Public Participation in
the Making of Science
Policy
Darrin Durant
York University
This paper argues that, because Science and Technology Studies (STS) lost
contact with political philosophy, its defense of public participation in policy-
making involving technical claims is normatively unsatisfactory. Current
penchants for political under-laboring and normative individualism are
critiqued, and the connections between STS and theorists of deliberative de-
mocracy are explored. A conservative normativity is proposed, and STS posi-
tions on public participation are discussed in relation to current questions
about individual and group rights in a liberal democracy. The result is ave-
nues to normatively defend public participation, by analogy with identity
politics and Habermas, while also theorizing its limits.
Introduction
Lately, one can distinguish two strands within Science and Technology
Studies (STS): theorists who understand science as an agent of culture and
tend to discipline public challenges to experts, and theorists who insist on
greater public participation and thus criticize expert autonomy. Harry
Collins and Robert Evans (2002, 2003, and 2007) represent the former
strand. They contend that STS ought to address how far public participa-
tion should extend rather than just the grounds for its legitimacy.
Knowing why (and when) expert advice should be especially valued re-
quires, for Collins and Evans, a normative theory of expertise. Sheila
Jasanoff (2003a, 2003b) and Brian Wynne (2003, 2007) represent the lat-
ter strand. They contend that public participation ensures that issues are
not framed too narrowly, that institutions behave properly, that expertise
is held to cultural standards, and that tacit assumptions are aired
and thereby debated. Yet Jasanoff and Wynne, the most prominent STS
theorists of participation and cited widely with approval, disavow the
Perspectives on Science 2010, vol. 18, no. 2
©2010 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
189
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190
Getting Political about Participation
language of normative prescription and instead argue that political en-
gagement properly ends at revealing connections otherwise unseen or
questioning taken-for-granted issue deªnitions. This paper argues that
when this under-laborer conception of political engagement is coupled to
two associated practices—the idea that understanding is the end of analy-
sis, and that normativity can be reduced to individualism—the result is
that STS participation theorists fail to clearly articulate why the public
ought to be involved in science policy. What emerges instead is an ironic
presentation of deconstruction as the only secure kind of political engage-
ment, taking the form of an inverted Rawlsian (1971) veil of ignorance—
from a hypothetical actor who knows neither self nor others and can thus
speak for all, to the STS participation theorist who graciously knows too
much to speak for anyone. Part of the attractiveness of Collins and Evans’
recent proposals is thus their more intuitive normativity, that expertise
has some virtues and ought to be defended via some substantive prescrip-
tions, in contrast to STS participation theorists’ counter-intuitive claim
that public participation has a host of virtues yet is not to be defended via
substantive prescriptions. I chart a path away from this unsatisfactory
normativity, in part by arguing that what is needed is more careful think-
ing about the relationship between STS and normative political theory,
and indeed an effort to reconnect STS and political philosophy.
This paper thus sets out how advocates of public participation, who fol-
low in the (deconstructionist) footsteps of Jasanoff and Wynne, could
beneªt from constructive engagement with political philosophy. An alli-
ance with deliberative democrats is suggested, due to the shared focus
on responsiveness, deliberation, and accountability as democratic pre-
scriptions. This alliance can be made if STS conceives of normativity as
grounded in communal activity and immanent norms. My route to show-
ing the potential beneªts is contained in ªve steps. First, I broaden the ho-
rizon of STS: I connect STS theorizing about experts and publics to the
question of whether collectives or individuals should possess and exercise
rights. Second, I critique the popular notion in STS that political under-
laboring sufªces to claim political engagement. Third, I argue that an un-
satisfactory normative individualism afºicts STS participation theorists.
Fourth, I argue that once political under-laboring and normative individ-
ualism are set aside, STS can be seen to already share both epistemic and
normative commitments with theorists of representative and deliberative
democracy. Fifth, I argue that speciªc avenues for normatively defending
public participation in science policy are available to STS, if one is pre-
pared to argue by analogy with existing normative stances within political
philosophy. These include afªnities between STS participation theorists,
and either identity politics theorists or work by or responding to Jurgen
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Perspectives on Science
191
Habermas. The point is to show that it is possible to normatively defend
public participation on constructivist grounds, but also theorize its limits,
contra Collins and Evans’ claim that a normative theory of expertise is re-
quired to theorize such limits.
I. Experts, Publics, and Normativity
Collins and Evans proposed to construct what expertise ought to be, rather
than deconstruct it. This normative theory of expertise is inspired by a
frustration with prominent characterizations of publics, their knowledge,
and their recommended roles in decision making. The following two para-
graphs summarize Collins and Evans (2002, 2003, and 2007) and Evans
and Plows (2007).
Collins and Evans begin with the following claim: citing the legiti-
macy of including public views in considerations related to technical deci-
sion-making does not ipso facto tell us how far that participation ought to
extend. Unless expertise is to be collapsed into politics, then one must
prescribe where the boundaries ought to be drawn. Description alone will
not sufªce because, to the extent that boundaries are treated as contingent
and expertise as attributed status, an experts’ regress applies (in analogous
fashion to Collins’ experimenters’ regress). If the class of experts can only
be identiªed with hindsight, after the credibility contest is over and/or the
scientiªc matter decided, then to the extent that the need for political ac-
tion is moving faster than scientiªc consensus, an attribution-based means
of separating expertise from politics can provide no guidance to political
decision-makers. With the need for a normative theory of expertise thus
grounded in the pragmatics of business-as-usual democracy, Collins and
Evans asked what justiªes treating expertise as especially valuable in vari-
ous contexts (from consensus to uncertainty to disagreement). Their argu-
ment hinges on a preference for a particular form-of-life, in which politics
is intrinsic to science but is not a legitimate extrinsic input into technical
decision-making. Decisions about technical matters ought not to be made
based upon ethical-political positions. Similarly, the sphere of judgment
about technical matters ought to be bounded, and this means treating ex-
pertise in a realist fashion, in which only some are competent to make or
judge scientiªc claims. The right to make such judgments would thus be
distributed unevenly; while the rights accruing based upon stakeholder
status would have to be conceived of differently to rights accruing due to
specialist knowledge and experience.
Collins and Evans distinguish between two kinds of analytic questions:
downstream addresses consensus formation, and upstream addresses how
to inºuence the course of decisions as they happen and how decisions
ought to be taken prior to consensus formation. Upstream questions entail
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192
Getting Political about Participation
constructing categories to guide the making of discriminations. The cate-
gory of expertise was thus expanded beyond qualiªcations to include in-
teractive abilities and contributory experience (experience that was con-
tinuous with core-set specialists even if it was not accompanied by
qualiªcations). Discriminatory abilities were divided into the kinds of
judgments everyone could generally make and those possible only
through local experience and familiarity with institutionalized science or
particular issues of concern. Disputes were divided into the types of ques-
tions that could occur (political and technical questions were thus sepa-
rated). Problems themselves were conceived of along a spectrum of
techno-sciences in which political or technical questions came ªrst or sec-
ond, or were more important depending upon the level of consensus that
existed or could possibly be available to the scientiªc community prior to
political action being desired. Thus with already settled science, experts
would have priority to make judgments, but in cases like climate change
where uncertainty and disagreement prevails, political decisions would
need to be made so as to contextualize what was needed or desired from
science. The overall effect was to create room for public individuals and
groups to be involved in decision-making regarding political questions,
and in making technical judgments where public individuals possessed lo-
cal discriminatory abilities, interactive competences, or contributory ex-
perience. This expansion of expertise simultaneously bounded expertise:
limiting it to those who know what they are talking about in regard to
technical matters. Roles for speciªc types of expert are thus warranted ac-
cording to the types of problems and types of input that science is able to
provide. Being circumspect about efforts to ground public participation in
explicit political position alone creates a social space within which expert
autonomy can operate. This social space of expert skills and understand-
ings becomes more than just a resource; it becomes a domain partly con-
stituting culture. By outlining the limits to public participation and a
conception of when and where a politically autonomous technical culture
is justiªed, Collins and Evans provided normative grounds for viewing ex-
pertise as more than contingent, politically attributed status. Armed with
this normative theory, Collins and Evans criticized case-studies in STS
that conºated political rights accruing to public groups because of their
stakeholder status with rights and/or abilities to make technical judg-
ments.
