[en] Scientific reasoning has emerged as a powerful social force, particularly due to the institutionalization of science, a process that has significantly accelerated since the late 20th century. This phenomenon, known as scientization in the social sciences, encapsulates how scientific reasoning has become the dominant medium for shaping science-society relationships. Despite its growing prominence, the mechanisms and outcomes of scientization remain less well understood. A systematic search of Elsevier's Scopus database reveals a sharp increase in references to scientization since the late 1970s, with 296 publications doing so by 2020. This study examines how mechanisms such as rationalization, professionalization, technologization, commercialization, and actorhood have driven the institutionalization of science, impacting culture, academic disciplines, and policy-making. Our findings highlight the critical need for more nuanced understandings of how scientization influences modern societies, particularly within the policy sphere, where the interplay between science and policy has substantial and far-reaching consequences.
Research center :
DSOC
Disciplines :
Sociology & social sciences Social & behavioral sciences, psychology: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Abugideiri H. (2004) ' The Scientisation of Culture: Colonial Medicine's Construction of Egyptian Womanhood, 1893-1929 ', Gender & History, 16: 83-98. doi: 10.1111/j.0953-5233.2004.327_1.x
Amdam J. (2020) ' Creating the New Executive: Postwar Executive Education and Socialization into the Managerial Elite ', Management and Organizational History, 15: 106-22. doi: 10.1080/17449359.2020.1776134
Anderson D. R. (2002) ' The Humanity of Movement or "It's Not Just a Gym Class" ', Quest, 54: 87-96. doi: 10.1080/00336297.2002.10491768
Aukland K. (2016) ' The Scientization and Academization of Jainism ', Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 84: 192-233.
Baker D. P. (2014) The Schooled Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Baker D. P. and Powell J. J. W. (2024) Global Mega-Science: Universities, Research Collaborations, and Knowledge Production. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Beck U. (1992) Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE.
Ben-David J. (1990) Scientific Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ben-David J. and Sullivan T. A. (1975) ' Sociology of Science ', Annual Review of Sociology, 1: 203-22. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.01.080175.001223
Brückweh K. et al. (2012) Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880-1980. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cheng G. et al. (2021) ' Stochastic Rainwater Harvesting System Modeling under Random Rainfall Features and Variable Water Demands ', Water Resources Research, 57: 1-21. doi: 10.1029/2021WR029731
Christensen J. (2018) ' Economic Knowledge and the Scientization of Policy Advice ', Policy Sciences, 51: 291-311. doi: 10.1007/s11077-018-9316-6
Christensen J. and Holst C. (2017) ' Advisory Commissions, Academic Expertise and Democratic Legitimacy: The Case of Norway ', Science and Public Policy, 44: 821-33. doi: 10.1093/scipol/scx016
Christensen T. and Lægreid P. (2022) ' Special Issue on the Scientization of Public Decision-making Processes-the Relevance for the Handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic ', Public Organization Review, 22: 215-21. doi: 10.1007/s11115-022-00632-x
Collins H. M. (1983) ' The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Studies of Contemporary Science ', Annual Review of Sociology, 9: 265-85. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.001405
Dai J. (2022) ' Physical Education Teaching Based on Human Model Design and Computer Simulation of Human Two-Dimensional Moving Image ', Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 20: 1-8.
Dong J. (2020) ' The Theoretical Construction and Application System Development Study of Sports Information Management ', 2020 IEEE International Conference on Power, Intelligent Computing and Systems (ICPICS), Shenyang, China, pp. 526-9.
Doremus H. (2005) ' Science Plays Defense: Natural Resource Management in the Bush Administration ', Ecology Law Quarterly, 32: 249-305.
Drori G. S., Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., and Schofer, E (2003) Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Drori G. S., Meyer J. W. and Hwang H. (eds.) (2006) Globalization and organization: World society and change. Oxford: OUP.
Drori G. S. Meyer J. W. (2006a) ' Scientization: Making a World Safe for Organization ', in M. Djelic and K. Sahlin-Andersson (eds) Transnational Governance, pp. 31-52. Oxford: OUP.
