Narrative as a resource for inclusive governance: a UK–Brazil comparison of public responses to nanotechnology

ABSTRACT

In this article we examine the role of narrative as a resource for developing inclusive governance frameworks, principally through an examination of two public deliberation experiments, conducted concurrently in the UK and Brazil, that took place prior to the rise of interest in responsible innovation. While in the UK we witness a (partial) rhetorical move in science governance, from a top-down technocratic model to a more deliberative model in which public engagement assumes a central role, in Brazil the political contestations over particular technologies failed to gain political traction. A contrast is drawn between the narratives that publics draw upon in responding to nanotechnology between UK and Brazilian publics. We draw on these differences to argue that situated narratives of epistemic inclusion need to be addressed at the outset of adapting any responsible innovation framework to best align its goals and practices with the context of implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Public engagement with science
• narrative
• responsible innovation
• nanotechnology
• epistemic inclusion

Introduction

Until roughly the turn of the century, it was assumed that new science and technology were relatively unproblematic public goods, that should be permitted unless and until there were clear and demonstrable indications of harm, either to the environment or human health, identified and preferably quantified through science. This ‘risk-based’ approach to scientific governance became deeply embedded within science policy practice and culture during the latter part of the twentieth century across Western democracies, reproduced through mechanisms of science-based risk assessment, tightly-defined expert advisory structures and a narrow reliance on sound science and administrative caution (in the United States, this approach was perhaps best exemplified in reports from the National Research Council, see NRC 1983, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1996). In addition, notwithstanding differences in national socio-technical imaginaries and their constitutive coupling of the science policy interface (Jasanoff 2005; Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 2015), it became connected to an optimistic and largely modernist social imaginary, where the progress of science was in large measure tied to the future prosperity of the nation (Jasanoff 2003; Sarewitz 1996).

However, from the 1970s onwards, this model of risk governance failed to accommodate a series of political contestations around particular technologies, notably the development of civil nuclear power, where risk-based estimates of harm failed to accommodate the social, ethical and political challenges associated with technoscientific progress. The model came to be challenged, initially by the academic community and later by wider policy institutions, and for three reasons.

First, it became clear that the narrative of technology as a liberating and empowering force was not uncontested. Just as dreams can turn to nightmares, the promise and hope of technology can equally turn to failure, breakdown, crash and disappointment (Jasanoff 2006). Indeed, as historians and sociologists of technology have testified, the twentieth century is besieged with examples of technology’s dark side, from the horrors of chemical weapons in the First World War to nuclear bombs in the Second, from nuclear explosions at Chernobyl to chemical explosions at Bhopal, from the terrorist atrocities of 11 September 2001 to the on-going perils of climate change, ozone depletion and other environmental disasters (Jasanoff 2003; Perrow 1984). While these cases of technoscientific failure clearly require different kinds of social, political and historical explanation, they nevertheless, in Sheila Jasanoff’s words: ‘have served collective notice that human pretensions of control over technological systems need serious re-examination’ (Jasanoff 2003, 223). The proposition that systems of technology may have the capacity to disrupt society through the manufacture of risk also lies at the heart of a substantial body of sociological literature on the (world) risk society (Beck 1992, 2000, 2009; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994). Within this sociological canon, risks are seen as becoming global, unpredictable, distributed in time and space, invisible to the senses and endemic to the ways in which modern life is conducted in technologically-intensive society. Under these conditions, a quest for risk reduction through narrow reliance on sound science and case-by-case scientific risk assessment is by definition a partial and restricted response to the perils of life in a globalised risk society.

Second, it became apparent that many of the most profound technologically-induced risks that are faced today were not identified in advance by formal processes of risk assessment. Rather, they appeared as unforeseen surprises, characterised by interactions between unknown processes and variables. In the case of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) for example, risk assessment was limited to questions of human toxicity, and where the slow drift of CFCs into the upper atmosphere, and their capacity there to destroy ozone, had not been imagined as a possible risk (Hoffmann-Reim and Wynne 2002). Nobody had suspected a connection between stratospheric CFC concentration and stratospheric ozone concentration. According to Wynne, the problem lies with the implicit assumption that risk analysis can identify the relevant interactions and processes in advance (Wynne 2002). More accurately, risk analysis needs to be recognised as fundamentally limited by ignorance, by its ability to focus on known uncertainties rather than on unknowns. Thus, the fundamental risk governance question for Wynne and colleagues concern who will be responsible for future unanticipated surprises, given that ‘unanticipated effects of novel technologies are not just possible but probable’ (Hoffmann-Reim and Wynne 2002, 123).

And third, it became increasingly recognised that the assessment of risks is rarely based on science or technical evaluation alone, but is contingent on wider social judgement and values. To determine the level at which a technology can be deemed safe, or whether a certain level of uncertainty is acceptable, can not be read as purely a technical matter; it depends on such considerations as norms, expectations, the trustworthiness of responsible institutions, the purposes to which the technology will be addressed, and so on. The importance of ‘framing’ as a necessary element in the risk assessment process has been advocated as a key ingredient of technology appraisal (Grove-White, Macnaghten, and Wynne 2000; Stirling 1998; Wynne 1992, 2006).

