The Canadian Science Advocacy Movement

Nicole Stradiotto

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Masters of Information Faculty of Information University of Toronto

Nicole Stradiotto

Masters of Information

Faculty of Information University of Toronto

2019 Abstract

In this study I explore the nature of the disruptive mobilized science that erupted in

Canada between 2006-2018. I investigate both the culture of Canadian mobilized science and the larger question of why this movement occured. I draw on data from interviews with event organizers, as well as from an analysis of publicly-available rally speeches. I utilize Ulrich Beck’s reflexive modernization theory to demonstrate that the culture of science advocacy organizers is complex, and includes both elements that align with Beck's vision of a “reflexive science,” and elements that seem to represent its opposite, or what Beck calls “modern science.” Social movement theory supports my finding that the movement drew on a set of different institutions that provided resources and facilitative conditions. Further, I find that an alliance between specific “impact” disciplines, such as environmental and health sciences, is another facilitative condition for mobilized science.

Table of Contents

List of Tables 3

Chapter 1: Introduction 6

Chapter 2: Background, a short history of the movement 8

Chapter 3: Literature review 12 3.1 Scientists as self-advocates and activists 12 3.2 Reflexive Science 14 3.3 Social Movement Theory 16

Chapter 4: Methods 19 4.1 Data collection: Interviews 19 4.2 Data collection: Rally speeches 21

Chapter 5: Is Canadian mobilized science reflexive? 22 5.1 The science of science 22 5.2 Epistemic authority 24 5.3 Science’s fallibility and adaptability 27 5.4 Integrating values into research 30 5.5 Conclusion 32

Chapter 6: Exploring the facilitative conditions of mobilized science 32 6.1 Resource mobilization theory 33 6.1.1 Federal political parties 33 6.1.2 The university 34 6.1.3 Professional Associations and Labour Unions 39 6.1.4 Social movements 40 6.2 Impact Science, production science and political opportunity structure 41

Chapter 7: Conclusion 43

References 45

iii

List of Tables

Table 1: operationalization of modern and reflexive science Table 2: operationalization of production and impact science

Chapter 1: Introduction

The Canadian “science advocacy” movement (Linnit, 2014) arose in response to what critics have dubbed Stephen Harper’s “War on Science” (Amend & Barney, 2015). During his term as Prime Minister (2006-2015), Harper was responsible for heavy funding cuts to scientific programs, the restructuring of federal-level science, and highly restrictive science-communication and access-to-information practices. These drastic moves led to public outcry and the rise of scientist-led protest action, action that included events like the “Death of Evidence” and “Stand Up for Science” rallies and the establishment of the organizations Evidence for Democracy and Our Right to Know. This conflict became one of the defining political controversies of Harper’s governance.

With the election of Donald Trump, Canadian science advocates mobilized again under the banner of the “March for Science” in early 2017. The American-led march (which has spawned an international social movement organization) arose in response to Trump’s threats to defund various scientific programs, his antagonism toward the Environmental Protection Agency his public denial of anthropogenic climate change (Eilperin, 2016; Milman, 2016). A transnational-activist network reactivated Canadian science activists (Evidence for Democracy, 2017). This continued through the next year; March for Science 2018 reached nine Canadian cities.

Under the current Trudeau administration, movement organizations consider the most draconian of the heavily-criticized components of the “War on Science” redressed (Westwood & Walsh, 2016). That said, these scientists are still active, though in many ways their activity is better described as that of an interest group as opposed to a movement. They are focusing now on “safeguarding” their newly reinstated rights (Daviau & Gibbs, 2016) and attempting to hold the Liberals to their promises—promises to abide by “a higher bar for openness and transparency” and “evidence-based decision-making” (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2016).

That said, with the recent election of Doug Ford, this network may soon use tactics like marches and rallies again. More broadly, it is apparent that the end of Harper’s governance was far from the end of the story, as the science wars have become a significant set of phenomena that have the capacity to span administrations and national borders. Neither are the actions of the Trump administration necessarily the culmination of this trend. In the words of Rush Holt, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and March for Science 2017 advocate, “It's not just about Donald Trump… It's built on a growing anxiety about the conditions under which science can thrive” (Semeniuk, 2017). It seems that a certain type of dramatic friction in science-society relations, which Canada felt earlier than many other Western nations, may be a feature of our era.

As such it is no surprise that many significant intellectual efforts have been devoted to documenting the phenomena of “anti-science” governance. In the Canadian context alone, books like The war on science: Muzzled scientists and wilful blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada (Turner, 2013), Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada (Gustein, 2014) and Kill the Messengers: Stephen Harper's Assault on Your Right to Know (Bourrie, 2015) have meticulously demonstrated that the Conservative government has ignored, misrepresented and and suppressed scientific research.

Yet this version of the story contains large omissions. First, who are these scientists? The culture of those who wage “war” on science has been explored in depth. Mooney (2006), Turner (2013), Gustein (2014), Bourrie (2015) and others have produced detailed profiles of the conservative cultures that are represented by George W. Bush and Stephen Harper. But what of the other side of the story? Is it not also important to understand the political position and worldview behind mobilized science at greater depth?

Second, why did the “war on science” happen? As commented by sociologists McCright and Dunlap, many texts like Mooney (2006), Turner (2013), Gustein (2014) and Bourrie (2015) provide important documentation of what happened, but “only rarely do they delve deeply into why it has happened–beyond suggesting the obvious political motivations of the actors involved” (2010, p. 100).

In this project I aim to address these omissions. First, I ask: how can we describe the culture of Canadian mobilized science? Second, I inquire: what are some of the as-of-yet unclarified facilitative conditions behind mobilized science in Canada?

To investigate the culture of Canadian mobilized science, I utilize Ulrich Beck’s “reflexive modernization theory”. Bearing in mind that it is impossible to summarize the negotiation of norms, practices and beliefs that constitute any one culture, I demonstrate that the culture of science advocacy organizers is complex, and includes both elements that align with Beck's vision of a “reflexive science,” and elements that seem to represent its opposite, or what Beck called “modern science.”

In my investigation into why the movement occured, I draw on social movement theory, specifically, resource mobilization theory and political process theory. I found that political parties, universities, professional associations and labour unions, as well as other social movements, all to some extent provided resources to, and so facilitative conditions for, the movement. Further, I found that specific sciences (“impact” sciences, e.g. environmental and health sciences) are a large presence and focus in this movement, and as such, an alliance between these sciences may be considered another facilitative condition for mobilized science.

To complete this analysis, I interviewed 12 activists in early 2018 from across Canada who organized the largest events of science advocacy from 2006 through May 2018: The Stand Up for Science march and March for Science. Further, in an effort to draw on the public communications of the movement, I integrated into my analysis fifteen rally speeches—nine speeches from the 2012 Ottawa Death of Evidence Ottawa rally, and six from the 2017 Toronto March for Science. All of this is undergirded by desktop research of secondary sources and journalistic articles, to provide historical context.

The structure of this thesis is as follows. In Chapter 2 I offer a short historical background of mobilized science in the Canadian context. In Chapter 3, I will review the relevant literature—both empirical precedent for this phenomena and theoretical debate relevant to my analysis. Chapter 4 is a description of the methodology that I used to investigate the movement. Chapter 5 marks the beginning of my analysis, as I consider the evidence that the movement represents an example of what Beck calls “reflexive” science. In Chapter 6 I investigate the facilitative conditions behind mobilization. First, I investigate the effects that federal political party resources, university resources, professional associations and labour unions and other social movements had on movement mobilization. Next, I consider whether an alliance amoung impact sciences was important to movement mobilization. Lastly, in the conclusion I offer a final reflection on the movement and the insight that this case offers us about the changing relationship between science and society.

Chapter 2: Background, a short history of the movement

In what follows I review some significant historical landmarks in the development of the movement. While not a comprehensive review, I aim to give the reader a familiarity with the concrete events that compose the movement. This will contextualize the analysis ahead.

While Harper was in power (2006-2015), the Conservative government undertook a wide variety of actions characterized by science advocates as “anti-science”. These include the defunding of federal programs, the restructuring of environmental regulation and national-level research funding, and a variety of measures that made federal scientific information less accessible to the public.

While Harper was in power, the government significantly defunded a number of programs to the protest of scientists (Chung, 2014). These included initiatives focused on public health, poverty, immigrant and refugee rights, women’s health and indigenous rights, and programs that monitored food inspections, oil spills, water quality, climate change and smoke stack emissions (CBC, 2014). Further, the Conservatives restructured environmental law and changed environmental assessment processes in ways decried by environmental scientists—these changes disqualified substantial geographic areas from environmental protection and made it possible to greatly accelerate the development of resource extraction projects (Amend & Barney, 2016).

Further, Harper restructured scientific research funding. Most strikingly, the National Research Council (NRC) shifted its focus from basic to industry-supportive, applied research. The new mandate was accompanied by blatant rebranding; the NRC became self-described as a “concierge” service for industry (Turner, 2013). Gary Goodyear, then minister of state for science and technology, summarized the new NRC as a “a one-stop, 1-800 ‘I have a solution for your business problem.’” (Turner, 2013). Perhaps more to the point, the president of the NRC, John McDougall, justified these changes by stating that “scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value” (Toronto Star, 2013).

Beyond funding cuts and restructuring, the Harper government also generally made federal scientific information much less accessible. Access-to-information request processing under Harper was slow and often resulted in documents that were not computer-readable (see News Media Canada’s Freedom of Information audits, 2006-2015; Rubin & Kozolanka, 2014). Cuts to scientific libraries, data archives, and archival job-development programs were other important components of this issue (Brabazon & Kozolanka, 2018). Further, the long-form census was cut, significantly reducing the social-scientific data yielded by the national survey. This is to say nothing of the fact that Harper also infamously “muzzled” federal scientists. Under the policies established by the Harper government, federal scientists were not allowed to speak directly to the media (CBC, 2015). That is, a journalist attempting to contact a federal

5 scientist would be redirected to an administrator who would significantly delay and/or mediate the interaction between scientist and journalist (Brabazon & Kozolanka, 2018; CBC, 2015). Such delays often lasted weeks, and were sometimes months in length.

Scientists pushed back against these changes early in Harper’s governance, though mostly in non-disruptive forms at first. The term disruptive indicates forms of action that entail higher risk/commitment than other forms of political participation (Van Laer & Van Aelst, 2010; Tarrow 1998). In social movement literature, tactics like marches, rallies and sit-ins are generally considered disruptive, while tactics like open letters or producing research reports are non-disruptive (though schemes vary amoung theorists). The terms “disruptive” and “non-disruptive” are not to be confused with “radical” and “reformist”—they do not refer to the ambition or revolutionary potential movement goals but only to concrete tactics.

