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Abstract
Neoliberal reforms have changed the conduct of academic research in, and beyond, science, technology and society. Social science scholars have undertaken critical studies regarding the negative consequences of neoliberalism, such as the globalization of poverty and the inattention to rights and fairness. However, science and technology studies (STS), which should take a critical approach to science and technology, has generally not addressed the problem of neoliberalism. Rather, some currents in STS may be viewed as supportive of neoliberal transformations.Footnote 1 Why is this so? To address this question, Japanese public policy will provide a case study. In Japan, public policy changed, affected by neoliberal reforms in the 1990s. Consequently, a broad area of Japanese social sciences was altered regarding how to be engaged in public policy. STS in Japan was formed at this time and shifted to neoliberal public policy. As a result STS, as well as many other social sciences, transformed their critical function. These circumstances seem to have overlapped and caused STS in Japan to be uncritical of neoliberalism.
Notes
[1] Some public policy-oriented STS such as the “mode thesis” (Gibbons et al. Citation1994) and “triple helix” analysis (Etzkowitz Citation2008) have this tendency. A conceptual framework such as “science and technology communication” is also unintelligibly made use of in this direction. See Section 3 of this paper and Kihara Citation2010. See also, note 22.
[2] This paper does not focus on which concrete social changes, individual neoliberal public policies, such as deregulation or privatization brought about, rather on which changes in the way of doing STS or social sciences brought about the neoliberal understanding, or meaning, of public policy. Hereinafter, this paper will discuss the neoliberal change of public policy in the sense.
[3] According to Sasaki (Citation2007), in the 1990s, Japanese large manufacturers (such as the automotive or electronics industry), that are key members of the Federation of Economic Organizations, changed to “Japanese-style multinational corporations” that make profits from both exports and offshore production. See also Harvey (Citation2005) about the political and economic history of neoliberalism that gained ascendancy in the world since the 1970s.
[4] The “New Civil Society” in the 1990s is not completely unrelated to, and needs to be distinguished from, “New Social Movements” in the late 1970s (such as the ecology movement or women’s movement). The latter is something affected by postmodernism. The former came out of neoliberalism as complementary to it. See Kihara (Citation2008) and note 15. The “New Civil Society” is underpinned by a social norm that advocates the expansion of practitioners of public policy to NPOs and businesses. The method of public administration based on this norm is called “New Public Management.” The form of governing system it aims for is called “Governance.” “The third sector society” as used in this paper refers to the “New Civil Society.” The third sector society is generally defined only in a negative light as neither the public sector and government, nor the private sector and business, therfore the third sector includes, various activities in local communities, charities, cooperatives, and public interest corporations. The third sector society differs in the activities to which it refers given the social structure or system. This paper understands the third sector society as focusing on activities that tend to take on the character of the quasi-public sector or the quasi-private sector in the public-private partnership as configured by New Public Management (see also Nihei Citation2010.
[5] From a practical standpoint, it was difficult since the government faced a large budget deficit. In Japan, an affirmation of the significance of NPO activities and voluntarism arose in Kobe earthquake disaster in 1995, where voluntary mutual cooperation arose. Friedman (Citation1962) argued for the significance of making NPOs practitioners of public policy. Business lobbies in Japan recommended the same before the earthquake (in about 1990). Seen in this light, the Kobe earthquake disaster could have been made available for bolstering “New Civil Society” ideology. Klein (Citation2007) points out that in the last 20 years, governments and business communities around the world have introduced radical neoliberal policies, that would not be accepted in times of peace, through the shock of political or economic cataclysms, or natural disasters.
[6] See, for example, the following: Report by the Council on Fiscal and Economic Policy “Basic policies for future economic and fiscal management, and economic and social structural transformation” in 2001, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) Administrative Management Bureau “Toward the achievement of a new administrative management” in 2002, and MIC “Report for fiscal year 2002 by Study Group on the introduction of NPM to local administration” in 2003.
[7] Japanese government, for instance, moved ahead with industry–university collaboration by establishing “Special Measures Law of Recovery of Industrial Vitality” and infused private sector money and know-how into public facilities improvement by legislation supporting Private Finance Initiative in 1999.
[8] Another example of the engagement in public policy2 is the Federation of Economic Organizations and their economists played a leading role in government’s Council on Fiscal and Economic Policy (2001–2009) and propelled market-oriented public policy such as deregulation or privatization under the pretext of consumer benefits.
[9] Organizations, universities, or academic societies that carry out the public policy2-oriented social science, increasingly became themselves market players or civic associations in PPP. It is by no means limited to the case of social science——an instance is provided by 20 shakai gijutu and the emergence of JSSTS in Japan we will address in Section 3 below. Arguments in Woolgar et al. (2009) seem to arise from the fact STS in Europe is also in a similar context. The case report of sociology in Japan we take up in this section, and in Section 4, owes a good deal to Japanese sociologists (Takegawa and Mieno 2007). However, interpretation stems solely from the present writer.
[10] Welfare policy includes, employment policy, income policy, healthcare policy, personal care policy, housing policy, education policy, etc. Sociology, of course, also has a relationship with public policy as order or safety policy and economic policy. For example, criminal sociology or sociology of law has a relationship with order or safety policy, and industrial sociology or sociology of labor with economic policy.
[11] Examples can be found in the “Program for Economic and Social Progress” of 1967 and “Basic Program for Economic and Social Affairs” of 1973. However, “Outlook and Guidelines for Economy and Society in 1980s” appeared in 1983, the title of which did not have the word “program”.