Drori G. S. Meyer J. W. (2006b) ' Global Scientization: An Environment for Expanded Organization ', in G. S. Drori, J. W. Meyer and H. Hwang (eds) World Society and Organizational Change, pp. 50-68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dusdal J. and Powell J. J. W. (2021) ' Benefits, Motivations, and Challenges of International Collaborative Research: A Sociology of Science Case Study ', Science and Public Policy, 48: 235-45. doi: 10.1093/scipol/scab010
Faircloth C. (2010) ' What Science Says Is Best': Pareting Practices, Scientific Authority and Maternal Identity ', Sociological Research Online, 15: 85-98. doi: 10.5153/sro.2175
Fortunato S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojević, S., Petersen, A. M., Radicchi, F., Sinatra, R., Uzzi, B., Vespignani, A., Waltman, L., Wang, D., and Barabási, A.-L. (2018) ' Science of Science ', Science, 359. doi: 10.1126/science.aao0185
Fourcade-Gourinchas M. (2001) ' Politics, Institutional Structures, and the Rise of Economics: A Comparative Study ', Theory and Society, 30: 397-447. doi: 10.1023/A:1017952519266
Frank D. J. and Meyer J. W. (2007) ' University Expansion and the Knowledge Society ', Theory and Society, 36: 287-311. doi: 10.1007/s11186-007-9035-z
Frank D. J. and Meyer J. W. (2020) The University and the Global Knowledge Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fu Y. C., Marques M., Tseng Y.-H., Powell J. J. W., and Baker D. P. (2022) ' An Evolving International Research Collaboration Network: Spatial and Thematic Developments in Co-authored Higher Education Research, 1998-2018 ', Scientometrics, 127: 1403-29. doi: 10.1007/s11192-021-04200-w
Gauchat G. W. (2011) ' The Cultural Authority of Science: Public Trust and Acceptance of Organized Science ', Public Understanding of Science, 20: 751-70. doi: 10.1177/0963662510365246
Gauchat G. W. (2023) ' The Legitimacy of Science ', Annual Review of Sociology, 49: 263-79. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-030320-035037
Gideon J., Hunter B. M., and Murray S. F. (2017) ' Public-private Partnerships in Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Provision ', Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 33: 166-80. doi: 10.1080/21699763.2017.1329157
Gideon J. and Porter F. (2016) ' Challenging Gendered Inequalities in Global Health: Dilemmas for NGOs ', Development and Change, 47: 782-97. doi: 10.1111/dech.12243
Habermas J. ([1968] 1972) Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
Harsh M. (2014) ' Nongovernmental Organizations and Genetically Modified Crops in Kenya: Understanding Influence within a Techno-civil Society ', Geoforum, 53: 172-83. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.12.009
Harwood J. (2010) ' Understanding Academic Drift: On the Institutional Dynamics of Higher Technical and Professional Education ', Minerva, 48: 413-27. doi: 10.1007/s11024-010-9156-9
Hoppe R., Wesselink A., and Cairns R. (2013) ' Lost in the Problem: The Role of Boundary Organisations in the Governance of Climate Change ', Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 4: 283-300.
Horkheimer M. and Adorno T. W. (2002) Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.), Stanford, CA: SUP.
Jepperson R. L. (2002) ' Political Modernities: Disentangling Two Underlying Dimensions of Institutional Differentiation ', Sociological Theory, 20: 61-78. doi: 10.1111/1467-9558.00151
Karjalainen M., Islam G., and Holm M. (2021) ' Scientization, Instrumentalization, and Commodification of Mindfulness in a Professional Services Firm ', Organization, 28: 483-509. doi: 10.1177/1350508419883388
Kaufman B. E. (2022) ' The Academic-practitioner Gap: Past Time to Bring in the Practitioner Perspective ', Human Resource Management Review, 32: 100895. doi: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2022.100895
Kim J. (2009) ' Transcultural Medicine: A Multi-Sited Ethnography on the Scientific-Industrial Networking of Korean Medicine ', Medical Anthropology, 28: 31-64. doi: 10.1080/01459740802640909
Lattas A. (1992) ' Hysteria, Anthropological Disclosure and the Concept of the Unconscious: Cargo Cults and the Scientisation of Race and Colonial Power ', Oceania, 63: 1-14. doi: 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1992.tb00364.x
Lee E. (2011) ' Infant Feeding and the Problems of Policy ', in P. Liamputtong (ed.) Infant Feeding Practices, pp. 77-91. Dordrecht: Springer.
