Who are the actors of controversies? appreciating the heterogeneity of collective life
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Who are the actors of controversies? appreciating the heterogeneity of collective life
- 1. WHO Who are the actors? appreciating the heterogeneity of collective life Tommaso Venturini tommaso.venturini@sciences-po.fr
- 2. Laboratory Life Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar (1979)
- 3. Scientific facts as social construtions Latour reconsider science Woolgar
- 6. Scientific facts as social construtions Latour reconsider science Woolgar ?
- 7. The Sokal Affair "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity » in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).
- 8. The Sokal Affair "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity » in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996). It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical “reality”, no less than social “reality”, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific “knowledge”, far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential
- 9. The Sokal Affair "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies » in Lingua Franca, pp. 62-64 (May/June 1996) To test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies … publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions? The answer, unfortunately, is yes.
- 10. from Science Studies to Science Wars
- 11. The fortunate wreck of sociology of science “Whereas [our closet colleagues] have decided that social theory works even on science, we have concluded that, overall and in details, the social theory has failed on science so radically that it’s safe to postulate that it had always failed elsewhere as well” (p. 94) “For the first time, social scientists had to study something that was higher, harder and stronger than them. For the first time… the scream of those being studied could be hear loud and clear – and they were not coming from Bali or the ghettos… but from the departments next door, from colleagues in the very hiring and grant committees” (p. 98) Bruno Latour (2005) Reassembling the social
- 12. Scientific facts as social construtions Latour reconsider sociology reconsider science Woolgar
- 13. Positivism vs relativism Positivism: scientific truths are facts Relativism: scientific truths are fetishes
- 14. Can you be constructivist and realist at once
- 15. Constructivism Positivism: scientific truths are facts Relativism: scientific truths are fetishes Constructivism: scientific truths are factish
- 16. From relativism to relationalism (constructivism) “Relativism is not the relativity of truth but the truth of relation” Gille Deleuze Paris, Centre Pompidou Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers
- 17. The vascularisation of sciences and technologies
- 19. The controversy mapping tightrope positivism constructivism relativism idealism pragmatism conventionalism
- 20. The controversy mapping tightrope positivism constructivism relativism idealism pragmatism conventionalism extending the notion of agency
- 21. Extending the notion of agency The actors of technoscience are not only scientistists and engineers The actors of technoscience are not only human beings non-expert actors non-human actors
- 22. The construction of Lay Expertise Epstein, S., (1995), Science Technology & Human Values, 20(4)
- 23. A standard sociological explanation Socio-economical features of the affected people • People in their most active age (20-40 years old) • Member of a distinct social group already highly mobilized (for homosexual rights) • Persons coming prevalently from the dominant classes (white, middle and upper class male) • Several persons already in the medical profession Medical features of the disease • The disease is identified early, several years before the onset of the most serious symptoms • Clinical tests require the active participation of patients Epstein, S., (1995), Science Technology & Human Values, 20(4)
- 24. Obtaining one’s objectives Obtain quicker and larger access to experimental drugs Epstein, S., (1995), Science Technology & Human Values, 20(4) Overcome FDA and NIH ‘paternalistic’ drug policies and establish patients’ right to take risks
- 25. Establishing oneself as a legitimate actor Epstein, S., (1995), Science Technology & Human Values, 20(4) • Learning the medical specialized jargon • Imposing the activist-group (more radical) as representative of all the patients (gay and non-gay) • Finding allies in the minority positions of the medical community • Mixing scientific and ethical/political arguments i.e. the access to the drugs should be large because - Individuals have the right to take risks - Participation to tests should be distributed fairly - Large and more diverse samples improve tests • Obtaining representation in FDA and NIH comitees
- 26. Medical research lead by the patients M. Callon & V. Rabeharisoa, 1998 L'implication des malades dans les activités de recherche soutenues par l'Association française contre les myopathies Sciences Sociales et Santé 16(3)
- 27. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281)
- 28. Chernobyl disaster 26 April 1986
- 29. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281) Breeders had significant economic interests (capitalist science) Breeders don’t understand radioactivity (public understanding of science)
- 30. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281) Breeders had significant economic interests (capitalist science) Breeders don’t understand radioactivity (public understanding of science) In fact, things went in an opposite direction. At the beginning, breeders were aligned with The more their knowledge of the situation increased, the more discontent they grew
- 31. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281) “Lamb radioactivity will fall in about 3 weeks” “Soil will absorb and immobilize radioactivity” “Sooner or later radioactivity will fall” “Marked lambs can be sold to be decontam.” “Lambs can be fenced for test and decontam.”