To return to the historical narrative, early scientist-activism was non-disruptive. The earliest form of organized protest undertaken in the name of science in Canada during Harper’s term is an open letter signed by 85 scientists in the health, environment and technology fields entitled “The politicization of Science in Canada” (Jay, 2008). This letter does not mention the term “anti-science” nor “war on science”, but is consistent with the anti-science frames that would flourish later in the movement’s development.

The first disruptive action that I take to be part of the movement is that of the Archivists March on Ottawa (CBC News, 2012). This event focused on combating the funding cuts to federal programs that supported early-career archivists at a local level. While small in attendance, the march achieved national coverage (Ibid). The scope of this event’s grievances were small and were not articulated using an anti-science frame. That said, as confirmed by my interview data, there was contact between the organizers of this march and those behind the events that represent the peak of the movement, and this contact can be said to have contributed to the replication of tactics across events.

The first substantial disruptive event of the movement is the Death of Evidence March, which took place in Ottawa, July 2012 in response to the passage of Bill C-38, the omnibus bill in which Harper dismantled dozens of scientific programs. Organized in part by the University of Ottawa graduate student of Katie Gibbs, this rally was attended by approximately 2,000 people and received international coverage (“Death of evidence”, 2012). While said coverage can be attributed to previously existent international attention—prior to the March, a group of highly reputed international scientists had sent an open letter of protest to Harper regarding the government’s muzzling practices—the group’s creative tactics, including the creation of a coffin representing the “body of evidence”, surely aided the success of their bid for public attention.

After the success of the march (later in 2012), Katie Gibbs and others created one of the most successful social movement organization to be borne of the movement, Evidence for Democracy. The small Ottawa-based non-profit undertook a number of initiatives over the course of the movement and became a key driving force behind the organization of cross-national disruptive events. Other important initiatives include conducting reports such as “Can Scientists Speak?” (2014) which provided precise articulations of the movement’s grievances, the crafting of which is often an issue for movements in their early days.

While Evidence for Democracy was founded in 2013, 2012 saw the creation of the other major organization of the movement, Our Right to Know, a Toronto-based organization. It’s contributions include the coordination of a number of both disruptive and non-disruptive events, a letter-writing campaign, as well as an online “timeline” of what they take to be government transgressions against scientific practice (Our Right to Know, 2018d).

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada proved to be as instrumental in the movement as any social movement organization. Like Evidence for Democracy, the organization created a number of reports that proved to be essential articulations of the movement’s grievances. In particular, their surveys that investigated scientist muzzling became important sources in movement literature. Further, they organized a protest in May 2015 with sites in Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver alongside two other major federal unions and Evidence for Democracy, demanding that respect for the integrity of public science be enshrined in their next labour contract (Semeniuk, 2015). This was strategic effort in relation to federal campaign cycles; the organization voted to campaign openly against the Harper government during the 2015 election (PIPSC, 2014).

The movement succeeded in making science an election issue in 2015. Then, with the election of Justin Trudeau—the leader of a party having made extensive promises to support the cause of the movement—disruptive action subsided. Trudeau formally unmuzzled scientists and took steps to take the movement into the fold of contentious politics as a legitimate interest group.

Yet as aforementioned, the election of Donald Trump mobilized the movement again. When the event and eventual social movement organization March for Science formed in 2017, Evidence for Democracy coordinated under the banner of this cause, and more than 19 marches were held across the country. This momentum carried through to the next year; 2018 saw another set of marches, though around half as many (Yarmie, 2018).

With the humble turnout of the 2018 March for Science (CBC News 2018; Andone & Benson), at the time of writing what I have been calling a “movement” appears to be better identified as an “interest group”. In the SMS literature, there are three differences between social movements and interest groups: 1) interest

7 groups are defined in relation to the government, whereas social movements attempt to enact change in other spheres of social life, 2) interest groups are regarded as legitimate actors in the political arena, as opposed to as outsiders, and 3) interest groups pursue their objectives through institutionalized means, whereas social movements are active in politics through disruptive events like marches (Snow, Soule & Kriesi, 2008). While the movement had always looked something like an interest group—what with its clear target of the federal government, and its elite standing in the political sphere—it had, for a while, practiced noninstitutional tactics. In this project, I focus on the individuals that organized disruptive events during the period in which science advocacy in Canada can be designated a movement (2012-2018).

Chapter 3: Literature review

My literature review is structured as follows. I first offer a tour of the empirical precedent for Canadian mobilized science: a review of the literature discussing scientists as self-advocates and activists. Next I tackle reflexive modernity theory, which will help me to answer my first research question (what is the culture of Canadian science advocacy?). Next, I review social movement theory, which will help me to to address my second research question (what are the structural determinants of the Canadian science advocacy movement?).

3.1 Scientists as self-advocates and activists

Commentators have often claimed that the mobilized science that has emerged in this era is historically unique (MacKendrick, 2017). Yet such claims are often overstated. Scientists have engaged in both self-advocacy and disruptive activism before this historical moment.

The earliest forms of scientific institutions—the first forms of scientific societies that historians of science recognize as representing science as we know it today, such as The Royal Society (Oreskes, 2010)—were born into the world negotiating with patrons (Shapin, 2010; Yearley, 2014). In the course of their development, these institutions have continually negotiated with government, industry and the public, and in so doing have used a wide variety of political tactics and strategies to accrue resources and achieve autonomy (Shapin, 2010; Yearley 2014). The self-advocacy used in such negotiations has been extensively explored in academic literature through inquiry into scientists as public communicators. In particular, the fields of Public Communication of Science & Technology and Science & Technology Studies have contributed significantly to our understanding of the ways in which scientists represent themselves and their research in public settings in an effort to achieve their collective goals.

One important insight from the literature exploring scientists as self-advocates is that scientists often engage in “boundary-work” (Gieryn, 1983). In his landmark paper, Gieryn demonstrates that scientists often define science in ways that advances their professional goals. That is, scientists will leverage the fact that “the boundaries of science are ambiguous, flexible, historically changing, contextually variable, internally inconsistent, and sometimes disputed” in order to define science in a way that is politically advantageous in a given situation. This often involves redrawing the “borders” between science and other intellectual or technological activities—between, for instance, pseudoscience and science, or between basic science and its technological application.

Another important observation from the literature exploring scientists as self-advocates is that scientists often employ the “deficit model” when communicating with the public (Simis et al. 2016). This model

9 attempts to explain public lack of support for (or trust in) science. The deficit model dictates that if a public does not trust or favour scientific knowledge, this is because this public is not sufficiently scientifically literate. This asserts that once an individual understands science, they will always value and trust this knowledge more than other knowledge systems. As such—and this is the crux of the criticisms leveled against the use of this model—this assumes that science is epistemically superior to other knowledge systems (Wynne, 1995). Its use is associated with Public Understanding of Science, a research and policy program that aims to improve science education and communication, popularized in the UK, the US and other nations in the 1980s (Pitrelli, 2003). While the deficit model is generally understood in the literature to be an outmoded and ineffective approach to public communication, it is still a quite common, if not dominant, in science-society relations (Simis et al., 2016).

Scientists have engaged in politics not only as self-advocates, they have lent their weight to a variety of political debates. More specifically, doubtless in part because of what historian of science Naomi Oreskes speculates is “epistemic proximity”, scientists have often been part of social movements that are significantly related to scientific research and/or technological development.

The most robust example of this is anti-military (including anti-nuclear) mobilization in the west. As documented by Moore (2009), many American scientists participated in a range of disruptive and non-disruptive modes of political participation in an effort to support anti-military protest. This lead to the establishment of groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and Science for the People, social movement organizations that have been revived in the war-on-science era (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018; Science for the People, 2018). It is notable that while this movement had specific grievances like preventing nuclear holocaust and restructuring the military industrial complex, many such groups and individuals considered the work of their movement to be not only to change military and nuclear policy, but also to effect changes on the social position and internal culture of science as a whole (Moore, 2009).

The anti-war movement is not the only disruptive mobilization in which scientists have been heavily involved. Since the 1960s, scientists have been very much engaged in what were are sometimes called “controversies” in the academic literature—local citizen protest against unwanted technologies or development projects (Breyman 2016; Nelkin 1992). In these cases, scientists involved in such standoffs were often allied with industry and/or government (movement targets) (Breyman 2016). That said, scientists were in some cases openly allied with protesters, and this phenomenon has only increased over time, with the continued development of what Hess calls “industrial transition movements” (typified by the protest of projects that pose environmental hazards, like pipelines) (Breyman, 2016; Hess, 2016; Allen, 2003).

The nature of scientists’ involvements in such “controversies” or “industrial transition movements” from the 1960s through to today has been greatly elucidated by Frickel (2000, 2011, 2015). Specifically, Frickel has explored the fact that scientists have often been mobilized by movements in invisible ways, or at least, ways that are often not recognized by academics as part of mobilization, though they nonetheless represent vital contributions to activist efforts. One such form is “shadow mobilization”, a form of activism in which scientists act as behind-the-scenes resources for activists (Frickel, 2010). Further, scientists can support movements through ”research agenda setting”—Frickel has specifically laid out the case for the creation of the discipline of Toxicology as a form of environmentalist activism (Frickel, 2004; Frickel et al., 2010).

As such, despite the overstated claims of many commentators that “we are witnessing a unique moment” (MacKendrick, 2017) with The March for Science and other such protests, scientists have been engaged in political struggle since the era of modern science began. Further, a wealth of academic literature has explored this topic. I hope to build on these insights in some small way.

3.2 Reflexive Science

The culture of those who wage “war” on science has been explored in depth. Turner (2013), Mooney (2006), Gustein (2014), have produced detailed profiles of the conservative cultures that produced and are represented by Bush, Harper and Trump. But what of the other side of the story? How can we understand the political position and belief system behind mobilized science at greater depth?

In the academic literature, attempts to understand the worldviews of groups of scientists have often come under the umbrella of studies into “epistemic cultures” (Cetina 2007). Such studies have succeeded in demonstrating that knowledge cultures vary across scientific disciplines, that social factors affect knowledge cultures, and that knowledge cultures can manifest through a variety of practices and objects. Since, Cetina and others have broadened the research program’s scope of analysis to distributed locations, and to phenomena that are broad and global in nature.

