Hegemony and Inequality in Global Science: Problems of the Center-Periphery Model

Abstract

The autonomous global system of science, grounded in collegial networks of scientists, publishing and cross-border papers, is expanding rapidly. Science infrastructure is spreading to a growing number of countries. Though the United States remains the leading country, strong national science systems have emerged in China and other countries outside Euro-America. Yet the multi-polarization of economic capacity and scientific output plays out within a continuing Euro-American science world regulated by an inside/outside binary.Global science remains primarily Anglo-American in language, leading institutions, disciplinary and publishing regimes, agendas and topics. Non-English and endogenous knowledges are excluded. Scholarship on global science does not effectively address its inequalities and homogenization. The paper critiques the dominant interpretation of relations of power in science, world-systems theory with its center-periphery model. This theory, which is statist and economic determinist, fails to grasp the growth and pluralization of global science, and its relation with national science systems. The center-periphery model normalizes the Eurocentrism it opposes, radically under-estimating agency outside the 'center' countries, as shown by science networking on the 'semi-periphery' and 'periphery'.The paper argues for a more ontologically open theorization of global power in science, in terms of cultural hegemony, and for an ecology of knowledges approach.

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