- 32. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281) “Lamb radioactivity will fall in about 3 weeks” BUT the ban on selling extended unlimitedly “Soil will absorb and immobilize radioactivity” BUT Cumbrian soil is peaty (not alkaline) “Sooner or later radioactivity will fall” BUT grazing will be destroyed after fall “Marked lambs can be sold to be decontam.” BUT market price collapsed “Lambs can be fenced for test and decontam.” BUT In hill farming sheep are free to roam
- 33. Misunderstood misunderstanding Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281)
- 34. Sellafield Windscale complex Brian Wynne (1992) Public Understanding of Science 1(281)
- 35. Extending the notion of agency The actors of technoscience are not only scientistists and engineers The actors of technoscience are not only human beings non-expert actors non-human actors
- 36. The Fly Kholer, R. (1999) Moral Economy, Material Culture and Community in Drosophila Genetics
- 37. A biological technology Kholer, R. (1999) Moral Economy, Material Culture and Community in Drosophila Genetics Drosophila Melanogaster Short life cycle Large offspring Tolerance to lab. Life Experiments with many flies Easily visible mutations Standard Organism - Limited genetic variability - Extremely well know features - Creations of different pure strands Chromosome Mapping Statistical frequency of mutations (more data – better accuracy) Data classification is elastic (more data – better chrom. maps)
- 38. A social technology Kholer, R. (1999) Moral Economy, Material Culture and Community in Drosophila Genetics Fly Group Open access to research tools Equity in credit distribution (not to who had the idea, but to who made it work) Jointly decided research agenda Chromosome Mapping Reciprocity (not money) Disclosure or research intentions Limited ownership of flies stocks Standard Organism Abundance of flies Abundance of mutations Abundance of chrom.
- 39. Drosophila Fly Group Standard Organism Chromosome Mapping The Fly Kholer, R. (1999) Moral Economy, Material Culture and Community in Drosophila Genetics
- 40. Generalized symmetry principle Symmetry principle (D. Bloor): Truth and error should be explained symmetrically because sciences and technologies are social constructions Generalized symmetry principle (B. Latour): Society is a technoscientific construction
- 41. What would we be without sciences and technologies ?
- 42. 1. Social complexity 11. Political ecology 10. Technologies 9. Networks of power 8. Industries 7. Megamachines 6. Domestic ecology 5. Human societies 4. Techniques 3. Social complication 2. Basic toolkit Evolution of humans Evolution of non-human Bruno Latour (1994) Pragmatogonies: A Mythical Account of How Humans and Nonhumans Swap Properties American Behavioral Scientist 37
- 44. 2. Strumenti elementari la forma degli elementi naturali può essere negoziata 2. Basic Toolkit The form of natural elements can be negotiated
- 45. 3. Complicazione sociale (interazioni complicate) le relazioni sociali possono essere inscritte in segni 3. Social complication Social relation can be inscribed in material signs
- 46. 4. Tecniche (strumenti composti) gli elementi naturali possono essere scomposti e ricomposti 4. Techniques Natural elements can be composed and decomposed
- 47. 5. Società umane le relazioni sociali possono essere reificate 5. Human societies Social relation can be reified
- 48. 6. Ecologia domestica (addomesticamento) le piante e gli animali possono essere socializzati 6. Internalized Ecology Plants and animals can be socialized
- 49. 7. Megamacchina (imperi - Mumford) gli esseri umani possono essere addomesticati7. Megamachines (empires) Human beings can be domesticated
- 50. 8. Industrie i non-umani possono essere organizzati in sistemi 8. Industries Instruments can be organized in systems
- 51. 9. Reti di potere la vita collettiva può essere gestita attraverso sistemi tecnologici 9. Network of power Collective live can be organized through technical systems
- 52. 10. Technologies Technological infrastructures can be managed like organizations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML
- 53. 11. Political ecology (hybrid forums) politics of human and non-human co-existence 10. Technologies technical infrastructures can be managed as organization 9. Networks of power collective life can be managed through technical systems 8. Industries instruments can be organized in systems 7. Megamachines (empires) human beings can be domesticated 6. Internalized ecology plants and animals can be domesticated 5. Human societies Social relations can be reified 4. Techniques (composite tools) natural elements can be composed and decomposed 3. Social complication (complicated interaction) social relations can be inscribed in signs 2. Basic toolkit the form of natural elements can be negotiated 1. Social complexity (unmediated ftf interactions)