I explore whether Canadian mobilized science can be well-characterized as one such culture: a culture envisioned by Beck, which he calls “reflexive science”. Beck is a prominent sociological theorist who promoted the idea that risk is a defining feature of our age. He rose to prominence in the Western world in the late 1980s and 1990s in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster: his theory’s ability to respond to this crisis and the other environmental crises rose to the historical moment. One of Beck’s most substantial contributions to sociological literature is reflexive modernity theory, a system of ideas set out in texts including Risk Society (1992) and The Reinvention of Politics (1997). Reflexive modernization theory

11 offers a vision of a particular culture—a “reflexive science”—that I hypothesize will be present in the worldviews of Canadian activist-scientists. The potential to explore reflexive modernity as an epistemic culture has been identified by Cetina (2007, p. 370), and others have investigated the nature and presence of reflexive cultures in studies similar to my own. That is, the idea of reflexive science has been applied to characterize scientists’ attitudes towards GMOs (Tulloch, 2002) and to profile the culture of citizen science groups (Vallabh et al., 2016).

Reflexive modernization theories are based on the idea that there has been a historic break from modernity, “reflexive modernity”. Modernity, in social scientific literature, refers to an era beginning in approximately the 1700s in which enlightenment thinkers applied rational thinking and scientific methods to challenge authority (especially religious authority) in the name of the values of freedom and equality (Giddens & Sutton, 2014) . Beck takes reflexive modernity to be a subsequent period in which “the modern itself is modernized” (Beck, 1992; 2003).

Beck hypothesizes that as the negative, unintended consequences of modernization become more and more unmanageable and unpredictable (e.g. environmental disaster, unprecedented flows of human migration), the conditions of group decision-making become highly uncertain, and prominent social institutions operating in the modern mode will demonstrate their inability to control outcomes (read: disasters). As such, these institutions are threatened by legitimacy crises. Reflexive modernity scholars contend that to survive these legitimacy crises, institutions must become more reflexive.

It is important to note that Beck’s work has both descriptive and prescriptive components. He makes the descriptive case that reflexivity is an imperative in our social circumstances, and a prescriptive case that we should choose to be reflexive. In The Risk Society and other texts he details the prescriptive components of this theory as part of a political project (Draper,1993).

Beck predicts that science is one of the institutions that will be greatly transformed by reflexive modernity, and in turn that society will be transformed by “reflexive scientization”. As it is made clear that modern scientific approaches are flawed (they have failed to predict and/or control huge risks, and have in fact, created said risks) it becomes acceptable for different social groups to practice their own, politically-positioned types of science. In his language, he predicts that as scientific knowledge becomes “demonopolized”, it becomes “politically accepted” and “de-institutionalized”. This process can be characterized as a “marketization”, in which a variety of forms of competing expertise are considered legitimate. Or, it can be compared to the Reformation—as faith in Catholic institutions was lost, new forms of Christianity proliferated and gained legitimate social status. As faith in scientific epistemic supremacy is lost, Beck predicts that new forms of science will proliferate and gain social status.

Beck outlines a political project for the practice of science is this new era. It is built upon a set of reflexive beliefs. This new science does not assume that technological progress equals social progress. Further, it must consider itself but one form of epistemologically valuable form of knowledge, not as a superior mode of thought. Perhaps most fundamentally, it must see itself as a fallible institution that is capable of both making mistakes and learning from them. Maybe the most concrete of these prescriptions is that reflexive science must consider values inseparable from research. As such, values must be integrated into the smallest research considerations: “the selection of variables, the direction and scope of pursuing conjectures, the conceptual design, the methods of calculating 'risks', etc.” (p. 169) all become political issues for the reflexive scientist.

I recognize that the categories of modern and reflexive, as outlined above, represent a reductive binary in the face of the complex task of understanding a culture. I use these concepts with the recognition that they cannot wholly capture the broad combination of norms, practices and beliefs that constitute the worldviews of movement actors. That said, I still think that these concepts can be useful given that they are uniquely suited to analyzing this particular case—as evidenced by the fact that this scheme of Beck’s has been well-applied to the war on science in other ways. More specifically, reflexive modernity theory has been used to analyze conservative anti-science governance. McCright & Dunlap (2010), were the first to make this connection made between the science wars and reflexive modernization theory. The authors demonstrated that after the American conservative movement blatantly targeted environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this political faction learned from these failures by developing a set of tactics that McCright & Dunlap identify as “anti-reflexive”. These tactics can be thought of as a set of “non-decision-making” methods. These include obfuscating, misrepresenting, manipulating or suppressing the results of scientific research, intimidating individual scientists and invoking a pre-existing media bias (p. 113). To McCright & Dunlap, these tactics demonstrate an ethos that is the precise antithesis of the reflexivity championed by Beck. This theory has also been applied to characterize the actions of the Harper government by Young, & Coutinho (2013). They contend that Harpers’ strategies of publicly denying climate change, controlling researcher communications and appealing to nationalism can be well-understood as anti-reflexive strategies (Ibid).

3.3 Social Movement Theory

There are two bodies of social movement literature that attempt to explain the structural determinants of social movements: resource mobilization theory and political process theory. In this study, I apply both theories in an attempt to answer my second research question: what caused the Canadian science advocacy movement?

Resource mobilization theory is a classic social movement theory of the 1970s. It interprets social movements using the logic of economics. It conceives of activists as rational, utility-maximizing individuals, and of the organizational field as a set of structures from which movements seek to draw the resources to further their goals (McCarthy & Zald, 1977). In other words, it asks the question: how do activists access the resources that enable them to act? A classic example that demonstrates the utility of this perspective is Morris’ account of how black churches greatly supported the civil rights movement.

This theory has been criticised for its very thin conception of political context: organizations like political parties are reduced to potential resources, and are not analyzed for the myriad of other ways they can affect social movement actions. While this emphasis on resources has offered social movement theory a wealth of important empirical findings, a consensus has formed in the contemporary literature that this theory cannot offer a complete explanation, but rather a set of sufficient conditions (Koopmans, 2009).

I apply this theory by examining which institutions provided resources that aided the development of Canadian mobilized science. In particular, I analyze the role of political parties, universities, professional associations, labour unions, as well as other social movements. I find that while these institutions played an enabling role, their facilitation alone is not a sufficient explanation for mobilization.

Developed in response to the criticisms aimed at resource mobilization theory, political process theory is an answer to the call for attention to political context. This theory dictates that movements happen when powerful actors are aligned in patterns that create “opportunities”, that is, when what are called “political opportunity structures” enable and/or encourage activists to act. Eisinger (1973) pioneered this work with his analysis of local urban movements: he found that movements’ use of disruptive tactics varied according to the degree that municipal governments were repressive. McAdam (1982) demonstrated that the success of the civil rights movement could be linked to the migration of black americans to northern states and the subsequent loss of Democratic Party popularity amoung southern whites.

While the concept of “political opportunity structure” has faced criticism for the broad and inconsistent ways in which it is has been operationalized (Mayer, 2004), if carefully applied, it can yield important insight. I operationalize political opportunity structure as 1) degree of state repression and 2) elite alliances/ divisions. These are two common aspects of political opportunity structure that have consistently demonstrated analytical power in many studies, as with the landmark studies above (Ibid).

The predominant understanding of the political opportunity structure that spurs mobilized science is characterized by the state repression of “anti-science” governments (Mooney, 2006; Turner, 2013; Hess, 2016). Further, there is academic consensus around the idea that such movements arise in a context in which there is an elite alliance between conservative governments and industry (Mooney, 2006; Hess,

2016). While I take both of these factors to be facilitative conditions that hold empirically true in the Canadian case, I hope to add nuance to this model.

To add this nuance, I draw again on reflexive modernity theory. In this instance, I draw not only on Beck, but also on its development in environmental sociology by Schnaiberg, Mol, and Spaargaren. These theorists build on Beck to propose a distinction between two groups of scientists: “production” and “impact” scientists (Schnaiberg’s terminology, 1977). Production sciences direct their research to control nature and produce new comforts and affordances, while impact sciences “identify, examine and attempt to ameliorate the negative effects of earlier scientific endeavors” (McCright & Dunlap 2010, p. 104; Beck, 1992; Mol & Spaargaren, 2000). Prototypical examples of production sciences include physics and engineering. Prototypical examples of impact sciences include environmental sciences and health sciences.

There is prima facie evidence that the difference between impact science and production science is salient for understanding the movement in that impact science was a major focus of the collective grievances expressed by movement organizations. In some sense, this stands as de facto, given that the Harper government was systematically targeting impact sciences. As Amend & Barney (2015) have persuasively argued, Harper’s government as anti-scientific or as waging a war on science generally is a misleading frame: “the government has continued to make financial and rhetorical investments into science and technology to promote economic prosperity and boost Canadian national identity based on ‘innovation’” (p. 9). That is, Harper arguably supported production science while working against impact science.

More specifically, much of the federal program defunding from this era can be said to have targeted the impact sciences. The Conservative Party defunded many programs monitoring health and environmental risk—those that monitored food inspection, water quality, smoke stack emissions, oil spills and climate change amoung them (Chung, 2014). Further, concerns surrounding the cancellation of the long-form census can plausibly fall into this category as well, given that much of the criticism of this move was grounded in the fact that it greatly decreased the availability of solid statistical evidence of the health of many marginalized regions and populations (see, for example, The Canadian Public Health Association, 2010).

To summarize, I use social movement theory to answer the question: why did this movement happen? I do so by investigating how organizations like universities and unions aided the movement with resources. Further, I hope to add to our current understanding of the political opportunity structure in which this movement occured by investigating whether the movement is composed of impact sciences. In this way, I

15 plan to enrich the current understanding of the facilitative conditions in which disruptive, mobilized science occurs.

Chapter 4: Methods

I used a mix-method approach. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 organizers. Further, I integrated into my analysis 15 speeches from notable disruptive events in the movement. These analyses are undergirded by desktop research of secondary sources, notably journalistic articles from national news sources, to provide historical context.

