Scientific Capital and Scientific Labor

Abstract

This essay is a think piece that takes a labor and capital perspective on science to discuss two chief concepts: credit and exploitation. Credit, as the symbolic currency of science, has been central to how we understand the moral workings of science in the twentieth century. But our lived experience of changes in the political economy of science also alerts us to the notion that credit may not be applicable to a robust analysis of science in the past and in the present. Scientific exploitation, the evidence of which usually prompts an effort to redistribute credit, may offer only a partial picture of the labor structure of science. Self-exploitation, an implicit understanding of how scientists may approach their work, has never been fully articulated but is nevertheless a useful descriptive notion.