Social studies of science: some aspects of the formation of a field

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the mechanisms that shaped a new field of social studies of science (SSS), its contextual elements, the dynamics of its stakeholders, and the main problems this process generates. To illustrate this development, we present the experience that occurred in France in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the intervention of the agency responsible for scientific promotion. This last aspect also raises the question of the creation of, or incentives for, the creation of new fields.
A reading of this experience will reveal the different components of the problem.