4.1 Data collection: Interviews

My sample is purposive, and my sampling frame is as follows. I decided to start the exploratory phase of my project by interviewing the organizers of the largest demonstrative level events of science advocacy from 2006-May 2018: The Stand Up for Science march and March for Science. I chose to concentrate on these events given that these appear to be the most attended and reported (and so generally, largest and most significant) of the disruptive events organized in the name of science advocacy under each government under analysis. I found organizers through the public contact information listed on the website of the central social movement organization (Evidence for Democracy; Evidence for Democracy publicly listed the contact information for local organizers for each of the Stand up for Science marches). Further, I used Facebook “event” pages to identify potential participants: I contacted those that identified themselves as organizers in event descriptions and/or who were listed by Facebook as “hosting” the event in question. This decision is based upon the need to analyze what Paolo Gerbaudo defines “digital vanguards.” In his comparative study of social media managers for movements from Occupy to the Arab Spring, Gerbaudo demonstrates that, while not necessarily visible in public, these individuals hold considerably powerful positions within movement characterized by a strong online presence (2017). I recruited through email and facebook messaging. I recruited in rounds stratified by geography and event year; I aimed to get a sample including those from cities across Canada and from different times. In total, I spoke to 10 participants sampled through this logic.

Having satisfied my sampling frame in terms of geography and time period, I had begun to think about the breadth of this movement’s non-disruptive tactics, and decided to reach out to those who participated in science advocacy through less disruptive modes of advocacy (e.g. open letter organizers and those who had created online resources for the movement). Through this round of sampling I recruited two more participants (of note: both turned out to have participated in and/or organized disruptive events in addition to the non-disruptive events for which they were identified). This brought my total sample to 12 participants.

Each participant completed a 1-2 hour interview in-person, on the phone or via Skype. In addition to some basic demographic questions, interview questions included inquiries about their experiences as an

17 organizer of the event in question, their further participation in science advocacy from 2006-2018, their involvement in the practice of science, and their general political involvement. Lastly, I posed some open-ended questions about their political beliefs, about science, and about how science, government and industry should relate.

All information was collected in a confidential, ethics board-approved process. Audio and text files were stored in secure locations and in encrypted electronic forms. To the end of confidentiality, I use generalized identifiers to refer to interviewees throughout this thesis. Interviewees are identified by their academic position or position of employment at the that they were most active in the movement (e.g. BSc, PhD candidate, postdoc, faculty member, government employee) and their general disciplinary area at this time (e.g. life sciences, earth sciences, information sciences). To clarify, while these individuals changed both their academic position/ employment and their disciplinary focus over time, I describe each of these variables as they were at the time that the participant was most heavily involved in organizing disruptive mobilization.

My sample has the following geographic, employment and disciplinary characteristics. Five interviewees had organized events in Ontario, two had organized in British Columbia, two had organized in Nova Scotia, and one individual had organized in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Quebec, respectively. They hailed from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, with the representation of environmental and biological disciplines being well-represented (N=4). At the time of mobilization, three participants had post-secondary education in computer science, while two held degrees in the field of library & archival science. Humanities degrees were also represented by two individuals respectively, while one individual had studied medicine and another physics. Further, they were in various levels in their academic and professional careers at the time that they were organizing events in the name of science advocacy. That is, one individual was still in high school while organizing. Another organized while mid-way through their undergrad, while another individual was involved from the end of their undergrad and through their MA. Three of the most active organizers were completing PhDs or post-doctoral positions while organizing, and one was an Associate Professor during their most active period of participation. Further, two more interviewees worked as academic support staff in a university context, and another was working on private contract for university researchers (though not on-site). Two interviewees were outside of academia at the time of their participation; one working as an information professional in the field of libraries & archives, the other as a medical doctor.

4.2 Data collection: Rally speeches

I have integrated into my analysis nine speeches from the 2012 Death of Evidence Ottawa rallies, six from the 2017 Toronto March for Science. The former I found on the YouTube channel of Straight Goods News, a now defunct independent Canadian news website, the latter, posted publicly on the Toronto March for Science website. I introduced this data into the study because as my thinking developed, I realized that it was important to systematically analyze some of the public communications of movement discourse, not only the information said to me in privacy in the course of research. This not only generally enriches my data, but might allow me to apply two literatures that only apply to public communications: framing theory (from social movement studies) and findings from Public Communication of Science and Technology. Note: rally speech data is not anonymized in the way that interviews are because this information has been made publically available by speakers.

4.3 Analysis

All interviews and speeches were analyzed using Atlas.TI qualitative analysis software. Codes from both data types were integrated. I proceeded from a position of grounded theory, open-coding sources before and during theoretical research.

This analysis included the operationalization of some key concepts: production science, impact science, modernity and reflexive modernity. To operationalize production science and impact science, I drew on McCright & Dunlap (2010) who in turn developed their definition based on the work of Beck, Mol and Spaargaren, and Schnaiberg (see Fig. 1). To operationalize modern science and reflexive science, I drew directly on Beck, especially the text Risk Society, to formulate ideal types (see Fig. 2).

Modern Science culture Reflexive Science culture

● Dismissal of “science of science” ● Recognition of “science of science” ● Technological progress = social progress findings ● Science is epistemically superior to other ● Technological progress =/ social progress forms of knowledge ● Science is but one form of ● Science is infallible epistemologically valuable form of ● Values are thought to be seperate from knowledge, is not superior research practice and/or are not ● Science makes mistakes and can learn consciously integrated into research ● Values are inseparable from research practice practice and/or are consciously integrated into research Table 1: operationalization of modern and reflexive science

Production science Impact science

● Science directed primarily to control ● Sciences which “identify, examine and nature and produce new comforts and attempt to ameliorate the negative effects affordances (and/or: individual practices a of earlier scientific endeavors” (McCright “production” science) & Dunlap 2010, p. 104; Beck, 1992; Mol ● Prototypical examples: and Spaargaren, 2000). ○ Physical sciences ● Prototypical examples: ○ Engineering ○ Earth Sciences ○ Formal Sciences ○ life sciences ○ Health Sciences

Table 2: operationalization of production and impact science

Chapter 5: Is Canadian mobilized science reflexive?

In this chapter I ask: does Canadian mobilized science culture align with Beck’s vision of reflexive science culture? I consider the evidence that the movement represents an example of what Beck calls “reflexive” science by analyzing my data for characteristics of both modern thought and reflexively modern thought. This analysis is organized into four sections, each describing a different characteristic of the culture of reflexive science: 5.1) interest in the social science of science, 5.2) a belief that science shares epistemic authority with other types of knowledge, 5.3) a belief that science is fallible but can learn, and 5.4) a willingness to integrate value judgements into research. 5.1 The science of science

According to Beck (1992), as science transitions from primary scientization to reflexive scientization, scientific culture will become more comfortable applying scientific skepticism to its own practices and methods. That is, the science of science will become an important influence on scientific practice. Beck, in fact, points to specific disciplines:

The agents of rupture are the disciplines of the critical application of science to itself - the theory of science and the history of science, cognitive sociology and the sociology of science, psychology and empirical ethnology of science, and so on - which have been gnawing at the foundations of the self-dogmatization of scientific rationality with varying success since the beginning of the century (p. 155)

Given the special place of these disciplines in Beck’s idea of reflexivity, I take it as interesting that two participants expressed direct interest in “meta-science” and/or drew directly on affiliated fields in their responses.

When asked “What scientific disciplines interest you most? [...] This is personal interest, it doesn't have to be tied to your political activities”, one interviewee offered an answer that seemed to align with a reflexive ethos. They responded that while their interests are broad, they were currently

sort of focused on science in society and like processes of science itself, you know, issues around gender and diversity in science, issues around reproducibility within science and sort of more the, I guess not always critiques, but kind of the science of science - (PhD, life sciences)

Dissimilarly, one interviewee's interest in the science of science was brought to light through a discussion of public trust in science (librarian, information sciences). When I asked if they had a conception of why some members of the public did not trust science, the interviewee asked me if I had considered the work of Daniel Kahan. Kahan is a professor of Psychology known for cultural cognition theory, a theory that

21 explains the way that individuals develop epistemic judgements, and in particular, the way that they process new scientific information (Kahan et al., 2011; Kahan & Braman, 2006). This interviewee is demonstrating interest in just the type of field that Beck highlights as a springboard for reflexive scientization.

This interviewee also demonstrated that Kahan’s work is incorporated into their own beliefs and practices in an individually reflexive way. Some further background for the reader: Kahan has proposed that his cultural cognition thesis can explain denial of climate change, the idea being that group affinities (most notably, political identity) mediate the reception of new scientific information. That is, it is hard for individuals to change their mind about ideas that are tied to their political self. After this interviewee and I had discussed this idea using the example of conservative attitudes towards climate change, I asked if they thought that there was any way “around” or “above” this “cultural cognition” process—if they believed that they themselves had formed their scientific beliefs any differently. Their response:

[T]here might be other things that we’re on the wrong side, but, we can't see them—because we're falling prey to the same kinds of motivated reasoning that we can see on the people on the other side but can't see it in ourselves (librarian, information sciences).

In sum, I interpret this interviewee’s contribution to this study to be reflexive not only in that they demonstrate familiarity with a field highlighted by Beck, but also in that they demonstrate an openness to their own scientific beliefs being fallible and/or socially mediated.

These results should be considered exploratory, not only because of my small sample and the small subset of interviewees discussed in this section (N=2)—but also because I did not systematically ask questions which could directly and systematically expose an interest in (or lack thereof) the science of science. Rather, it came up organically with these two participants in the course of a single interview session. As such, more research would have to be done in order to substantiate this conclusion.

5.2 Epistemic authority

In Beck’s ideal of the reflexive scientific ethos, scientists consider scientific knowledge but one form of epistemologically valuable form of knowledge. It is not considered an absolutely superior mode of thought. This is as opposed Beck’s idea of the modern mode, in which science is said to have absolute epistemic authority.

This has implications for the way that expertise is considered according to each ethos. “Modernization is typified by the creation of a hierarchy between experts and laymen which was grounded on the monopoly of knowledge by professionals” (Beck et al., 2003, p. 5) and in the reflexive mode this hierarchy is

22 renounced; there is “a reception of alternative expertise” (Beck 1992, p. 161). The majority of the interviewee’s perspectives on expertise seem to align with the reflexive perspective, confirming that their culture could well be characterized as similar to the one Beck envisioned.

