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Science, Technology and Democracy on the STS Agenda: Review Article
Abstract
Irwin's ‘Citizen Science’ and Sclove's ‘Technology and Democracy’ represent two important recent attempts, from different precincts of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), to explore the democratization of science and technology. Irwin suggests that policies for democratizing science and technology should avoid the pre-definitions of science of experts. Sclove promotes the utilization of democratic design criteria to inhibit the unanticipated negative effects of technology on democracy. Despite their differences both texts address similar politkal questions and display some theoretical convergence. These similarities suggest that Sclove's claims that there is a clear division, according to their theoretical orientation between studies in STS which are concerned with the politics of science and technology and those which are not, are overstated. Both texts possess considerable merits but tend to romanticise ‘lay knowledges’ and oversimplify the politics of expertise.
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The other ‘urges’ being research on ‘science as a social system’ and ‘educational considerations’. D. Edge, ‘Reinventing the wheel’, in S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Peterson and T. Pinch (eds), Handbook Of Science And Technology Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California. 1995; p. 10, pp. 3–25.
At the time of writing Alan Irwin was Reader in Sociology at Brunel University, West London.
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Barry Barnes, About Science, Blackwell, Oxford, 1985; Barry Barnes, The Elements of Social Theory, UCL Press, London, pp. 104–110.
T. Gieryn, ‘Boundaries of science’, in Jasanoff, op.cit., Ref 1, pp. 393–443.
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Numerous studies of scientific controversy show how technical and broader social considerations become interlinked. See for example, Brian Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy, State University of New York, Albany, USA, 1991; Evelleen Richards, Vitamin C and Cancer: Medicine or politics, Macmillan, London, 1991.
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Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, Basic Books, USA, 1994; Jerome Ravetz. Science and its Social Problems, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971; Terry Shinn and Richard Whitley (eds), Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation, Dordrecht, Reidel, The Netherlands, 1985; Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987.
For an introduction to the ‘Science Wars’, see C. Macilwain, ‘Campuses ring to a stormy clash over truth and reason’, D. Dickson, ‘Champions or challengers of the cause of science?’ and E. Masood, ‘Gunfire echoes in debates on public understanding’, in ‘briefing science wars’, Nature, Vol. 387, 22, May 1997, pp. 331-335. For an example of the ‘politics’ of the public understanding of science see, L. Wolpert, ‘Woolly thinking in the field’, in ‘Risk in a modern society, Special Supplement’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 31 May 1996, p. viii. See also in response, A. Irwin and B. Wynne, Times Higher Education Supplement, ‘Lessons of the sharp end’, 21 June 1996, p. 13.
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Richard Sclove is the founder of FASTnet (the Federation of Activists on Science and Technology Network) and executive director of the Loka Institute an organisation set up to promote the democratic politics of technology, e-mail loka@amherst.edu
Kant's ‘Categorical Imperative’ was expressed in the following terms: Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only’, cited in Richard Sclove, Technology and Democracy, The Guilford Press, New York, 1995, p. 34.
The problems of defining technology so as to capture the specific but also general features of the politics and social shaping of technology have been discussed in numerous places, see for instance, W.E. Bijker and J. Law ‘Postscript: technology, stability and social theory’, in: E. Wiebe Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 1992, pp. 290–308.
R. Sclove, ‘STS on other planets’, EASST Review, 15, 2 June 1996, pp. 12-16; D. Edge, ‘Editorial’ Social Studies of Science, 26, 4, 1996, pp. 723–732.
David Mercer, ‘Understanding scientific/technical controversy’, Science and Technology Policy Research Group Occasional Paper No. 1, November 1996, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.