Around the consensus in the STS community on the above three points, a subfield of research has grown significantly in the last 20 years on the relevance of public engagement in the governance of emerging technologies (Bowman et al. 2017; Mahr et al. 2018; Stilgoe, Lock, and Wilsdon 2014). A variety of approaches have been developed, ranging from versions of ‘upstream’ engagement (Wilsdon and Willis 2004; Wynne 2002) to those of anticipatory governance (Barben et al. 2008; Guston 2014), various forms of technology assessment (Delvenne 2017; Guston and Sarewitz 2002; Rip, Misa, and Schot 1995), value-sensitive design (van den Hoven 2013), socio-technical integration (Fisher, Mahajan, and Mitcham 2006), and most recently responsible innovation (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; von Schomberg 2013), all aimed, inter alia, at the deliberative and reflexive inclusion of new voices in the governance of science and innovation. This participatory turn for a more democratic science and technology policy has been further specified recently, emphasising that participation is co-produced, that publics do not exist in a natural state external to participatory practices, that models of public engagement vary significantly depending on institutional purpose and design, and that public responses can be profoundly mediated by national cultural differences (Burgess 2014; Chilvers and Kearnes 2016, 2020; Irwin 2014; Macnaghten 2020a, 2020b; Macnaghten and Chilvers 2014).

In line with these insights, scholars have traced the adaptation of policies, practices and frameworks for responsible innovation across a diverse and rapidly expanding variety of national, cultural and epistemic contexts (Doezema et al. 2019; Wittrock et al. 2020). In the process, they have argued for the need to attend in particular to various forms of inclusion and exclusion, perhaps most notably epistemic inclusion (Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020; Valkenburg et al. 2020). Only by attending to the epistemic and ontological world views and positions of local and lay communities, and their convergences and divergences from dominant scientific, policy and market frames, can a diversity of epistemologies and ontologies be empowered. Building on these insights, in this article we reflect back on a research project aimed at comparing national cultural differences in public responses to nanotechnology in Brazil and the UK. The goal of the article is less to compare perceptions, but to re-examine this data in light of more recent work on considerations of epistemic inclusion in public engagement aimed at responsible innovation.

In 2008–2009 the authors undertook the field research (for a detailed analysis see Macnaghten and Guivant 2011). Using an anticipatory public engagement methodology using focus groups (Macnaghten 2017, 2020b), the research was conducted concurrently in the North-East of England and subsequently in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina State, Brazil. The methodology was designed to articulate a contextual understanding of how people develop views and attitudes to emerging nanotechnologies under conditions of unfamiliarity, where participants were empowered to negotiate the meanings of issues endogenously. The methodology was designed to respond to the challenges of researching a technology in-the-making and to elucidate a contextual understanding of the factors likely to shape future public responses to nanotechnology (Macnaghten 2010, 2017, 2020b). A focus group methodology was chosen, designed to encourage discussion of potential issues arising for nanotechnology in an active learning setting, where the analytical task was one of examining the narrative forms and processes through which the unfamiliar was rendered familiar. Our research questions included the following: What kind of stories would people tell about nanotechnology? How would these narratives be drawn upon, argued over, and negotiated in the craft of producing opinions and attitudes? How do these emerge and solidify in guided social interaction? How and at what level and with what epistemological and ontological significance can these be codified? Can they be considered in some manner or form ‘arche’ or master narratives? And in what ways would publics respond when confronted with narratives reflecting dominant institutional norms and aspirations (for a more detailed account of the research design principles, see Macnaghten 2020b; for an account on the centrality of narrative in science policy, see Felt et al. 2007, Chapter 7)?

Our re-examination of this case study suggests that a greater focus on narrative and on narrative resourcing provides an avenue for attending to epistemic inclusion. More specifically, if we are to explicate the epistemologies and ontologies of lay and local communities, we need to attend to how their positions and views are narratively resourced and configured. We argue that narratives provide insight not only for the governance of emerging technologies but also for developing practices in designing and adapting appropriately inclusive governance frameworks. First, we attend to national policy cultures of scientific governance both in the UK and Brazil.

Science, technology and innovation governance in the UK and Brazil

According to Pansera and Owen (2018), the UK’s national science, technology and innovation (STI) imaginary has been built out of the following intersecting elements: a proud tradition of excellence and autonomy in basic science and discovery, a set of world-leading elite universities configured around the London–Cambridge–Oxford golden triangle, a long-standing culture of deference towards science and expertise, the rise of a pro-market STI policy regime aimed at stimulating economic growth through strategic investment, a growing emphasis on a ‘triple helix’ of government–industry–university relations and on the entrepreneurial university, and a residual tension between a ‘systems of innovation’ model aimed at improving productivity and growth and a ‘science for society’ model aimed purposely at societal challenges.

The role of public participation has traditionally been shaped in the UK by national demands for economic growth and market governance. After the Second World War, researchers were more or less autonomous and largely unaccountable to the public, the dominant assumption being that investments in science would lead inevitably to benefits to society. After the 1970s, however, processes of neoliberalisation and the rise of the Thatcher pro-market STI policy regime led to calls for accountability and a focus on economic (and to a lesser extent societal) goals, crystalising in the notion of (national) systems of innovation at the end of the 1990s (Lundvall and Borrás 2006; Schot and Steinmueller 2018). The result was that scientists were encouraged to address non-scientific economic and societal goals, to demonstrate impact and to engage in science communication and the education of the unknowing public (the ‘deficit model’ of science communication). Scientists remained largely autonomously responsible for the research process.

