Tim Turpin

CRCs and Transdisciplinary Research: What are the Implications for Science?

A number of authors have recently proposed a future for science where the traditional academic mode of knowledge production, primarily organised on disciplinary lines, is largely replaced by a different mode of knowledge production that is more transient in its organisational forms. If correct, the new mode of knowledge production has implications for the research cultures of universities, government research institutes, or industrial laboratories. But in particular, the trend has implications for research arrangements, such as Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs), because the CRCs seek to integrate, yet maintain, many of the characteristics of each sector that are likely to be significantly transformed by this new mode of knowledge production. Further, the CRCs themselves already reflect the salient characteristics proposed by this new mode of knowledge. It is therefore important to consider the impact that CRCs are having on the culture of science itself.

Indicators of research relevance to ecologically sustainable development and their integration with other R&D indicators in the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract Governments throughout the Asia-Pacific region during the 1990s are increasingly seeking ways to develop research policies that target national socio-economic objectives, within an overall framework of ‘sustainable development’. However, the concept of sustainable development varies from country to country and so do indicators for accounting for economic, research and development data. Research indicators in most countries remain disconnected from national strategies for sustainable development. Given the importance of research investment for social, economic and technological development, it is important to develop a model for connecting this particular investment to strategies for sustainable development. During the past five years the Centre for Research Policy (CRP) has been involved with many countries throughout the Asian region in developing indicators and information systems for monitoring and driving national research policies. This work has been carried out under the auspices of the UNESCO Science and Technology Policy Asian Network (STEPAN), for which CRP provides the regional focal point. The Australian government has recently commissioned CRP to carry out a study in order to develop a working definition of research relevant to ecologically sustainable development (ESD) and to develop a methodology to determine and assess indicators of the nature and level of research relevant to ESD. Practical aspects of the development of these indicators in Australia are outlined and the possible integration of these with other R&D indicators is discussed in the context of developments in the Asia-Pacific region.

Research management and commercial markets: cultural change in Australian research institutions

Research institutions and universities have undergone significant organisational change during the past decade. While these organisations have been pressed to attract an increasingly larger proportion of their research budget from industry, they have introduced business principles and practices in order to manage their scientific research and to focus it more on producing commercial outcomes. As individual scientists and institutions have responded to these changing research environments, the research cultures of these organisations have undergone a transformation. This paper seeks to unpack the notion and process of ‘cultural change’ and to emphasise the social dynamics that underpin such change.

Book Reviews : LIFE AMONG THE SCIENTISTS: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF AN AUSTRALIAN SCIENTIFIC COMMU NITY. Max Charlesworth, Lyndsay Farrall, Terry Stokes and David Turnbull. Melbourne, 1989. Oxford University Press

as elsewhere, the one science can achieve nothing without the help of the other (Levi-Strauss, 1963, 25). The difference between anthropology and history, as Levi-Strauss, pointed out is not one of subject, goal or method, but rather in their differing choice of analytical perspective. History organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations (Levi-Strauss, 1963, 18).