: en studie av tjugo års forskningspolitik. Uppsala universitet: Institutionen för idéhistoria, masteruppsats, vårterminen 2024. This thesis is a study of the research and innovation policies of three Swedish governments at the beginning of the 21st century. I examine five of the research propositions the governments presented during the first two decades of the century with the aim to chart and analyse the governments ambitions to transform the universities in accordance with the concept of knowledge society. Each research proposition presents the overall direction and orientation for the ensuing four years. Allocations of resources and changes of laws are generally proposed in separate propositions. My focus is to describe how the transformation has affected the liberties and the productive outcomes of the universities. My starting point is two separate and conflicting norm systems which I explain in the thesis. My account demonstrates how the governments try to balance between two conflicting interests: to maintain the liberty of the university and gain the commercial and welfare benefits created by the researchers and teachers at the universities. One conflict of interest that is constantly neglected in the propositions is that the normative structure for science, described by the sociologist Robert K. Merton, is not compatible with cooperation between scientists and commercial or political interests as research design and results could be affected. In what looks like concerted efforts by the three governments, they identify some issues, i.e. that basic research is regarded to differ from applied research, with the latter having more immediate applications for markets. The governments argue that the discrepancy between basic and applied research is small and should be neglected. I argue that profound conflicts of interests and competing targets regarding the transformation of the universities to fit commercial and political standards of the knowledge society neither have been identified nor problematised in the propositions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-530326 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Streiffert, Göran |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för idéhistoria |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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