From the 1990s, however, in the face of a series of high profile risk controversies and the failure of traditional models of scientific governance to anticipate and take into account adverse public reaction, UK policy cultures and practice on scientific governance began to question the dominant, traditional, one-way, linear model of science and innovation processes. The controversy surrounding mad cow disease and the uncertainties surrounding the link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), followed by the rows over genetically modified (GM) foods and crops in the late 1990s, led to a number of influential policy reports calling for a new style of scientific governance. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution made a landmark contribution in their ‘Setting Standards’ report (RCEP 1998), recognising the role of public engagement in scientific governance as a key requirement for assuring public trust in environmental regulation, including the need to consider and take into account, at the stage of the definition of the issue, the ‘perspectives and values of all those who may be affected by a problem or have an interest in it’ (RCEP 1998, 119). This appeal to include a broader array of voices, including lay publics, in deliberative processes, was a major departure in risk governance cultures.

A new scientific governance developed, based on the need for more proactive public involvement and deliberation, to ensure that decisions are based on public values, and with wider openness and accountability in the scientific and regulatory process (HM Treasury 2004; House of Lords 2000; RCEP 1998, 2008). Embedded within this emergent governance paradigm are a number of assumptions: that current levels of mistrust are a matter of concern for scientific governance and that openness and accountability can help remedy it; that expert and scientific framings of risk issues may be at odds with lay ethical judgements and values and that this can be remedied by giving lay people a greater voice; and that public dialogue should be promoted by government as part of the democratic process (Irwin 2006). The framing of public dialogue itself evolved throughout the early 2000s, from a set of debates around the framing of regulatory science, to a wider and more inclusive set of debates about the social and ethical dimensions of science and technology, and on how these could be anticipated by techniques of public engagement (see Wilsdon and Willis 2004).

Brazil’s national STI imaginary has a different constitution, shaped by an alternative set of intersecting dynamics (Reyes-Galindo and Monteiro 2018). First, there remains the pervasive adoption of the linear model of science policy, adhered to by scientific elites seeking to retain institutional autonomy in the face of political pressures and interference, and by a drive to improve excellence and prestige in science, particularly in international rankings. Second, there remains the strong endorsement of a systems of innovation model, particularly strong in the industrial South-East and in powerful funding bodies like the Sao Paulo state funding body FAPESP, seeking to use science in a strategic manner for economic growth and competitiveness. Third, there is a wider imaginary of national pride and self-sufficiency, including a marked ambivalence and resistance to the imposition of foreign ideas framed as colonial impositions and of taking advantage. Fourth, there is the problem of weak institutions, including government ministries and funding bodies, who prove unable to pursue and carry out long-term strategic investment. In this context, the Sao Paulo state funder FAPESP is an exception, with relatively constant and long-term funding written into its constitution. Fifth, there is the problem of the many Brazils, with very high indices of racial, social and regional inequality.

The role of public participation in Brazil’s STI imaginary has historically been limited, in line with its top-down administrative style and an institutional desire for autonomy. Key reasons for this include: the lack of a significant public technological risk controversy; the high regard placed on science and scientists in public opinion; the perception that when risk issues emerge, this can be blamed as the result of corrupt individuals or companies rather than as an instance of systemic failure; general apathy and distrust in enforcement; and similar distrust in politicians and civil servants (Guivant 2002). Research that supports these observations can be found from a survey conducted in 2003 across three municipalities in Sao Paulo that found that 76.5% of those polled agreed that science and technology was the principal driver for an improved quality of life, an equivalent 75.9% agreed that the positive effects of science were greater than its negatives, a further 75% perceived the motives of scientists to be principally honourable (i.e. to do good, to contribute to knowledge or to solve social problems rather than to gain money, prestige, power or rewards), while an even larger 82.5% majority agreed that science and technology could provide solutions to all of society’s problems (Vogt and Polino 2003). A national 2013 survey, sponsored by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation and by Museum of Life/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, found similar results (Castelfranchi et al. 2013). 2,016 interviews were conducted, based on a representative sample of Brazilians stratified according to gender, age, educational level, income, and region of residence. Consonant with the 2003 survey, this research concluded that ‘the vast majority of Brazilians display a trusting, optimistic view that generally expresses support for science.’ While, in parallel, a developed confidence index in the professions conducted by the CGEE (2015) presented the university scientist or public institution of research as the most respected professional. Against such a context in Brazil, it is not surprising that science and scientists may tend to be seen as far removed from downstream risk events and thus far from any associated responsibility (see findings below).

The case study regarding how the controversy over genetically modified crops was handled and understood in Brazil serves to draw out these differences. Unlike in the UK, where the risk controversy was understood at least by a number of prominent institutions as evidence of the need for more inclusive and transparent forms of scientific governance, including the need to open up regulatory processes to wider stakeholders, in Brazil the debate had a different provenance. The debate on GMOs exposed a polarisation between heterogeneous coalitions, with international alliances on each side, both in favour and against GMO release (Guivant 2002). Although those who opposed GMO agriculture justified such a stance through endorsing the ‘precautionary principle’, and those in favour to it made justification through the principle of ‘sound science’, both sides resorted to a standard linear model of science as providing authoritative, objective and universal knowledge, and as providing the unquestionable basis for decision-making (Guivant 2008). Indeed, the rhetorical strategies of both parties were to position their own stance as based on objective ‘science’, uncontaminated by value considerations and political interest, while at the same time positioning the stance of their opponents as ‘ideological’ and even ‘demagogic’. Thus, from a science and technology studies (STS) and responsible innovation perspective, the controversy remained largely untainted by three decades of scholarship oriented towards exposing the multiple ways in which value judgements and commitments are present, inevitably, in scientific knowledge and expert advice, including the ways in which ‘scientific uncertainty’ is handled (Jasanoff 1990, 2004). Indeed, even in those rare occasions where the coalition against the liberalisation of GMOs called for public debate, this was analysed by one of the authors to be for the purposes of self-interested mobilisation rather than for genuine open-ended and participative deliberation (Guivant 2008; Guivant and Macnagthen 2015).