Marcuse H. (1964 / 1965) One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marques M. (2018) Research Governance through Public Funding Instruments: Institutional Change of Educational Research in the European Union and England, 1984-2014. Luxembourg: University of Luxembourg.
Marques M. (2023) ' Governing European Educational Research through Ideas? Incremental Ideational Change in the European Union's Framework Programme (1994-2020) ', European Journal of Education, 51: e12579.
McCauley J. (2017) ' "We Can Help the People Who Can Make a Difference": Motivations, Goals, and Outcomes in Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring ', Sociological Focus, 50: 125-37. doi: 10.1080/00380237.2017.1251748
McCormick S. (2006) ' The Brazilian Anti-Dam Movement. Knowledge Contestation as Communicative Action ', Organization & Environment, 19: 321-46. doi: 10.1177/1086026606292494
Merl S. (2020) ' Modernity and the Failure to Maintain the Peace (1918-1938): Comparing the Cases of the Soviet Union and the German Reich ', Мир России. Социология. Этнология [World of Russia. Sociology. Ethnology], 29: 103-31.
Merton R. K. (1962) The Sociology of Science. Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer J. W. (2010) ' World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor ', Annual Review of Sociology, 36: 1-20. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102506
Meyer J. W. and Jepperson R. L. (2000) ' The "Actors"of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction of Social Agency ', Sociological Theory, 18: 100-20. doi: 10.1111/0735-2751.00090
Meyer J. W. and Rowan B. (1977) ' Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony ', American Journal of Sociology, 83: 340-63. doi: 10.1086/226550
Moher D. et al. (2009) ' PRISMA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses ', Annals of Internal Medicine, 151: 264-9. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-151-4-200908180-00135
Moore K., Kleinman, D. L., Hess, D., and Frickel, S (2011) ' Science and Neoliberal Globalization: A Political Sociological Approach ', Theory and Society, 40: 505-32. doi: 10.1007/s11186-011-9147-3
Mudge S. L. and Vauchez A. (2018) ' Too Embedded to Fail: The ECB and the Necessity of Calculating Europe ', Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 43: 248-73.
Mulberg J. (1996) ' Environmental Planning, Economic Planning and Political Economy ', International Sociology, 11: 441-56. doi: 10.1177/026858096011004004
Murakami Y. P. (1993) ' Scientization of Science ', Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 8: 175-85. doi: 10.4288/jafpos1956.8.175
Murakami Y. P. (1997) ' Transformation of Science ', Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 9: 79-85. doi: 10.4288/jafpos1956.9.79
O'Connor C. and Joffe H. (2020) ' Intercoder Reliability in Qualitative Research ', International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19: 1609406919899220. doi: 10.1177/1609406919899220
Page M. J. et al. (2021) ' The PRISMA 2020 Statement. An Updated Guideline for Reporting Systematic Reviews ', BMJ, 71: 372.
Park R. S. (2013) ' Fragmented Knowledge Structures: Secularization as Scientization ', The Heythrop Journal, 54: 563-73. doi: 10.1111/heyj.12012
Pinto M. F. (2017) ' Agnotology and the New Politicization of Science and Scientization of Politics ', in D. Tyfield, R. Lave, S. Randalls, et al. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science, pp. 341-50. London: Routledge.
Powell, J. J. W., Baker, D. P., and Fernandez, F. (eds.) (2017) The Century of Science: The Global Triumph of the Research University. Bingley: Emerald.
Price D. J. de Solla (1963) Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pupala B., Kascak O., and Tesar M. (2016) ' Learning How to Do up Buttons: Professionalism, Teacher Identity and Bureaucratic Subjectivities in Early Years Settings ', Policy Futures in Education, 14: 1-11. doi: 10.1177/1478210316642675
Quark A. A. and Lienesch R. (2017) ' Scientific Boundary Wor and Food Regime Transitions: The Double Movement and the Science of Food Safety Regulation ', Agriculture & Human Values, 34: 645-61. doi: 10.1007/s10460-016-9764-6
Raphael L. (1996) ' Die Verwissenschaftlichung des Sozialen als methodische und konzeptionelle Herausforderung für eine Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts ', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 22: 165-93.
Rautalin M., Syväterä J., and Vento E. (2021) ' International Organizations Establishing their Scientific Authority ', International Sociology, 36: 3-24. doi: 10.1177/0268580920947871
Roesch C. (2015) Macho Men and Modern Women. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Rollin B. E. (2020) ' Integrating Science and Well-being ', Veterinary Clinics: Small Animal Practice, 50: 899-904.
