Tchalakov, Ivan | Russia

Ivan Tchalakov was Fellow at IAS-STS in 2003. Ivan Tchalakov graduated in 1988 from the Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS); thesis on classical sociology of knowledge. He is working in the field of sociology of science and economics of technical change.

Between 1993 and 1997 he carried out an ethnographic study of holographic laboratory (CLOSPI) at the BAS. Analyzing the relationships of laboratory scientists with their colleagues in the former Soviet Union, Germany and France since the late 1960s, the study revealed the social and technical history of the 'holographic computer memory' project, which never found its way to industrial application. In this study the notion of a heterogeneous micro-community was developed, comprising a limited number of human and non-human actors in the laboratory which are constituted on the relationships of passivity and responsibility (Levinas, Merleau-Ponty). Recently he applied this notion in his studies of large technical systems.

Since the mid-1990s Ivan Tchalakov has extensively studied the transformation of research and innovation systems in post-socialist countries. In collaboration with colleagues in France (Michel Callon and Philippe Laredo at Center of Sociology of Innovation, Paris), Romania (Ion Glodeanu, Institute of Sociology in Bucharest) and Macedonia (Mileva Gyurovska, University of Skopje) he studied reconfigurations of regional techno-economic networks in the field of advanced computer communications. These studies revealed the profound changes in industrial research in the countries of South-Eastern Europe, which is now dominated by innovative SME, replacing the previous system of state-funded research. Also, interesting actors of transformation were found - neo-Schumpeterian entrepreneurs, who build their strategies on focused R&D efforts, and who were largely ignored in the existing studies of transition. Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, from February to June 2003.

Project at IAS-STS: Humanism Towards the Fellow Non-Human

Humanism Towards the Fellow Non-Human A comparative analysis of the emergence and stabilisation of heterogeneous micro-communities in scientific laboratories and large technical systems. The research project aims at studying agency of technology by further development of the notion of heterogeneous micro-communities (coupling), developed earlier in the framework of the actor-network approach. During the project a theoretical frame will be elaborated that is sensitive enough for the purpose of comparative analysis of the empirical data, already collected during field work in two opto- electronic research laboratories and two sites of the Bulgarian National Power Corporations.