Furthermore, in Brazil there has been little perceived institutional need to engage in societal debate, nor to open up processes to wider stakeholders, nor to integrate such considerations back into scientific research programmes (Guivant 2008). The silence about public participation in Brazil, notwithstanding the noisy confrontation of both coalitions in the GM controversy between 1999 and 2003, has had the effect of strengthening the traditional and standard model of science as the indisputable basis for public policy (Guivant 2006). This tendency has been consolidated in the last decade through the activities of National Technical Commission on Biotechnology (CTNBio), the organisation that regulates genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Brazil. Based on a study of the CTNBio, Fonseca and Guivant (2019) concluded that the organisation has successfully managed conflicts behind the scenes, constructing decision-making processes as having taken place impartially, without any political interference or personal interests. Nevertheless, particularly with regards to the approval process of pesticides, non-transparent and value-based decision-making have co-produced an alignment between regulatory science and public policy precriptions, where there is little perceived justification for public participation in governance processes. This ‘science-led’ policy culture has been further reinforced with recent and severe cuts in research and innovation funding in Brazil, applied with particular vigour to the social sciences (Petherick 2017; Reyes-Galindo, Monteiro, and Macnaghten 2019). With less financial resources, public engagement becomes a very distant option for science and technology innovation governance (Jornal da Ciência 2019), as the very survival of independent spaces of research become threatened (Monteiro 2020).

Comparative public engagement research in Brazil and the UK

For our comparative research, we formed groups of publics around commonalities of lifeworld experience seen as likely to be of relevance in creating positions on nanotechnology (critical distinctions were faith, relations to the body, agency, community involvement, alongside standard demographics of age, gender and socio-economic status). The UK included a group of church attenders (recruited from a single church) – UK Group 1; a student environmental group (recruited from the organisation People and Planet) – UK Group 2; a natural health group (users of organic produce and natural health techniques) – UK Group 3; a confident believers group (positive towards technology and its governance) – UK Group 4; a local involvers group (active or potentially active within the local community) – UK Group 5; an authority figures group (drawn from business leaders and the professions) – UK Group 6. The Brazilian groups included a spiritual and natural health group (drawn from attendance of Catholic and evangelical churches and including users of natural therapies and organic produce) – Brazil Group 1; a local involvers and social movement group (drawn from members of ecological, feminist and neighbourhood organisations) – Brazil Group 2; and an authority figures group (drawn from business leaders and the professions) – Brazil Group 3.

Given the promissory character of most nanotechnologies, considerable thought was given to the institutional frames and narratives through which the technology is being introduced in the public domain (e.g. in the form of policy reports, newspaper articles, television documentaries, industry presentations, campaign materials, and so on). Two dominant frames were identified and presented to the groups: one that interpolated nanotechnology as a new science that would contribute to projected breakthroughs across multiple sectors and spheres of application (European Commission 2004; HM Government 2010); the other more avowedly utopian and revolutionary, with promises of how nanotechnology will extend and transform human sensory and physical capacities to transcend natural and physical constraint (Roco and Bainbridge 2002). In addition, a third frame was added, derived from civil society actors and sceptics that focused on the potential and uncertain risks of the technology on human health and the environment, and of wider concerns of the technology running ‘out of control’ (ETC 2003; Joy 2000; Lloyds 2007; RCEP 2008). These three styles of thought, visually represented in stimulus materials (Fleck 1979; Hacking 1992; Rose 2007), reflected three different visions of what nanotechnology is, what it explains, and what futures it will lead to. By exposing participants to the multiple frames characteristic of an emerging public debate, and by encouraging discussion and exchange on the credibility, legitimacy and authority of such frames, the design was intended explicitly to simulate the real-world dynamics through which nanotechnologies and their associated social relationships become co-produced.

Research findings

We now set out a comparative analysis of public perceptions across Brazilian and UK publics. To begin, however, we advise a note of caution. In the evaluation that follows we do not attempt at an overarching analysis. Rather, and for the purposes of this article, we pay attention to styles of thought that ran through the group discussions and to overarching differences that we witnessed between and across the different national contexts. In so doing we inevitably impose a sense of order from our focus group data that does not fully correspond to talk that was messy, complex and at times chaotic. Indeed, in focusing on the converging and prominent narrative constructions we inescapably pay only partial attention to the diversity that occurs within particular narratives and to the presence of counter-stories to them. Notwithstanding this caveat we nevertheless were struck by highly divergent citizen responses across the UK and Brazil and it is these we examine and theorise in the following sections.

Brazilian master narratives of nanotechnology

Enlightenment thinking can be characterised as involving ideals that include, inter alia: the belief in reason, criticism, freedom of expression, the value of science, the pursuit of progress, and the battle against tyranny, ignorance and superstition. Central to such thinking is the master narrative that conflates general societal progress with technoscientific advance, that gives science a thrusting forward arrow of time, and one that not only grows over time but also improves. Central too is an associated set of psycho-social emotions that include juvenile enthusiasm, indifference to the past, risk taking, frontier spirit ¹ and optimism (Latour 2008). Although this model of technoscientific advance has been powerful ever since the time of Francis Bacon, where efforts aimed at an ever-increasing instrumentalisation of the natural world have been equated ipso facto with human betterment, it is possible to locate nanotechnology as in some ways representing an intensification of such modernist dreams of reason through its metaphysical project of control and improvement (Dupuy 2007).

