In the GM food debate presented in Chapter 1, what is the status of the science under discussion? It is obvious enough that both sides of the controversy draw on a picture of science that is somewhat blurred. Both Monsanto and Green- peace (as well as the various lay contributors) deploy a version of science that is thoroughly embroiled in society. Thus, the public features both as a contribu- tor and as a representation in that the ostensible views, needs and interests of the public are mobilized in the argument to warrant and justify particular scientific and technological strategies. This blurring touches on several aspects of the relation between science and society: the ‘rational’ status of science; the position of science vis-à-vis other institutions in society; the role of science in
Western ‘progress’. All of these topics have been subject to sustained explor- ation by social theory. It is to several of these treatments that this section is devoted.
Many social theorists, going back at least to Max Weber, have identified
rationalization as a key characteristic of modernity. Three aspects of this
rationalization can be drawn out (cf. Crook et al. 1992):
• the requirement for rational action to be informed by factual knowledge;
• the growth of impersonal systems (e.g. bureaucracies, the market) that
structure moderns’ lives;
• the extension of control over social and natural worlds not least through
making these worlds calculable.
Various theorists have gone on to critique this process of rationalization (notably critical theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas), not least because it has meant that substantive values have been overtaken by instrumental ones. That is to say, instead of an orientation towards the ‘good
life’ (in political, economic, social and cultural terms), modern rationalization has been concerned with determining the most efficient means (in terms of, for
example, organization and distribution of resources). This drive, it has been argued, lies at the heart of such modern travesties as the Holocaust (Bauman 1989, 1991; Beilharz 2000).
Associated with rationalization is the process of differentiation – the
increasingly refined separation of various spheres of human activity from one another. This process of differentiation has been thoroughgoing, ranging from such structural changes as the separation of economic and political ‘systems’ from the ‘lifeworld’ (the everyday world of lived experience) to differentiation between different aspects of culture (high and low art). Most relevant in the present case is the differentiation between science (and more generally expert-
ise) and society (cf. Nowotny et al. 2001). Separate, distinct, expert institutions
and scientific disciplines have proliferated as more and more aspects of the social and natural world have been rendered calculable and controllable. Importantly, such expert systems have been woven into states and corpor- ations. However, as Crook et al. note, this differentiation and rationalization is
not simply and uniformly driven by some ‘logic’ of modernity, but is a messy and contested process.
This last point evokes the issue of progress. Modernity, as an albeit com- plex and contradictory reaction against the constraints of feudal society, entailed a social commitment to such substantive goals as increased political enfranchisement and economic equality. In relation to science, this notion of progress has been manifested in a number of ways, most obviously in terms of the accumulation of knowledge and the incremental movement towards the ‘truth’. Less obviously, science has been both an icon of modernity (in so far as
it has been presented as an embodiment of all the best aspects of modernity, e.g. freedom, truth and equality) and a central part of the master narrative of
modernity (cf. Lyotard 1984).
Now, a number of contemporary social theorists suggest that, in various ways, this picture has changed fundamentally. A confusing array of labels has been attached to these changes – late modern, high modern, postmodern to name but three. But what seems common among them is the idea that there is increasing ‘fluidity’ in society. The seeming rigidities of modern structures, institutions, forms of life appear to have ‘loosened up’. The old categories used to describe the modern world have become inadequate. For example, Lyotard (1984) has argued that the grand narrative of science is no longer valid or recognizable. That is to say, the once entrenched stories that were associated with science have stopped structuring the way we think about the nature of social life and the possibilities of progress. This is because, according to Lyo- tard, (postmodern) science is no longer at the core of the modernist project: it has failed to deliver its Enlightenment promise. Science is now just the techni- cian-servant of industry, uninterested in political and economic progress
towards greater equality and freedom. Indeed, as we shall see, science is better thought of as ‘technoscience’.
Furthermore, as Nowotny et al. (2001) note, the erosion of the status of
science in the postmodern world is allied to the de-differentiation of science from
other spheres. The differentiation (or professionalization) of science from other sectors of society was hard won – a major accomplishment (e.g. Whitley 1984; Shapin 1991; Gieryn 1999) by scientific institutions. But latterly, science seems to have diffused into a variety of fora and settings. Nowotny et al. point
to several factors that have led to the increasing ‘alignment’ – that is, the co-evolution – of science and society:
it has become increasingly difficult to establish a clear demarcation and differentiation between science and society. The fundamental categories of the modern world – state, society, economy, culture [and science] – have become porous and even problematical . . . [Further- more] both science and society . . . are subject to the same, or similar, driving forces.
(Nowotny et al. 2001: 47)
These driving forces are listed as:
• The overall growth of uncertainty – ‘both science and society have
opted for the production of the New in an open-ended process of moving toward a plurality of unknown futures’ (p. 35).
• The pervasiveness of new forms of economic rationality that centre in
particular upon speculation and which are echoed in science as the production of ‘insubstantial promises, which are based upon a poten- tial that is difficult to assess properly and which will take time to develop fully but which are amplified through the media, excite the imagination of industry and the public and influence decisions about which parts of basic research are to be funded and which lines of inquiry are to be pursued’ (p. 38).
• The transformation of time into an ‘extended present’ wherein future
prospects are experienced as closer to the present: in both science and society, there is an enhanced sense of mastery of the future world (in biological terms, for example).
• The flexibilization of space: while there has been a compression of
space, time and distance, not least through new information and communication technologies, distance has also become ambiguous. On the one hand, certain local sites appear closer together (more ‘stitchable together’). On the other, as knowledge or technology or cultural images speed across these sites, differences as well as similar- ities become apparent.
• The self-organizing capacity of science and society: both sectors are now,
partly in response to the potentially disruptive ‘closeness’ of other local sites, engaged in processes of reflexivity, self-scrutiny and defin- ition, aiming to derive a ‘main reference framework in which a sense of stability and orientation can be constructed’ (p. 44). However, part of this reflexivity is also an attempt to accommodate the demands of other actors – say, of the demands for accountability placed by society on science.
To reiterate, these abstractions (and highly abstract dynamics these are indeed) are not supposed to describe causal relations between science and society. Nowotny et al. (2001) are rather more interested in the processes of co- evolution in which one finds the clustering and interdependent influence of
science and society. At the very least, these authors point to the ways in which science has, if not divested itself of, certainly supplemented its modernist character. As the preceding list suggests, the relation of both science and soci- ety to rationalization and progress has become altogether more complex and contingent.
Rationalization is as much about reflexivity and accountability as effi- ciency and instrumentality, and progress has been redefined in the context of space–time compression and the open-endedness and uncertainty of the future. Already, then, we can see a view of social and scientific change which offers a challenging contrast to the discussion in the previous two chapters.