CO-SCIENCES ANR Project

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 Collaboration between sciences and firms for the construction of scientific questioning in the environmental field :

analysis of scientific, social and structural innovations

 Socio-economical stakes of the project

The relationship between research, innovation, markets, companies, state and public space, that is to say, in other words, the relationship between science and society have experienced profound changes (Bonneuil 2004). The direct link between the progress of knowledge, material and human progress and social progress, a legacy of Condorcet and the Enlightenment, is now widely questioned in a risk society (Beck 2001) crossed by systemic crises (Environmental , energy, food, economic, social, ..).

Many sociologists and philosophers of science call for such, to the emergence of a scientific third sector (Latour, 2004), which is co-producer of knowledge and innovations. This approach involves the invention of new devices that allow social-science to confront other ways of thinking, other ways of setting problems, explore solutions, and would fuel the creation of new knowledge. These new spaces for debate between science and society are sources of social innovation, scientific as well as political (Bensaude-Vincent, 2003; Stengers 2002). But their emergence as potential carriers of innovation deliberative processes raises several questions. The first concerns the entry terms and in relation to the construction of an interaction between stakeholders (scientists, entrepreneurs, innovation support structures) whose representations, interest and action logics are very heterogeneous. Meanwhile, the construction of innovation-related deliberative processes implies that one wonders about the organizational and institutional spaces where such exchanges could develop; as well as argumentative and discursive forms in which they are expressed. The co-construction of knowledge seems to be dissociated from argumentation approaches and storytelling.

These new deliberative processes represent in terms of implementation and evaluation, experimental objects and particularly interesting analysis from the perspective of human and social sciences, but in reality questioning, all disciplines and more broadly society, if we manage to overcome a posture that made the company - as opposed to science - only an object of study.

Because if researchers and companies meet daily as part of a bilateral exchange, or may be invited to share in discussions, the question of the productions of these meetings? What are the scientific issues discussed? How to evaluate the innovations produced, whether scientific course but also structural and social? These questions require both to identify or design the devices science ventures debates, but also to analyze the related updates.

Led since 2012 by an interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, CO SCIENCES project funded by the ANR (French National Agency for Research) continues in this regard is twofold: first, design and test a deliberative space composed of scientists from several disciplines (the science nature and human and social sciences) and business leaders or their representatives; secondly, to analyze scientific questions generated during these open discussions, as part of company-laboratory couples and within thematic networks formed to enrich the comparisons. The object of study of the CO-SCIENCES project focuses on environmental issues as they traverse the whole of society are complex and feed the debate (top-down or bottom-up).

The CO-SCIENCES Project

4 tasks

- The organization (task 1) and analysis (task 2) of ad hoc debates between researchers and representatives of companies resulting from the fields of the aquaculture and Renewable Marine Energies. Within this framework has been developed a methodology of debate accompaniment  called  P.A.I.N. (Problems - Actors - Interactions - Network)

- The sociological study of structured thematic networks gathering the researchers and the companies in the field of ecological engineering (task 3)

- The focused analysis of the relations between a innovating aquacultural company and one/more laboratories. (task 3)

- From the three preceding tasks, analysis of the social, structural and cultural innovation. (task 4)

An interdisciplinary and intersector partnership

  6 laboratories members of the European University of Brittany :

- Institut de Géo-Architecture (EA 2219)

- Laboratoire d’étude de l’Environnement MARin (LEMAR - UMR 6539)

- Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique (EA 4451)

- Centre Recherche en Psychologie, Cognition et Communication (EA 1285)

- Centre François Viète (EA 1161)

- Plurilinguismes, Représentations, Expressions Francophones – Information, Communication, sociolinguistique (PREFICs - EA 3207)

3 economic and industrial clusters :

- Technopole Brest Iroise

 - Pôle Mer Bretagne-Atlantique

- Club Finistérien du Développement Durable