I asked nine of my twelve participants the question: “How would you define an expert?”. Of nine, seven offered a response that I interpret as aligned with Beck’s reflexive modernity. This uniform response consisted of an openness to knowledge obtained outside of formal scientific institutions, as expressed by a definition of expertise that did not rely on formal education or professional certification. In these answers, lived experience was as valued as formal recognitions. The following is a statement that epitomizes this position from one interviewee:

Well, an expert is somebody who has, I think, deep knowledge and understanding of a subject from long experience and exposure. [If] it’s culturally embedded, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful or inaccurate. It just means it’s acquired in a different way. [...] And then, of course, there’s the more conventional version, you know, a person’s gone to school and they’ve studied this subject and they did some work in the area and that kind of thing. (MD, life sciences)

Notably, this participant expressed skepticism about modern measurements of expertise, saying that “our criteria for establishing expertise in the Western industrial world are sometimes flawed”. Another response from one interviewee demonstrates a similar attitude: I don’t think there’s one definition of expert. [...] Expertise is extremely dependent on your context, right? So, you know, you can study something for twenty years but still not be more of an expert than somebody who has lived the experience, right? There’s not …[..] there’s no minimum threshold that, you know, you must be this tall to be an expert, right? That doesn’t make sense. I’m not very big on gatekeeping. (PhD, earth sciences)

While thus far my discussion of expertise presents my interviewees’ responses as representative of reflexive science, the data also demonstrated the opposite in many cases. That is, by endorsing the deficit model, many subjects presented an attitude aligned with the modern mode. To review, this model attempts to explain public lack of support for (or trust in) science (Simis et al., 2016). The deficit model dictates that if a public does not trust or favour scientific knowledge, this is because this public is not sufficiently scientifically literate. This asserts that once an individual understands science, they will always value and trust this knowledge more than other knowledge systems. As such—and this is the crux of the criticism most often leveled against the deficit model—this assumes that science is epistemically superior to other knowledge systems (Wynne, 1995).

Many interviewees (N=9) consistently used the lense of the deficit model. This model was often employed when I asked: “If large parts of the public do not trust science, why do you think that is?”. One participant (support staff, interdisciplinary) responded to this question in a way that epitomises the deficit position:

Poor communication, I think, is a big part of it. [...] even just starting with what science is and how the scientific method works, I feel like, is actually lost on a lot of people. [...] What is the scientific method? How is science done? And, that…again, that starts at the elementary school level, let alone when you have adults. So, I think, a lot of it really is communication and education. I'd say, pretty much all of it, actually, is communication and education. If people, I think, understood better, what the scientific method is, how research happens and, the nature of consensus within the scientific community, I think, people would have a lot more trust. (support staff, interdisciplinary)

We can contrast this to the reflexive response of another interviewee (librarian, information sciences), in reference to data that has in fact been mentioned earlier in this chapter. When asked the same question (“If large parts of the public do not trust science, why do you think that is?”), this participant employed Daniel Kahan’s cultural cognition thesis. This thesis theorizes that individuals evaluate scientific beliefs differently depending on their cultural beliefs, or the beliefs held by others that they trust. This approach is more reflexive in that it recognizes the role of other forms of knowledge in the acceptance of scientific beliefs, and does not imply that science will automatically be accepted after it is understood in light of it’s intrinsic superiority.

Another pattern in my data is that individuals under study varied in their judgement of the relationship between indigenous knowledge and science. In particular, two individuals articulated opposing viewpoints. One asserted that indigenous knowledge was of equal epistemic value to science (which I take to represent a reflexive position), while another performed boundary work that designated indigenous knowledge as a type of religious knowledge (which I take to represent a modern position).

Dr. Dawn Martin-Hill’s 2017 March for Science Toronto speech was focused on the relationship between indigenous knowledge and settler science. She first explained the nature of Indigenous Knowledge:

Indigenous knowledge is a complete knowledge system with its own epistemology, philosophy, and scientific and logical validity... which can only be understood by means of pedagogy traditionally employed by the people themselves (Dawn-Martin Hill quoting Daes, Report on the Protection of Heritage of Indigenous People).

Further, she called on scientists to be pluralistic in their treatment of other knowledges: “Our medicines, understanding of natural law should be accepted and respected by settler science”. Further, she brought to light that the viewpoint of indigenous knowledge, from which she, herself, approaches, does not take

24 any one knowledge system to be epistemically superior: “Indigenous knowledge pedagogy acknowledges diverse ways of knowing and respects the pluralism of knowledge”.

Dissimilarly, one interviewee framed indigenous knowledge as a religious knowledge that should not affect policy-making—that it’s involvement in policy-making conflicted with the secular state. This matter came up organically. We were discussing the interviewee’s views on environmentalism, when they expressed some inner conflict over the involvement of indigenous knowledge in climate change governance:

The Ministry has put out some kind of directive that we must include both scientific and [...] indigenous knowledge about areas while making decisions about [land use]. And while I’m fine with respecting Indigenous tradition, I have a hard time with making any kind of cultural practice policy. And really, I think my biggest problem there is a sense of weird kind of problematic precedent of while we have to respect the Indigenous religious understanding of what this land is and what it means and what it does, then we have to respect all sites as being perfectly holy and no matter what that religion is. So that is troubling. (private sector, computer science)

In these statements, this interviewee draws a border between scientific and cultural practice, and implies that the latter should not be a component of policy decisions. This creates a hierarchy between indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge, with the latter in the superior position.

In sum, I have analyzed my data to understand whether these scientist-activists take science to be epistemically superior (a modern position) or whether they have a more pluralistic vision of knowledge (a reflexive position). Both positions appear in my data, and this signals that movement is a complex combination of traits that represent both of the categories outlined by Beck.

5.3 Science’s fallibility and adaptability

In Beck’s ideal of the reflexive scientific ethos, scientists consider science fallible—it can make mistakes, both intellectual and moral—but it can learn from these mistakes and change. Beck calls the reflexive modern ethos a form of “re-modernism”, and distinguishes this approach from postmodern attitudes that can be immobilizing; he calls on institutional leaders to retain enlightenment goals, but strive with self-awareness. This is also distinct from the approach of the modern scientific ethos, which according to Beck considers scientific knowledge and practice infallible, or at least answerable to criticism only from within the sciences.

Aadita Chaudhury’s speech at the March for Science Toronto in 2017 epitomises the reflexive ethos promoted by Beck. Chaudhury relates that she was trained as an engineer and became disillusioned with

25 the structure of the industry to which her skills could be applied. Her speech culminates in the assertion that:

Canadian extractive industries, namely, the oil and gas and mining industries, continue with impunity, to use the expertise, economic and political support of our nation’s scientists and engineers, to violate human and environmental rights in vulnerable communities.

While the sentence structure here seems at first glance to attribute sole responsibility for harm to the “Canadian extractive industries, namely the oil and gas and mining industries”, designating these parties as the actors that are “use”-ing science, a closer look reveals that one of the resources that industry is “use”-ing is the “political support of our nation’s scientists and engineers”. In other words, she brings to the fore the fact that production scientists and engineers participate in, and therefore support, these activities. Further, she contends that

During the Harper government, Canadians acknowledged the need to hold our government accountable for all the harm and negligence that was to befall this country’s environment and health. It’s time we extend this push for accountability and transparency to our homegrown technocrats and their enablers who exploit Canadian laws and scientific and technical expertise to reap profits.

In this quote, she directly targets “technocrats”, or the attempt to rule solely through scientific justification. This is aligned with Beck’s vision: he thought that reflexivity was vital to ward off what he named technocratic authoritarianism. Further, while this passage positions scientists as the experts being “exploited”, they are still clearly implicated in “harm and negligence”. In sum, by directly addressing the fact that some scientific practices are implicated in harming environmental and human health, and that some scientists benefit from these processes, she demonstrates a belief that scientific practice can be fallible.

I attended March for Science Toronto 2017 and listened to Chaudary’s speech first-hand before composing my interview questions, and in fact her speech prompted me to ask my interviewees (with some variation in the wording):

There are some parts of the history of science that are popularly considered dark chapters; eugenics, military technologies, environmental destruction, etc. Is there any tension for you between the fact that the history of science has some dark chapters and advocating for science to have more power in society?

I asked six individuals this question, and it produced a variety of responses—some that align with the reflexive ethos, others a modern ethos. That is, some responded by reflecting on the “dark chapters” that I mention as mistakes, while others reframed these historical issues in such a way that science was not

26 fallible as a result. I take the former response to be aligned with Beck’s vision of reflexive culture, while the latter demonstrates the presence of what he designated the modern ethos.

To elaborate, one interviewee gave the following response to this question:

We’re going to get things wrong, absolutely. But the benefit of science is that once we know that it’s wrong, we can change that practice. [...] Just because we’re going to get some things wrong and even wildly wrong doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It just means that we should think ahead. - (private sector, computer science)

This response perfectly represents what Beck took the reflexive scientific attitude to be. Reflexive science culture, in Beck’s conception, should acknowledge inevitable wrongdoing and resultant crises, but this acknowledgement does not mean that scientists “shouldn’t try”. Again, Beck calls the reflexive ethos a form of “re-modernism”; it is a call to continue to strive and learn despite mistakes.

Another response that I code as compatible with Beck’s vision comes from the librarian that I interviewed (information sciences). They first reacted by pointing to the nature of science as a social practice: they argue that because science is human, and humans change their moral and political positions over time, science will change too:

I think, ethics are constantly evolving. And, I think, science is an important piece of that. But, I don't think that science is in any way, unique when we look at any number of things that just involve ethically and morally over the human history. (librarian, information sciences)

Next, like the aforementioned participant (private sector, computer science), this participant emphasized that the fact that science produces mistakes or crises does not mean that it cannot be redeemed through a learning process:

I don’t think we should pretend it never happened, or pretend that it's not happening now. But, I don't think we should…you know, I don't think we should say to our…I don't think we should react to the fact that science has often been a terrible place for women, by saying we shouldn’t have science, right. I think, our reaction as science advocates should be that we should have better science, right. We should have a science that includes everybody, right. That includes everyone and is for everyone. I think that's what our reaction to the dark chapters should be.

This is exactly the kind of attitude that Beck dictates scientists must take to adapt to an era of high risks and crises.

That said, views on the fallibility and adaptability of science that I characterize as modern were also present in my data. One interviewee attributed the harms that I list in my question solely to applied science:

Well, I think a lot of the dark history that you described for science has is many cases resulted from scientific theories being guided towards particular ends rather than being allowed to—a lot of it stems from applied science rather than basic science. And I think that’s part of the reason why basic science is so important and needs to be allowed to develop [...] The applications you’ve described such as eugenics, military technology and developments that caused this environmental destruction, those have been results of applied science. (MA, social sciences and humanities)

I then asked “when you march, do you march only for basic science then, considering your response?” To which the interviewee replied:

It’s not, I wouldn’t say only for basic science, but I think . . . I would say primarily for basic science, but also for . . . I would say for a less biased, for removing commercial and ideological biases from applied science.

