English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Recent data delivered by Eurobarometer show how Europeans tend not to perceive science and technology as important factors for the Europe’s future. While showing the scarce development of scientific culture in Europe, these data allow to understand how science and technology are exposed to risk of social marginalization, notwithstanding the results they are attaining. In order to interpret this quite contradictory picture, an analytical framework revolving around the notion of “science and technology socialization” is proposed and developed. Implications of such an approach on research policies, on citizens’ participation and on the role of social sciences are also briefly examined. The Eurobarometer report on the latest survey of the Europeans’ opinions published last July includes the “scientific research” expression only once. It appears in a chart reporting the interviewees’ answers to the question “In your opinion, which aspects should be emphasized by the European institutions in the coming years, to strengthen the European Union in the future?. Scientific research was one of the fifteen options comprised in the questionnaire. Only a scarce 10% of the interviewees selected it as a relevant aspect for Europe’s future, a percentage which makes it rank twelfth in the chart. The top spots are taken by “economic affairs”, “social and health issues”, “the fight against crime”, “immigration issues” and “energy issues”. Before scientific research, the Europeans’ interests focus also on “the fight against climate change”, “solidarity with poorer regions”, “the internal market”, “the European foreign policy” and “the European education policy”. According to the writers of the report, it is not surprising that, during hard and long recession, Europeans most want the institutions to emphasize economic affairs and welfare; indeed, it did not surprise us. What actually surprises is that scientific and technological research ranks twelfth. It is a result sounding like a very serious warning – if not like a real toll – for the Lisbon ambitions expressed nine years ago by the heads of state and of government who stated as a priority goal for the European Union to make Europe “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. Evidently, it is a prospect which the majority of the citizens do not believe in. Granted, there are other surveys showing that most Europeans support science and the role by scientists, and others highlighting the public’s interest in science museums and science centres. However, evidence suggests they are marginal phenomena if compared with the core of the problem, which is: in general, Europeans do not believe scientific and technological research is an important factor for Europe’s future. All of this shows how scarcely is scientific culture developed in Europe, whatever the meaning you give to the expression. In the mental representation of the citizens (but also of many policy makers, entrepreneurs and even of some scientists) science has a place which is marginal and distant from economic growth and welfare, i.e. distant from the centres of interests and from the concerns of the community. Moreover, this result does confirm the “exclusion” of scientific and technological research which many observers have long reported – a condition which widely clashes with the growing impact science and technology have on any aspect of social life and even on individual lives. It almost seems as if in Europe the advent of a knowledge-based society represents a process which is more “suffered” than wanted, something happening in spite of everything. And nobody has ever set any (cultural, social, economic,

A different interpretation of science-society relations: the socialization of scientific and technological research