- 54. Human and non-human actors are not the same…
- 55. SHEPHERD - works 10 hours a day - can be easily transported - can handle most unexpected events - need to be fed - need to be paid - need replacement every 40-50 years Human and non-human actors are not the same…
- 56. SHEPHERD - works 10 hours a day - can be easily transported - can handle most unexpected events - need to be fed - need to be paid - need replacement every 40-50 years Human and non-human actors are not the same… DOG - works 14 hours a day - can be easily transported - can handle some unexpected events - need to be fed - does not need to be paid - need replacement every 8-10 years
- 57. SHEPHERD - works 10 hours a day - can be easily transported - can handle most unexpected events - need to be fed - need to be paid - need replacement every 40-50 years Human and non-human actors are not the same… DOG - works 14 hours a day - can be easily transported - can handle some unexpected events - need to be fed - does not need to be paid - need replacement every 8-10 years FENCE - works 24 hours a day - cannot be easily transported - cannot handle unexpected events - does not need to be fed - does not need to be paid - need to be replaced every 5 years
- 58. Human and non-human actors are not the same…
- 59. … yet the grew inseparable
- 60. Political Ecology (the end of Nature)
- 61. One collective… Effetti del Buon e del Cattivo Governo, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Siena
- 62. … one parliament Bruno Latour, The Parliament of Things
- 63. Why controversies? 1. A methodological answer 2. A political answer
- 64. A wrong idea of science in society “Science Blood Flow”, Bruno Latour, 1999, Pandora’s Hope
- 65. A wrong idea of scientific controversies
- 66. A wrong idea of science & politics
- 67. A disturbing explanation for the proliferation of controversy
- 68. How to stall regulation with controversies Mix equal parts of: The worst relativism claim equal media attention for all positions The worst positivism demand science to be 100% certain, consensual, independent The worst constructivism denounce research uncertainties, complexities and compromises
- 69. A disturbing explanation for the proliferation of controversy
- 70. A wrong interpretation of the precautionary principle
- 71. Precautionary principle Principle #15 of 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development « Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation »
- 72. Who is to decide on controversies?
- 73. Who is to decide on controversies? Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur, 1921
- 74. The Phantom Public Walter Lippmann, 1925
- 75. « It is controversies of this kind, the hardest controversies to disentangle, that the public is called in to judge. Where the facts are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is compelled to make its most important decisions » (p. 121). The Phantom Public Walter Lippmann, 1925
- 76. « It is controversies of this kind, the hardest controversies to disentangle, that the public is called in to judge. Where the facts are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is compelled to make its most important decisions » (p. 121). The Phantom Public Walter Lippmann, 1925
- 78. The pragmatic citizen « The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and will leave before the last curtain, having stayed just al long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who the villain of the piece. Yet usually that judgment will necessary be made apart from the intrinsic merits, on the basis on a sample behavior, an aspect of the situation; by very rough external evidence » (p. 55).
- 80. The death of newspapers
Editor's Notes
- 15/10/12
- 27/08/12 The conclusion of Latour and Woolgar’s argument is therefore that scientific facts are social construction (as the very subtitle of the book reads).
- 27/08/12 Of course, such an ground breaking conclusion stirred a huge controversy and even Steve Woolgar and Bruno Latour disagreed on how the statement ‘scientific facts are social constructions’ should be interpreted. According to Woolgar, this meant the our ideas on science had to be radically reconsidered.
