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Abstract
Science, as a privileged form of knowledge in modernity, is entering a period of crisis in public confidence. Notably, science is credited with an authoritative basis for ascribing climate change to human activity but it is also increasingly considered to be deeply implicated in this activity and to lack the capacity to fully or adequately comprehend the mechanisms and dynamics of climate change. This crisis of science, it is argued, is symptomatic of the dominance of an anthropocentric self-understanding of science that is central to its everyday governance. Superseding this anthropocentric orientation with an ecocentric self-understanding is a condition of possibility of effectively addressing problems, such as climate change and associated forms of environmental degradation, which are as resistant to anthropocentric self-understanding as they are a product of it. An important politico-organizational condition of making this shift in scientific self-understanding, it is argued, is a move away from a technocratic, and towards a civil, mode of governance.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank participants at the first Critical Governance Studies conference, where this article was first presented, for their encouraging comments. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments which have been invaluable in developing the article. Finally, I would like to thank Jonathan Davies for his persistence in bringing this symposium to publication.
Notes
1. The boundaries of science as an ‘object’ of study are contested (see Gieryn Citation1983). It comprises diverse epistemic cultures (Galison and Stump Citation1996, Knorr Cetina Citation1999) and practices (Wong and Hodson Citation2008). Whatever defining features are attributed to distinctively ‘scientific’ ideas or practices, they are inescapably historical and cultural, and so are transient and dynamic in their formation and representation (Shapin Citation2008). Modern science has, for the most part, been developed within Western, patriarchal institutions (Harding Citation1986, Citation1993).
2. There are mounting concerns about the ‘misuse’ of science – the so-called ‘dual use’ dilemma (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Citation2009) as well as its perverse effects. Such misgivings about science and its governance find parallels in studies of scientific practice undertaken by philosophers, historians and sociologists in which doubt is cast on the credibility, or at least the completeness, of dominant representations of science as ‘independent’, and where autonomy is regarded as a condition of gaining impartiality of theoretical appraisal and neutrality of theoretical claims (see Lacey Citation1999).
3. A common focus is differences and changes in the institutional frameworks that are conceived to regulate scientific practice (e.g., Cozzens et al. Citation1990, Whitley and Gläser Citation2007).
4. Reference to the military–industrial complex was made by Eisenhower in his farewell address where he also warned of the ‘domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money’ (cited by Shapin Citation2008, p. 81).
5. In academic discourse, the term governance has been traced to the early 1960s (see Eels Citation1960).
6. Such studies often revolve around the question of how scientists may best be governed to ensure that the value produced by innovation is not impeded by the increasingly organized and programmatic nature of scientific knowledge production.
7. The preferred focus of ‘governance studies’ is (hybrid) structures (e.g., ‘network governance’), not messy practicalities and accountabilities. In Rhodes’ case, his subsequent coauthored formulation of a decentered theory of governance (Bevir and Rhodes Citation2001), and his recent close study of government (Rhodes Citation2011) indicates some broadening of approach.
8. Members of The Royal Society, for example, elect new Fellows as exemplars of the scientific conduct which they most prize.
9. Of crucial importance, the ontology of science is not reducible to what, ontically, is stipulated or facilitated by formal rules or the Method attributed to it, even though it is by reference to such rules that self-understandings are scrutinized, challenged and transformed.
10. They may contain some (routinely marginalized) elements of self-criticism (Moore Citation2008).
11. Autonomy or ‘academic freedom’ is routinely invoked as a defense against forms of interference – religious, moral and political – that pose threats to the espoused impartiality and neutrality of science. However, as Lacey (Citation1999) instructively notes, autonomy is also invoked inter alia to resist ‘public pressure to bring about greater diversity’ in the direction and focus of science as well as to gain the freedom ‘to enter into compromises with whatever agencies one sees fit, without regard to the broader social interests that may be affected by the choices’ (Lacey Citation1999, p. 11; see also Rouse Citation1992).
12. This stance is paralleled by, and perhaps draws inspiration from, an established tradition of science studies where any residual concern about the governance of scientific activity is assumed to be answered by a well-established ‘scientific ethos’ of honesty, disinterestedness, etc. (Merton Citation1969). This ethos is understood to cleanse science of bias; and it is believed that such clear-sightedness can be extended into the public sphere by educating the public about the uncertainties that science is, as yet, unable to conquer.
13. A dramatic example is the creation of tularemia strains resistant to antibiotics (Guillemin Citation2006).
14. To a visiting Martian, it might seem that the only non-scientific text on science known to scientists is Sokal’s spoof article (see Sokal Citation2008). Knowledge of this article leads Bishop (Citation2003), a Nobel laureate, to refer to ‘the post-modern vendetta against science’, which he explains in terms of envy and ignorance of ‘the practice and content of science’. Bishop describes science in terms that echo Cox’s BBC lecture: ‘no other human pursuit is anchored so fully in observation, experiment and reproducibility; so scientists can ultimately resolve their disputes beyond question, a privilege granted to no other discipline’ (Bishop Citation2003, p. 206). For a commentary upon the quote attributed to Feynman, listen to http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=441 [Accessed 14 May 2013]. In this lecture, Roman Frigg, a faculty member at the London School of Economics who is a physicist by training, argues that ‘philosophical convictions matter to how one does science’.
15. Of course, they can be read in other ways too, such as contributions to campaigns to deny global warming or conspiracies to discredit the doubters. See, for example, Hoggan and Littlemore (Citation2009). It is perhaps also relevant to note that deniers of humanly produced climate change are frequently backed by major oil companies (e.g., Exxon), the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States (see Curry Citation2011, 203).
16. The Report advises that some methods of limiting climate change (e.g., stratospheric aerosols or space-based Mirrors) have ‘transboundary effects’ that may therefore require new (international) regulatory mechanisms of an ‘external’ character. For an enlightening consideration of the discourse of geoengineering, see Sikka (Citation2012).
17. The view that geoengineering is ‘not the right focus for action’ does not, of course, directly challenge the anthropocentric orientation of the Royal Society. It is indeed unlikely that questions put to the focus groups invited comment upon this orientation. However, the preference for low-carbon technologies does suggest a more holistic frame of reference in which the priority is to address the cause attributed to climate change (the profligate burning of fossil fuels for exclusively human benefit), not to develop a risky, high-tech remedy.
18. These qualifications are, of course, very important. In particular, there is the incentivizing of what Žižek (Citation1989) terms ‘enlightened false consciousness’. The scientist knows that the claims made for science are questionable and that there is ‘a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality’, but s/he continues to act as if the claims were entirely credible.
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Hugh Willmott
Hugh Willmott is a research professor in Organization Studies at Cardiff Business School and has held visiting professorships at Copenhagen Business School and the Universities of Uppsala, Lund, Innsbruck, Sydney, and the University of Technology, Sydney. He previously held professorial appointments at the UMIST (now Manchester Business School) and Cambridge. He co-founded the International Labour Process Conference and the International Critical Management Studies Conference. He currently serves on the boards of Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies and the Journal of Management Studies, and he is an associate editor of the Organization. He has contributed to a wide range of management and social science journals and has published over 20 books.