LATTS (LAboratory Technology, Territories and Societies) brings together forty or so researchers in regional and national development, economics, ergonomics, geography, management, history, politics and sociology. LATTS studies companies, administrations and local institutions, and particularly collective action, territorial dynamics and associated technological systems. Through field surveys, comparative investigation, and conceptual reflection, this work in the social sciences is intended to foster cross-cutting approaches: between disciplines, between theory and empirical research, and between scientific controversies and societal debates.
The researchers of the TIO (Technology, Innovation and Organization) team work on three different research thrusts which inform IFRIS’ work.
The first focuses on research and innovation policy. It places its work at the interface of two great research traditions: “science and innovation policy studies” and “science, technology and society studies”. These two approaches actually appear to be complementary and increasingly essential today for understanding social dynamics and the stakes linked to innovation in our societies, because the question of science and technology “in society” is increasingly tied to that of their “governance”. The research work mainly explores disruptive technologies or transitions between technological regimes (nanotechnologies constitute an ideal “laboratory” for such approaches) and is centred on the emergence of epistemic communities and on the social and political construction of markets for new products.
A second set of research is dedicated to information and communication technology and explores the construction of digital databases and their role in the cooperation between social worlds. This work covers a wide range of situations concerning, for example, orphan diseases and the regional press. They aim to gain a better understanding of how digital processing of data modifies the collectively elaborated evaluations of beings and things, as well as its effects on professional identities and knowledge.
A third research thrust concentrates on the governance of universities, from a a sociology of measurement and a sociology of organizations perspective. PrestEnce, its flagship project supervised by Catherine Paradeise, studies the transformations of universities linked to the increasing substitution of quantitative indicators by peer evaluation.
Institutions to which it is affiliated: UPEM, ENPC, CNRS
Website: http://www.latts.fr/