For the Brazilian groups, and notwithstanding its potential both to liberate and to ‘enslave’, technology tended to be seen, by and large, as the source of economic progress and social betterment rather than as the creator of risks and manufactured uncertainty. For the group of authority figures (Brazil Group 3), technology was represented as the force that would enable Brazil to enter into modernity, to benefit from globalisation, and to become a more democratic and open society. For the group of local involvers and activists (Brazil Group 2), technology retained a positive appeal, that would enable them to fulfil their ambitions of creating a more equal society and as providing solutions to environmental and social problems. Even for the spiritual and natural health group (Brazil Group 1), who tended to express scepticism in the values propagated by an increasingly technological and consumer-oriented society, their response was to advocate voluntary simplicity and to appeal to religious faith rather than to develop a collective or political response. Such visions on the role of technology provided the shared reference points and guides of imagination upon which participants developed their responses to nanotechnology. Below are two passages in which participants express their optimism for technology, and for nanotechnology in particular, as providing the source for social progress and a better future:

Renata:

‘I believe in technology. And because of this I believe that nanotechnology will help solve everything.’

Moderator:

‘Can I understand your position some more?’

Renata:

‘ … We do not need to resolve this [now] because our knowledge has not reached this stage. But it will resolve everything for us. This feeling provides you with a sensation, a little bit like, trust.’ … 

Rosali:

‘Despite not having much knowledge about how it happens, I am extremely optimistic about it [nanotechnology and scientific progress]. Because this is how things advance, just as Antonio was saying in relation to the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution. I think it’s an inevitable process, I think it is a process that will benefit humanity. And I agree with Antonio when he says that it is up to the individual human being whether this will be used for good or ill. Do not shoot those who have responsibility for governing, because governments are made up of people and people have choices. And I think that this [nanotechnology] will come and it will bring benefits for humanity. I am extremely in favour.’

 

(Brazil Group 1: Spiritual and natural health group)

Antonio:

‘I’m totally optimistic. I think that technological development is the solution. If we have resources in nanotechnology to prolong our life I think this is something very nice. Imagine walking a little robot inside me to cure a disease I have!’

Cristina:

‘I also have an optimistic view. The risks – We have to take enough risks with existing technologies. I think it [nanotechnology] will not increase the risk, the risk is already there. I believe it will be a positive thing!’

 

(Brazil Group 3: Authority figures group)

The profound sense of optimism highlighted in the exchanges above is prototypical of our Brazilian participants’ trust and faith in science and technology as the source and driver of social betterment and progress. This is legitimated by historical precedent (Rosali’s reference to the industrial revolution), the plausibility and seductiveness of the technology’s promise (Antonio’s appeal to the image of self-healing robots), the background assumption that technology tends to mitigate rather than manufacture risk (the source for Cristina’s optimism), or simply due to an unconditional sense of trust in the techno-scientific project (important for Renata). For our Brazilian participants more generally, there was little critique of technology as a social system, and thus little sensed need to scrutinise or critique the actors involved in its social production. Scientists were seen as on the side of the angels and as part of a still to be realized process of social improvement. From a Brazilian perspective, due the socio-technical system seen as itself self-correcting, there was little sensed need for oversight, either by government or by techniques of public engagement. For the authority figures group problems any residual problems would be resolved through individual and familial responsibility; for the spiritual and natural health group, these problems would be determined by ‘God’s will’, or through individual self-responsibility; while even for the local involver and activist group, where one might have expected a more critical discourse, there remained a perception that problems arising from advanced technology would be local and solved through government control. In other words, there was little evidence in the discussions of the kind of widespread public unease with science and technology that has been experienced and reported in the UK and Europe (Felt et al. 2007; Horst and Irwin 2010), and little expressed mistrust in the motives of scientists or with the system through which innovation R&D folds into everyday life. ²

UK master narratives of nanotechnology

In our UK groups we identified a dynamic whereby participants moved between optimism and pessimism in their responses to nanotechnology. However, without exception, all our UK focus group discussions ended in tragedy, offering the opinion that under real-world circumstances nanotechnology would generate profound and complex dilemmas that were predicted to exceed our capacity for collective control and negotiation. To justify this position, our UK groups appealed to five complex and intersecting narratives: that nanotechnology would constitute a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of secrets that, once opened, would release a whole host of human evils; that the technology had the potential to severely ‘mess with nature’ and disrupt what it is to be human; that while the technology held desirable promises of perfection and improvement we need to ‘be careful what we wish for’; that people felt that the technology would exacerbate existing inequalities with ‘the rich getting richer’; and that in relation to all these dynamics people felt impotent and ‘kept in the dark’ (for more detail on these narratives, see Davies, Macnaghten, and Kearnes 2009; Macnaghten, Davies, and Kearnes 2019).