[12] Japan looked to “Japanese-style” welfare society in order to evade state responsibility for welfare and reduce welfare spending from the late 1970s and 1980s on the eve of an aging society. “Japanese-style” welfare society presupposed the stable role of family and company in welfare that individuals complemented by risk reduction measures available in the market, such as insurance, and the state came on the last stage and provided public assistance. The Japanese government wasted a decisive moment for examining social policies on aging and, consequently, landed in follow-up welfare policies while caught in the direct wave of aging in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the Japanese government, to this day, still seeks the “New Civil Society” which presupposes self-help and is complemented by mutual-help, and furnishes state-based help last, for similar policy purposes.
[13] In fact, the Nakasone cabinet, 1982–1987, introduced a policy that privatized the Japan Monopoly Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, and Japan National Railways in 1984, 1985, 1987 respectively. The Nakasone cabinet also enacted the “Law for Acceleration of the Use of Private-sector Businesses” in 1986. Neoliberal reform in Japan, therefore, might be said to start in the period of the Nakasone cabinet the mid-1980s (if we choose an early starting point) but the reform stayed at limited level. In contrast to Europe and the USA suffering stagflation, Japan’s economy made a rapid recovery from the oil crisis in 1970s. Both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate were low at about 2% from 1980s to the mid-1990s. Japan did not need full-scale reform.
[14] In the 1980s, in the fields of sociology of education, family, gender, ethnicity, environment, science, mass media, and social movement etc., for example, many researchers, who identified themselves as constructivist, emerged. The constructivist approach to social problems made a critical attack on the previous understanding of social problems. The previous (structural-functional) approach had been taking as “a social problem” the phenomenon that makes the negative effects/functions on the realization of collective goal or value shared with members of “a society,” no matter which society it is — political society, market society or the third sector society. On the contrary, the constructivist approach took as “a social problem” (the emergence of) a personal or group claim-making activity for the affair he or she recognizes as a problem. See Spector and Kitsuse (Citation1977).
[15] The constructivist approach could find the problem only in a piecemeal society. That approach encourages the constructivist affinity for microsociology. See Hess’s paper in this special issue. Additionally, the reason why public-policy2 advanced after the 1990s was because the constructivist approach weakened public policy1 in adance. See Kihara (Citation2008). In STS, the “constructivist turn” may have paved the way to the neoliberal turn.
[16] See Jessop (Citation2002) for the Schumpeterian-style competitive state affected by neoliberal policy ideas, aiming for supply-side policy, labor market flexibility, underemployment, and cut-down or marketising of social security.
[17] This paper does not address Japanese public policy1–oriented science or/and technology studies that were founded in the 1970s and earlier (the public policy1 era). For that account, please refer to Fujita’s paper in this issue. The turnaround of Japanese STS in the mid-1990s about which we will tell in the next section is not from public policy1-oriented to public policy2-oriented but from not public policy-oriented to public policy2-oriented. This turnaround produced an alteration in the front-line arrangement of research in the science and technology policy field—the replacement of public policy1-oriented science or/and technology studies by public policy2-oriented kagaku gijutu shakai ron. The situation in sociology is different.
[18] Japanese version of JSSTS is “the Society for Kagaku Gijutu Shakai Ron.” Why was the new term, which emphasizes “society,” widely accepted around 2000? Generally speaking, a new term is required when a new reality arises which existing words cannot adequate describe, or arises from a necessity to mobilize people in a new direction. As for the new term, Kagaku Gijutu Shakai Ron, it has been often said to be necessary given that as the interrelation among science, technology, and society becomes closer, we should bring our attention to it. But this paper finds the reason to be that the interrelation has shifted from public policy1 context to public policy2 context, and the need for mobilizing people in this direction has arisen. That is, the meaning and reality of “society” is changing and the need for adapting science and technology activities to it arises. It makes the term widely accepted. In fact, it is argued that kagaku gijutu shakai ron is “mode 2” research. This finding suggests that this paper’s perspective is correct.
[19] See Kihara (Citation2010) for how misguided this response was.
[20] The symposium “Science Communication ’95” was co-hosted with Japan Science and Technology Corporation and a government worker of the Ministry of Education participated in it as a panelist.
[21] We find that shakai gijutu developed in accordance with Japanese government’s science and technology policy from the process of the foundation of “shakai gijutu research system” in 2001. See the end of Section 3. Additionally, some reports by National Institute of Science and Technology policy (e.g. Watanabe and Imai Citation2005) shows that “science and technology communication” also developed in concert with the government’s science and technology policy.
[22] The concept of “science and technology communication” that can be usable not only in political contexts, but in market or social contexts, was convenient for neoliberalism that blurs the difference of meaning between public interest 1 and public interest2. See Kihara (Citation2010) for details. Studies need to be performed on whether the way of doing “science and technology literacy” or “science/engineering ethics” similarly shifted a balance to the means for realizing public interest2.
[23] Similar consent procurement was required generally in academic research since neoliberal public policy and administration2 needs knowledge or solution for realization of public interest2 in various fields. The mode thesis could have been made available for it, in so far as it was taken as contributing to the solution of “social problems.” Note, however, that the meaning of “social” was focused on the market society or the third sector society.
[24] See Gibbons et al. (Citation1994) and Pestre (Citation2000).
[25] Yoichiro Murakami offered these remarks in the keynote speech at the “Symposium of STSNJ’s 20th Anniversary: STS Reconsidered’ held at Tokyo Institute of Technology” on 27 March 2010.
[26] It is because a vision of political society touches on the interests of unknown members of (political) society and, in that sense, it is the vision relating to the whole of society.
[27] This paper was written four months after the accident. This recognition of Japan’s STS is as of then. We still can’t see a marked difference in Japan’s STS in spite of the signs.