- 27/08/12 Sociology has a long history of relativism. Sociological relativism is the idea the things that matters the most for social actors are in fact fetishes representing the society in which they live. Such an idea can be traced back to a seminal book in the history of sociology: “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” by Emile Durkheim. In this book, Durkheim describes the religious believes of several aboriginal tribes of Australia and shows how they can be explained by the social context in which they life. In other words, native Australian thinks that they are worshipping they gods, but this gods are nothing more than the reflex of their society, which is in fact what they are worshipping.
- 27/08/12 Steve Wolgar and many other apply the same type of reasoning to science. Scientists think that they are observing the Nature, but in fact what they observe in they microscopes and accelerator is nothing more than a fetish of the social context of the scientific community.
- 27/08/12 There is nothing objective about scientific facts, as scientific truth is nothing but a social construction, the reflection of a social arrangements that may have not be happened, at best the results of a social convention. But is it really necessary to swing from positivism to relativism? Bruno Latour, as we will see has a different idea… But before discussing Latour’s idea of costructivism. Let’s have a look at the reactions of natural scientists to the attempts of sociologists to relativize the content of their disciplines.
- 27/08/12
- 27/08/12 In 1996, the journal ‘Social Text” published an article by Alan Sokal with the tile . Social Text is a journal devoted to “critical cultural theory” which is another name for sociological relativism. Most of the articles of this review were meant to reveal the sociological roots of traditional ideas on science, economy, genres and many other subjects. Like any other review, some of these articles were good other less so.
- 27/08/12 The article by Alain Sokal was particularly interesting because, though its author was a prominent physics professor at NYU, it assumed a extreme relativist position, claiming notably that quantum gravity had direct progressive political implications.
- 27/08/12 The vary day of the publications of the article of Social Text, Sokal revealed in another article in ‘Lingua Franca’ (a journal dedicated to academic life) that the first article was in fact a hoax meant to [see slide]. The article by Sokal, to be sure, do not prove much other than the fact that Lingua Franca was a bad review (for one thing, it didn’t employed peer-review at the time). The fact that one can publish a stupid article in a second-rate journal does not prove that a field of study is biased.
- 27/08/12 The ‘Sokal Affair’ marks the peak of the so-called ‘Science Wars’ a long controversy that saw many important natural scientists to line up against the sociology of scientific knowledge and in particular sociological relativism. These natural scientists just couldn’t accept the reduction of their theories to mere social fetishes and they claimed out and loud that scientific facts, far from being just social conventions, are real, true and objective.
- 27/08/12
- 27/08/12 Against the expectations of many, Bruno Latour did not took the side of his fellow sociologists. On the contrary, he admitted that Science Wars marked the failure of the sociology of scientific knowledge and, more generally, the failure of sociological relativism. He claimed that “social theory has failed on science so radically that it’s safe to postulate that it had always failed elsewhere as well”. Up until now we mostly focused on the first failure of sociology (the one on science). Today we will move the focus from science to society and observed how sociology (or at least sociological relativism) fails on society as well.
- 27/08/12 At the same time, it is crucial to note that Latour did not deny his previous work nor the work of his colleagues. He maintened that scientific facts are social constructions but he claimed that this observation should teach us an opposite lesson. Whereas Woolgar concluded that we had to reconsider science, Latour concluded that we had to reconsider sociology.
- 27/08/12
- 27/08/12 According to Woolgar, overcoming positivism meant to accept relativism. If scientific truth are not facts, they can only be fetishes.
- 27/08/12 But how Latour maintain that scientific facts are socially constructed and yet believe that they are real and objective? Is it possible to be constructivist and realist at the same time? If you think about it, there is a tremendous number of things that are both constructed and real. In fact, most of the things we deal with daily are real precisely because they are constructed. Even more: their objectivity, their resistance, their solidity is directly proportional to the quantity and quality of the work that has been used to build them.
