What Management Does to Space Projects

The Franco-Soviet Project Arcad 3 in the Late 1970s

Bibliographic Data

ID4516150
AuthorsJérôme Lamy (0000-0003-3820-284X, Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume24
Issue4
Pages545-586
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889711000226
OpenAlexW2140991855
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited53

ArgumentSpace projects represent, after World War II, the archetype of large-scale organization of scientific practices that are flexible, temporary, and oriented towards specific goals. A new form of activity, the project, emerged through the management of technical means, allocation of skills, and coordination of various players. Project management emerged as the synthesis of a set of social practices designed to subordinate as well as synchronize the initiatives of researchers, engineers, and technicians who had temporarily joined forces. This article presents the genesis and deployment of the Franco-Soviet space program ARCAD 3 whose purpose was to study the magnetosphere with a satellite. This study is situated at the junction of three historiographical dimensions: scientific writings, links between action and graphic forms, and Big Science. The diagrams, organization charts and schedules produced by the French space agency throughout the entire project form the documentary substrata of this analysis. These graphic management tools define the role of each player, designate fields of competence, and specify the temporality of actions. A self-monitoring system as well as surveillance instrument, diagrams, organization charts and schedules are linked to form a certain vision of authority along the lines of the "neoliberal governmentality" defined by Michel Foucault. By defining in advance and in writing all the possible (or impossible) relationships, the chronological order of activities as well as the actions to be performed, graphic project management tools contribute to the transfer of coercive panoptic mechanisms towards a minimal organization of relationships between individuals

Constellation · Epistemology · Governmentality · Management · Panopticon · Political science · Project management · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Systems engineering · Temporality · Computer Science · Engineering · International Science and Diplomacy · Law · Space exploration and regulation · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

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