I take this to be a paradigmatic example of boundary work, and one that is not compatible with Beck’s reflexive ethos. Instead of positioning science as an institution that is flawed and can learn, this interviewee instead redrew the boundaries around science in an effort to offer a vision of science that is infallible, and not responsible for harm.

In sum, by examining the theme of science’s fallibility and adaptability, I found that Canadian science activists vary in their attitudes. Some demonstrated the Canadian science activism is similar to Beck’s vision—they conceived of science as an flawed but adaptive institution. Others participated in boundary work, protecting the modern idea of science as infallible.

5.4 Integrating values into research

According to Beck, the “isolated analytical approach” to science will prove “false and a risk-producer in practice” during reflexive modernity—and as such, a “reflexive” science will consider value judgements a component of research (1992). Instead, Beck dictates that “scientific procedures have to open themselves up to the special logic of subjective experience”, and so in this process, to ethical and political context (Ibid).

Of those who had done scientific research during their academic degrees or scientific careers (N = 7), I asked: “Were your research interests ethical or political choices for you?”. Three interviewees responded in a way that I interpret as compatible with Beck’s reflexive science, two in a way that Beck’s theory would designate modern, and two others in such a way that they could not be well-characterized as being of either mode.

Two of the interviewees who indicated that their research choices had political or ethical dimensions were educated in and practice environmental science. One even identified the nature of their discipline as being integrated with a value position, and that this, in turn, determined that their research would have a political bent. In the words of this interviewee (PhD, life sciences), “I mean [my feild] is a bit of an interesting discipline of science in that it is more so than others areas of science inherently value-driven, like it has a stated goal of conserving”. Similarly, one interviewee (Post doc, life sciences) expressed a motivation to protect both ecological and human welfare as being a set of values that directs their work.

Another interviewee (government employee, information sciences) used a community-based research design in the most substantial research effort of their career. They characterize both this project and their use of community-based method as an effort guided by their own moral and political judgement.

On the other hand, others responded in a way that is compatible with Beck’s modern scientific ethos. Two interviewees implied that certain types of research questions were apolitical. One interviewee responded to the question at hand (again,“are your research interests ethical or political choices for you?”)

Respondent: Well, in physics there's a – it's mainly far removed from human – Interviewer: - Activity? Respondent: Yeah. - (high school student, note: interviewee is now enrolled in a University program)

While my interruption may have significantly biased the data (I leave this to the reader to judge), I interpret their response as implying that certain types of science are exempt from political or ethical evaluation. As such, this interviewee’s attitude is in line with a modern ethos in this instance. Similarly, another interviewee stated that: “Yeah. I did…I did do a couple of research courses, where I got a chance to, you know, do more, kind of in-depth literature use on topics, not political.” The implication here is that the practice of “deeper”—perhaps more basic science—is not related to political or ethical issues.

Of those I asked, others responded in a way that matched neither ethos. One expressed personal preference for their subject, and went on to state that “I knew the prof and I had worked with for him previously and so was just like, okay, I’ll do that again”. Another simply stated “No, it wasn't”, and did not elaborate enough for me to code their response.

The relationship between values and research came up in various other portions of my interviews. In particular, one line of questioning created relevant data. I asked a few of my participants (N=3) what they thought of the accusation sometimes leveled by critics that science advocates are “politicizing” science through disruptive mobilization. One of the interviewees offered a response compatible with Beck, while another interviewee responded in a way that corresponds with Beck’s understanding of the modern ethos. One interviewee (Bsc, computer science) replied that they see values and politics as intrinsically integrated into science, and that as such, accusations that science is political are correct but not, in fact, negative:

What we're doing is [political]...But I think that's okay and I think that there might be things - like more things in life that society might be tied to politics than those people might sort of realize or want to accept...and it’s not - I don’t think political - that things being political [...] - I don’t think that's negative. (Bsc, computer science)

On the other hand, another interviewee responded with a statement more aligned with Beck’s vision of the modern. They equate science with infallible “logic”:

And so when I hear people say politicizing science I know they're pretty ignorant in saying that they do not want people to apply logic to the world. If your political opinion is based on logic, evidence and data, then that's a good political thing. But if you're political opinion is based on misinformation and bias and hatred, then that's a bad political opinion. (High school student)

These set of statements has a technocratic bent, and is the antithesis of the reflexive science promoted by Beck.

In sum, by examining the theme of the relationship between values and research, I found that Canadian science activists vary in their attitudes. Some conceived of science as being a process in which value judgements are integrated. Others implied that the scientific research process is value-free.

5.5 Conclusion

Canadian mobilized science culture seems to be in some senses similar to the one Beck envisioned, and in some senses it is incompatible. In fact this group is best understood as possessing characteristics of both cultures: a culture that aligns with Beck’s vision of reflexive science, and one that resembles Beck’s take on modern science. It is also valuable to note that while I organized this analysis thematically, the variation that is my major finding was also true on the level of each individual interviewee: while three individuals responded in ways that I took to be very consistently compatible with “reflexive” science, and

30 one in a way that was consistently coded as compatible with “modern” science, most demonstrated a mix of these worldviews. This affirms that Canadian mobilized science is not well-understood as monolithic.

Chapter 6: Exploring the facilitative conditions of mobilized science

In this section, I explore the facilitative conditions of disruptively mobilized science. First, I draw on the resource mobilization perspective to examine how activists access the resources that enable them to act. I explore the role of a variety of institutions from which the movement drew resources, beginning with a discussion of federal political parties, after which I tackle the role of the university, professional associations and unions, and finally, other social movements. Second, I use political process theory to ascertain whether this movement is composed of an alliance of impact scientists. That is, I utilize a distinction brought to light by reflexive modernity theory—between “impact” and “production” science—to investigate the political landscape in which the movement arose.

6.1 Resource mobilization theory

Resource mobilization theory analyzes how movement organizers depend on other players in the political landscape to achieve their goals. This theory considers a wide range of resources—from the most obvious and concrete aids to mobilization (e.g., space in which to hold events) to the more abstract (public legitimation through endorsement). In the following, I examine four sets of institutions to understand how they supported Canadian science advocates.

6.1.1 Federal political parties

None of my interviewees were members of a political party to which they felt any allegiance; only two were members at all, and one of these admitted that they had joined with purely strategic intent—to vote within a party they disagreed with in an effort to impede the success of an extreme wing of said party. When asked who they would vote for if a federal election were held “today” (the day of the interview), all interviewees that felt comfortable responding replied that it would depend on the political context, and most said or implied that they would simply have to do more research.

Further, while the movement arose in response to the actions of a particular federal party (The Conservative Party of Canada), and political parties have supported particular rallies and marches (e.g. Liberal MP Ted Hsu spoke at 2012’s Death of Evidence rally in Ottawa), the movement remained formally and materially autonomous from party politics. Scientists positioned themselves as a voice distinctive from, and not allied to, these organizations. This can be evidenced in the fact that movement activity continued after the 2015 election.

Further, the social movement organizations that have remained as the legacy of movement activity (Evidence for Democracy, Our Right to Know) are non-partisan, but view relationship-building with federal political parties as part of their ongoing work. Or, as one interviewee who had worked with Evidence for Democracy put it, their organization is “multi-partisan”:

I think a lot of organizations are just kind of like scared to engage with politicians at all, whereas [Evidence for Democracy] would much rather work with politicians, but work with politicians from all parties. So [Evidence for Democracy has] really good relationships with the NDP science critic and with the Conservative science critic, in addition to relationships with the Green Party and, of course, with Liberals now, even if they’re the government. So [Evidence for Democracy] put in that time and effort to build relationships across party lines. - (PhD, Life Sciences)

So, relationships with federal political parties constitute an important part of the ongoing work of Canadian science advocates as they transition from disruptor to interest group.

That said, in a less direct sense, did political parties, as institutions, in any sense enable or discourage movement mobilization? I contend that for some individuals, these structures acted as important training grounds for learning the applied skills of organizing. The two most active of my interviewees—activity being measured in frequency of participating, organizing and role in social movement organizations—had previously volunteered or worked with considerable involvement for the Green Party of Canada. Both spent years learning concrete organizing skills; as one participant put it, “I had a fair bit of experience with organizing events, and trying to get volunteers out to go door knocking, and trying to get volunteers to make phone calls”. Further, both participants had taken on leadership roles within the organization. All of this capacity-building undoubtedly prepared these individuals to assume leadership roles within the movement, and thus enabled the movement.

6.1.2 The university

The effect of universities on movement activity is all the more interesting because the effect of “anti-science” actions taken by the federal government often did not immediately affect many scientists employed by universities; it was federally-employed scientists who first felt the effects of the war on science. In the words of one interviewee, “When you’re in university and, you know, these things were happening to government researchers, and the university researchers, maybe they partnered with them but they weren’t hearing about it directly” (post-doc, life sciences).

Nine of twelve interviewees were part of university communities at the time that they organized. That is, one individual was mid-way through their undergraduate degree, one was involved from the end of their undergraduate studies and through their MA, three of the most active organizers were completing PhDs or post-doctoral positions, and one was an Associate Professor. Further, two interviewees worked as academic support staff in a university context, and another was working on private contract for university researchers (though not on-site). Universities structured these activists’ lives while they brought about the movement, and as such, the movement has been structured by these institutions.

Most concretely, interviewees reported that universities provided an excellent infrastructure for event planning: physical space, communication channels for inviting attendees, and easy access to experts to fill the role of host or speaker. This is to say nothing of the media standing with which to draw journalists to these talks, a vital currency for social movements (Gitlin, 2003). Two participants described this supportive experience of organizing events on university property—one organized a “disruptive” event (a march/rally), while the other led a couple of non-disruptive talks/workshops connected to the movement.

Further, organizers for movement events off-campus often drew on university networks to find speakers. A typical description of how this worked from one interviewee: “One of our organizers was a postsecondary student and so she leveraged those and she had speakers from the [specific university-based research group] and [specific university]” (high school student). Three organizers reported finding speakers in this way.

Universities can also be said to have lent these events media standing through their speakers; in many (N=14) of the speeches I coded, those with university degrees and/or positions mentioned them directly as a way of asserting their authoritative position. A non-systematic evaluation of newspaper reporting on these events confirms that this was important, as journalists often mentioned the current university position of a speaker or interviewee in movement stories (e.g. Pedwell, 2012). Universities also offered symbolic weight to initiatives like letter-writing campaigns and open letters. In at least one case, a group of students undertaking one such initiative identified themselves primarily as students of a particular university (from interview data).

Another resource that universities offer is that of the protected freedom of expression for employees. This aspect of university employment was probably unimportant to post-docs and early-career professors given that their job security relies on tenure. That said, it may have greatly enabled support staff, who may have been taking a far greater risk to organize had they been employed in a similar position by a government or private institution. One interviewee, support staff at a prominent research university, brought this to light:

Our information security policy [...] very specifically lays out our protected right of freedom of expression, including even using [specific university] resources within the scope of…our sort of intellectual and academic freedom. So, yes, it's actually protected for everybody in [specific university] from you know, the Deans, all the way down to people like me, and to people that are, you know…even the custodial staff still have that protected (support staff, interdisciplinary).

For many of my interviewees (N=6), their department (and/or lab) structured their daily experience of the university. Their reports indicate that the level of support for movement activity varied between departments in a way that was not patterned (not even by discipline, as one might expect, for instance, environmental departments to be more enabling of social movement activity). While I did not ask participants directly about the climate of their department (I should have), but instead about the attitudes and behaviour of 1) their peers and 2) their advisors, implicit in their answers to these questions and other responses were portraits of university departments. In the end, some departments, taken as a whole, provided social environments that were highly conducive to organizing, while others actively created barriers to organizing. Perhaps the best example of this variation comes from an organizer who moved departments over the course of the movement: “You finally find your people and oh my gosh, now you feel like together you can accomplish so much more, rather than being a bunch of naysayers who are like ‘just keep your head down’”.

What was common among the descriptions of lab and/or department culture were accounts of university hierarchy—divisions between ranks of students and professors, and of course, between students and professors—being a defining feature of department culture. This is best demonstrated in the responses of one interviewee who described the atmosphere of their department by reflecting that “in the Harper years, nobody was really actively unsupportive” but then quickly qualifying this response by saying that

people behave differently when they’re in the company of people that hold positions of power to some extent over them in that, you know, it’s … they are the ones who are reviewing your tenure file [...] even if everybody is like, yes, this is what we’re going to do, we’re all advocating in the same direction, [...] depending on who is, you know, actually in the room, you know, that risk assessment can look very, very different. (PhD, earth sciences)

To this participant’s point, much of the empirical work on scientist activism demonstrates that early-career natural scientists are often hesitant to risk organizing given their relative professional precarity (Delbourne, 2008). Sometimes termed the “hierarchical expectation”, the idea that senior-ranking scientists are far more likely to be politically active than those lower down the institutional ladder has been considered an empirical cornerstone of science communications since the 70’s (Boltanski & Maldidier, 1970) and within the timeframe of the movement had been consistently proven cross-nationally (studies in

France, the UK, Spain and Argentina confirm these findings; Bauer & Jensen, 2011). In short, in the words of Frickel et al. (2015), “tenure offers expert activists insulation from economic risks that those in non-tenured positions typically do not enjoy” (p. 18).

The opposite seems to have been true of this movement, and this is perhaps one of the most striking patterns to be observed about this mobilization: students and early-career scientists were some of its most prominent leaders (see Katie Gibbs of Evidence for Democracy). Students and early-career researchers made up a substantial portion of my small, non-random sample (to review, five of nine university-associated individuals that I interviewed were students or in a post-doc position at the time of the movement, one was a professor, and three were support staff). This pattern has validation internal to the movement, in the unprompted words of an interviewee, “that early activism came from, you know, grad students, post-docs” (librarian, information sciences). Another participant agreed that “there wasn’t leadership from senior profs or even junior profs, you know, or even postdocs” (post-doc, life sciences).

How did the hierarchical nature of university departments promote or discourage CASM mobilization? I found that the attitudes of those within organizers’ departments were somewhat stratified by rank. Namely, the reaction of a given individual depended to a degree on where this individuals was in departmental hierarchy. Reactions from fellow students ranged from “gung-ho” to apathetic and risk-aversive, though not discouraging. On the other hand, the attitudes of professors ranged from supportive to outright discouraging. In other words, high-ranking individuals were the only group actively discouraging involvement.

Interviewees reported that some professors openly discouraged activism with the rationale that, as mentors, they were attempting to protect the careers of the early-career researchers. One interviewee offered examples of such feedback:

Wait until you’re established. Wait until you get tenure and then start working on that stuff, rather than these things are really important now. [...] don’t write a letter to the editor of the newspaper, because maybe [someone] will see that and tell someone not to hire you at [a federal government department].

Another professor saw movement activity as neglectful of a scientist’s primary occupation:

They were concerned that, you know, it’s taking time away from your thesis, rather than these activities are things that are actually part of the practice of science. [They] didn’t see that the skills that I was developing or that kind of work was related to science, so I think he thought it was a waste of time.

In the most contentious of the participants’ conflicts, one interviewee received outright pressure from administration to cancel a movement event - pressure that could be traced back to the threat of a donor withdrawing university funds.

[T]hen I got called into the dean’s office at the university, with my advisor [...] they got pushback from donors to the university, saying cancel it. Like, do not hold this. Do not hold this event. And find out who’s organising it and shut it down. (Post-doc, life sciences)

At the time, this individual did not have the security of tenure, as is obvious in their comment that “it was really scary, for me, maybe less scary for [my advisor], but for me it was really scary.”

Some of the most positive accounts of university culture as fostering the movement came from support staff. Only two individuals in the sample can be described as support staff, but their experiences of the university are sufficiently similar—and interesting enough—to warrant report.

While they hold very different titles, these two individuals hold strikingly similar positions. Both have worked at a single institution for a long period of time (over 8 years). Both enjoy a high degree of autonomy. In the words of one interviewee, “my job description is very vague. Extremely autonomous. I have no direct report. So, I just kind of do what I want and hope for the best. Hope nobody gets too, too mad” (librarian, information sciences).

Further, they are both in some sense in charge of allocating key university resources like space and communications tech: they not only have access to these resources, but can actually make important decisions about how such assets are used. This is not to mention that both are in touch or at least have easy access to individuals at many levels of university hierarchy and across disciplines. In the words of one interviewee:

Well, I'm in a really privileged position in that I do work in an academic institution, but, I don't work in one narrow small pocket of it. I work in a really broad ranging sort of place.[...] So my network and my social circles are huge, which is fantastic, because it does give me this kind of like, idea of where all of these intersections can lie. (support staff, interdisciplinary)

Both reported their peers to be supportive (“absolutely”) and described their respective administrations as “absolutely supportive” and “really supportive”. One individual was even presented with an award by their supervisor for their work on the movement.

How can we explain this pattern? Put simply, the degree of autonomy, the degree of control over material resources, and cross-institutional networks of these individuals meant that people in these positions can

37 practice science advocacy “as part of our jobs” (in the words of a participant referring to their own activism and that of someone else with the same role). As for the direction of association—whether the nature of their jobs are themselves indicators of universities with cultures open to movement mobilization, or whether these individuals created this culture through the affordances of their jobs—it is impossible to tell from the data. What I can soundly conclude is that these individuals represent key nodes in the flow of resources.

6.1.3 Professional Associations and Labour Unions

The involvement of professional associations and unions was key to mobilization. Most significantly, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), a union that represents more than 15,000 federal scientists, was involved in organizing disruptive events, and commissioned a number of surveys and reports that investigated movement grievances. This research substantiated the movement’s claims and garnered press attention.

Their presence also played a key role in the mobilization narrative of some interviewees (N=3), most significantly in that these organizations often proved to be a first point of contact for some organizers (i.e. they were how organizers received their first communications about movement activities). One organizer related that their first encounter with movement efforts was through the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), an organization that has run multiple campaigns in support of movement goals under both Harper and Trudeau. For this advocate, an email led to “just doing on the ground [work], a little bit of promotion, putting up a couple posters” for a CAUT “Get Science Right!” Campaign under the Harper government, which in turn proved to be a first step toward organizing a March for Science event in the Trudeau era.

Another interviewee described the Canadian Association of Physician for the Environment (CAPE) as their bridge to involvement. CAPE organizes doctors around environmental protection efforts. More specifically, this participant described their relationship to a fellow board member as a catalyst. Their fellow board member was involved in organizing the “Death of Evidence” march in Ottawa and other efforts thereafter. The interviewee described their decision to get involved with movement organizing as a “no-brainer” given the involvement of this fellow trusted CAPE board member, with whom they had practiced advocacy work for years.

For another of my interviewees (government employee, information sciences), the Association of Canadian Archivists’ listserv proved to be an important tool with which they themselves coordinated a disruptive action. After receiving news of Harper policy changes that proved to be the “straw that broke the donkey’s back”, this organizer “sent out an email calling for action—basically saying let's do

38 something, you know, let's rally the troops and do something about this—and it kind of snowballed from there”. In this way, this organizer utilized the ACA’s communication network to further movement goals.

6.1.4 Social movements

Social movement experiences and networks formed a crucial part of the mobilization narrative of some interviewees (N=4). Two who had organized March for Science events reported being inspired by the Women’s March only months before. For one participant (private sector, computer science), the Women’s March 2017 was the second disruptive political event that they had attended in their life course, and they related that this experience made disruptive modes of political participation accessible to them: “So I went to the one [women's] march and I said, ‘You know, I could probably help set this kind of thing up’”. As such, after watching the development of the American-led March for Science 2017 in the media, they “went and looked for one locally because I knew that they were doing the satellite marches. And the research that I did, I couldn’t find anything for anyone who already started something. And so I said, ‘Okay, well, I guess that means that I’m starting something’”. This stands as a remarkable set of steps—from never having participated in disruption to leading it—spawned by attending The Women’s March.

Another interviewee (BSc, computer science) was first mobilized by the Women’s March, but described the connection between that experience and engaging with the movement as one more of sustained community-building as opposed to an individual change in perspective. This individual was an organizer for their local Women’s March, and these organizers came to form a community and eventually an organization: “It was kind of like a group of people from across the city who hadn’t really met or connected before, [who] sort of took on organizing the Women's March and just through that, like a permanent Women's March Canada chapter was established”. They related that when a fellow chapter member decided to take the lead on March for Science 2018, that individual asked my interviewee to support the effort (on the basis of this interviewee’s scientific training). Wanting to maintain that relationship and connection to the community (and having an affinity with the cause), the interviewee agreed and joined the effort.

One interviewee describes a similar community-building dynamic, though their involvement was spawned by a different movement: an environmental activism network was their first point of contact with movement activity. “I know other people in the community who are activists particularly in terms of climate justice. And so, it was organic and I connected with these people and we decided together last year to do a March for Science [2017]” (faculty, life sciences).

