Technoscience the Politics of Interventions

Technoscience The Politics of Interventions Kristin Asdal, Brita Brenna and Ingunn Moser (eds.) Unipub 2007 © Unipub AS 2007 ISBN 978-82-7477-300-4 Contact info Unipub: T: + 47 22 85 33 00 F: + 47 22 85 30 39 E-mail: [email protected] www.unipub.no Publisher: Oslo Academic Press, Unipub Norway Printed in Norway: AIT e-dit AS, Oslo 2007 This book has been produced with financial support from Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK) at the University of Oslo and The Research Council of Norway The introduction has been translated by Connie Stultz All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission Contents Introduction Kristin Asdal, Brita Brenna, Ingunn Moser The Politics of Interventions A History of STS .........................................................................................................7 Part 1: Networks and Critiques Michel Callon Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay .................................. 57 Susan Leigh Star Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions On Being Allergic to Onions ..................................................................................... 79 Donna Haraway Situated Knowledges The Science Question in Feminism and The Privilege of Partial Perspective ...................... 109 Part 2: Modest Interventions Deborah Heath Bodies, Antibodies, and Modest Interventions ................................................. 135 Ingunn Moser and John Law Good Passages, Bad Passages ......................................................................... 157 Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol The Zimbabwe Bush Pump Mechanics of a Fluid Technology ............................................................................. 179 Vicky Singleton Training and Resuscitating Healthy Citizens in the English New Public Health – Normativities in Process ....................................................................................... 221 Part 3: From the Laboratory to Politics and Economics Bruno Latour To Modernize or to Ecologise? That is the Question ........................................ 249 Michel Callon Actor-Network Theory – The Market Test .................................................................................................. 273 Andrew Barry Political Invention .............................................................................................. 287 Kristin Asdal Re-Inventing Politics of the State Science and the Politics of Contestation ..................................................................... 309 Epilogue ............................................................................................................ 327 Ingunn Moser Interventions in History Maureen McNeil and John Law in Conversation on the Emergence, Trajectories and Interferences of Science and Technology Studies (STS) ................................................. 329 List of contributors ............................................................................................. 351 Introduction Kristin Asdal, Brita Brenna, Ingunn Moser The Politics of Interventions A History of STS … I will use the word technoscience from now on, to describe all the elements tied to the scientific contents no matter how dirty, unexpected or foreign they seem … 1 Bruno Latour Technoscience extravagantly exceeds the distinction between science and technology as well as those between nature and society, subjects and objects, the natural and the artifactual that structured the imaginary time called modernity. Donna Haraway2 This book has a dual purpose. It introduces readers to the cross-disciplinary field of science and technology studies, also referred to as studies of science, technology and society (STS). It is also an anthology of articles written by authors currently working in the field of STS. The common theme of this historical introduction to STS and the contributors to this book is the different ways that the political is ad- dressed in STS research. Both Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, whom we have drawn upon to introduce and create a framework for this project, have established important premises for these discussions. Simply put, the history we relate deals with the tension between Haraway and Latour. It deals with STS as a field of research with a political engagement tied to social movements and STS as a field of research with an articulated goal of conducting better, more relevant studies of science. But this is to oversimplify it, of course. In our discussion, we want to shed light on the way in which “the political” has been discussed and practiced in various ways throughout the history of STS. Through our selection of articles, we also want to provide examples of how political engagement and various forms of intervention are thematized and practiced in the field today. 7 TECHNOSCIENCE Latour introduced the term technoscience to STS, and Haraway has used it both with and against Latour. For Latour, the concept of technoscience suggests that there are no pre-determined boundaries for what constitutes technology or science, the social or the technical, science or politics. There is no “science” on the one hand and “society” and “values” on the other. These are dividing lines found only in our theories and imaginations. Instead we should follow the actors and study how they create reality through the diversity of their practices and material resources, Latour proposes.3 Perhaps we have never been modern, as Latour asserts in his book of the same title.4 The boundaries between science and society, the technical and the social, have never been absolute. In any case, boundaries we have taken for granted are being reconfigured today. Research being conducted on the so-called cutting- edge is making the boundaries between science and technology, science and society, nature and culture, subjects and objects, the natural and the artificial, highly problematic. One figure used by Haraway to emphasize this point is Du Pont’s OncoMouse™, the world’s first patented animal. As a carrier of the onco-gene, a gene that caused the mouse to develop cancer, the mouse was a promising figure. Could it solve the cancer puzzle? Or as Du Pont declared in its own advertisement for the OncoMouse™: “Available to researchers only from Du Pont, where better things for better living come to life”.5 As the world’s first patented animal, the OncoMouse™ has, precisely, lost its status of being just an animal. The mouse is a creation of science. Its natural envi- ronment, its arena for physical and genetic development, is the laboratory and the regulatory institutions in a powerful nation-state. The OncoMouse™ is an invention. At the same time, it remains a living creature. In combination, it is a vampire of sorts – according to Haraway. It is a vampire that does what vampires are sup- posed to do: pollute natural categories. What is subject and object in this story and where are science’s naked facts versus value-laden politics? There are politics in technoscientific activities, Haraway points out. Technoscience metes out chances to live or die. Some win, some lose. But who?6 Latour is no less political – or concerned with politics. But where Haraway is explicit about her connections to political activism and social movements, Latour is explicit about the exact opposite. In his engagement with the politics of nature, he emphasizes that he is not himself a member of the ecological movement.7 For Latour, the political challenge is to conduct better, more relevant studies of science. Thus this has been more of an academic project. More recently, however, this approach has become more oriented towards participation and cooperation with the actors in the field in a process of experimentation and learning. These actors include, but are not limited to, activists and social movements. They also encompass 8 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTIONS researchers, politicians and average citizens – everyone who is a stakeholder or rep- resentative in a politicizing process. This also implies a concern with how something becomes a political issue, how matters of fact become matters of concern, what role the sciences play in these processes, and how scientific facts and objects become problematic and politicized. Along with Haraway and Latour, we will argue that science intervenes in nature and politics, and that this approach provides a much better way of understanding what scientific activity is than do old notions about how science discovers and describes reality. In this way, the issue of politics is placed at the core of knowledge production. Science and technology are ordering activities that are also materi- ally productive. They generate reality rather than discovering or revealing it. They continually bring about new, transformed, material realities. In other words: they are technoscience. This book also takes a broader view in an effort to investigate in what ways science is in politics, and what political issues science and technology take part in creating. In so doing, the book deals with empirical studies of science, the politics of science, and empirical studies of politics – with methodologies and resources used in science studies. By making room for this approach, we also want to highlight the non-productive power of science. Not all forms of scientific intervention are equal in their capacity to bring about change, gain a foothold,

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