Modern science has employed a self-explanatory semantics that takes a variety of analytical strategies and levels into account. At the level of scientific organization, the sociology of science has made use of distinctions such as science-society and interest- disinterest. These theoretical forms of observation are undergirded by the notion of the social context of the production of scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, literature on the sociology of science has not given enough attention to basic differentiation, within the world system of science and technology, between center and periphery, corresponding to a territorially-differentiated context of scientific and technological production and whose influence is also extended to the content of locally-produced scientific knowledge. This article revisits the literature on the sociology of science, technology and scientific knowledge, emphasizing the way in which these areas of research treat the above-mentioned differentiation. Furthermore, it also attempts to present theoretical discussion on the usefulness of the center-periphery distinction for sociological study of knowledge and the way in which this differentiation intersects other types of differentiation, including its effects on the very content of scientific knowledge. The article argues that the sociology of scientific knowledge in Brazil remains timid insofar as the study of the content of scientific knowledge in the periphery of the world system of science and technology is concerned. In Brazil, the "curse of normal science" prevails, a conception that is rooted in the local imaginary which asserts that there is little to be known regarding the content of autochthonous knowledge. Contrary to this view, this article encourages studies of science, technology and scientific knowledge in the periphery, in such a way as to specify the original content that the latter has contributed.
Sociology of Science; Sociology of Scientific Knowledge; Studies of Science and Technology; social differentiation; center-periphery relations