- 27/08/12 Constructivism can be very different from relativism, because acknowledging that scientific truths are built by the work of the scientists and their laboratories does not imply concluding that these truths are not valid or solid or real. On the contrary, the more and the better they are constructed within and beyond the laboratories and the more objective they will be.
- 15/10/12 27/08/12 Discussing constructivism (two units ago), we saw how scientific truth and technical artifacts seem having an independent existence only because they are ‘packaged’ as black box that are not supposed to be opened. We also saw, however, that looking inside these black boxes reveals that their existence relies on a complex networks of relations and that it is the solidity of this network (the chain of reference in the case of scientific theories) that makes them objective and real. But who are the authors of this painstaking work of relation weaving? Who is responsible for the construction of science and technology?
- Scientific theories and technical artifacts exists and have real effects because the are vascularized by hundreds and thousands of relations (the way an organ is vascularized by blood vessels). It is the quantity and the quality of these relations which decide the value of science and technology and it is this quantity and quality that controversy mapping is meant to explore. 27/08/12
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- 15/10/12 The trick of tighrope walking is to have a very long shaft to help you keep the balance
- 27/08/12 Plusieurs raisons expliquent l’intense mobilisation des malades du SIDA et leur succès dans la bataille pour s’imposer comme des acteurs crédible de la recherche :
- 15/10/12 Le texte est un des premières études dédiées à la participation des malades (et de leur association) à la recherche médicale. Le texte retrace l’histoire du mouvement des malades de SIDA aux États Unis dans les années ‘80. Il s’agit d’un des premiers cas dans lesquels les malades sont arrivés à se faire reconnaître comme des acteurs légitimes de la recherche par les scientifiques et leurs institutions.
- 27/08/12 Plusieurs raisons expliquent l’intense mobilisation des malades du SIDA et leur succès dans la bataille pour s’imposer comme des acteurs crédible de la recherche :
- 27/08/12 La mobilisation des malades-activistes commence à la moitié des années ’80, sur la question de la participation aux expérimentations sur les nouveaux traitements contre le SIDA. Les malades estimaient que les protocoles des institutions scientifiques américaines étaient trop prudents et empêchaient aux malades d’avoir accès aux médicaments qui pouvaient les sauver
- 27/08/12 Transforming from victims to research partners Normal activism + Specific credibility strategies
- 27/08/12 Transforming from victims to research partners Normal activism + Specific credibility strategies
- 15/10/12 We will try to answer this question by analyzing three famous controversies. The first one has been studied by Brian Wynne and took place in region of Cumbria in United Kindom.
- 15/10/12 Our controversy begins in 1986 a few weeks after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In these few weeks the radioactive cloud escaped from the Chernobyl reactor has reached the UK and the rain has brought the radioactivity on the ground. There it has been absorbed by the roots of the grass and the grass has been grazed by the Cumbrian sheep. Result: a lot of radioactive sheep and an official ban on their selling. The ban was enforced by the Government, of course, but the decision to revoke or continue it was left to a team of scientists.
- 15/10/12
- 15/10/12 Apparently, there are few reasons for a controversy to arise out of this situation. The science involved in the decision on the ban is simple: as long as the radioactivity levels remain high there is a tangible food security risk on which everyone agrees (scientists, breeders, public opinions, media…). The measure of the radioactivity level is simple and reliable (no experimenter’s regression here). The only thinks that is to be done is to wait the instruments to indicate that the lamb meat is safe. Or at least this was what the scientists thought. But as it turns out things were more complex and there was at least another set of actors to be taken into account: the sheep breeders. And it was precisely the Cumbrian sheep breeders that mounted an enormous controversy around the subject. Why? If you look at the situation from a ‘public understanding of science’ or from ‘capitalist science’ point of view, the controversy seems simple to explain: the breeders had significant economic interests in the matter and they understood badly the complex science of radioactivity. What a better recipe for controversy? But let some time pass, explain some sound science to the breeders and that will eventually understand what is their best interest.
- 15/10/12 In fact, however, things went in an opposite direction. At the beginning of the ban, sheep breeders were perfectly aligned with the scientists position and willing to support the costs necessary to assure the food safety. As the months passed as far as their knowledge of the situation increased, the breeders grew discontent with the official science and the more they learnt about the scientists’s methods the more discontent they grew.
