This open-access volume questions traditional concepts of community and identity using examples from modern techno-sciences such as biochemistry, synthetic biology or, somewhat surprisingly, sustainability research: "In sustainability research, there is no centuries-long tradition, people tend to define themselves through problem-oriented innovations and defy traditional categories in order to make things work," emphasises Kastenhofer, a researcher at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Here she explains, why this book was overdue:

Ms. Kastenhofer, what does the term "community" mean in the context of techno-science anyway?

Kastenhofer: Until the middle of the 20th century, great ideas and discoveries were always presented as something that came to a single brilliant mind, usually that of a white man. If possible, while he was in the shower. It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that the perspective became accepted that there is a community of scientists. Individual minds have ideas, but they have them in exchange and communication with others and building on existing presuppositions. Science produces innovation as a social system.

So, innovation is something social?

Kastenhofer: Of course there are different scientific communities, each of which ticks differently, such as physicists, biologists or sociologists. Until the 1980s, there was also a clear line between basic and applied research. There was money, universities could expand, education was funded on an unprecedented scale.

This system has changed. Today, public management principles that actually come from the private sector are applied at universities. We are experiencing a "projectification" of research. Scientists are expected to be as international as possible, to finance projects through third-party funding, to be flexible and adaptable. It is therefore time to look at how science is created and functions today. The identity of scientists and also the community in science are being completely reshaped.

Is ”scientist” now a job like any other?

Kastenhofer: The era of professorships is over. If we think of an "intelligentsia" that was paid for thinking and knowing, we are talking about the past. Measurable 'output' and application orientation are now the central yardsticks. Our book asks specifically how this development affects the broader scientific community and identity. These are big, complex issues. We want to shed light on how these shifts are manifesting themselves, based on empirical individual studies:

Community and identity are sometimes illuminated separately, but they are of course also strongly interrelated: Identities are configured in communities. But, how much do I need to differentiate myself? Do I have to have a Unique Selling Position that sets myself apart from others and from the past, or do I live a scientific culture in which the communal and also traditions are in the foreground? Of course, one does not exclude the other, but the pendulum can swing either way: competition and delimitation or cooperation and integration.

Table of Contents

• Making Sense of Community and Identity in Twenty-First Century Technoscience
• Success of a Research Speciality at the University of Strasbourg (1961–2011)
• What Synthetic Biology Aims At: Review Articles as Sites for Constructing and Narrating an Emerging Field
• The Emergence of Technoscientific Fields and the New Political Sociology of Science
• Self-Organisation and Steering in International Research Collaborations
• The Project-ed Community
• The Epistemic Importance of Novices: How Undergraduate Students Contribute to Engineering Laboratory Communities
• Tracing Technoscientific Collectives in Synthetic Biology: Interdisciplines and Communities of Knowledge Application
• Community by Template? Considering the Role of Templates for Enacting Membership in Digital Communities of Practice
• Performing Science in Public: Science Communication and Scientific Identity
• Being a ‘Good Researcher’ in Transdisciplinary Research: Choreographies of Identity Work Beyond Community
• Constructing (Inter)Disciplinary Identities: Biographical Narrative and the Reproduction of Academic Selves and Communities
• ‘Big Interdisciplinarity’: Unsettling and Resettling Excellence
• A Passion for Science: Addressing the Role of Emotions in Identities of Biologists