Deployed in all of our UK focus groups as a way of expressing what is ‘at stake’ at the level of human ontology, nanotechnology came to be represented in the role of a temptress with its seductive but false appeals to eternal youth, control over nature, perfection, excess and desire. Thus, reinforced by driving visions apparently endorsed by government and corporate actors, nanotechnology was represented as in danger of intensifying existing trends of individualism (UK Group 1), conspicuous consumerism (UK Group 1), sloth (UK Group 4) and insularity (UK Group 5). For our group of church attenders, discussion centred on how nanotechnology could further replace the human soul with convenience (UK Group 1); for the natural health group, the quest for perfection and for ‘curing everything’ was seen as taking away our free will and devaluing life (UK Group 3); while for the authority figures group, it was precisely the act of dealing with adversity and contingency that was seen as forming character and ‘making one strong’ (UK Group 6). Below is one exchange on the socially disruptive consequences seen as likely to result from nanotechnological innovation:

Mary:

‘Whatever they throw at us we’ll all have it. So it’s just finding more new things to sell. It’s quite divisive. It’s just more and more that we want – different things that we want and the people who have it are those who can afford it. It’s divisive in terms of individuals, communities within a country and internationally.’

Chris:

‘The presumption is that we want more, more and more. We just get swept along with all these things.’

Lynn:

‘It’s like removing the human soul, isn’t it? It’s removing what makes us individual and replacing it with … ’

David:

‘Convenience’

Lynn:

‘ … a technology that says “don’t worry, I know what you want, I know what you need, I know what you fancy”.’

 

(UK Group 1: Church attending group)

In this exchange the discussion centres on the envisioned consumer and economically-driven dynamics through which nanotechnology will permeate everyday life, resulting in a set of negative societal consequences. Mary locates the technology as propagating yet more intense forms of consumer life, which while benefiting producers, will exacerbate existing divisions in society. Chris concurs and adds how the seductive appeal of the technology will ensure that we get ‘swept’ along. Lynn then adds a more ontological point, articulating how this process will make us less human through removing ‘the human soul’ which David adds will be replaced with ‘convenience’. The salient feature of this exchange lies not simply in what people say but with the ease at which all members of the group interact, embellish and add to this narrative form (what we have elsewhere named the ‘Be careful what you wish for narrative’, see Macnaghten, Davies, and Kearnes 2019), illustrating the salience of the narrative and its potency in resourcing public responses.

Financial drivers were also seen to play a formative role in contributing towards such pessimistic scenarios. Unlike the Brazilian groups, where there was little expressed concern or interest in the dynamics underpinning the technoscientific system, for the UK participants there was more vocal discussion on the actors and their associated interests. Consumption was seen not only as a driver of the system but also as the cause of unsustainable and socially disruptive pathways. The participants themselves were frequently critical of this, but at the same time acknowledged its power and its lure. Discussions of financial drivers were linked to broader questions about control, distrust of those seen as being behind nanotechnology, and feelings of powerlessness. The exchange shown below is typical, indicating a shared sense of lack of choice, lack of knowledge, and lack of control:

Moderator:

‘That’s interesting. [Are you implying] there is a sense of inevitability [at stake here]?’

Sharon:

‘Yes.’

Lynn:

‘Frighteningly so.’

David:

‘I think so.’

Chris:

‘Yes.’

Beth:

‘Yes, terrifyingly so.’

David:

‘You’re getting it whether you want it or not.’

Lynn:

‘Well we are in those products there that are presumably all available in [town name]. We didn’t know even.’

Sharon:

‘Exactly.’

Lynn:

‘It’s happening. It’s coming to us.’

David:

‘Too much is like a massive financial railroad that’s behind it that’s just driving it on.’

 

(UK Group 1: Church attending group)

In addition, as previous research has suggested, many of these concerns were linked to participants’ perceptions of those driving and funding the technology, such as national governments, big business and the military. What are their motivations? How will they affect how the technology will be used? And can they be trusted? Responsibility thus tended to be oriented towards distant and un-get-at-able actors and with their (in)ability to govern or control a ‘runaway’ world (Giddens 1999). Again this contrasted to the more optimistic outlook of our Brazilian participants who were more hopeful in their own agency and who located, ultimately, responsibility at the level of the individual, the family, institutions (as made up of individuals), or in the essential ‘goodness’ of the human spirit.

Catastrophe, nature and the social treatment of uncertainty

For our UK participants, many people thought that disaster of some kind – whether environmental, social, or moral – was inevitable. This was not the case for our Brazilian participants. In important respects this difference arose from the ways in which the category of nature was deployed across these two national contexts.

For our UK groups the appeal to nature and the natural, including accounts of our human nature, constituted a particularly powerful and shared normative foundation to public responses. In other research we have examined the appeal to nature in structuring public responses to biotechnologies, arguing how the appeal to nature represents a kind of ‘valuable fiction’ in which people can wrestle with deeply unfamiliar and potentially disturbing questions surrounding the physical manipulation and transgression of boundaries, hitherto regarded as fixed in nature (see Grove-White et al. 1997; Macnaghten 2004; on analogous research on the role of naturalness in structuring public responses to geoengineering, see Corner et al. 2013; Macnaghten and Szerszynski 2013). The same dynamic was present in conversations on nanotechnology as people reflected on what was ‘at stake’ in our nanotechnological future. Not only was nanotechnology seen as likely to ‘mess with nature’ through the social production of new risks and harms or what one participant termed ‘accelerating the evolution of disasters’, but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, through the technology’s ability to blur boundaries that provided a moral ordering and compass to everyday life. Thus, nature provided a category in which to question the wisdom and integrity of technological visions to increase lifespan (‘We’re designed to live this certain life span, aren’t we? We’re not designed to go on forever and forever’ – UK Group 3), that extend control over life (‘Mother Nature should control your life, not a scientist’ – UK Group 5), that enables you to appreciate diversity and beauty in life as it is (‘Variety and difference is what nature’s about, every plant would be exactly the same if we didn’t have diversity’ – UK Group 1), and that would encourage those with power to manipulate us for their own purposes (‘Whoever controls it is always going to manipulate it to their benefit’ – UK Group 4).