- 15/10/12 The reasons of this growing opposition is that breeders discovered, in their consideration of the problem, that scientists were neglecting many crucial aspects that played a crucial role in the controversy: Prices: Being forced to sell livestock to other farmers for decontamination means collapsing the prices for Cumbrian lambs. Cumbrian sheep: Cumbrian breeding model, being based on roaming and open-field grazing, makes it impossible to control the sheep and restrict them to specific areas. Cumbrian soil: Scientists used a model of alkaline clay soils in which the reactive cesium is captured and immobilized (so that it does not pass to the vegetation) more rapidly than in the Cumbrian peaty soil. - Cumbrian grass: The scarce available grazing in the highlands requires that the lamb flocks are sold before the fall. Otherwise they risk to destroy the grazing for the following years as well.
- 15/10/12 The reasons of this growing opposition is that breeders discovered, in their consideration of the problem, that scientists were neglecting many crucial aspects that played a crucial role in the controversy: Prices: Being forced to sell livestock to other farmers for decontamination means collapsing the prices for Cumbrian lambs. Cumbrian sheep: Cumbrian breeding model, being based on roaming and open-field grazing, makes it impossible to control the sheep and restrict them to specific areas. Cumbrian soil: Scientists used a model of alkaline clay soils in which the reactive cesium is captured and immobilized (so that it does not pass to the vegetation) more rapidly than in the Cumbrian peaty soil. - Cumbrian grass: The scarce available grazing in the highlands requires that the lamb flocks are sold before the fall. Otherwise they risk to destroy the grazing for the following years as well.
- 15/10/12 The Sellafield-Windscale plant: The area in which the selling restriction was imposed indefinitely encircles the Sellafield-Windscale plant, which has been the object of several successive accidents and controversies.
- 15/10/12 The last omission made the breeders especially suspicious. Conspiracy theories flourished in Cumbria and the controversy soon passed from a mild opposition to a violent fight. As a result a climate of mistrust was establish that event today still affects British science. According to Brian Wynne, the British scientists creatde and eventually lost this controversy because the stubbornly refused to acknowledge the lay expertise of the breeders and their native knowledge of their soil, their sheep, their grass. Ignoring the breeders and their remarks the scientists also ignore many crucial aspects of the controversy and were therefore incapable to establish the chain of reference they need to support their statements. The lessons we have to learn from this first controversy is that the scientific experts are not the only actors of science. Lay experts may be just as important.
- 27/08/12 Plusieurs raisons expliquent l’intense mobilisation des malades du SIDA et leur succès dans la bataille pour s’imposer comme des acteurs crédible de la recherche :
- 15/10/12 The work of Thomas Hunt Morgan is important because it introduced measurement in genetics, shifting the study of biology from the qualitative study of evolution to the quantitative study of chromosome genetics.
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- According to Bruno Latour, the failure of sociology derives from its lack of symmetry. As you probably remember we introduced a first version of the symmetry principle when discussing the ‘strong program’ of the sociology of science by David Bloor. According to Bloor, Truth and error should be explained symmetrically because sciences and technologies are social constructions. Latour accepts this idea and generalizes it by noting that if it is true that science and technology are social constructions, it is also true that society is a technoscientific construction. Remember that, when we discussed the actors (or better the actors-networks) of scientific controversies, we discovered that non-human actors can play a crucial role in shaping science. What Latour is telling us now, is that the also play a crucial role in shaping society.
- Consider what we would be without our sciences and our technologies. The answer has been given countless time by our culture in the various myth of the ‘feral child’ (or ‘wild child’): a child who lives isolated from human contact from a very young age. Mowgli, Tarzan, Peter Pan and even Romulus and Remus are all such children. And what all this versions of the myth have in common is that there is always a turning point in which the wild child stop being an animal and start being a man by building some sort of technological object (a spear or a knife most of the time). It seems that becoming human require to negotiate with technology.
