FOR 2553:  Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316001474

The research group aims to study the difficult interplay of cooperation and competition in the sciences (in the large, German sense of the term) in the 1970s through 1990s. The modern sciences have often been described, particularly in view of the twentieth century, in terms of competition alone. Yet, it is a paradox of the scientific enterprise that only those actors can hope to succeed in competition who are also integrated into cooperative structures. Furthermore, neither competition nor cooperation leads to stable configurations: today’s partners can turn into tomorrow’s rivals and vice versa. The research group sets out to analyse at selected examples – settings that are shaped by this tension – the resulting dilemma and its specific solutions in order to gain a better understanding of the underlying conventions and mechanisms. The participants’ self-conception and their role models as scientists or science policy persons will be studied; the consequences of the increasingly manifest entanglement of science, politics and economy during the time period in question will be analysed; and the formation of new, transnational networks of science investigated. One of the core questions, finally, concerns the epistemic effects of cooperative and competitive configurations and their interplay. Methods and approaches from the history of science that are appropriate to analyse the actors’ behaviour and motivations are combined in this project with a critical, self-conscious impetus: cooperation and competition are open to shaping and change, and scientific actors should be aware of the consequences of their doing so.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Competing for sovereignty in cooperative committees: Bioethical debates and the development of a regulatory policy for the life sciences in Germany in the 1980s (Applicant Brandt, Christina )
• Competing over the Future? Competition and Cooperation in Entrepreneurial Futures Studies (Applicant Seefried, Elke )
• Cooperation and Competition Observed: The Emergence of Science Studies in the "Biotech Age" (Applicant Leber, Christoffer )
• Cooperation, Competition, Complexity: West Germany, East Germany and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Applicant Seefried, Elke )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Nickelsen, Kärin )
• Humanities in Crisis? The Marketisation of Higher Education and Its Consequences in Europe, ca. 1970 to 2000 (Applicant Wirsching, Andreas )
• Logics of Marketization in German Science. Program-oriented Funding within the Helmholtz Association (Applicant Trischler, Ph.D., Helmuth )
• The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP): East-West Cooperation despite System Competition (1970s) (Applicants Schulze Wessel, Martin ;  Volf, Darina )
• The EUREKA Project. The Oscillation of the Politics of European Research and Technology between Cooperation and Competition (c1980-1992) (Applicant Wirsching, Andreas )
• The European Union’s Framework Programmes: A less economic focus as a means of expansion? (ca. 1980-2002) (Applicant Patel, Kiran )
• Value for Money? Cooperation and Competition in the Human Genome Mapping Project (Applicant Nickelsen, Kärin )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Kärin Nickelsen