CNR ExploRA

Presentazione, 2023, ENG

Science, equity and public policy. Is a public-commons research infrastructure desirable?

Maria Patrizia VITTORIA, Vittoria BIASIUCCI

IRISS/CNR, Università di Torino e HAngar Piemonte

Governments have created a broad ecosystem of knowledge as a public good in the double meaning of a good that is non-rivalrous in use and at least partly non-excludable, but also a good that is originally produced by public policies. Examples are policies towards universities, research infrastructures, and support for business R&D. Knowledge is born as a good in principle available to all, but then along the way, still partly due to some public policies, it is transformed into wealth for private investors. This is not an entirely new phenomenon, but what is new is the scale and pervasiveness of the process. Which channels of privatization of knowledge are the most widespread today, and how through them social inequalities are generated, is clearest in the case of digital content and information production. In markets dominated by tech giants (Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Tencent, Alibaba, Amazon), enclosures (as Polanyi puts it) concern intangible assets such as digital information. What are the corrective policies? This paper, discusses the fact that in the face of the ineffectiveness of income redistributive mechanisms, Sraffa's thought (production of knowledge by means of knowledge) should be taken up in order to rethink a new economic subject that combines some traits of research infrastructures and the commons (Ostrom 1990). The social value produced would return through the internalization of missions defined from below, the collective and civic use of resources, democratic governance, self-financing, and the relationship between scientific research and technological development objectives and innovative public service objectives.

Urban conflicts and Peace: Everyday politics of Commons, AESOP TG PSUC, Napoli, Palazzo Gravina, 5-6/10/2023