In Brazil, by contrast, nature had a different resonance. When presented with debates on the current level of uncertainty that characterised nanotechnology and its indeterminate effects on the environment and human health, participants understood such processes in a different register. These tended to be presented as part of the rational process through which science develops, where risks and uncertainties associated with new science are settled through regular processes of empirical inquiry, innovation and regulatory oversight. The exchange below sets out this logic: not only would uncertainties in the science be resolved through new scientific inquiry, but, more ideologically, it would be a mistake to try to intervene or control the ‘natural’ progression of innovation processes:

Moderator:

‘So, do you think that in the future these uncertainties will be resolved?’

Ricardo:

‘Ah, this is undoubtedly so.’

Antonio:

‘Yes, for sure – this is the process.’

Ricardo:

‘It is one of maturing … The process is inevitable. People will want it or it will not become part of daily life. I think we simply need to provide the right information to consumers. That is all … 

Moderator:

‘Can you imagine that it is possible to change the direction of a technology.’

Ricardo e Antônio:

‘It is not possible!’

Moderator:

‘Why is the process inevitable?’

Rosali:

‘For eight years the Bush government sought to stop stem cell research. It delayed it for eight years. Now it will start again. Can you hold it back? No, it is not possible.’

 

(Brazil Group 3: Authority figures group)

This exchange is a prototypical example of an Enlightenment narrative of technoscience as inevitably and unambiguously motoring progress and social betterment; a case of technological determinism par excellence (see Jasanoff 2016, Chapter 1). This speaks to a different cultural register of the power of the idea of nature and naturalness. Whereas nanotechnology’s potential to blur boundaries, and to ‘mess with nature’, conflicted with UK sensibilities, for our Brazilian participants this was less the case. Life was seen as inevitably risky; nature was presented as that which had in part constrained and enslaved everyday life in the recent past; technology had been experienced as liberating people from necessity (e.g. through domestic appliances); and nanotechnology was seen as potentially fulfilling this process. The fact that nanotechnology could be identified as ‘mexendo’ with nature (translated as somewhere between ‘mixing’ and ‘messing’) was not necessarily bad. By contrast, its open-ended and even ‘magic’ properties offered new possibilities of liberation and emancipation (see also Bennett 2000).

Discussion

In a review article, Bruno Latour (2008) distinguishes between two models of modernism. In the first model, the scientific project of distinguishing fact from emotion is one of promised emancipation: emancipation from nature, from the past, from emotions, from ‘all the shackles of ancient existence’ (2008, 111). This mental attitude paints a picture of the future that is so full of energy and enthusiasm and beauty that it is hard to resist. Yet, according to Latour, this model has failed to deliver, the paradox being the more intense and intimate Science (with a big S) has interacted and intervened on Nature (with a big N), the more complex and confusing and often unforeseen have been the effects. Instead of the promised emancipation science has produced more and more entanglement. The implication, according to Latour, is the relevance of a second model of modernism, in which we learn to care for (or to use Latour’s more apt word to ‘love’) the seen and unforeseen consequences that will inevitably result from technoscientific inquiry. Indeed, using Langdon Winner’s formulation of technologies as ‘forms of life’, technological innovation needs to be addressed ‘not merely [as] aids to human activity, but also [as] powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning’ (1989, 6; see also Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020) and with inevitable and potentially transformative effects on cultural and social relations. Rather than thinking of such transformations as side effects, a framework of technologies as ‘forms of life’ puts them at the centre of thinking about innovation.

The dynamic above was the precise impulse that was used by one of the authors in developing a framework of responsible innovation, that included a definition of RI as ‘taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present’ (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013, 1570, emphasis added). Instead of seeking to abandon innovation, and in contradistinction to an alternative prognosis often embedded in a traditional critique which scripts its response to radical technological advance in terms of preventing, rejecting, prohibiting, mitigating, reducing, stopping, ‘saying no’ (e.g. Nuclear Power – No Thanks etc.), the matter for RI scholars and practitioners is not to bring to a halt innovation but to advocate change with a heightened attentiveness to the socio-material effects that may arise. Yet, according to Latour, the question remains as to whether we have the ‘mental, moral, aesthetic, emotional resources to follow through the attachments’ (Latour 2008, 114, italics in original), and in advance of their application (Macnaghten 2020a).

With this challenge in mind, over the last decade we have made considerable progress in developing such resources not least through the scholarship developed in this journal including the development of the AIRR framework, that assumes that responsible innovation anticipates (A) multiple effects of change on the basis of inclusive deliberation (I) that fosters reflexivity (R) about background assumptions and responds (R) to concerns, interests, and values of diverse stakeholders. Such a framework clearly aligns to the prognosis of our UK participants. Not only do UK publics perceive that radical science, driven increasingly by short-term economic interests, generates new risks and the probability of future harms, seen and unforeseen effects. But, in addition, they remain unconvinced that current arrangements – whether in regulation or ethics or public policy – are capable of ensuring that science progresses in socially and environmentally robust trajectories. Our UK participants could thus be assumed to be likely endorsers of a political programme of responsible innovation conventionally configured. For the Brazilian participants the response is otherwise. Partially, this is because scientists remain trusted actors who are seen as likely to follow through the consequences of their actions, unlike politicians who are not. Partially too because the project of science has been seen to have led to radical improvements in the lifespan of most people’s lives, from the time saving and liberating effects of the washing machine to the radical opportunities enabled by communication technologies.

