Science for the South/Science for the North the Great Divide? ORSTOM versus CNRS

Abstract

Some observers of South/North relations argue that the scientific community which generates knowledge and skills for developing countries is very different from the scientific community which addresses northern audiences. A few commentators have occasionally even intimated that the former is inferior to the latter.¹ In this chapter we examine the ways and extent to which the profession, institutions and cognitive products connected with Northern research agencies that deal mainly with other metropolitan interlocutors converge with and contrast from metropolitan-based research agencies mandated to address the South. Recent historical and sociological studies of science demonstrate that science does not constitute a homogeneous body, either cognitively or socially. For every discipline there exists a vast choice of analytic objects open to exploration, a variety of methods that can be adopted and an array of fully legitimate research results. In this text we take the case of France and compare science whose principal frame of reference is the North and science for which the South constitutes the relevant system of coordinates. Key elements of the Office de Recherche Scientifique et Technique d’Outre-Mer (ORSTOM), — founded in 1943 to deal with technical questions in the French colonies and eventually to generate a distinct, appropriate form of knowledge and know-how — will be matched with key components of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) — set up in 1939 to promote innovative, world quality research in fundamental science. While ORSTOM focuses mainly on applied science, cooperating with Southern countries in attempting to spawn development, the CNRS addresses Northern audiences and serves the ambitions and demands of metropolitan France.