Jasanoff (2003a, 2003b) and Wynne (2003, 2007) have responded by
defending public participation in science policy, but have mostly done so
by restating the description-based, downstream project Collins and Evans
have said they are not doing. Hence Collins and Evans do not deny the
points Jasanoff and Wynne offer in critique: that boundaries are made via
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Perspectives on Science
193
social battles, and that the public is often concerned with the ability to de-
liberate upon the human purposes driving technical projects and the na-
ture of the issue in the ªrst place. Jasanoff and Wynne’s real challenge be-
gins when they defend public participation as an aspect of good democratic
decision-making: public participation acts as a democratic check on the
scope of expert judgment (Jasanoff); functioning democracies minimize
the exclusion of potentially affected groups and/or operate best when
agendas are set by the widest possible audience (Wynne). Yet what is the
scope and applicability of these defenses? How do we know if democratic
checks are working? When should we use referenda as opposed to repre-
sentation, and how should the latter operate within complex and large de-
mocracies? Jasanoff and Wynne’s populist styled defense of public partici-
pation means Collins and Evans can be read as offering answers to such
questions. Have Collins and Evans not offered one means to adjudicate
conºicting claims, to provide a measure of democratic checks, and to set-
tle membership claims regarding decision-making forums (presuming not
everything is handled via referenda)? It seems that to defend the public’s
right to participate in science policy, in the face of such a challenge, one
might want to justify it. That means making normative claims about it,
and doing so is helped by having some boundaries or measures to work
with in regard to it. These do not have to be ‘foundational’ or ‘transcen-
dental’ or even ‘realist’, a point to which I return below.
The question this dispute raises is whether liberal democratic decision-
making forums are enhanced by limiting the public, and thereby securing
the participation of experts, or by limiting experts and thereby securing
the participation of the public. Fence-sitting (‘both’) is technically correct
but normatively and pragmatically of little guidance. Collins and Evans
also provide little guidance, if we take their normative demarcation of ex-
pertise from politics as justiªed simply by the claim that the Western
scientiªc form of life involves denying that extrinsic politics is a legiti-
mate inºuence in settling technical questions (Collins and Evans 2002,
pp. 244–52; 2007, pp. 125–31). If a form of life “can be thought of as a
pattern of socially sustained boundaries” (Bloor 1983, p. 140), then it
makes sense to explain actions in terms of how they are believed to be the
right things to do within particular forms of life. Yet political philoso-
phers are clear that attempting to justify speciªc boundaries by referring
to the fact they exist is to confuse the moral discourse of defending a prac-
tice with the anthropological-sociological statement of a fact (cf. Barry
2001, pp. 252–58). Collins and Evans’ approach provides guidance be-
cause they pursue the implications of these claimed conventions: if exper-
tise is to be preserved as a public good, then efforts to politicize expertise
ought to be rejected. This normative claim is itself a form of life: it is
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194
Getting Political about Participation
compelling to the extent people accept and use it, rather than being tran-
scendentally true. The guiding principle offered by Collins and Evans is
thus to deny epistemic rights to groups simply by virtue of those groups’
claim to political rights and, because epistemic and political rights are
conceived of as distinct, this preserves the convention of denying that pol-
itics is a legitimate inºuence in the making of technical decisions. We
thus see Collins and Evans rejecting standpoint sciences, which have their
grounding in overt political positions or states of mind, and are thus dis-
continuous with each other (2002, pp. 281 and 286; 2003, pp. 442–43;
2007, pp. 127–28).
Collins and Evans thus reject politicized group-based claims to techni-
cal rights, and argue that technical authority should transcend the bound-
aries of community-based social identities and political commitments.
Collins and Evans’ approach thus ªnds a philosophical home—intentional
or not—within current liberal (egalitarian) democratic theory that also
evinces skepticism about group-based rights. It is thus politically naïve
and inaccurate to brand Collins and Evans bad democrats simply for want-
ing to theorize the limits to public participation (as Jasanoff and Wynne
have done; see Jasanoff 2003a, pp. 394 and 397, and 2003b, p. 158;
Wynne 2003, p. 402, and 2007, p. 108). Rather, and in regard to the
right to render technical judgments, Collins and Evans are claiming ex-
perts are the bearers of such rights only in their capacity as qualiªed and
experienced (individual) agents, and that technical rights should not be
extended to groups in their capacity as bearers of political/cultural posi-
tions and identities. This is analogous to egalitarian liberals with regard to
civil, political and social rights; that such rights accrue to individuals qua
autonomous agents, and that rights should not be extended to collective
identities. By contrast, STS participation theorists typically defend public
participation in science policy as if what is at stake is the recognition of
the identity and difference claims of marginalized public groups, or at least
the critique of their exclusion/marginalization. To the extent that group
rights is in the background of STS participation theorists in their defenses
of public participation, one can see why Collins and Evans’ proposals
would provoke opposition. I return to these analogies in the conclusion of
the paper.
Yet in order to pursue the meaning of these analogies, for the question
of justifying public participation in science policy, I need to confront the
following question: to what extent is deconstruction antithetical to pre-
scription? I suggest the antithetical relation is sustained by three analytic
practices. One is political under-laboring, which tends to suggest decon-
struction exhausts political engagement. A second is the idea that verstehen
(understanding) is the end-point of analysis rather than its beginning. A
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Perspectives on Science
195
third is normative individualism, in which an anti-foundationalist philos-
ophy morphs into a disappointed foundationalism by refusing to counte-
nance that prescriptions could be something other than transcendentally
grounded. To say such practices sustain the antithetical relation, and that
to reject such practices makes prescription possible on constructivist
grounds, is of course to invite the perception of impending intellectual
schizophrenia (pulled in one way by deconstruction and another by pre-
scription). We thus need a practice to sustain the lack of antithesis. Here I
suggest the utility of importing from political philosophy the practice of
conservative normativity, which accepts that an ungrounded way of acting
is the end point of justiªcations. I suggest such conservative normativity
is practiced by contemporary deliberative democrats, leading to demo-
cratic prescriptions concerning diverse modes of political representation,
responsiveness, accountability and deliberation. I also suggest STS partici-
pation theorists share these prescriptions (thus Wynne criticizes unreºex-
ive experts (1992b, 2005) and Jasanoff demands experts should only re-
ceive “carefully circumscribed power” (2003b, p. 158)). My criticism here
thus admits that STS has theorized the political underpinnings of exper-
tise by linking with critical traditions in social theory (cf. Fuller 2000,
Guston 2000, Woodhouse et.al 2002, Frickel and Moore 2006). Never-
theless I claim STS defenses of public participation, which utilize the
three practices noted above, obscure what it is that normatively justiªes
public participation in science policy.
II. The Political under-Laborer at Work
Prominent STS theorists paint a bleak picture for political philosophy: it
is a clumsy behemoth, practicing a generalized will to universal prescrip-
tion, and unable to see the nature-culture hybrids that demand a new
agenda. This picture underplays the difference between those who outline
normative standards intended to justify and guide real-world participa-
tory practices (such as Rawls and Habermas), and those who relate prac-
tices to forms of life (such as Rorty and neo-Wittgensteinians) (Mouffe
2000, Chap. 3). This split is evident in that political philosophy does not
have a commonly accepted account of deliberative democracy (Freeman
2000, p. 373). What STS emphasizes is the yawning gulf between STS
and political philosophy, which is plausible to the extent one characterizes
political philosophy as engaging in universal prescription but STS as en-
gaging in case-studies of actual deliberations, trust relations, and identity
formation. Yet to the extent that the claimed gulf rests upon the case-
study orientation within STS (for such, see Shapin 1995a, Irwin and
Wynne 1996, Kleinman 2000, Jasanoff 2004a) the gulf measures special-
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Getting Political about Participation
ization as much as conceptual outlook (see Shapiro’s (2002) critique of
separating normative from empirical political theory).
