Accepted author manuscript, 113 KB, PDF document
Available under license: None
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
}
TY - CHAP
T1 - The economics of research
T2 - the contribution of critical realism
AU - Tyfield, David Peter
PY - 2016/6/17
Y1 - 2016/6/17
N2 - In the wake of the global financial crisis and amidst continuing global economic malaise, mainstream economics continues to reign supreme even as its inadequacies are increasingly manifest in terms of elucidating these challenges. This chapter seeks to demonstrate, and not merely rehearse familiar (if compelling) arguments for, an alternative economics and the contribution of critical realism to this programme. This responds to two elements of the necessary challenge to mainstream economics: a political one, of strategically illuminating new issues on which an insightful political economy of the present must able to comment, such as the ‘knowledge-based’ economy, the heightened importance of innovation, technological change and socio-economic ‘rhythms’ thereof, including socio-technical systems transitions, the interaction of economy and ‘nature’ and the commercialization of research; and an epistemological one, of a reframing of the paradigms of ‘economics’ such that it can furnish critical and explanatory, not just axiomatic and ahistorical, knowledge of these inherently temporal, complex and systemic phenomena. The chapter starts this research programme with the substantive problem of developing an economics of research capable of illuminating the commercialisation of research and its interaction with and implications for broader social crises; and showing how critical realism is a crucial component in this theoretical project.
AB - In the wake of the global financial crisis and amidst continuing global economic malaise, mainstream economics continues to reign supreme even as its inadequacies are increasingly manifest in terms of elucidating these challenges. This chapter seeks to demonstrate, and not merely rehearse familiar (if compelling) arguments for, an alternative economics and the contribution of critical realism to this programme. This responds to two elements of the necessary challenge to mainstream economics: a political one, of strategically illuminating new issues on which an insightful political economy of the present must able to comment, such as the ‘knowledge-based’ economy, the heightened importance of innovation, technological change and socio-economic ‘rhythms’ thereof, including socio-technical systems transitions, the interaction of economy and ‘nature’ and the commercialization of research; and an epistemological one, of a reframing of the paradigms of ‘economics’ such that it can furnish critical and explanatory, not just axiomatic and ahistorical, knowledge of these inherently temporal, complex and systemic phenomena. The chapter starts this research programme with the substantive problem of developing an economics of research capable of illuminating the commercialisation of research and its interaction with and implications for broader social crises; and showing how critical realism is a crucial component in this theoretical project.
KW - Economics of science
KW - Political economy
KW - Critical realism
KW - Commercialization of science
KW - Crisis
U2 - 10.4324/9781315563138
DO - 10.4324/9781315563138
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:84951290515
SN - 9780415818742
SP - 30
EP - 47
BT - Crisis system
A2 - Naess, Petter
A2 - Price, Leigh
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -