Political subcultures of knowledge
The ideal of science is to be neutral or value-free, and to operate above and beyond the left-right political spectrum. Yet, ideological stances nevertheless take shape, and not randomly, across the different academic disciplines. As such, considerable and persistent cleavages, from conservative to progressive, differentiate the fields from each other. The analysis of participation in the Quebec student strike in 2012 by department and faculty at the undergraduate level confirms this observation. Our analysis proceeds in three stages. First, we define the departments or faculties as distinctive political subcultures based on their participation in the strike. In a second step, we seek to assess whether the degrees and types of militancy in the humanities and social sciences and in the natural and applied sciences have changed over recent decades. In a third step, we then try to understand why some disciplines are more militant and progressive than others. In conclusion, we attempt to identify the possibility of defining an epistemological political culture of science.