UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Amor Mundi

439 Pages·2016·2.02 MB·English

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Amor Mundi: Politics, Democracy, and TechoScience
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rh226m9
Author
Undurraga, Beltran
Publication Date
2016

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Amor Mundi:
Politics, Democracy, and TechnoScience
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in Political Science
by
Beltrán Felipe Undurraga
2016

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Amor Mundi: Politics, Democracy, and TechnoScience
by
Beltrán Felipe Undurraga
Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles, 2016
Professor Kirstie M. McClure, Chair
This dissertation interrogates the political significance of science and technology in the
contemporary world as well as their challenge to our understanding of democracy. It provides a
critical examination and integration of contributions from the fields of political theory—
represented here by Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière, and theorists of deliberative democracy—
and ‘science and technology studies’—particularly the works of Brian Wynne, Bruno Latour, and
Michel Callon. At the center of the investigation is the question of amor mundi, understood as
the sense of care for the world as a place fit for the mutually enforcing appearance of new
subjects and objects in the public scene. Acknowledging how the doings of technoscientists
increasingly shape and structure our conditions of existence below the radar of conventional
politics, and the challenge this poses to democratic ideals of self-determination, it is further
argued that science and technology are a complex form of agency that unsettles inherited
conceptual categories and blurs traditional demarcations between nature and the human artifice.
!ii
From the splitting of the atom afforded by the development of quantum mechanics to the creation
of new life forms in the field of synthetic biology, the activities of technoscientists are forms of
acting into nature and making socio-technical hybrids whose proliferation has not been
sufficiently addressed and recognized. Furthermore, the agency of technoscience qua expertise
tends to frame the scope of public debate along narrow scientistic parameters of control,
prediction, and standardization, signaled by the dominance of ‘risk’ discourses in the public
sphere. The recent profusion of deliberative forums for engaging lay publics with science is
shown to be inadequate for confronting this challenge. In the light of contemporary instances of
democratic practice around technoscience—exemplarily represented by the case of AIDS-
treatment activism—an alternative form of democratic politics is proposed around the two
related concepts of ’interference’ and ‘composition.’

!iii
The dissertation of Beltrán Felipe Undurraga is approved
Joshua F. Dienstag
Sharon J. Traweek
Kirstie M. McClure, Committee Chair
University of California, Los Angeles
2016
!iv
This thesis is dedicated to Pilar and Juan, who came to illuminate my world and teach me the
things that are truly meaningful, and to my wife Soledad, whose loving support has been the sine
qua non of an otherwise solitary project.
!v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART I: What Sciences Do
1. ACTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2. MAKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3. FRAMING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
PART II: The Doubling of Expertise
4. DELIBERATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
5. ELICITATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
PART III: Amor Mundi
6. INTERFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
7. COMPOSITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
!vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first years of my graduate studies were supported by a Fulbright-MECESUP scholarship, for
which I am greatly indebted. At a crucial juncture, the Department of Political Science at UCLA
gave me generous financial assistance, without which this whole project would have been
prematurely interrupted. Throughout, the auspices of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de
Chile have been fundamental. In particular, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Eduardo
Valenzuela, Dean of Social Sciences, and to María Soledad Herrera, Chair of the Sociology
Institute (ISUC).
At UCLA, I benefited from the advice of Brian Esparza Walker, Carole Pateman, Joshua
Dienstag and Sharon Traweek. My deepest gratitude goes to Kirstie McClure, whose tremendous
generosity, relentless criticism, and insightful advice exceeded by large any expectations I had
entertained about the role of a Committee Chair. Despite the geographical distance separating us,
she was a permanent company for my reflections, and her presence can be felt in every page of
this dissertation.
Finally, this project wouldn’t have come to fruition without the support of Soledad
Rodríguez and Ana María López, who kindly provided a homely ambient for my writing process.
!vii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Beltrán Undurraga is a Sociologist with a BA in Philosophy from the Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile. After working for two years as a lecturer in his Alma Mater, he received a
Fulbright Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in Political Science at the University of
California, Los Angeles, where he also had the opportunity to work as editorial assistant for the
American Political Science Review. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Sociology Institute
of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, lecturing and researching at the intersection of
social and political theory.
!viii