The visible technician : scientist, technicians, and the neutrality of science in 1960s and 1970s Italy

The end of the 1960s and the first half of the following decade was a period of intense political and social tensions in Italy. The social struggles involved the world of research too. Non-tenured scientists and technicians often went on strike. Between 1968 and 1970 all the major Italian scientific institutions were at some point occupied by young non-tenured scientists and technicians. Their protests tended to converge with those of factory workers and technicians. Industrial workers not only asked for better work conditions and higher salaries: they contested the hierarchical organization of production and they criticized the role of science and technology in contemporary productive processes. Likewise, non-tenured scientists and technicians criticized the hierarchical nature of scientific research organization, which - they argued - was rooted in the alleged neutrality of science. They also stood against the military use of scientific research. Most senior scientists were disconcerted.

On being accused of authoritarianism, some heads of laboratories even resigned. Through the analysis of archival documents and publications, this paper explores the social, cultural, and political reflections produced by technicians and young scientists. It analyses how the conflict between senior scientists and junior scientists and technicians spread across Italian society. The paper shows how non-tenured scientists and technicians were often acute observers of contemporary scientific research and Italian society. It explains how they appropriated and elaborated the reflections of Thomas Kuhn and produced an original collective discourse, which echoed some of the themes that STS scholars and historians of science would tackle in the late 1970s. [Publisher's text]