Latour has led the charge, beginning with an underlying anti-explana-
tory approach: both nature and society are the outcomes of controversy and
thus cannot be invoked as the cause of any particular settlement as to what
constitutes nature and society (Latour 1987). For Bruno Latour (1991), the
entire ªeld of political philosophy inherited a Kantian provincialism—
nature and culture were separated in order to protect political philosophers
from positivistic social science. Applied to the standard objects of political
philosophy, the co-production of nature and society means the nature-
culture divide at the heart of Western political philosophy is but a mecha-
nism for sorting hybrids1 elevated to a constitutional given (Latour 1993).
While modernity is populated by hybrids as a matter of fact, for Latour the
essence of modernity is in its efforts to purify the hybrid networks of nature
and culture: to make people and things appear wholly one or the other. Po-
litical philosophy is a partisan in this war, preserving the dichotomy wher-
ever possible. Latour declares that political philosophy must embrace the
hybrids revealed by STS, thus moving beyond the dichotomy between
things-in-themselves and humans-among-themselves. This pursuit of the
Enlightenment into the “dark tangles of science and society mixtures” will
secure a ‘parliament of things’ for non-humans (Latour 1991, p. 18). Latour
thus rewrites political philosophy, beginning with a refusal to “tie politics
to humans” (Latour 2004a, p. 89). Indeed politics is exhausted by ontology,
because politics is just “the entire set of tasks that allow the progressive
composition of a common world” (p. 53).
Ironically (or not?2), later users have done more to ªll out the normative
implications. If agency is about connecting things, and an action is a series
of interconnections (Bruun and Hukkinen 2003, p. 104), the result is to
reduce the mystique of being an agent by dissipating the structures of ac-
tivity/passivity required to maintain power relations. Some have criticized
this for maximizing self-representation in politics, rather than account-
ability relations (Fuller 2007, pp. 97–108). Others have argued the prin-
ciples are sufªciently vague to allow strategic manipulations of pseudo-
democratic proposals in aid of legitimizing interests or decisions (Tucker
2007, p. 219). Latour’s own statements, aside from gesturing toward ex-
tending democracy to things (1993, p. 12; 2004a), have involved a refusal
to tie politics to social critique. References to entities like ‘power’ are
1. Disputes about the boundaries between technical and political issues create contin-
gently stabilized ‘hybrids’ (Latour 1993). Hybrids both embody accounts of material and
social order and shape that material and social order (Jasanoff 2004b, pp. 15–19).
2. Statements of fact are in the hands of later users (Latour 1987, Chap. 1).
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Perspectives on Science
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deemed no better than conspiracy theories (Latour 2004b). In response to
the accusation that Latour and STS in general have expanded politics to
the extent where it is meaningless, Latour’s disconnect from political phi-
losophy has come home to roost. Latour offered as a defense what is really
just a recapitulation of the empty politics accusation: everything is politi-
cal, “but not at all in the same way” (2007, p. 818). Confronted with what
to say about politics, Latour either deºates it to a conspiracy or inºates it
to everywhere in some way. Ultimately Latour has never gone far past his
early injunction that the STS scholar is limited to a “tiny breathing space
. . . to study independently the extensions of all these networks” (1987,
p. 257). The discovery of associations between humans and non-humans
remains the height of STS’s contribution to politics (2007, p. 818).
Jasanoff
continues
this discovery-claim rhetoric,
repeating that
Latourian hybrids demand a new politics, but also criticizing Latour for
losing sight of the moral and political conºicts of actual haves and have-
nots and thus for not handling human values very well (2004b, pp. 22–
23). Jasanoff does not locate the source of such deªciencies in Latour’s
anti-explanatory approach, because for Jasanoff the co-production meth-
odology usefully avoids natural or social determinism and the making of
a priori distinctions (2004a, p. 3; 2004b, p. 22). Explanatory accounts are
(regrettably) equated with “reductionist, linear accounts” that fail to cap-
ture “ambiguity [and] richness” (2005, p. 11). Jasanoff attempts to solve
Latourian deªciencies at the level of research choices: STS approaches poli-
tics to the extent its research choices and styles of explanation trace pat-
terns of social conºict and destabilize dominant narratives (2004a, p. 3).
Jasanoff has consistently explicated the relation between such unmasking
efforts, and the struggles of actual haves and have-nots, via abstract meta-
phors of illumination and revelation. STS makes “visible” the “unsus-
pected dimensions” and “unseen patterns” of material and social order
(1996, p. 413; 2004a, p. 4). STS overcomes the negative connotations of
deconstruction (“mindless relativism” and “moral nihilism”) by emphasiz-
ing the construction of “socially grounded accounts” and by recognizing
that “its ultimate aim is to piece things together constructively” (1999,
pp. 65–66 and 69–70). STS “enables normative analysis by following
power into places where current social theory seldom thinks to look for it
. . . allow[ing] us to imagine the pathways by which change could con-
ceivably occur. It illuminates, in this way, new possibilities for human
development” (2004a, p. 42). This project is a division of labor: the
“ªtting place” for STS is not to “make demarcations” but to “show what is
at stake in the making of such boundaries” (2003a, pp. 398–99). Given
that such an ‘emergence ethos’ charts power relations (Durant 2006,
pp. 200–202) it seems fair to characterize the implied political philosophy
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Getting Political about Participation
as deconstructive and facilitative. Indeed, comparisons of different politi-
cal cultures “should aspire less to prescribe policy solutions” or to embrace
some “divine prerogative of producing universally valid principles of
knowledge or governance,” than to offer “understanding” and to “reveal
. . . what gives signiªcance to another culture’s distinctions and differ-
ences” (2005, p. 291). Note that prescription is equated with universaliz-
ing tendencies and contrasted with cultural differences, where culture is
constructed as self-contained enough that cross-cultural generalizations
are to be avoided.
Wynne (1992b) seeks to deconstruct as well, revealing the tacit insecu-
rities, implicit meanings, and presumptive commitments embedded in
science. Wynne is concerned with how such features are projected onto the
public, leading to dominant institutions unreºexively colonizing the pub-
lic sphere. Although Latour’s hybrids imply an “enlarged human agenda,”
commitment to any particular possibility is an “extra” commitment not to
be confused with STS (Wynne 1996, p. 381). Wynne’s concern is with the
“retrieval of authentic democratic potentials with a legitimate science”
and the “need therein to identify, and hold to account, the normative
models” responsible for colonization. The recommendation is that “un-
democratic . . . framings” be “insistently and carefully addressed in prac-
tice” (2005, pp. 81–82). Although Wynne has been misread as romanti-
cizing the public, much of this misreading stems from subtle oscillations
within Wynne’s theorizing, which tends to simultaneously focus on the
social identities of lay public actors and whether they are being recog-
nized, and also the way in which those social identities are embedded
within social relationships (Durant 2008). Yet it is clear from Wynne’s
work that a political project exists. Questions regarding the qualiªcations
of public actors to participate in science and policies about science ought
not be confused with questions about whether the full range of issues the
public remains concerned about are available for discussion in deliberative
forums, while vigilance must be displayed in regard to whether scientiªc
framings of issues are being imposed upon a silently disempowered public
(Wynne 2007). Nevertheless, what to do about such situations of imposi-
tion and denial, and the task of negotiating “more broadly legitimated
principles . . . in some way,” is a task explicitly left to others (Wynne
1992a, p. 127).
