Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T09:32:06.649Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building strong research associations Interdisciplinarity, theory-building, and policy in politics and the life sciences and health services research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

William P. Brandon
William P. Brandon*
Affiliation:
Metrolina Medical Foundation Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Department of Political Science, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223. wilbrand@uncc.edu
Get access

Extract

This essay explores efforts to establish interdisciplinary research associations by comparing two organizations that were founded in the early 1980s. One has focused on the field of politics and the life sciences and the other on health services research. Both are involved in securing recognition for a research area—or “field of research”—that had not previously been conceptualized as a coherent academic or professional enterprise. The motivation for this paper is my interest in politics and the life sciences (the field), the organization—the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that was established in 1980 to foster scholarly study of the field—and its journal Politics and the Life Sciences. (For the sake of clarity I adopt the convention of signifying a field entirely in lower-case orthography, beginning an organizational name with capital letters and naming the related journals in italics.)

Type
Founders' Forum
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 56 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Arnhart, Larry, “Biopolitical science,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 2010, 29(1): 24–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2. Goetze, David, “Options for APLS: Identity Challenges Facing the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences,” Paper presented in the Founders' Panel, annual meeting of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, Bloomington, IN, October 2010.Google Scholar
3. “Welcome to PLS,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 2010, 29(1): ii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Geissler, Erhard and Guillemin, Jeanne, “German flooding of the Pontine Marshes in World War II: Biological warfare or total war tactic?” Politics and the Life Sciences, 2010, 29(1): 2–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Fox, Daniel M., “The development of priorities for health services research: The National Center, 1974–76,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 1976, 54(3): 237–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. Fox, Daniel M., “Health policy and the politics of research in the United States,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 1990, 15(3): 481–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. Fox, Daniel M., “The Milbank Quarterly and Health Services Research, 1977–1990,” Milbank Quarterly, 1991, 69(2): 185–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Brown, Lawrence D., “Knowledge and power: Health Services Research as a political resource,” in Health Services Research: Key to Health Policy, Ginzberg, Eli, ed. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 20–45.Google Scholar
9. Journal Citation Reports Web, s.v. “Health Policy & Services,” Social Sciences Edition, (Philadelphia PA: 2009). Retrieved October 12, 2010 from Thompson Reuters Web of Knowledge Database, http://admin-apps.isiknowledge.com/JCR/JCR Google Scholar
10. Ginzberg, Eli, “The challenges ahead,” in Health Services Research: Key to Health Policy, Ginzberg, Eli, ed. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 315–331, specifically pp. 321–322.Google Scholar
11. Brandon, William P., “Foreword,” in Shi, Leiyu, Health Services Research Methods, 1st ed. (Albany NY: Delmar, 1997), pp. xi–xiv.Google Scholar
12. Kingdon, John W., Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, updated 2nd ed. (Boston MA: Longman, 2011), pp. 4, 118–121.Google Scholar