- In an article published in 1994, Bruno Latour described a ‘mythical’ account of the growing intertwining of social evolution and technoscientific evolution. Such an account is mythical as it do not retrace the actual history of the development of society and technology, but sketches the conceptual co-evolution of the cohabitation of human being and of non-human beings. Latour criticizes the common idea that the history of humanity has increasingly separated society from nature. On the contrary, according to Latour, it is only by enrolling more and more non-human actors in social dynamics, that collective life has come to embrace so many human beings. But let’s see each of the steps of this ‘mythical’ account.
- The first step is ‘social complexity’. Unlike what you may think, primates societies (baboons for example) are as complex as human society. If something, baboons societies are even more complex than human ones because lacking all type of technologies baboons have no way to solidly establish the rankings and alliances. Baboons spend half of their time discussing who is friend with whom and who is stronger than whom and they never finish because they have no way to fix what the social decisions that they take.
- But then comes the ‘basic toolkit’ and human beings (but also other primates) start to learn how to negotiate with things. They learn that some types of stones, for examples, chip in a way that make them sharp. Humans chose natural objects whose properties fit their needs.
- Then humans start to apply what they learnt on things on their own body. The form of the body itself can be transformed in order to inscribe (even better ‘embody’) social relation in material signs. Powerful men and women tattooed or otherwise altered their body in order to make their supremacy visible and therefore more durable.
- The lesson learnt on the body (that it may be transformed by the tools of the basic toolkit) can then be applied to objects. The basic toolkit can be used to assemble together several natural element and create complex techniques.
- Techniques then allows to materialize social relation in something that is more solid and durable then the human body. In hunters and gatherers communities, for instance, the dominant individual has no way to stabilize his/her supremacy. He/she can claim the larger share of the food, but not much more than the others, because he/she would not know how to store it. But with agriculture, larger and larger piles of cereals can be accumulated by the strongest ones. The pile itself becomes the very sign of the supremacy and soon the pile of bricks (the pyramid) replace the pile of cereals creating a sign of kinship that is still alive.
- But if social relation can be materialized, then also plants and animals can be socialized and become an integrated part of human society. The case of the dog is famous, but all agricultural plants followed a similar transformation (called the domestication syndromes). Fruits are not juicy and savory by nature, they have been selected by generations of farmers to be so.
- On the other hand, humans can also be domesticated and in the history of battles has often showed that the more trained armies always defeat the larger ones. Applied to the production of goods, this organization produced the modern assembly line (initially prevalently constituted by people).
- But soon people were replaced (at least in part) by machines giving birth to the modern industry.
- And modern industry allowed to build the huge networks of power (train, gas, electricity, telephone…) that allowed extending enormously the frontiers of our society.
- Networks of power requires standardization and this in turn require that technological infrastructures are managed like organization. To assure standardization, the development of many technologies is nowadays decided to procedures of votes and negotiations that resemble parliamentary procedures.
- Through this continuous mixing of human and non-human we eventually arrive to what Bruno Latour calls ‘political ecology’…
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- 15/10/12 Saying that human beings and non-human beings are both actors does not mean that they act in the same way. And this is precisely why it is sometime useful to replace a human agency with a non-human agency. The tired shepherd can delegate the watching of his sheep to his devoted dog, but it can also delegate the action to a fence, which unlike the dog and the shepherd does not need rest at all.
- 15/10/12 Saying that human beings and non-human beings are both actors does not mean that they act in the same way. And this is precisely why it is sometime useful to replace a human agency with a non-human agency. The tired shepherd can delegate the watching of his sheep to his devoted dog, but it can also delegate the action to a fence, which unlike the dog and the shepherd does not need rest at all.
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- 15/10/12 And if the example seems trivial, think of the role played by the fences in UK the XIV century and how they marked the passage from the medieval open-field systems to the modern system of enclosures (according to many historians, the beginning of the capitalism).
- … whose best illustration is provide by the climate change crisis which revealed that society has eventually occupied the whole planet and its atmosphere. Nature was an outer space where the unwanted consequences of our actions could be discharge. This space do not exist any more.
- This last example should have made clear the methodological answer to the question “why controversies?”: controversies makes the fabrication of technoscience explicit and thereby observable. There is however a second answer to this question and this time it is a political answer.
