In Chapter 2, the multidiscipline of public understanding of science was reviewed. In the process, we traced the movement from an emphasis upon cognition to a concern with the cultural context in which ‘understanding’ is embedded. It became apparent that understanding is a highly complex con- cept, which, from the perspective of ethnographic public understanding of science, incorporates: the use of ignorance; local or situated knowledges; the appropriation and production of expert knowledge; relations of trust with experts and expert bodies; the mutual embedding of knowledge and social identity.
The discussion of ethnographic PUS was specifically structured around the gradual expansion of the social context of understanding – from a local community whose identity was crucially bound up with situated, practical knowledges through to a social movement where the relations to expertise were much more variegated, and where scientific knowledges were a major, if contingent, resource in the forging of social identities. But these ‘contexts’ – comprised of relations within public constituencies, and between the lay and scientific actors – cannot be assumed a priori. They reflect and mediate what
might be thought of as much broader social processes that characterize the contemporary Western world. These contexts at once emerge out of these
broader processes and serve in their making. For example, the AIDS movement
has contributed to a restructuring of conditions which has, in turn, facilitated the rise of subsequent new social movements. At this point, we must turn to social theory and its analysis of the modern social world.
In the preceding chapter, we considered the trajectory from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ in the context of science policy, and the changing relationship between expertise, the state and the public. From the top-down perspective in which it was assumed that the public must have cognitive deficits corrected through information and education, we traced the emergence of more partici- patory, dialogic relations. Now, as various government reports and statements have made clear, the public’s views and knowledges need to be incorporated
within the process of science policy making. However, we also documented that this was a compromised vision. There were still powerful residues of the old deficit model concerning the relationship between laypeople and experts. These ‘residues’ are not simply historical but reflect wider tensions between democratic engagement and international economic competitiveness, and between the commitment to technological innovation and open dialogue.
We noted, too, that these developing concerns with dialogue and partici- pation were neither uniform nor coherent. Differences between various sectors of government mean that there is currently an uneven engagement with the public. As we write, there is a new social experiment being conducted in the UK over GM food, which, yet again, raises questions about the relationship between public consultation, scientific investigation and economic assess- ment. It is likely that this Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Com- mission consultation will reveal once again the difficulties of conducting a democratic engagement within such loaded, and inevitably fraught, settings and where there is little social consensus over the operating assumptions or indeed status of such exercises.
These differences of approach and perspective become even more evident when we consider the international character of contemporary science–public relations. We pointed to the ways in which the issues and concerns that char- acterize governance have transcended the boundaries of the nation state. The relations between public and scientific experts now span the globe as multi- national corporations and international social movements directly engage in debate, simultaneously bypassing and embroiling the institutions of national governments.
This last point echoes the debate between Monsanto and Greenpeace considered in our introductory chapter. Here, we saw a series of complex inter- actions between ‘global’ actors that were effectively beyond the reach of nation states. Furthermore, as we drew out in that chapter, the content of that
debate had major implications for the status of scientific knowledge within public controversies.
There are additional things to say about this exchange between Greenpeace and Monsanto, not least when we turn our attention to its general
form. For example, it was presented on the web (in fact, on the website of a
state-sponsored broadcasting corporation, the BBC). Thus, this debate was, potentially at least, globally accessible. To access it, however, a number of conditions have to be met, including the ready availability of the hardware and software, and the sorts of capacity and self-identity that enables one to ‘surf the web’ and to assimilate the debate. At this point, wider questions of culture and technology begin to emerge. To put all this in the terms of social theory: what is the nature of the social, cultural and technological processes through which such interactions are facilitated and ‘make sense’?
picture of these processes – after all, it is an intellectual activity that spans many contrasting traditions. Therefore, we do not intend to provide a com- prehensive review of the various writings that can be said to be a part of recent social theory. In being necessarily selective, we have been guided by a concern to detail the work of those influential social theorists which has a bearing on our fields of interest, namely ‘scientific governance’ and ‘public understanding of science and technology’.