The engagement conceived of by deconstruction-styled STS participa-
tion theorists amounts to political under-laboring, clearing away the un-
derbrush preventing truly democratic framings of hybrid entities. Latour,
Jasanoff, and Wynne all tell political philosophers what to do (take ac-
count of this hybrid and these dimensions) but otherwise ªnd the project
of telling people what to do to be a topic and not a resource. My complaint
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Perspectives on Science
199
is not speciªcally about the political under-laboring itself; to each their
own. My complaint is about an associated practice, what I call normative
individualism. To bring this practice into focus it is helpful to concentrate
on actual instances of political under-laboring. Drawing from the list of
contributors to the mid-1990’s ‘politics of SSK’ debate, I focus on
Wynne’s ‘engagement’ (cf. 1996, 1998) perspective and the Actor Net-
work Theory (ANT) perspective of Vicky Singleton (1996, 1998), and I
concentrate on their shared normative individualism.
Singleton’s ANT analysis of the UK cervical screening programme ex-
plored the question of whether women should participate in the
programme. Apparently ANT suggests “no women should but all women
could” (Singleton 1996, p. 459). Singleton’s reasoning was:
Surely we need to talk more about could than the guilt inducing
discourse of should, which seems to be based in a discourse of op-
pression and domination. . . . There is no room in a ‘should’ dis-
course for ambivalence, negotiation of identity and multiple identi-
ties. Morally, politically, intellectually and personally I cannot
tolerate that. (pp. 462–63)
Hans Radder replied that Singleton illegitimately disqualiªed ‘should’
discourses, for they can also be subtle and differentiated rather than abso-
lute and inºexible (1998).
Singleton’s response to Radder demonstrated some equivocations in
ANT. Singleton claimed issues surrounding neutrality/commitment and
descriptive/normative are “inextricably linked,” that ANT is used even
while “the shortfalls of this approach in its purely descriptive form” are
discussed, and that while refusing to “endorse the use of any particular ap-
proach” Singelton was “personally . . . enamoured of ANT [because it is]
theoretically and politically sophisticated” (1998, p. 333). Notice that
what happens at the level of theory (all is inextricably linked, nothing is
endorsed) does not quite translate into practice (there is something called
a pure descriptive form of ANT, and Singleton is personally taken by it). It
is thus almost ironically prophetic that Singleton favored ANT because it
“exposes how difªcult it is to say what to do” (1998, p. 336). Yet ANT
does more than identify the difªculty of prescription: it ªnds something
wrong with it (continued in Latour 2004b). Singleton sought to evade
Radder’s critique by qualifying the ‘should discourses are oppressive and
guilt inducing’ claim to the case of the UK cervical screening programme
alone (1998, p. 337). Yet Singleton immediately generalized her point that
‘should is oppressive’ by citing Michel Callon’s general rule that “to speak
for others is ªrst to silence those in whose name we speak” (p. 337; citing
Callon 1986, p. 216). Thus Singleton’s cervical screening case is meant to
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Getting Political about Participation
be an instance of Callon’s general rule, even though Callon qualiªed that
rule to the effect that silencing human beings was “very difªcult” to do in
a “deªnitive manner” while speaking for entities without voices could be
even more difªcult (1986, p. 216).
Wynne’s political under-laboring shares with ANT the goal of disinte-
grating reiªed notions, such as ‘side’ (Wynne 1996). Yet Wynne also pre-
supposes stable enough groups that can have political messages directed at
them. For Wynne, any approach that contributes to “public reºexivity
about received issue-deªnitions” thereby contributes to an enlarged politi-
cal agenda (1998, p. 339). A narrow political agenda, which scientists of-
ten attempt to impose on the public, involves restricting debate to propo-
sitional questions such as ‘safe or not’ (1992b, 2003). An enlarged agenda
would broach the “tacit contextual commitments and assumptions” of the
“cultural fabric” (1998, p. 339; 2003). A proper agenda would thus be re-
sponsive to public culture. Indeed ‘should’ discourses that are more
ºexibly adaptive to local culture (1992b, p. 299) are valued because they
may increase the “autonomous capacities” of citizens (2005, p. 68). So here
we see the beginnings of an account that creates a politically autonomous
realm for the public. Yet Wynne retreats from articulating this autono-
mous realm. For Wynne, unmasking technical culture only creates the pos-
sibility of an “engaged contribution,” rather than pointing directly to any par-
ticular “normative prescription” (1998, p. 340; emphasis in original). In
forging this division the full import of ‘being responsive’ appears to be
lost. Normative prescription is said to go “beyond the analysis alone . . . to
add a personal moral ingredient—for which we should obviously take per-
sonal responsibility” (1998, p. 340; emphasis added). Whereas normativ-
ity involves “direct and ªnal” positive prescriptions (p. 342), an ‘engaged’
contribution is associated with being “more relational, and more open-
ended with respect to speciªc practical prescriptions” (p. 341; emphasis in
original).
These two accounts differ in their stances toward representation, but
each disclaims prescriptive aims. ANT political under-laboring hinges on
the effort to “describe, unravel, unpack, expose, to leave open . . .” and ul-
timately to unravel “to disintegration” any pretense to “deªnitive” an-
swers (Singleton 1998, p. 337). Yet packed within this scheme is an im-
poverished conception of normative prescription: it is guilt inducing,
oppressive, exclusionary, individualistic, silencing and couched in deªn-
itive terms. Of course normative claims can function as such, but it is not
necessarily so and only silencing to the degree that responsiveness to those
being spoken for has not been provided as a democratic condition. Poli-
tically speaking Singelton’s anti-representation stance implies direct de-
mocracy is the only feasible democratic model, and that representation can
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Perspectives on Science
201
only be political substitution for actual constituents. Yet as noted below,
theorists of representative democracy have for decades claimed responsive-
ness is a fundamental precondition of representative government (cf.
Pitkin 1967, pp. 232–233). What matters is the mediation between con-
stituents and delegates involved in representation (Warren 1996, Urbinati
2000, Brown 2007). Indeed even Callon’s ANT rule about spokespeople
silencing the represented can be interpreted as acknowledging mediation
is important, because Callon claimed the level of silencing varied with the
degree of difªculty attached to speaking for humans and non-humans
(Callon 1986, p. 216). Nevertheless, in application, Singleton’s account
explicitly ignored the actual political dimensions of ‘speaking for’. By
contrast, Wynne’s efforts at engagement appear to depend upon represen-
tation. In practice it is not Wynne’s personal moral ingredient that informs
the critique of dominant and unreºexive scientiªc institutions. Such insti-
tutions adopt poor ‘body language’, lacking responsiveness to “public experi-
ences of . . . scientiªc information [and] material social relationships”
(Wynne 1992b, p. 281). Wynne invokes such plural categories, of public
experience and dissatisfaction, as a means to construct how institutions
should behave. The normative ingredient in Wynne’s ‘engagement’ is a
representation of a public phenomenon, a group lament concerning unrespon-
sive expertise. This ingredient should not be confused with Wynne’s sense
of personal responsibility for identifying with public dissatisfaction (given
the ordinary sense of ‘personal’ as consigned to the individual).
III. On Normative Individualism
The elision in Singleton and Wynne’s theorizing is to slip straight from
universal moral ingredients to personal prescriptions. It is as if an engaged
contribution that avoided absolutist discourses (ªnal, direct, oppressive,
silencing) would have no choice other than to embrace individualized dis-
courses (personal preferences; what the “me” in Singleton’s article title can
“personally tolerate” (1996); the “personal moral ingredient” for which
Wynne must assume “personal responsibility” (1998, p. 340)).3 The
normative orientation discussed by Wynne and Singleton trades on a di-
chotomy between normativity grounded in transcendental forces and
normativity as personal preferences. Rejecting the former, they take
their normativity to be bounded by the latter. This is an implicitly indi-
vidualistic normativity. Analogous to the individualistic account of knowl-
edge as the possession of the individual, normativity is here conceived of
3. Latour had similarly spoken of ‘principles’ as “my personal summary of the empirical
facts at hand after a decade of work in this area”, which he expected to be falsiªed and/or
modiªed (1987, p. 17).
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202
Getting Political about Participation
as a personal ingredient. Were the claim just that we cannot escape our
own skins, that a God’s-eye viewpoint is unavailable to us, this practice
would be unexceptionably but uninterestingly true. But it appears to be
more than that, for ‘we’ or ‘our’ skins appear to be reduced to ‘my’ skin,
and there appears the individualism.
