Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens

114 Pages·2009·0.855 MB·English

by  Massimiano Bucchi (auth.)

Beyond Technocracy
Massimiano Bucchi
Beyond Technocracy
Science, Politics and Citizens
Massimiano Bucchi
Università di Trento
Translated by
Adrian Belton
Translated from the Italian Scegliere il mondo che vogliamo. Cittadini, politica, tecnoscienza by
Massimiano Bucchi, published by Società editrice il Mulino S.p.a., Bologna, Italy © 2006.
ISBN 978-0-387-89521-5 e-ISBN 978-0-387-89522-2
DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-89522-2
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York
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Acknowledgements
I should thank Barbara Allen, Piero Bassetti, Alessia Graziano, Bruno Latour,
Federico Neresini, Giuseppe Pellegrini, Roberto Franzosi, Pierangelo Schiera,
Mariachiara Tallacchini, Giuseppe Testa and Bryan Wynne for their discussions
and encouragement; Marco Cavalli and Renato Mazzolini for reading and
commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript; Marco Brunazzo and Mario
Diani for important bibliographic suggestions on Chap. 3; Adrian Belton and
Alessia Bertagnolli for their translating and editing work. Some of the arguments
presented here have been discussed during seminars at the European University
Institute, the Center for Genomics and Society dell’Università di Exeter and the
London School of Economics. I should thank all participants for their comments
and in particular Donatella Della Porta, Martin Bauer and Massimo Mazzotti.
. v
Contents
Introduction
Science and Society: A Clash of Civilizations? ................................................. ix
1 The Technocratic Response: All Power to the Experts .......................... 1
1.1 The “Missionary” Wing of Technocracy: “Defi cit”
and the Public Understanding of Science ............................................ 1
1.2 The Flimsy Pillars of the Technocratic View ...................................... 5
1.3 Democracy and Ignorance ................................................................... 10
1.4 A Flour that Threatened to Bring Down a Government ...................... 19
2 Einstein Has Left the Building: Coming
to Terms with Post-academic Science ....................................................... 25
2.1 A Post-academic Science? ................................................................... 25
2.2 After Doctor Strangelove: How I Learned
Not to Worry and Love the Stock Exchange ....................................... 26
2.3 Whose Knowledge? ............................................................................. 29
2.4 From Physics to Biology ..................................................................... 35
2.5 A Mediatized Science .......................................................................... 36
2.6 A Science Without Boundaries ............................................................ 40
2.7 The Eclipse of the Scientifi c Community? .......................................... 43
2.8 … In the Meantime, Society Does Not Stand By and Watch .............. 46
3 Citizens Enter the Laboratory Whilst Scientists
Take to the Streets ...................................................................................... 49
3.1 From Two Stubborn Parents to Seven Thousand
Square Metres of Laboratory ............................................................... 49
3.2 Childhood Leukaemia in Woburn: “Hybrid Forums”
and the Co-production of Knowledge ................................................. 51
3.3 Technoscience Debated in the Courts.................................................. 54
3.4 From Users to Innovators: How a Windsurfer
Kept Himself Afl oat and Became Something of a Designer ............... 56
. vii
viii Contents
3.5 Everyone Around a Table: Promoting Civic
Participation in Technoscience ............................................................ 58
3.6 Science and Public Participation: A General
Interpretative Framework .................................................................... 63
3.7 The “March of the Test-Tubes”: Scientists
Take to the Streets................................................................................ 67
4 Beyond Technocracy: Democracy
in the Age of Technoscience ....................................................................... 73
4.1 Beyond the Illusions of Technocracy .................................................. 73
4.2 Will Bioethics Save Us? ...................................................................... 74
4.3 Why Are Citizens Against Biotechnologies? ...................................... 77
4.4 Knowledge Is Power ........................................................................... 80
4.5 The Presumed Neutrality of Technoscience ........................................ 82
4.6 The Horse that Knew How to Do Sums .............................................. 85
4.7 The Crisis of the “Double Delegation” ............................................... 87
4.8 “Etsi Veritas Non Daretur” .................................................................. 88
4.9 Choosing the World We Want ............................................................. 90
Bibiolography ................................................................................................... 97
Introduction
Science and Society: A Clash of Civilizations?
Nuclear energy, GM foods and stem cells: the more rapidly science advances, the
more society seems to resist it. Not a day passes without the news media reporting
protests against genetically modified foods, demonstrations and road blocks against
the disposal of radioactive waste, motions lodged with the international institutions
and heated controversy on embryo stem-cell research.
Issues concerning scientific research and technological innovation appear with
increasing frequency on the agendas of public and political debate. The outcome in
many cases is an open conflict among technical-scientific experts, policy-makers,
business lobbyists and citizens, which not infrequently paralyses decision making.