Social theory certainly has much to say about the ways in which scientific knowledge and institutions have changed in late modernity. On the one hand, there are various problematizations of existing institutions. Such problemati- zations take the form of commentaries upon the increasingly apparent role of technoscience in the production of risks, or in the recent shifts in the character of self-identity, or the evident abandonment of the enlightenment project, or our increasingly irrational commitment to rationalization. On the other hand, partly the medium and partly the result of these problematizations of scientific knowledge and institutions, a range of new social phenomena has arisen and been subjected to social theoretical analysis. These phenomena are multi- farious and disparate, but they touch upon some of the topics introduced in previous chapters: new social movements and forms of citizenship, subpolitics, globalization, reflexivity, consumer culture.
In sum, social theory is important to this book because it:
• engages with the ‘broader’ empirical dynamics of Western and global- ized societies in which science–public relations are embroiled and to which they contribute;
• provides a range of theoretical characterizations and conceptualiza- tions of recent and contemporary Western society which, at least potentially, can help in better understanding the current and poten- tial state of science–public relations;
• broadens the horizons of science–public relations beyond the nation state and the lay local to encompass global or transnational actors or groupings;
• refashions the notion of cultural identity such that it can be seen to be constituted through a range of resources, both local and distant, and be directed towards expressive as well as instrumental ends;
• articulates the emergence of hybrid actors that, in so far as they embody elements of the public, expert institutions, regulatory bodies, communications specialists, commercial players and so on, blur the science–public divide.
In this chapter, then, we spend some time explicating major themes that are said to characterize the ‘Western modern’. In the process, we draw upon the work of such theorists as Beck (1992), Giddens (1991) and Lyotard
(1984). More particularly, we engage with these theorists’ treatments of the nature of the ‘public’, the character of ‘science’ and the constitution of the ‘political process’. Furthermore, we show how these topics relate to other recent concerns of social theory, not least issues of citizenship and political agency. As we will suggest, for all the power of these social theoretical analy- ses, one is often left with a sense that there has been a detachment from the messiness of everyday life. That is to say, these theorizations neglect the complexity, ambiguity and multiplicity so well documented in ethnographic PUS studies and evidenced in the convoluted and contradictory practices of governance.
This chapter is organized as follows. We consider several of the most prominent themes in recent social theory which appear relevant to our present concern with the public understanding of science and the processes of govern- ance. The themes we have derived are not at all distinct, let alone mutually exclusive – there are overlaps and mergings – and their ordering does not imply any hierarchy or ranking. Partly for explanatory reasons and partly to ground these very abstract themes, we will draw upon the GM case study introduced in Chapter 1. This serves not only to render each theme somewhat more concrete, but also to illustrate its value for a more nuanced understand- ing of public–science relations. On that basis, we will consider in turn recent social theoretical treatments of:
• rationality, progress and differentiation; • trust and ambivalence;
• risk and globalization; • consumption and citizenship; • self-identity and ‘fluidity’.
To reiterate, the items on this list fold into one another in various ways, not all of which we will be able to explicate. As such, they form a nexus of issues that is addressed, in one way or another, by various prominent social theorists. In exploring the ways that the relation between scientific know- ledge, policy and lay actors are theorized, it is certainly possible to pay close attention to the differences between various theorists. However, important though these differences certainly are, for present purposes we will stress com- mon themes. In summarizing these common themes, we emphasize especially
the de-differentiation of both science and the public, and the global and the local. As such, we provide an initial outline of how we might go about reformulating the simultaneous blurring and interaction between expert and lay constituencies. Furthermore, given our concern to show how ethnographic PUS can inform and enrich social theory, we end, ironically, with a brief illus- tration of how the complex processes described by social theory become even more complex when one looks closely at empirical examples of ‘public
understanding of science’. All this serves as a basis for subsequent chapters that will draw the domains of social theory, public understanding of science and governance together (Chapter 5) and elaborate a framework for better analys- ing the relations between science and public (Chapter 6).
Finally, we should acknowledge that we are about to embark on a very rapid tour of what for many will be a rather unfamiliar world of social theory. Let us emphasize before embarking that the detail of what follows is less important than the general sense of activity and debate over the mean- ing of contemporary social change. Equally, we do not claim to offer an authoritative account. Our aim is the more modest one of opening up a productive exchange between PUS, scientific governance and social theory.