The Spanish National Research Council and the Shaping of Science in Franco´s Spain

This book delivers on the promise of a new direction in the study of science by focusing on the political influence of dictatorial ideology on scientific publishing – and, more broadly, on the scientific field and on women in science in Franco’s Spain. While restricting the scope of the study to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), objectives are broadened by analysing the criteria applied by Franco’s Spain to define both science and scientific authority. This study also examines how such criteria determined which social actors were able to participate in the production and validation of scientific and theoretical knowledge, in both practical and discursive terms. Contextualised by a scientific field shaped under dictatorship, epistemological questions are explored through a fragmentary analysis of specific sites and social actors, political discourses and scientific publications within the spatiotemporal framework of Franco’s Spain.