The proliferation of conflicts on techno-scientific issues raises a series of ques-
tions. Are we witnessing a radical clash between science and society? How have we
come to this pass? Are our institutions – from political to scientific – capable of
meeting the challenges raised by research and technological innovation? Are citi-
zens sufficiently well informed to discuss them? What scenarios await us in the
future? What responses and strategies can help decision makers tackle these issues?
In short, how can the increasing need to take decisions on highly complex techni-
cal-scientific matters be reconciled with rights to democratic participation?
This book argues that these issues and conflicts cannot be considered episodic;
nor can they be glibly dismissed with epithets like “obscurantism”, “anti-scientism”
or “scientific illiteracy”. The book puts forward two hypotheses: first that these
cases are symptomatic of major – perhaps even epochal – changes in the social role
of science, and generally in the production of scientific knowledge; second that
such changes concern the nature itself of contemporary politics and democracy.
The first chapter considers a particularly common type of response to the emer-
gence of issues and conflicts in technoscience: the so-called “technocratic” response.
The chapter seeks to show the principal reasons why there seems to be no way out
of the decision-making deadlock on technoscience and from the sterile opposition
between science and society viewed as a “clash of civilizations”.
The book’s two central chapters analyse two key factors in understanding and
tackling the challenges of technoscience in contemporary society. Specifically, the
. ix
x Introduction
second chapter examines the significant changes in the processes of knowledge
production which have led to so-called “post-academic” science. The third chapter
explores the proliferation of participation by non-experts in such processes – cor-
responding to which is the increasingly large-scale mobilization of technical-scientific
experts in the public arena.
On this basis, the last chapter urges that the illusory shortcuts offered by tech-
nocracy and frequent appeals to individual ethics should be eschewed. It describes
the substantial implications that full and mature awareness of the challenges and
conflicts on science entail, not only for the scientific sphere, but also for democratic
politics.
A terminological specification is necessary. I shall frequently use the term tech-
noscience to denote both scientific research and technological innovation. The use
of this term, however, should not be taken as implying a substantial overlap between
the two areas. Nor is it intended to revive debate on the relationship between
science and technology, which has been already amply discussed elsewhere. Here
the term refers to two phenomena in particular. First, the increasing closeness
between the contexts of research and those of its application, which is considered
one of the key features of the current configuration of contemporary science – so-called
“post-academic” science.1 In this sense, the term “technoscience” can be consid-
ered similar in meaning to “knowledge”. It is not a mere stock of expertise but a
combination of knowledge and power, or the “generalized capacity for action” that
some scholars regard as typical of contemporary knowledge-based societies (Stehr
2005 :24).
Second, the overlap between research and innovation – however, debatable in its
substance – is a distinctive feature of the discourse on, and the public perception of,
science issues. Yet, however, close or distant science and technology may be in the
concrete practice of researchers (and innovators), or in the analyses of scholars, in
the public arena; they are frequently treated as being one and the same.
1 Gibbons et al. ( 1994 ); Ziman ( 2000 ); Nowotny et al. ( 2001 ).
Chapter 1
The Technocratic Response: All Power
to the Experts
(With the Blessing of Citizens Provided
They Are Well-Educated)
The populace was confused, yet didn’t care .
Scientists peered into data and concluded
that we should all be very worried
(Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park)
1.1 The “Missionary” Wing of Technocracy: “Deficit”
and the Public Understanding of Science
This first chapter considers a particularly common response to issues and conflicts
in technoscience. I refer to the so-called “technocratic response”, which is especially
frequent within the scientific community, but not uncommon among policymakers
and other authoritative commentators, or in some sectors of public opinion. It bases
its proposals for decision making on a specific conception of the relationships
among scientific experts, political decision makers, and public opinion.
Summarizing to the extreme, the technocrat conception rests on two main tenets:
(a) Public opinion and political decision makers are extremely misinformed about
science and the issues raised by its development.
(b) This misinformation is fuelled by inadequate and sensationalist media cover-
age of technoscientific topics. This situation is exacerbated by poor training in
basic science and a general disinterest – among the institutions and the cultural
intelligentsia – in scientific research. Consequently, citizens and political deci-
sion makers easily fall prey to “irrational” fears which stoke their hostility and
suspicion towards entire sectors of research and technological innovation
(nuclear energy, GM foods, and stem cells).
Various versions of this argument have been put forward. In Italy, the tenacious
hostility (indeed “obscurantist” prejudice) against science and technology has been
blamed on the prevalence of philosophical-political doctrines: historicist-Crocean,
Marxian, and also Catholic. A significant role in fomenting public hostility is often
attributed to environmentalist groups and movements, and also to economic interests
M. Bucchi, Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens, 1
DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-89522-2_1, © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009