Beyond operating as first points of contact between organizers and the movement, other social movements acted as important training grounds for learning the applied skills of organizing (much as federal political parties did for other interviewees). One interviewee (government employee, information science) described extensive experience planning disruptive events on behalf of the anti-globalization, anti-capitalist and labour movement, among others. This experience proved important in convincing those with less experience of the accessibility of disruptive action: while discussing the possibility of grassroots action, “their mind just went to black blocks smashing up windows”. Given their experience of many protests, this participant was able to convince their fellow organizers with “a more institutional mindset” that disruptive action could be a relatively straight-forward, peaceful and organized activity; for instance, they were able to convince others that event planning did not require appointing a Marshal. In this way, their previous social movement experience prepared this individual to assume a leadership role in a movement event.

6.2 Impact Science, production science and political opportunity structure

The dominant understanding of the political opportunity structure that spurs mobilized science is characterized by the state repression of an “anti-science” government (Mooney 2006; Turner 2013; Hess 2016). Further, there is academic consensus around the idea that such movements arise in a context in which there is an alliance between conservative governments and industry (Mooney 2006; Hess 2016). While I take both of these factors to be facilitative conditions that hold empirically true in the Canadian case, I investigate whether Canadian mobilized science is characterized by “impact science”: if so, then an alliance between impact scientists may be said to be an important feature of the political opportunity structure that activates mobilized science.

To review, production sciences direct their research to control nature and produce new comforts and affordances, while impact sciences “identify, examine and attempt to ameliorate the negative effects of earlier scientific endeavors” (Beck, 1992; McCright & Dunlap 2010, p. 104; Mol & Spaargaren, 2000). Prototypical examples of production sciences include physics and engineering while those of impact sciences include life sciences and earth sciences.

I explore whether organizers can be said to represent “impact science” by investigating 1) whether organizers have a background in impact science (i.e. are educated in a field of impact science or currently work as an impact scientist) and 2) analyzing whether organizers considered impact-science related grievances important to their mobilization and/or an important political issue in their worldview.

Impact science is well-represented in the background of interviewees. Three of the four most active of my interviewees—activity being measured in frequency of participating, organizing and role in social movement organizations—have backgrounds in biological and/or environmental science or adjacent fields. Of interviewees with average levels of involvement, one is trained as a biologist and one is a doctor who runs an integrative health practice. As such, five of my participants can be said to have backgrounds specializing in impact sciences, three of these individuals being quite active leaders in the movement.

The second-most significant pattern of disciplinary specialization in my interview data is that of computer science, as three of my twelve interviewees have studied computer science at the post-secondary level. Computer science does not fall easily into the ideal type of either impact or production science, and so this pattern cannot be explained by my approach. Nonetheless, relative to the size of my sample (N=12), it bears noting.

Further, many of the organizations and institutions that enabled the movement, as detailed in this chapter, are organized around impact science. The Green Party’s core identity is as an environmentally progressive organization. Of the professional associations profiled earlier in this chapter, one interviewee (MD, life sciences) explains the identity of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment: “It’s a physicians’ group that was started in around 1995. Its focus is on examining interface between humans and the ecosystem and pointing out how what we do to the ecosystem affects us as humans”. Many of the university departments (N=4) that I analyzed in this chapter were environmental or adjacent, with Meteorology, Conservation, and Biological Sciences included. And, of course, among the social movements that enabled the Canadian mobilized science, the environmental movement was featured.

Further, the social movement organizations of Canadians seem to be especially connected to the impact sciences. Evidence for Democracy, while not an organization that advocates directly for environmental issues (as it was emphasized to me by one interviewee), from my cursory evaluation seems to represent a substantial constituency of environmentalists and health professionals. According to an interviewee who has been involved with Evidence for Democracy for years, those “who sort of started E4D [Evidence for Democracy] were a lot of environmental scientists, ecologists, biologists, so I think that ended up being the first core stakeholder group within the organization, just inherently based on our relationships”. While they emphasized that they were speculating as to the ratios, and that overall their members represented a broad range of disciplinary specialties, they guessed that current membership skewed to “environment-type areas and health-type areas”.

Of course, Canadian mobilized science activists expressed their support of impact science more directly, as well. Of those I interviewed, eleven of twelve participants identified environmentalism as an issue of

41 great personal importance to them, while eight identified cuts to environmental programs as one of the most important grievances driving their participation in the Canadian mobilized science. Further, of the fifteen speeches that I analyzed, the central theme of five speeches was to express concern for the state of environmental, social scientific and/or health-monitoring programs in Canada. In fact, these concerns constituted the central concerns of these speeches. Another five speeches mentioned such concerns, though the central themes were other topics.

Of course, the focus on impact sciences in rally speeches was not uniform. Many of the speeches (N=4) relied on the idea of science as production science, as a means by which humanity triumphs over nature to achieve new affordances and comforts. Chelsea Rochman, speaking in 2017, perhaps best typifies this approach:

Science is the reason we can beat cancer. Science is the reason we can share picture of our children with our families, from anywhere at any time. Science is what allows us to explore the world from top to bottom. Science is what brought us to the moon and is sending us to Mars. Science is the reason we have clean air and water. Whether we realize it or not, scientific evidence serves as the foundation for many of the things we take for granted every single day.

In Tanya Harrison’s 2017 speech arguing for support of “blue-sky” research (specifically, funding for space programs) she takes this line of reasoning as well:

Did you check the weather forecast before you decided how to dress this morning? Thank satellite data. Have you ever used Google Maps? Thank satellite data. Have you flown on an airplane recently? Thank satellite data.

In sum, while the movement is not homogeneously composed of impact sciences or impact science grievances, impact science is a strong presence in the Canadian Science advocacy movement. Further, of the individuals and organizations that I have identified as affiliated with impact science, many were involved in the early days of organizing. As such, in a scenario where impact science does not compose the core of the movement now, at the very least it is plausible that impact science relationships and networks were vital to its initiation.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

In the work above, I investigate the nature of the disruptive mobilized science that erupted in Canada between 2006-2018. This investigation follows two lines of inquiry. First, I explore whether the culture of Canadian mobilized science is compatible with Beck’s vision of reflexive science. Second, I study the facilitative conditions behind mobilization.

In Chapter 5, I demonstrated that while in some ways Canadian science-activists hold worldviews compatible with Beck’s reflexive science, they do not do so consistently. In fact, this group is best understood as possessing characteristics of both cultures: a culture that aligns with Beck’s vision of reflexive science, and one that resembles Beck’s take on modern science. In Chapter 6, I demonstrate that political parties, universities, professional associations and labour unions, as well as other social movements, all to some extent provided resources, and so facilitative conditions, to the movement. These patterns were limited but represent possible avenues for further research. I also show that this movement was led by “impact” scientists, and as such, an alliance between impact sciences may be considered another facilitative condition for mobilized science. With this work I hope to have elucidated in some small way the scientists’ role in the story of “the war on science” in Canada.

It is vital to note that this study has serious limitations. Beyond the limitations in sample size and inconsistencies in data collection (some of the questions central to this thesis were not asked to all participants), it is important to consider that the questions that I asked were not thorough enough, nor my interactions with said individuals long enough, to capture completely the nuance and complexity of a culture or worldview.

One issue at hand is the oversimplification inherent in the dualistic categories structuring this work. Indeed, Beck’s binary of modernity and reflexive modernity has been criticized for reproducing the very mode of thought he was attempting to reinvent (modern Western thought being characterized by dualisms) (Giddens & Sutton 2014). Tellingly, I found this binary difficult to impose on my data, what with the complex worldviews of individuals never fitting neatly into one of these categories. That said, as an analytical tool, the binary did help me to hone in on points of tension and conflict within the movement that I would not have seen otherwise, and to capture the wealth of ideas in Beck’s overall framework.

Further, “political opportunity structure” and “reflexive modernization” have serious shortcomings as social scientific tools. In fact, they have similar weaknesses: both are non-falsifiable, and both can and often are applied post-hoc to explain phenomena and are difficult to disprove (Mayer 2004; Giddens & Sutton 2014). As such, they stand as descriptive theories with little explanatory power. While I may have achieved my goal of adding nuance to the scientist role in the science wars, I have not necessarily

43 identified the key facilitative conditions, nevermind structural determinants of, Canadian mobilized science.

Yet while this study did not produce a strong causal model, this effort generally points to the potential goodness-of-fit between reflexive modernity theory and anti-science politics. With this thesis and McCright and Dunlap (2010) taken together, it is clear that reflexive modernity theory has the potential to offer an overarching theoretical framework from which to study both sides of science wars—it offers a complex portrait of both state and scientific institutions, as opposed to the dominant approach of simply analyzing the former. This line of thought could be well-developed through the use of comparative methods, a research design that enables the study of social movements to hone in on mechanisms and dynamics as opposed to static facilitative conditions (Koopmans, 2009).

Further, I think that the most robust part of this study is the assertion that impact science is an important part of this movement. While the categories of impact and production science are, like the binary of modernity and reflexivity, simplistic in the face of the empirical phenomenon at hand (to perfectly categorize the work of any particular scientist would require an entire interview unto itself), the rough division allowed me to perceive a pattern that I take to be valid and to see the political landscape from a vantage point that I otherwise would not have been able to. To this point, thinking in terms of this division could have strategic implications for scientists-activists. If a division between impact and production science exists, and, as reflexive modernity predicts, impact science becomes more central to the scientific establishment, this presents mobilized Canadian scientists with an important opportunity. Simply put, impact scientists can invest effort in allying with production scientists, or with students of production science who are not as deeply materially implicated in division (that is, they do not rely on the state or industry for production science jobs). This, in turn, opens up the avenue of strategically withholding labour in the event of further conflict between conservative forces and impact science.

In closing, while this study is small, the phenomena it tackles demands more and better research: mobilized science does not seem to be going anywhere soon. There are clear signs that this scientization of politics may well continue (as Beck predicts), from the sheer international force represented by the March for Science 2017 (in which over 600 cities participated) to the recent spate of anti-science authoritarian-populist leaders elected in the West. This is to say nothing of the continual stream of scientific controversies and crises that define our generation, like anthropogenic climate change. The stakes for understanding the nature of scientization are high—the denial and inaction on environmental issues that have been characteristic of anti-science (or “anti-reflexive”) governments imperil all of us, whatever our relationship to the institution of science.

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