Commercialization of the University and Problem Choice by Academic Biological Scientists

Abstract

Based on data from a survey of biological scientists at 125 American universities, this article explores how the commercialization of the university affects the problems academic scientists pursue and argues that this reorientation of scientific agendas results in a shift from science in the public interest to science for private goods. Drawing on perspectives from Bourdieu on how actors employ strategic practices toward the accumulation of social capital and acquire dispositional and perceptional tendencies that in turn recondition social structures, the commercialization of the university is construed not as something that ‘‘happens to,’’ but rather something that ‘‘happens through’’ academic scientists. The specific shape and direction of the commercialization of the university is therefore influenced by how scientists incorporate the new resources and social relations of commercialization into their scientific practice and how their creative engagement with shifting structural conditions remakes the culture of academic science.