Rosenhead J. (1978) ' Operational Research in Health Services Planning ', European Journal of Operational Research, 2: 75-85. doi: 10.1016/0377-2217(78)90103-0
Schillinger N. (2023) ' Microbic Mass Destruction-Biological Warfare and Epidemic Prevention in Republican China ', East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 17: 148-69. doi: 10.1080/18752160.2021.1984009
Schofer E. (1999) ' Science Associations in the International Sphere, 1875-1990: The Rationalization of Science and the Scientization of Society ', in J. Boli and G. M. Thomas (eds) Constructing World Culture. International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875, pp. 249-66. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Schofer E., Lerch J. C., and Meyer J. W. (2022) ' Illiberal Reactions to Higher Education ', Minerva, 60: 509-34. doi: 10.1007/s11024-022-09472-x
Schofer E. and Meyer J. W. (2005) ' The Worldwide Expansion of Higher Education in the Twentieth Century ', American Sociological Review, 70: 898-920. doi: 10.1177/000312240507000602
Shapin S. (1995) ' Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge ', Annual Review of Sociology, 21: 289-321. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.001445
Shils E. (1973) Max Weber on Universities: The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling in Imperial Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith D. S. (2022) ' Social Scientization and the Schooling State in UK Parliamentary Discourse, 1803-1909 ', Social Science History, 46: 223-54. doi: 10.1017/ssh.2021.35
Sukjang Y. (2003) ' The Global Diffusion of Ministries of Science and Technology ', in G. S. Drori, J. W. Meyer and F. O. Ramirez, et al. (eds) Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization, pp. 120-35. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Tangney P. (2015) ' Brisbane City Council's Q100 Assessment: How Climate Risk Management Becomes Scientised ', International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 14: 496-503. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.10.001
Vaismoradi M. et al. (2016) ' Theme Development in Qualitative Content Analysis and Thematic Analysis ', Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 6: 100-10. doi: 10.5430/jnep.v6n5p100
Wagner C. and Leydesdorff L. (2005) ' Network Structure, Self-organization, and the Growth of International Collaboration in Science ', Research Policy, 34: 1608-18. doi: 10.1016/j.respol.2005.08.002
Wang D. and Barabási A. (2021) The Science of Science. Cambridge: CUP.
Weber M. ([1919] 1946) ' Science as a Vocation ', in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber. New York: The Free Press 129-156.
Weingart P. (1999) ' Scientific Expertise and Political Accountability ', Science and Public Policy, 26: 151-61. doi: 10.3152/147154399781782437
Whitson D. J. and Macintosh D. (1990) ' The Scientization of Physical Education: Discourses of Performance ', Quest, 42: 40-51. doi: 10.1080/00336297.1990.10483978
Zapp M. (2017) ' The Scientization of the World Polity. International Organizations and the Production of Scientific Knowledge, 1950-2015 ', International Sociology, 33: 3-26. doi: 10.1177/0268580917742003
Zapp M. (2022) ' Revisiting the Global Knowledge Economy: The Worldwide Expansion of Research and Development Personnel, 1980-2015 ', Minerva, 60: 181-208. doi: 10.1007/s11024-021-09455-4
Zapp M., Marques M., and Brant T. (2024) ' The Structures of World Society: Geography, Discourse, and Interorganizational Networks in Global Education, 1900-2018 ', Comparative Education Review, 68: 286-311. doi: 10.1086/729667
Zapp M., Marques M., and Powell J. J. W. (2018) European Educational Research (Re)constructed: Institutional Change in Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, and the European Union. Oxford: Symposium Books.
Zeng Q. (2022) ' Characteristic Analysis and Route Optimization of Heterogenous Neural Network in Logistics Allocation System ', Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2022: 1713183. doi: 10.1155/2022/1713183
Zetter R. (1991) ' Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratice Identity ', Journal of Refugee Studies, 4: 39-62. doi: 10.1093/jrs/4.1.39
Zhan M. (2014) ' The Empirical as Conceptual: Transdisciplinary Engagements with an "Experiential Medicine" ', Science, Technology, & Human Values, 39: 236-63. doi: 10.1177/0162243913520045
