1. Discourses
For the purposes of this research, I use the term ‘discourse’ simply to refer to a unit of language organised around a particular subject matter and meaning. The first stage of my analysis identifies a series of subjects or discourses that are discussed within the public dialogues, based upon the words being used to discus them.
I am however interested in discourses in order to understand the world that speakers describe with their choice of words – and the values and social norms revealed in these choices and descriptions. I therefore engage in these discourses more critically at the second stage of analysis when I consider the sociotechnical imaginaries at play within these discourses.
2. Sociotechnical Imaginaries
Sociotechnical imaginaries are defined as:
“Collectively held, institutionally stabilised and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through and supportive of, advances in science and technology”. (Jasanoff & Kim 2015)
Simultaneously normative and descriptive, they both express and prescribe the meanings, purposes and priorities of science and technology.
The concept has been developed by Jasanoff and Kim (2009 & 2015) to help examine the complex relationship between knowledge, its applications and power. They argue that conceptual frameworks that help situate technologies within the material moral and social landscapes are in abundance in science fiction yet are scarce in STS. Nevertheless, STS acknowledges the normative dimensions of science and technology. For instance, the concept of coproduction (Jasanoff 2004) describes how science and technology do not uni-directionally shape our values and norms, but, in symmetry, our sense of how we ought to organise and govern ourselves shapes how we make sense nature, society and the world. Coproduction does however lack the specificity to understand why particular problems, viewpoints
and ideas persist – it helps us understand how things fit together, but not how they come to be as they are. They argue that “the idea of sociotechnical imaginaries confronts some of these challenges head on” (Jasanoff and Kim 2015).
Originating in their work on the US and South Korean response to nuclear power (Jasanoff & Kim 2009), the concept also draws on literature around the construction of imaginaries from political and cultural theory. For instance, Jasanoff and Kim (2015, p6) specifically attribute the work of Durkeheim and Weber as helping us take for granted the idea that societies share common narratives of who they are, where they have come from and where they are going. Benedict Anderson’s work ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991) is also cited as being foundational to the concept. In this, Anderson brings together ethnography and political science, to understand the Nation state, and nationalism, as an imagined community – a construction of individuals that don’t meet but that are tied together thorough shared practices of narrating, recollecting and forgetting.
Widening the gaze beyond nationhood and onto questions around the grand patterns of historial and political thought, Charles Taylor (2003) also develops the idea of imaginary further. In considering how did the modern world – and its distinctive structures, institutions and practices – come to be, he concludes that imaginaries changed, defining social imaginary as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.” (Taylor 2003, quoted in Jasanoff and Kim 2015 p7). Arjun Appadurai’s (1990) work on globalisation and diaspora is also cited as significant. In particular, Jasanoff and Kim (2015) argue that in this writing Appadurai turns the notion of the imagination as a fantasy or “opium for the masses whose real work is elsewhere”, nor “simple escape from a world defined principally by more concrete purpose and structures”, but is contributing to the shaping of our material world by defining what could and ought to be (Appadurai 1990, cited in Jasanoff and Kim 2015).
What is however missing from all of these accounts of social imaginaries however is any detailed investigation of science and technology, which Jasanoff and Kim argue, have been modernity’s most salient forces. The notion of “technoscientific
imaginaries” developed by George Marcus (1995) might appear to address this omission, but Jasanoff and Kim (2015, p11) argue that the context of these technoscientific imaginaries is the scientific workplace and their aims and achievements tied to scientific production. They argue that instead, sociotechnical imaginaries are necessary in order to continue the STS tradition of symmetry, to investigate “how, through the imaginative work of varied social actors, scicence and technology become enmeshed in performing and producing diverse visions of collective good, at expanding scales of governance from communities to nation- states to the planet” (Jasanoff and Kim 2015, page 11).
As illustration, Jasanoff and Kim (2009) describe how “sociotechnical imaginaries” have proved particularly useful for policymakers in late modern societies:
“Imagined futures help justify new investments in S&T; in turn, advances in S&T reaffirm the state’s capacity to act as responsible stewards of the public good. Sociotechnical imaginaries serve in this respect both as the ends of policy and as instruments of legitimation.” (Jasanoff & Kim 2009)
Importantly for this research, Jasanoff and Kim (2015) argue that while National governments are important sites for the construction and implementation of sociotechnical imaginaries, others might hold different imaginaries, based on different values, cultures and perceptions of the good life. These imaginaries will in turn shape how power and the role of science and technology in our society are understood, legitimized, valued and assessed. Understanding the sociotechnical imaginaries at play would appear to be a useful step towards identifying similarities and differences in the views of the public, experts and policymakers, as well as to making sense of how different groups come to know and form positions on particular new and emerging technologies (Jasanoff & Kim 2009).
Also helpfully for this research, Jasanoff and Kim (2009) have gone some way to explaining how to identify sociotechnical imaginaries. They suggest that documents and texts relating to science, technology and power – such as policy reports, speeches, judicial opinions – are some of the most accessible resources as, by their nature, official documents tend to favour the imaginaries of elites. Other documents, such as those produced by NGOS or social movements (arguably the reports of
public dialogues) are likely to reflect alternative imaginaries. They also suggest that open-ended interviews with key social actors are also useful to “understanding the performative, non-codified dimensions of collective self-identifications and ideologies” and to relate discourse to practice. In terms of analysis, they suggest going beyond formal techniques of discourse analysis, to look at linguistic and symbolic elements, such as rhetorical devices, articulations of the public good, risk or responsibility (Jasanoff n.d.). To further the use of the concept, Jasanoff has also produced a series of questions to ask of a text when trying to understand sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Hurlbut 2014).
Despite these useful features, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries is not without its drawbacks for my research. Most notably, it puts science and technology at its centre. While I am interested in how the public talk about science and technology, I am also aware that perceptions tend to be shaped by wider societal issues than science alone, and so I have some concerns about putting technology at the centre of my analytic frame.
John Dryzek (Dryzek 2005), in his work looking at environmental discourses, uses the term ‘worldview’ to describe the values framework or vision of the good life that he argues shapes attitudes to environmental technology. While the term ‘worldview’ lacks the specificity of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ – Dryzek goes no way towards defining what it means, nor characterizing any mechanism by which it may function or exert influence – and appears to discuss a more personal rather than collective concept, it does appear to look more widely than sociotechnical imaginaries. Dryzek has also detailed a series of questions to ask of discourses in order to identify environmental worldviews. These questions have considerable overlap with Jasanoff’s questions and so I have drawn the two together to form a series of questions (described later in the chapter) to apply to my texts, that will allow me to both identify the sociotechnical imaginaries, but at the same time remain alert to wider influences.
Approach
1. Analysis of discourses and imaginaries expressed in reports of public dialogue exercises and in the analogous documents submitted to policymakers by ‘expert’ bodies. (Chapter 4)
2. Analysis of discourses and imaginaries expressed in relevant policy documents (Chapter 5)
3. Comparison of public, expert and policy discourse and imaginaries and development of initial hypotheses to explain the policy impact of public dialogue (Chapter 6, Part 1)
4. Semi-structured interviews with policymakers, with questions focused on testing the initial hypotheses, in order to draw firm conclusions. (Chapter 6, Part 2).