My critique of normative individualism is modeled on Barbara
Hernstein-Smith’s (1997) incisive criticism of the question-begging ways
of philosophical orthodoxy. Classical accounts of the relation between
thought and action claim that without appeal to ‘objective’ and ‘universal’
standards—as classically conceived (a priori, necessary, universal, self-
evident)—no basis for action and activism exists. This claim, says
Hernstein-Smith, is leveled at the relativist to render the relativist self-
refuting, but is question-begging. It is the very foundationalist assump-
tions presupposed by the classical critic that the relativist is denying.
What I am proposing is to turn this argument on its head: constructivists
often implicitly presuppose classical conceptions of prescription in argu-
ing against them. That is, the constructivist accepts the terms of pre-
scriptivism articulated by classical philosophies, and rejects prescriptivism
as such. But constructivists could just as well deny that prescriptivism
must be grounded in universal, foundational, and transcendental norms
and principles. Exploring alternative ‘groundings’ could help avoid the
political equivocations attached to normative individualism, such as al-
lowing particular commitments but not general commitments. It also
bears stating here that another reason given by STS participation theorists,
for avoiding prescription, relies on positing a contrast between Verstehen
(understanding) and Erklärung (causal explanation) (cf. Jasanoff 2005,
p. 291). Not only did Weber (1949) see these principles as correlative not
opposed, but Verstehen is supposed to be about where inquiry starts not
where it ends. Moreover, within an interpretive understanding approach,
of course the analyst must understand the language game being played,
but by this very fact the analyst’s categories of understanding, explana-
tion, and justiªcation are mediated through the participants’ language
games.
The problem with normative individualism is analogous to the prob-
lem Wittgenstein identiªed in individualism. That is, without a standard
external to the individual, whatever seems right to the individual is right.
Wittgenstein pointed out that under such circumstances we cannot talk
about right at all (Wittgenstein 1953, §258). We can also now see that
while political under-laboring itself is not necessarily problematic, it is so
when tied to the practice of normative individualism (and the idea that
Verstehen is an end-point). What happens in this shift to normative indi-
vidualism is the recreation of Wittgenstein’s problem of private experi-
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Perspectives on Science
203
ence. If one asks what kind of problem this might be for being political,
then Wittgenstein provides a clue: “a wheel that can be turned though
nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism” (1953, §271).
But there is a Wittgensteinian solution to the problem. Groups furnish a
normative standard for the individuals within it (Bloor 1983, pp. 91–94
and Chap. 8; 1997, Chap. 7 & 8). STS Participation theorists rightly reject
transcendental norms as the external standard, but insufªcient attention is
paid to the argument that actual communities can provide a normative
standard external to its individual members. Noticeably with Wynne we
see that representations of such communal standards inform arguments
about why the public should participate in science policy. To the extent
we rewrite normative prescription as grounded in representations or invo-
cations of community standards, even if primarily drawn upon as explana-
tions of public discontent and inadequate expert behavior, one could argue
that many STS participation theorists are implicitly normatively prescrip-
tive. Simultaneously such theorists help to constitute the publics that
form the subjects of their empirical analysis, as Wynne does in treating
the lay public as possessing reºexive capacities (Durant 2008). Yet if the
reader denies the claim of implicit normative prescription, in this rewrit-
ten sense, at the very least rewriting normative prescription in the sense
suggested here would make a useful extension of current approaches to
discussing public participation.
Of course any prescription can itself be deconstructed, but deconstruc-
tion itself cannot undermine a knowledge claim unless one presupposes
that social grounding distorts knowledge (Bloor and Edge 2000). The net-
tle that will always have to be grasped here is Wittgenstein’s point about
the groundlessness of our beliefs.4 Justiªcation ends in “an ungrounded
way of acting” (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 110), rather than “a state of intel-
lectual doubt or in the apprehension of self-evident truths” (Bloor 1983,
p. 162). If this rewritten normativity is accepted, deconstruction would
reveal community standards not individualized preferences. To recap:
where political under-laboring is joined to the practice of normative indi-
vidualism, a kind of individualized private experience results that is polit-
ically akin to an idle wheel and also the thinking of a disappointed
foundationalist rather than a constructivist cognizant of the groundless-
ness of our actions and justiªcations. In other words, STS participation
theorists have poor arguments against normativity. Under such circum-
stances there is much to be gained by taking note of how political philoso-
phy approaches normativity.
In the following section I discuss features of contemporary theorizing
4. See Wittgenstein (1969, pp. 94, 100, 110, 140–41, 166, 253, 298, 477).
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Getting Political about Participation
about representative and deliberative democracy: that different modes of
political representation are theorized in terms of how they constitute the
publics represented; that an emphasis upon analytic mediation means ana-
lysts are considered part of the representative system doing the represent-
ing. Representative and deliberative democrats focus upon responsiveness,
accountability and deliberation as one way to approach the ideal of the
‘consent of the governed’. I claim the normative approach of deliberative
democrats involves immanent rather than transcendent norms. Prescrip-
tion is grounded in aspects of tradition, history, localism, contingency, and
the generative power of collective culture. Normative principles emerge
from collective action, or an ungrounded way of acting, derived from the
fact we belong to a community. Karl Mannheim would have called this a
‘conservative’ normativity.5 This approach suggests means to translate cur-
rent STS preferences for political under-laboring into more normatively
productive political engagement (one candidate stance being that of the
“modest scholar-activist,” see Woodhouse et al 2002, p. 301).
IV. Representative and Deliberative Democracy
In this section I indicate that general skepticism about public participa-
tion often holds that interactions between political actors is a cause for
concern, and that an emphasis upon the generative properties of collective
action grounds positive views of public participation. I show that deliber-
ative democrats ground normative claims in representations of collective
action, thereby connecting a constructivist epistemology of political
knowing to normative schemes, and I suggest STS participation theorists
could usefully model their own normativity on this practice.
Besides pragmatic concerns about time, organization, efªcacy and ma-
nipulation (Walzer 1999; Cooke and Kathari 2001), a general way to be a
participation skeptic is to argue that without appeal to universal and self-
evident standards no basis for activism exists (Hernstein-Smith 1997).
Mark Warren (1996, p. 259) has noted this argument at work in the ‘de-
mand overload’ thesis of democratic realists: “democratic challenge and
authority are incompatible . . . authorities can hold institutions together
only because they have special access to scientiªc or moral truth.” Demo-
cratic realists, pursuing a Schumpeterian approach, thus claim that lay
public incompetence and industrial-capitalist complexity warrant elitist
5. The notion of conservative used here has only the connotations referred to in the text
(tradition, history, contingency, localism, collective action, immanence), and not its more
everyday connotation of complacent resistance to change. On this conception of a ‘conser-
vative thinker’, see Mannheim (1927, Chap. 2), and as applied to Wittgenstein, see Bloor
(2000). For Wittgensteinian political philosophy, see Pitkin (1972), Tully (1989), and
Mouffe (2000, Chap. 3).
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Perspectives on Science
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representative democracy and militate against direct participation (see
Sartori 1962, pp. 102–15; Schumpeter 1962). Schumpeter thus ques-
tioned whether a common good existed (1962, p. 251), in part because
public deliberation based upon conºicting values and interests was re-
garded as unlikely to generate consensus. Many philosophers of science
have argued similarly, and typically operate within an individualistic
framework in which interests are individual biases (cf. Kitcher 2001,
p. 87). In such schemes limits upon public participation in science policy-
making are premised on the assumption that an unruly public needs a ‘tu-
toring’ of their preferences in order to reach ‘correct outcomes’ (for cri-
tiques, see Turner 2003 and Brown 2004).
Public understanding of science research informed by the ‘deªcit
model’ is also generally skeptical about public participation (for a critique,
see Irwin and Wynne 1996). Deªcit models of the public treat science as
unproblematic (coherent, unitary), but the public as cognitively deªcient.