Consequently, the challenges for governing (nano)technology are likely to be determined in different ways in the UK and Brazil. In the UK (and most likely, in mainland Europe), in the face of a public sceptical with science and with its capacity to inculcate a better future, public deliberation is a necessary element in laying at least some of the groundwork for a more socially-inclusive and sustainability-oriented science. This is arguably a core part of the project of responsible innovation, conventionally defined as that of aligning science and innovation processes with societal values through processes of early and inclusive deliberation (European Commission 2013; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; von Schomberg 2013). But, to counteract a shared prognosis of profound pessimism, and though practices of care and institutional redesign, innovators and policymakers have to engage with the narratives of technoscientific failure and the conditions under which they endure in the public realm (Macnaghten, Davies, and Kearnes 2019). In Brazil, by contrast, the debate on responsible innovation and governance requires a different configuration of actors and assemblages (see also Reyes-Galindo, Monteiro, and Macnaghten 2019). We need to consider what can happen in a context where neither the scientists, nor the politicians, and even less the public identify themselves as having a ‘stake’ in the debate (or even as needing to have a stake in the debate). Or even more, where the debate is not taking place at all, is it still valid for responsible innovation scholarship to speak in favour of public deliberation per se, or is a more nuanced treatment of the contribution of ‘engaged citizens’ in the new scientific governance required (Irwin 2008)?

Our re-examination of this case study suggests that a greater focus on narratives and narrative resourcing provides an avenue for attending to epistemic inclusion. Although this research was conducted prior to the emergence of a two-part scholarly and policy interest in responsible innovation (Owen and Pansera 2019), it suggests a set of lessons for considering how public engagements need to be adapted in different contexts. We argue that narratives provide guideposts not only for the types of epistemic inclusion that are needed in a particular context but also for mechanisms of exclusion that work against a broader interest in responsibility and governance. In particular, we argue that considerations of epistemic inclusion (Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020; Valkenburg et al. 2020) must be addressed not just at the point of engaging stakeholders or implementing a deliberative public engagement, but also at the outset of implementing any new or tailored framework for responsible innovation. Indeed, any such framework should itself be opened up to inclusion and responsiveness to best align its goals and practices with the situated context of its implementation. For example, for responsible innovation to gain traction in Brazil it may prudent be institutionalise new dialogue spaces which allow for the flow of ideas and the cultivation of new alliances but which do not seek to question long held beliefs about the place of innovation and science in Brazil (Reyes-Galindo, Monteiro, and Macnaghten 2019). To be effective institutionally the ‘style of engagement’ may need to be more iterative than transformative.

More generally the lesson from this research is directed both to the academic and to the policy community surrounding responsible innovation. If we are to continue to speak of public engagement as a public good, we need to talk not in global and universal terms but in more local and situational ones (see also Irwin 2016). We need to remain sensitive to the political culture or civic epistemologies (Jasanoff 2005, 2014) of the sites where public engagement is to be enacted, how these shape policy and innovation both in the public and policy domain, and the theoretical implications of these developments in a rapidly globalising world. We need to be open to the possibility of plural subaltern and contested imaginaries and their dynamics of inclusion in the public sphere (Bhadra Haines 2020). And we need to be open to the potentialities of responsible innovation gaining traction in what Wong (2016) calls ‘decent nonliberal states’, such as China, with very different normative traditions and values. Just as responsible innovation scholarship may have genuine contributions to opening up spaces of anticipation, reflection and inclusive deliberation on the societal and ethical dimensions of new science and technology, the analysis of political cultures (sensitive to an in-built Eurocentric bias) may have important lessons for responsible innovation. This may in addition require new forms of learning to avoid an evolutionist or deterministic perspective. For example, how can the tacit normative framework typically premised on liberal democratic values be translated, or what Doezema et al. (2019) more accurately call ‘traduced’, in heterogenous national contexts? What are the conditions under which ‘ethno-epistemic assemblages’ can emerge (Irwin 2008)? Who are the emergent coalitions and alliances to be drawn on? How is social media transforming the dynamics and the very possibilities of public engagement? And, in the context of emerging economies and democracies, what is the role of the responsible innovation scholars as active and reflexive players in their co-construction?

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Phil Macnaghten is a Personal Professor in the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation (KTI) Group of Wageningen University. His work focuses on frameworks of responsible innovation, the governance of socially controversial technologies and the politics of anticipation.

Julia S. Guivant is full professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Her main areas of expertise are in environmental sociology, risk analysis, sociology of food and sociology of scientific knowledge.

Notes

1 Arguably ‘frontier spirit’ is not universally a psycho-social emotion whereas ‘exploration’ might be said to be so. Frontier is a culturally specific term to geographically expanding cultures, for example colonial projects. Nevertheless, this is the term used by Latour which may be apt given the proximity between Enlightenment thinking and the spirit of colonialism. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

2 There is scope for research to expand on this point: to develop a more elaborate comparative analysis of the meanings of innovation R&D, and the intersections between these and cultural levels of alienation/non-alienation from political/civic/community processes. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this point.