ABSTRACT
During the second half of the twentieth century, sociology was exhilarated by an intellectual debate, the main premises of which still strongly structure general ideas about science and scientific research. This chapter reviews the competing notions of science, their key concepts and methodologies. It then reflects the role of universities as established environments in which these ideas could grow and prosper, though they have more recently also come under attack. Universities' move towards the market did not only erode a 'normative ethos' of science; it also undermined the public role of universities in global higher education and research. Approaches are reviewed that theorize what research grants brought, as a qualitatively new element, to the social organization of science, why its symbolic reputation matters, and which general ideas of public science may run into danger by these moves towards the market.