The public is thus said to require science to disseminate understanding,
measured in terms of the number of individuals correctly knowing (appre-
ciating) technical knowledge. Apparently lacking autonomous meanings
of its own with which to engage knowledge claims, the public is thought
to evince a concern with propositional questions rather than the human
purposes embedded in knowledge. The assumption at work in deªcit
models is that narrow bodies of expertise discover correct knowledge. On
the basis of this correct knowledge, technical and governing institutions
download education to the unwashed masses, which now have an objective
and universal basis upon which to act. As with democratic realists and
much philosophy of science, deªcit models of the public distrust ‘the so-
cial’. The dualist schemes of fact-value and reasons-interests politically en-
code ‘the social’ as the untutored public: epistemologically constrained,
politically restraining, and in need of democratic control/education.
In contrast the basic theory of knowledge espoused by STS makes it
difªcult for the ªeld to be generally skeptical about public participation.
Social factors are considered necessary (though not sufªcient) in any expla-
nation of knowledge, and society is conceived as enabling a collective en-
gagement with the world (Bloor and Edge 2000). Reality is conceived of
as contingent, open-ended and hybrid enough to sustain conºicting inter-
pretations (Wynne 2005, p. 67). For STS the primary (empirical) task has
been to make plausible how (technical) judgment and action can be possi-
ble on contingent foundations and in context-speciªc ways. The political
focus has been on how public groups experience and deªne science (and
politics) in social life and on how credibility is achieved. The distribution
of credibility in a culture is conceived of as bound up with that culture’s
moral and political life, rendering trust integral to culture and boundary
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Getting Political about Participation
maintenance and transgression activities contestable (Shapin 1995b). It is
this constructivist view of knowledge that warrants the claim of participa-
tion theorists that the broader public is necessarily participating in the
creation of communal knowledge, for the warrant of a broader moral and
political community is required for science to be able to be public knowl-
edge.
STS participation theorists translate this view of knowledge into a con-
cern with the social-prescriptive role that science plays as it goes public.
The context for such concerns should be understood as an interest in kinds
of political action, and here deliberative democracy theorists emphasize a
broad spectrum of political action. Thus Nadia Urbinati has championed
deliberative democracy as allowing us to
. . . perceive participation and representation not as two alternative
forms of democracy but as related forms constituting the continuum
of political action in modern democracies. Seen from this angle, the
distinction between direct and indirect politics is a promising path
of interpretation: it frames the institutional and sociocultural space
within which the various components of political action—from
opinions and will formation to political action—take shape. (2000,
p. 759)
This political continuum is routinely given a constructivist grounding.
‘Politics’ is said to involve continuous interaction between governing in-
stitutions and various modes of public talk, thus highlighting the impor-
tance of collective activity and acts of mediation in knowledge creation.
But a political continuum also means politics has edges, in that politics is
situated within social relations, so that politics might be pervasive but is
not everywhere. As Warren (1996, pp. 244–48) notes, social relations in-
volve an uncontested immediacy grounded in routinized collective action,
and politics is what emerges when the automatic regulation of social in-
teraction becomes problematic. Power can thus infuse social relations, but
is not thereby necessarily political.
Emphasizing a continuum of political action is part of a claim for the
normative superiority of deliberative forms of representative democracy
(Dahl 1989, part 6; Kateb 1992, 36–56; Warren 1996; Habermas 1996a;
Plotke 1997; Young 1997; Elster 1998; Bohman and Rehg 1999; Urbin-
ati 2000; Dryzek 2000; Freeman 2000; Gunderson 2000; Mansbridge
2003; Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Brown 2007). Thus David Plotke
noted “participatory democrats and postmodern radicals often reject rep-
resentation altogether in favour of immediacy and political control.”
Plotke counters that “the opposite of representation is not participation.
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Perspectives on Science
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The opposite of representation is exclusion. And the opposite of participa-
tion is abstention” (1997, p. 19). Similarly Urbinati separates direct from
representative government, asserting the normative superiority of the lat-
ter. Direct democracy is the argument that individual citizens should have
the opportunity of actual decision-making in policies affecting them. The
normative core of the theory is the claim that participation can change the
outlooks and attitudes of those who engage in it (Barber 1984, Laird
1993). This restates the core principle of Athenian democracy, the right of
an individual to speak in the assembly (isegoria). Yet as Urbinati notes, ‘di-
rectness’ often follows Rousseau’s preferences for Sparta over Athens as the
model of a Republic. For Rousseau a well-ordered republic was one in
which individual citizens made up their mind in isolation and then voted,
bypassing public deliberation. Any threats to political autonomy came
from citizen interaction, not citizen passivity (2000, pp. 763–65). As a
form of representative democracy, deliberative democracy reverses this em-
phasis upon isolated voting (and, in Taylor’s (1994) view, rescues democ-
racy from Rousseau’s suspicion of social differentiation). In contrast to po-
litical theorists who conceive of democratic talk along the model of a
solitary thinker having a discussion in their own imagination (as in Rawls’
(1971) hypothetical ‘veil of ignorance’), with democracy about the aggre-
gation of votes arrived at via such means, deliberative democrats stress the
actual interactive aspects of deliberation (cf. Dryzek 2000, pp. 1–30;
Habermas 1996a, pp. 118–131, 295–302).
The critique of the model of the direct participant, understood in terms
of Rousseau’s isolated voter, recapitulates the general STS opposition to
individualistic modes of thinking. Individualism deploys a model of the
ideal knower as an isolated individual. Surrounding social environs are po-
tential distorting agents to what the individual is rationally capable of
knowing on their own. Individuals and not communities are the genera-
tors of knowledge. Martin Kusch outlined a deªnition of individualistic
thinking (in order to oppose it): “Knowledge is the possession of the indi-
vidual, and our epistemic interdependence can only reside in the fact that
we, as individuals, need to get knowledge from other individuals. But
epistemic interdependence cannot be generative of knowledge” (2002,
p. 345). Though some STS participation theorists unwittingly fall into in-
dividualism when discussing normativity, in general STS is anti-individu-
alistic. Knowledge is generated out of communal processes. Deliberative
democrats build on such conceptions of the public sphere, as both crucial
and as existing as a part of political representation, to argue that commu-
nal acts of representation (by both analyst and actor) are necessarily impli-
cated in creating any kind of knowledge. As Mark Brown indicates,
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Getting Political about Participation
One implication of this view is that the various interests, perspec-
tives, facts, values and opinions that are represented are best under-
stood as partially constituted by, rather than existing prior to, prac-
tices of representation. Just as scientiªc representations of nature
are mediated by various social practices and laboratory instruments,
political representation involves more than a simple transmission or
‘making present’ of constituent ideas and interests. Not only are
constituent opinions often inchoate or nonexistent, but in a com-
plex pluralist society, whatever constituent opinions exist almost al-
ways conºict. Political representatives are thus required to engage
in various practices of mediation; they must elicit, educate, antici-
pate and aggregate constituent interests and opinions in the process
of representing them. Such practices of mediation, moreover, are
themselves mediated in various ways by, among other things, mate-
rial structures, technological devices and scientiªc claims. (2006,
pp. 205–206)
Despite the complexities of the concept of representation (cf. Pitkin 1967;
Brown 2007), both ªelds conceive of technical and political knowledge
and representation(s) as mediated by communal activities rather than in-
dividual acts of presence making. Yet it is representative and deliberative
democracy theorists who explicitly integrate this constructivist view of
knowledge into a means to evaluate political outcomes.
