Bruno Latour on science and politics
Marco Boscolo
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 07:18 UTC
Some weeks ago, Bruno Latour, one of the most influent sociologists of sciences, was giving a lectur in Bologna. Before the public speech, I had the opportunity to interview him for a few minutes. Here you can find the original audio (in english).
IMHO, what seems interesting, thinking to the scientific issues and realtive debates we had in Italy (but also in other countries) is that the Latour says the real dialogue between science and politics will begin only when we stop to think at science and politics as two separetes worlds.
I’d like to know what you think about this topic: is politics a world apart from science? Do you think that connections between politics and science should be more close or not?
-
Replies
-
Hi, as for me,
politics influence science all the time. The human genome sequencing project. The ethical constrains on the ex-uthero conception. The planning of the human resources that are needed and as consequence the close number of subscriptions to university. It depends on how to harmonise the requirements of both parts. Lobbying is today one of the most powerful activity even in the EU Commission, deciding which topics will become new calls for projects, and each country has its representatives inside the Commission structures and among the officers.
“Two separate worlds” is exagerate: a dialog between “scientists and politicians” is possible and necessary, to involve stakeholders, public, opinionists, science divulgative giornalists and bloggers. -
Latour argues, usually, that science is political, as much as politics is scientific. The process of making knowledge requires the inclusion of a lot of politics and the products (knowledge, facts, artifacts, technologies, etc.) are, as a result, hybrids of “nature” and “social”, or “science” and “politics”. (He writes about this in his book “We have never been modern”).
Following Latour, asking whether the connections between politics and science, or between the social and the natural, should increase, is an odd question, since they are fully and completely intertwined. We can ask how this should be shaped or what we can do to improve the “mainstreaming” of this intertwinement.
Poltronieri’s remark about lobbying (above) is interesting. Latour talks about the construction of facts/knowledge/technology in terms of the construction of network. No allies, no facts (See his books “Science in Action”/“Laboratory Life”). You need to have people who believe you, materials which support you and texts for distribution. Lobbying is a part of this networking process. Lobying is, however, restricted to humans. In Latour’s networks, humans and non-humans (including jounals, cells, molecular, bacteria (See his book: “The Pasteurization of France”), etc.).
-
bart, the fact that also non-humans are part of the networking process is one of the most interesting things I heard from latour.
the problem we have in Italy is that the compenetration of science, politics, and society is not so clear to much of politicians, commentators, journalists, and even scientists. -
Well, Marco, this is not a situation restricted to Italy. There are many people (in many social roles, whether scientist, scholar or politician) who attempt to establish clear demarcations in between science and politics. This has to do with authority (“This is my domain, I am the expert here”), naivity (retrace your own science education and you will identify its source), etc.
The entanglement of politics and science is very clear (and I assume this to be so in Italy too) in the prioritisation of some research field and problems over others in state funding. It is less clear on a micro-level, where it can be said that “artifacts are political too” (Cf. Winner, L. “Do artifacts have politics?” 1986).
The inclusion of non human actors (=actants) into his (with Michel Callon, John Law, Annemarie Mol) actor-network-theory (ANT) is indeed fascinating. To grasp the details of it, one should read Science in Action. I do not want to say “This is a book which every scientist, journalist and politician should have read” simply because reading everything one should have read in itself takes over a lifetime.
-
The book one should read in is life is a neverending list of masterpiecese, so seat back, relax and watch last baywatch’s episode! That’s what used to say one of my friends from the university years.
Back to the topic, I don’t know if I must be happy that this situation is not restricted to Italy. I mean, what you say is clear. But I’ve got the sensation that in my country there is a lack of consciousness on this topic also in the communicators/journalists’s community. To say: the people who should be , or at list I think should be, most aware of this situation.
Once journalists and magazine were the most cultured part of the society. Today I’ve the feeling that they don’t even know what they are writing about.
-
Are you referring to the current situation in which newspapers and other traditional media are relying more and more on “general” staff in stead of thematic correspondents (e.g. many newspapers not having a science correspondent or science section anymore) or that the public intellectuals are not speaking up in the media (or that the overlap between journalism and public intellectualism is grwoing smaller)?
I refrain from using the term culture. I would agree with you, that, for instance, journalists ought to take a critical (not negative) stance with respect to developments in the world – whether these are science-based or taking place in the Italian Parliament (which could in fact overlap a 100%).
But: and this is equally important: scientists should do the same thing. Science is about the organisation of scepticism with respect to nature. It rarely turns inwards, reflecting upon the process and practice of science. This type of reflection is usually left to the experts, philosophers and sociologists of science, like Bruno Latour.
It is too bad these worlds do not mix very well. Sometimes Nature runs essays by political scientists, sociologists, anthopologists or philosophers of science (See e.g. Jasanoff 2007 Nature 450:33), but Nature is an exception. Most scientists remain unaware of the issues these experts discuss. Symmetrically, in a journal such as “Social Studies of Science”, rarely a scientist replies to the research on science reported there.
-
Yes, Bart, I was exactly thinking about the problem of general media that you underline.
I agree with you when you say that researchers should do it too. The difficulty I see is that they’d like to keep themselves “pure”, not involved in this kind of “political”, and let me say also cultural, processes. I use the word ‘culture’ meaning expression of human activity, not referring only to the “high culture”. I should say: I use ‘culture’ in a illuministic meaning.
-
Linking back to your initial post, demarcating the pure from the political is equivalent to demarcating the scientific from the political. I agree with Latour that such a demarcation is counterproductive to any constructive dialogue and shared decision-making.
-
