ABSTRACT
In the USA and UK, during the 1970s, a new stream of studies developed which, whilst it does not amount to a specific branch, could better be described as an interdisciplinary approach. These are the ‘laboratory studies’ or ‘science and technology studies’ (STS) which incorporate the work of sociologists, anthropologists and indeed, in certain cases, historians (Latour and Woolgar 1986; Kevles 1987; Traweek 1988; Knorr-Cetina 1999), who cross the threshold of scientific laboratories, and who assess the way scientific facts emerge within so called ‘branches of science’ (the invention of radioastronomy, the detection of gravitational waves, the wave theory of light, Mendelian genetics, the development of statistics, etc.). In the STS approach, science is considered as one of society’s activities amongst many others, and thus can be subjected to the form of sociological, historical or ethnographic investigation usually carried out within social groups, institutions or traditional societies. Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, who introduced the new ‘sociology of sciences’ in France in the 1980s, carried their approach as far as it could go. This approach rested on a demand for symmetry by virtue of which the success and failures of science, the so called rational activities and attitudes formerly cast out as irrational, are dealt with in similar fashion and where the ‘great divide’ between the ‘pre-modern’ and the ‘modern’ world is removed from the stage (Chateauraynaud 1991). As against the epistemological approach, the new sociology of the sci-
ences considers that ‘the products of science themselves have come to be seen as cultural entities rather than as natural givens ‘‘discovered by science’’’ (Knorr-Cetina 1995). The new sociology of the sciences attempts to reveal the practices and values of scientific communities harbouring knowledge and using languages which may seem prima facie impenetrable. The assumption that the world of science is at a remove from society at large may well give rise to methodological problems where ethnographic surveys are concerned: should the social science researcher be well grounded in hard sciences (possibly a special course in the area he will be surveying), so
as to carry out his investigation?1 The difficulties possibly encountered by the ethnographic method, were it to be applied inside our own societies, points to a fundamental question: does science remain isolated from other factors at work in society? In fact the more recent STS agree in representing the scientific world as
one whose borders are permeable, by no means a citadel or a ‘stronghold of science’ according to Emily Martin’s metaphor (1998). The development of STS has waged an all-out attack on the notion of borders set out to mark the ‘sacredness’ of science. Science is constructed according to cultural categories (Gieryn 1995) which apply well beyond the area of science. It attempts to understand how science becomes integrated in the social field, the way it moves beyond the walls of the laboratories within which it has been confined for years. Such an analysis may follow different lines of thought. Surveying the mode of scientific production as it is evolving in Western society at the present juncture, Gibbons et al. evoke a new mode of knowledge production (Mode 2), where science also emerges outside the area it traditionally occupied, and which is coming to light alongside an older and more familiar pattern (Mode 1) where problems are analysed in an academic context governed by the interests of a community (Gibbons et al. 1994). This division between Mode 1 and Mode 2, however, has been challenged by French historian Dominique Pestre, who argues that the world of science has always maintained close links with the world outside. As early as the eighteenth century, science was closely related to the market (Pestre 1997). Whether the present mode of scientific production is taken to be a break
with the past or not, the development of STS has pointed to the necessity of interpreting science in the community, of making it clear to the public and having it regulated by political management. The recent work of Michel Callon and Bruno Latour has insisted on the necessity for science to be encompassed in the world of democracy. Scientific activity should be redefined so as to become part of the day-to-day workings of society and brought closer to political activity, involving a fresh look at the role of experts in public debate (Latour 2004).2 This point has been hotly debated in France in the scientific community (mainly human and social sciences). Faced with numerous instances in which governments have attempted to conceal or cover up the failures of applied science and technology,3 the scientific community has underlined the necessity for governments to make use of experts to assist in the management of technoscience. A new form of democracy must be founded on a dialogue between scientists, politicians and actors in the public sphere. As Michel Callon has rightly stated, in view of the degree of uncertainty
brought about by these crises, the controversies must be brought into the open and resolved in ‘hybrid fora’ where political personnel, technicians and outsiders4 may establish a dialogue with experts and scientists. These groups discuss options which affect society in a number of areas (environment,
health, ethics, economy, physiology, atomic physics, etc.). Hybrid fora underline the citizen’s right to confront the powers-that-be and to challenge the technocratic aspects of particular political decisions (Callon 1991). Michel Callon has also pointed to the fact that the dialogue between
scientists and outsiders greatly enriches the whole process of knowledge production. Walled-in research (cut off from the world outside), as it has often been represented, is nothing but a stage in the scientific process which is also built up through a network of permanent exchanges between specialists and the world around them (Callon et al. 2001). Scientific knowledge circulates and is built up in exchange between the laboratory and the world outside. The latter can provide data (i.e. information) which are analysed, simplified and systematised by the scientists, who then re-direct the results to the ‘world outside’.5