John Dryzek thus argued the representation of competing discourses in
public debate satisªes the legitimacy requirement of deliberative democ-
racy (those subject to the ªnal decision should be able to participate in ar-
riving at it and be able to reºect on it). Dryzek realizes an obvious objec-
tion concerns the losers of such public debate, but argues the solution is to
avoid an “individualistic ontology” in which individuals are required to
give assent to each and every decision. Rather, subjectivity is multidimen-
sional, so that discourses are legitimate to the extent they underwrite or
destabilize collective outcomes (2001, pp. 661–62). Dryzek thus con-
structs politics as about more than decisions, because the broader meaning of
political actions and issues, for relevant communities, is also at stake
(Wynne argues similarly in 2003, 2007). Urbinati’s defense of the norma-
tive superiority of representative government hinges on a similar concep-
tion that public deliberation and not simply voting characterize democracy.
Rather than the terminal image of an agora in which judgment and deci-
sion occur simultaneously, Urbinati champions an image of an agora that
is temporal, not spatial, and characterized by an endless course of action.
Public speech is an indirect form of political action, mediating between
citizens separated spatially and temporally. This deferred kind of politics,
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Perspectives on Science
209
which Urbinati attributes to Mill (1861, Chap. 10; also see Young 1997),
necessitates an articulated public sphere in which trust, control and ac-
countability are prominent features of civic life (Urbinati 2000, pp. 765–
67). In effect deliberating communities are the seat of representative democ-
racy; just as in STS they are the seat of scientiªc knowledge and the right-
ful seat of public meaning for participation theorists. Hence Wynne cri-
tiques Collins and Evans for reducing science policy arenas to domains of
speciªc and unrelated decisions. Issues in the public domain are about “the
democratic cultivation and negotiation of public meanings through the
continuities and interwoven textures of public experiences, relationships,
knowledges and interactions, in essentially open-ended historical form”
(Wynne 2003, p. 410; also see Wynne 1996, p. 359).
STS participation theorists thus share with their representative democ-
racy cousins a conviction that democratic discourse ought to be delibera-
tive. For Collins and Evans deliberation about technical matters must have
its boundaries, because if Wynne were correct that “the proper partici-
pants are in principle every democratic citizen” (Wynne 2003, p. 411),
then the result might entail “undermining . . . the norms and culture of
evidence-based, scientiªc argument” (Collins and Evans 2003, p. 441).
Yet for Wynne every democratic citizen has a potential role to play, rather
than just “speciªc sub-populations qualiªed by dint of specialist experi-
ence-based knowledge,” where the issue is “arrogant and illegitimate in-
stitutional presumption of public meanings” (Wynne 2003, p. 411). For
Wynne, science has “colonized” public meaning under the “umbrella of
‘science’” (p. 411). STS participation theorists thus value responsiveness as
a normative condition of deliberative democratic discourse. Similarly, po-
litical philosophers often follow Hanna Pitkin in arguing “there need not
be a constant activity of responding, but there must be a constant condi-
tion of responsiveness, a potential readiness to respond” (1967, p. 233).
Wynne’s lament about the colonization of public meaning implies science
has closed down the social space required for discussion and negotiation
about public meanings, collapsing any sense of tension about what consti-
tutes ‘scientiªc’. For deliberative democrats the condition of responsive-
ness, embodied by various kinds of political representation, serves to
maintain the tension between constituents and institutional bodies of
knowledge and policy-making (Manin 1997, pp. 174–75). Urbinati thus
refers to the “spatial and temporal gap” between social actors that is re-
quired for “trust, control, and accountability” to be feasible (2000,
p. 761).
The normative theory of representative and deliberative democrats thus
amounts to the claim that participation ought to be deliberative, and that
a constant condition of responsiveness ought to prevail. These conditions
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Getting Political about Participation
ground the superiority of representative forms of government, for repre-
sentation is seen as a “comprehensive ªltering, reªning, and mediating
process of political will
formation and expression” (Urbinati 2000,
p. 760). STS participation theorists share much of these normative com-
mitments, which are manifested as a concern with the grounds of public
discourse about science and policy, and which are directed toward estab-
lishing the scope of science and role of the public as democratic agent. By
analogy with the political philosophy discussed here, for STS participation
theorists public participation is especially valued to the extent it redresses
the closing down of the political space needed for deliberation about pub-
lic meanings. Where science has become unresponsive, public participation
is especially justiªed. What form would that participation take? Here
again political philosophy can provide assistance, for representative de-
mocracy theorists distinguish between normative concerns about the
grounds of public discourse and practical concerns about forms of political
action and representation. Thus Brown (2007) delineates a spectrum of
representation that includes symbolic (affective associations), formal (au-
thorized and accountable representatives), delegation (substituting for
constituents), and trustee (responsible to interest groups, social move-
ments, or the public good). The conditions under which these practices
operate are of paramount importance: “political representatives can nei-
ther reºect nor ªlter a pre-existing public will, because the practices and
institutions of representation help constitute the same public they repre-
sent” (2007, p. 15). Thus a democratic theory of participation must sup-
port a full spectrum of political representation, with a dispersed locus of
representation rather than a linear arrangement of citizen input and tech-
nical outcome. Yet democratic shaping also becomes a matter of delibera-
tive and responsive adjustment to changes in science and civil society. The
very grounds of debate matter.
Wynne’s prescriptivism with regard to ‘every democratic citizen’ can
thus be resituated, not as a contribution to debates about who is ‘qualiªed’
and how political action could unfold (a reading rejected by Wynne 2007,
pp. 108–09), but as a commitment to the norms of deliberation and re-
sponsiveness. Unlike the “spooky” norms derived from transcendentalist
schemes, in which prescriptions are posited as both independent of human
culture and causally efªcacious within human culture (Turner 2003,
pp. 591–96), STS participation theorists could advocate such norms as
representations of conventions evident in communal activity (as outlined
by Bloor 1996a, p. 372; Bloor 1996b). Normatively speaking, delibera-
tive practices thus become a straight response to the “groundlessness” of
representative democracy (Warren 1996, pp. 244–48) and the fact that
ends collide. I suggest the political sentiments of representative and delib-
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Perspectives on Science
211
erative democracy theorists, and STS participation theorists, arrive at the
same rejection of Rousseau’s argument that “long debates, dissension, and
tumult betoken the ascendance of private interests and the decline of the
state” (1762, section 4.2). Rather, the political sentiment is that
[Public] speech is a means of mediation that belongs to all citizens,
linking and separating them at the same time . . . the character and
broadness of its mediated politics [entails that representation is]
. . . a ‘course of action’ rather than a ‘simple act’—a practice of po-
litical interaction among citizens . . . [in which] words ‘give life’
. . . Thanks to deliberation, the common good can be seen as a co-
operative conception of the whole community and as the outcome
of ongoing persuasion and compromise that never ends in a perma-
nent verdict. (Urbinati 2000, pp. 765–72)
V. Future Avenues for STS Discussions of Public Participation?
If we say political under-laboring does not exhaust political engagement,
that normative individualism is an unsatisfactory view of normative pre-
scription, that conservative normativity (grounded in immanent norms
and the representation of community standards) is a viable form of pre-
scription, and that norms of deliberation, responsiveness and accountabil-
ity are shared by deliberative democrats and STS participation theorists,
then what speciªc political avenues are opened up? Here I sketch some
analogies between current approaches within STS and current divisions
within contemporary political philosophy, showing different avenues
available to STS for justifying public participation in science policy.
