Scientific Traditions in the Max Planck Society and What They Tell Us about Local-Global Relationships in Astronomy in the Past 50 Years

The organization of research in astronomy in the past half century reflects wider historical trends, showing a contrast between the cold war era and our current regime of neoliberal globalization. Based on examples from the presenter’s research on the history of astrophysics in the Max Planck Society, this talk visits these historical regimes asking the question of what remained permanent during the shift from one to the other paying. Special attention is paid to the articulation between the local and the global. Cold-war astronomers framed their activities politically, as national competition moderated by strategic collaboration blocs. Globalization during that era was tacit, molded around national rivalries and postcolonial sensitivities. Research in astronomy resembled the Keynesian factory model, striving towards vertical integration which provided scientists with hierarchically organized, nationally based, lifelong employment. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, research shifted towards a liberal framework in which political and scientific discourse are economicized. The ‘global’ discourse became explicit, while national competition turned tacit. Astronomical research is now fleeting, mobile, and compartmentalized away from a separate realm of research infrastructures. Scientific laborers are either part of a cutthroat creative precariat, or stripped of their creative individuality as ‘technicians’ within optimized, streamlined infrastructures. Through these shifts, however, one witnesses the continuity of scientific traditions, specifically through their instrument-building expertise, their deep interconnection with regionally specific industries, and their local political backers. Such local alliances continue to act as robust anchoring points that have a significant impact on how globalized astronomy operates.