KRISTIN L. MERCER AND JOEL D. WAINWRIGHT Science in ‘the storm’: Refections on politics and plant sciences today Kristin L. Mercer Department of Horticulture & Crop Sciences Ohio State University Joel D. Wainwright Department of Geography Ohio State University Abstract ¿Cuáles son las responsabilidades de los científcos frente a nuestra crisis planetaria? En 2016, los zapatis- What constitutes science? What is the relation tas de Chiapas organizaron un evento para refexionar between scientifc practice and capitalist modernity? y discutir la práctica y la política de la ciencia. Este What are the responsibilities of scientists in the face of documento, basado en un guión de una presentación our planetary crisis? In 2016 the Zapatistas of Chiapas en el evento, retoma estas preguntas, partiendo del organized an event to refect upon and discuss the pensamiento radical y la flosofía de la ciencia para practice and politics of science. Tis paper — based considerar la ciencia en nuestra coyuntura actual. on a script of a presentation at the event — takes up these questions, drawing from radical thought Palabras clave: Ciencia, Política, Ciencias and philosophy of science to consider science in our vegetales, ConCiencias, Capitalismo present conjuncture. 1. Introduction Key Words: science, politics, plant sciences, Con- Ciencias, capitalism [O]ur idea is neither to teach nor to ‘show’, but to provoke… to incite thought. La ciencia en "la tormenta": Refexiones sobre SupGaleano, Critical Tought in the Face of the política y ciencias vegetales en la actualidad Capitalist Hydra Resumen What we call science today may be conceptualized in several distinct ways.1 Te common-sense concep- ¿Qué constituye la ciencia? ¿Cuál es la relación tion, in which science is a rarefed feld of discovery entre la práctica científca y la modernidad capitalista? 1Tis paper was initially prepared in Spanish for an invited presentation to the Zapatistas of Chiapas. Kristen Mercer was honored with an invitation to give a presentation at the frst Zapatistas ConCiencias event in 2016. Kristen Mercer invited Joel Wainwright to join in the preparation of the script for the presentation, which is presented here in translation and with amendments. Te paper’s polemical tone refects the emergence of our text as a script for an oral presentation before a non-academic, political audience. Since the Zapatistas ConCiencias brought scientists together with Zapatistas to refect upon and discuss the practice and politics of science, we decided to focus our presentation on the political economy of agricultural research amidst what the Zapatistas call ‘the storm’: the present global economic, ecological and political crisis. We selected this topic because of our expertise and because we were responding to questions posed by the Zapatistas (ELZN 2015) in their call for a renewed, radical analysis of science. We were particularly inspired by three questions: “Do scientists wonder if they are doing science or something else? Do you do research and advance solely motivated by scientifc curiosity? And, is the paradise-like island of scientifc endeavor safe from the storm?” Volume 11, Number 3 2018 1 SCIENCE IN ‘THE STORM’ dominated by men and mathematics, is the wrong to facing these questions. We also share the recogni- starting point. If instead we begin — as some liberal tion that scientists alone cannot create the conditions philosophers of science do — by defning science necessary for a science that genuinely serves humanity. as a specifc set of practices (for instance, positivist- empiricist epistemology and/or hypothesis-testing) Tis is how we understand the premise of the then science can legitimately be defned as a modern events that the Zapatistas of Chiapas have hosted, phenomenon. Tis liberal position may be criticized namely ConCiencias por la Humanidad (hearafter from a more radical and historical perspective. For one ConCiencias). Te name provided for this event, thing, the liberal view easily slides into the (false) thesis translated most immediately as ‘With the Sciences for that ‘science is modernity’ or the even-more-dangerous Humanity’, can be understood as a call for a science thesis that ‘science is Western.’ On these lands we that is radically conscientious and just (Sp. ‘concienca’ now call ‘Chiapas’ (and we should never forget that means ‘conscience’). Te pair of ConCiencias meetings these lands were given other names long ago) people in 2016 and 2017 brought scientists of many nations shaped maize over millennia; built cities with complex and disciplines together with Zapatistas to improve astronomical reference-points; calculated with the use science literacy and practice in Zapatista communities of zero; and so on. By any meaningful conception of while also stimulating dialogue about how science science, people in Chiapas have been thinking scien- for humanity could serve as a “key column to build tifcally for as long as they have been here: longer than a new world, better, more democratic, fair and free” there has been a ‘Chiapas.’ (Moises and Galeano, 2016, p. 1). Such discussion is especially important in the face of what Zapatistas call Tis raises a question that seems simple but proves ‘the storm’ (see Reyes 2015): global social, economic, to be quite complex in its dimensions: how can we and ecological crisis. Te talks by the scientists at afrm science as a universal phenomenon — where ConCiencias address their scientifc practice and science is available to all — but also defne it in some fndings, of course, but also thought on the intersec- way that distinguishes it from simply thinking, or tions of science, society, capitalism, and the storm. looking carefully at the world? It requires that we histo- ConCiencias, therefore, refects a demand for a dis- ricize science, that is, that we grasp the long history of tinctive practice of science as well as a provocation to science, in all its variations, while also taking account revisit our conception of science. of the specifc ways science has been both extended and deformed through capitalist modernity. Empha- Contrary to the common sense and liberal concep- sizing capitalist modernity is essential, for two broad tions of science, we argue that we can grasp science as reasons. First, the political-economy of capitalism has a social process that reduces the not-known through deeply infuenced the form and activity of scientifc creative questioning and the critical comparison of practice. Second, the fourishing of the sciences has results. So understood, science is neither modern played an essential role in deepening capitalist social nor Western, but universal or at least universally relations. possible, though not always enacted. When practiced, science means reasoning in collective-critical fashion. Nevertheless, those who criticize capitalism Consider the practices we associate with science should not reject science per se. To do so is not only to today: comparing data, citing other work, ‘peer commit to anti-scientifc reasoning. It is also to give up review’, and so on. Tese are formal ways of building on the radical potential inherent in scientifc practice. claims together.2 It is on this ground — the ‘collective’ Tus, it is important to consider how and under what character of science — that we can fend for science’s conditions science could advance the radical aims of distinctiveness, for it is what allows scientifc reasoning subaltern social groups. We share the commitment to be defned as universal (anyone can do it!), but also 2 In adopting this view, we draw from Antonio Gramsci’s prison notes on science (see Gramsci 1979, 1995). On Gramsci’s conception of science, see Wainwright and Mercer (2009), Nieto-Galan (2011) and Antonini (2014). On the virtues of Gramsci political ecology, see Mann (2009). 2 Human Geography KRISTIN L. MERCER AND JOEL D. WAINWRIGHT specifc (the validity of a specifc claim is determined there has been an intensifcation of pressures on by comparison of results, peer review, and so on, scientists since the consolidation of neoliberalism4, within a specifc network). Science is not a thing at all, the fundamental demands of science by capital have but a conception of the world. Te distinctiveness of this changed little since capitalism took hold of Western conception of the world lies in its manner of testing Europe in the 1700s. What has changed in the claims through negation, through reasoning with an neoliberal era is not the essential character of capital other, i.e., through reasoning socially. Te public pre- nor of science but their interrelation. Te change we sentation of evidence to others to substantiate claims recognize in their interrelation — which has brought is fundamental; science is validated socially. No one us to a point where it seems like science has ‘become proves anything alone. Even the accomplishments of neoliberal’ — has not been driven by changes in geniuses are only marginal elaborations of humanity’s the nature of science per se but rather in its political knowledge. economy. To put it briefy, we could say that the role of science in capitalism has changed as a consequence Here, we unfold our argument in three steps. First, of three fundamental processes, each unfolding on we refect upon science, modernity, and the political diferent temporal rhythms. economy of capitalism. We examine how science in the modern university has been formed by the state First, there is long, slow process by which the and capitalism over three distinct epochs (we live in technical side of production (machinery and compu- the third, the ‘neoliberal’ era of capitalist history). tation) has grown relative to labor power. Marx (1867) Second, we focus on the particular feld of science — calls this ratio of living labor to machines the “organic agronomy and agroecology — with which we have the composition of capital”; the extreme point of the ratio, most direct knowledge and in the country and context which capital is driven toward, is a world where all the in which we primarily operate: in US agricultural production is done by robots; that these robots would research universities.