Massimiano Bucchi. Beyond Technocracy. Science, Politics and Citizens

Transcription

1 Beyond Technocracy

2 Massimiano Bucchi Beyond Technocracy Science, Politics and Citizens

3 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 ISBN e-isbn DOI / Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (

4 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

5 Contents Introduction Science and Society: A Clash of Civilizations?... ix 1 The Technocratic Response: All Power to the Experts The Missionary Wing of Technocracy: Deficit and the Public Understanding of Science The Flimsy Pillars of the Technocratic View Democracy and Ignorance A Flour that Threatened to Bring Down a Government Einstein Has Left the Building: Coming to Terms with Post-academic Science A Post-academic Science? After Doctor Strangelove: How I Learned Not to Worry and Love the Stock Exchange Whose Knowledge? From Physics to Biology A Mediatized Science A Science Without Boundaries The Eclipse of the Scientific Community? In the Meantime, Society Does Not Stand By and Watch Citizens Enter the Laboratory Whilst Scientists Take to the Streets From Two Stubborn Parents to Seven Thousand Square Metres of Laboratory Childhood Leukaemia in Woburn: Hybrid Forums and the Co-production of Knowledge Technoscience Debated in the Courts From Users to Innovators: How a Windsurfer Kept Himself Afloat and Became Something of a Designer vii

6 viii Contents 3.5 Everyone Around a Table: Promoting Civic Participation in Technoscience Science and Public Participation: A General Interpretative Framework The March of the Test-Tubes : Scientists Take to the Streets Beyond Technocracy: Democracy in the Age of Technoscience Beyond the Illusions of Technocracy Will Bioethics Save Us? Why Are Citizens Against Biotechnologies? Knowledge Is Power The Presumed Neutrality of Technoscience The Horse that Knew How to Do Sums The Crisis of the Double Delegation Etsi Veritas Non Daretur Choosing the World We Want Bibiolography... 97

7 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 questions. 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 citizens 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 technical-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 emergence 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

8 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 corresponding 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 technocracy 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 technoscience 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 considered 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 ).