- 23/03/12 A wrong idea of the place of science in society (as if science was a closed field inside a larger social context)…
- 23/03/12 … leads to a wrong idea of scientific controversies (as if controversies emerged because of the social influences deviating the scientific method).
- 23/03/12 In turn this leads to a wrong idea of the relationships between science and politics. Here the conventional idea science and politics should be as separated as possible. Politics should Decide which are the research questions that are worth studying for the society (and thereby worth financing). Then science should provide the best possible objective and consensual answers to such questions, without taking position on the social consequences of such answer. Eventually politics should draws on this scientific answer to take its decisions. Nice and clean. To bad that, as it should be evident by now, such model is totally unrealistic. The frontier between science and politics is never so clear-cut and for many good reasons. One, maybe the most important one, it that, for most of the issues that trouble our societies, we just don’t have the time to wait for scientists to reach a full consensus. A wrong idea of the relationships between science and politics…
- At the same time, the recent proliferation of controversies is bad news because it partly derives from the increasing ability of some lobbies to deliberately feed scientific controversies in order to stall political action. First employed by tobacco industries to uphold the doubts on the connection between smoking and cancer (--- ADD REFERENCE ---), this skeptics strategy is now used on issues so distant as climate change, acid rains and ozone depletion (often by the same skeptics organizations) (--- ADD REFERENCE ---). The (evil) genius of this strategy is to highlight the disagreements among the experts amplifying the complexity of science to the point of making it completely opaque: “no need for public decision, since Science can’t decide no one can”. The strategy is opposite, but the result is the same: the exclusion of non-experts from the technoscientific debate.
- 15/10/12 Remember this was exactly the recipe used to stall political regulation with scientific controversies.
- A recipe that was so successful in blocking the political action against the tobacco industry and that is so successful in blocking the political efforts to mitigate climate change.
- 23/03/12 … leads to a wrong idea of the precautionary principle: as if this principle was meant to impede political action (we will not take any political action until we will not all agree on the scientific consequences of something).
- The precautionary principle is not al all meant to be an obstacle to political action, on the contrary! It is enough to read its original formulation in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The principle is actually meant to allow political action notwithstanding scientific controversies.
- So the question become who is to decide on scientific controversies while scientists are unable to do so.
- A possibility is that of leaving the decision to political leaders. This is the possibility endorsed, among many others, by thinkers like Niccolo’ Macchiavelli and Carl Schmiitt. According to Schmiitt, for example, in situation of emergency (‘state of exception’) when a lot is at stake and quick decisions are necessary, it is the leader (the führer) who has to take decision and close controversies. It is know how this theory has been used to justify the Third Reich and Hitler's dictatorship.
- If we want to avoid this authoritarian solution, the only other possible solution is the one proposed by Walter Lippmann (one of the fathers of American journalism) in a book titled “The Phantom Public”.
- According to Lippmann, it is public opinion that has to decide on controversies. Lippmann, however, is a pragmatist thinkers: he refuses all idealized version of the public (where all citizens will find the time to become an expert of all possible scientific controversies) and explicitly affirms that the public is unfit to decide on scientific controversies/
- According to Lippmann, it is public opinion that has to decide on controversies. Lippmann, however, is a pragmatist thinkers: he refuses all idealized version of the public (where all citizens will find the time to become an expert of all possible scientific controversies) and explicitly affirms that the public is unfit to decide on scientific controversies/
- It is unrealistic, says Lippmann, to believe that the members of the public will dedicate to each controversy more attention than the occasional 5 minutes reading between two underground stops.
- Or with a metaphor…
- The role of the media, and newspaper in particular, is therefore crucial for Lippmann to make democracy possible, despite the unfitness of the public to decide on controversies. Newspaper provides the citizens with the little tiny cues that allow them to decide on controversies notwithstanding the limitations of knowledge, attention and times that they have.
- This kind of worked of a couple of centuries, but today newspapers are dying as their business model (essentially based on advertisements selling) is increasingly underlined by the competition of the new electronic media.
- But electronic media may solve the problem that they caused or, at least, this is the hope of controversy mapping.
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