For comparative purposes we should return to Collins and Evans. Their
normative theory of expertise ªnds a mildly comfortable niche within cur-
rent strands of liberal democratic theory that utilize conceptions of delib-
eration owing to John Rawls. For Rawls (1971, Chap. 3), substantive po-
litical, ethical and religious doctrines ought to be excluded from public
discourse, and replaced by an approach (the veil of ignorance) in which
deliberators reach conclusions by supposing which options would be cho-
sen if they lacked knowledge of such doctrines (including their own stake
in them). The point was not to posit disembodied beings, but to deal with
the differences between them by arguing that we know our conclusions
are fair when they are capable of being endorsed by people with different
identities and commitments (Freeman 2000, pp. 396–405). Collins and
Evans deploy a similar conception of deliberation in supposing that a gen-
uine civic epistemology involves either the self-compartmentalizing or the
marginalization of claims (and possibly people) where they are tied di-
rectly to committed knowledge cultures (Evans and Plows 2007, pp. 844–
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Getting Political about Participation
45), and that technical judgment ought to mean subject-speciªc knowl-
edge and experience independent of how it is connected to politicized life-
styles and identities (Collins and Evans 2007, pp. 113–133). We can also
tie Collins and Evans fairly closely to the political outlook of contempo-
rary liberal egalitarians (who do not necessarily follow Rawls on delibera-
tion). So-called liberal egalitarians argue that group-based rights jeopar-
dize the egalitarian liberal project of recognizing difference but ensuring
that all groups are accorded equal basic liberties and rights within a sys-
tem of equality of opportunity and the right of free association (cf. Barry
2001), and/or that when tied to the politics of recognition they threaten to
dissipate efforts to secure fair distribution of social and economic resources
(Gitlin 1995). Thus the rejection of group-rights is taken as an objection
to the political projects associated with ‘identity politics’ (cf. Young 1990,
Taylor 1994) and ‘liberal multiculturalism’ (cf. Kymlicka 1995), both of
which claim important judgments within liberal democracy ought to be
made with group-rights in view (for such objections see Kateb 1992,
Chap. 9; Habermas 1994; Gitlin 1995; Barry 2001, Part II; O’Neill
2002). By analogy, Collins and Evans are limiting public participation on
the grounds that social identities and substantive ethical-political com-
mitments do not amount to the democratic right to participate in the
making of technical judgments.
Collins and Evans’ approach hinges on their newly expanded and
puriªed category of expertise constituting an authoritative base upon
which governance groups can draw in response to politicized community-
based claims about what to do. In this sense, Collins and Evans project is a
left-Liberal critique of group-based rights to the making of technical
judgments. Where might STS participation theorists stand in regard to
the question of group rights? Jasanoff claims that what matters for com-
parative politics is “the meanings [and] what gives signiªcance to another
culture’s distinctions and differences . . . the normative implications of
different forms of contemporary scientiªc and political life, and to show
what is at stake, for knowing and reasoning human beings, in seeking to
inhabit them” (2005, p. 291). Wynne writes that elite attitude to what
constitutes publics “has to be seen as a profound inability and refusal of
modern scientiªc culture, as mutually-evolved or co-produced with late-
modern capitalism, to internalise, respect, and reºect difference. . . . [Ex-
perts institutions ought to be critiqued for their] blithe lack of recogni-
tion [and their] alienation and denial of the public” (2007, p. 101; empha-
sis in original). This emphasis upon difference, identity, and recognition
appears to align Jasanoff and Wynne with identity politics theorists. Not
being political philosophers, Jasanoff and Wynne do not elaborate upon
the group-rights aspect of the politics of identity project. Political philos-
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Perspectives on Science
213
ophy is here appealed to in order to buttress claims that public participation
in public policy involving technical claims is warranted to the extent re-
specting difference is desired. Thus Wynne cites (2007, p. 101) mostly ed-
ited collections on deliberative democracy, thereby avoiding internal differ-
ences over group rights but attaching academic weight to the focus on
difference. Similarly, Mark Elam and Margereta Bertilsson (2003, pp. 243–
246) invoke Seyla Benhabib to support recognition of difference as a justi-
ªcation for public participation. Nevertheless they do not note that Ben-
habib opposes group rights to the extent they encourage “the tyranny of in-
tolerant minorities and narcissistic collectivities” (1999, p. 412).
My point here is that aligning with the identity politics literature al-
lows STS participation theorists to suggestively allude to normative
means to defend public participation, but that more constructive engage-
ment with political philosophy could clarify what kind of politics is spe-
ciªcally envisioned. Thus, by analogy with the identity politics literature,
STS participation theorists could justify public participation in techno-
science to the extent that recognition and respect of difference is required
to challenge externally imposed identities and negative representations,
and because participation in social life can alter how decisions are made
that affect marginalized groups and how worth is evaluated in general. In
political philosophy the former project is closest (by analogy) to that of
Charles Taylor (1994) and Axel Honneth (1995), and the latter to that of
Iris Marion Young (1990). Two problems, though, arise in the alignment
with identity politics. One is the extent to which identity rests on
essentialism about groups. Without the assumption that groups are inter-
nally homogenous and sustaining of determinate interests, there appears
little reason to claim groups deserve representation or recognition as a
group (Jaggar 1999). The point is not what identity politics theorists
claim in principle—that social identity is constructed, or that it is ºuid
and negotiable (as Taylor and Young do; and so too Wynne 1992b,
p. 228)—but what the assumption must be that grounds calls for extend-
ing rights to groups. Note above that both Jasanoff and Wynne spoke of
cultures and publics in a way that suggests such entities are bounded and
stable enough to be studied, recognized, and protected. If publics are
treated the same as groups are by politics of identity theorists, then re-
gardless of whether the ‘bounded’ publics are indeed essentialized or just
treated as such for strategic purposes (as discussed by Bernstein 2005 and
critiqued by Benhabib 1999, pp. 405–06), might not publics qua collec-
tives have rights? That publics might have rights, in the same sense as the
group rights of identity politics theorists, is suggested in current public
understanding of science literature (the ‘applied’ wing of STS participa-
tion theorizing). Thus in regard to dialogue and engagement efforts, it has
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214
Getting Political about Participation
been said that the goal involves “allowing public groups to frame issues in a
manner that approximates to their own experience” (Irwin 2006, p. 316;
emphasis added). If publics are like groups with collective rights, this
would be a very strong normative claim for their participation to the ex-
tent one accepts collective rights.
Nevertheless publics as groups, with collective rights, court the objec-
tion that granting such rights invites the reiªcation of social groups. Ste-
ven Epstein’s (2007) recent study of the ‘inclusion-and-difference’ para-
digm (IDP) in biomedical research suggests a word of caution about
possibly reifying groups. The IDP is a response, within the past few de-
cades, to inequities in medical research and treatment. The IDP holds that
biological categories of group membership (such as sex, gender, race, eth-
nicity, and age to a lesser extent) deserve attention, and Epstein shows that
the IDP has been relatively successful in expanding who is involved in
clinical trials. However, Epstein also notes that, while the IDP reinforces
the politics of difference and identity politics, it does so by reinforcing
rigid biology-based conceptions of social identity and runs the risk of
reproducing—because disparity is
interpreted as difference and as
‘natural’—the very socio-economic inequities and disenfranchisement it
was ostensibly attempting to challenge (2007, pp. 291–302). If the move
to treat publics as like groups with claims to collective rights is resisted
on pragmatic grounds, this still leaves in place normative arguments that
recognizing group identity is essential to democracy. Thus identity poli-
tics theorists also claim mis-recognition and non-recognition damages
self-identity (see Taylor 1994 and Honneth 1995 especially). Wynne
seems to follow suit, holding that constructing understanding/knowledge
“should be seen as a process of identity-construction” (Wynne 1992b,
p. 283). Thus to deny and marginalize public views on knowledge must
be a threat to identity. Following Taylor (1994), we are only equal in our
dignity to the extent our uniqueness is known and has worth, and our
unique identity is formed by processes of mutual interdependence (dialog-
ically), in which the collective identity-related goals of socio-cultural
groups provide the frame in which identities are formed. One can see why
group rights enter the picture, as groups provide the frame in which iden-
tity is formed and thus require the protection liberalism uses rights to af-
ford the individual. By analogy, STS participation theorists could justify
group involvement as required for identity-formation within deliberative
forums in which ends and values vary, and individual participation as rep-
resentatives of collective ends. Still, a problem remains. If Taylor origi-
nally criticized liberalism for its atomism about individuals, his solution
appears to displace to the group level this atomism. Socio-cultural groups
appear to be treated as isomorphic units. Hence STS participation theo-
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Perspectives on Science
215
rists would still be required to face the group rights problem, even if rec-
ognition and identity-formation were their concern rather than the
pragmatics of mobilizing collective identities.
One resource for STS participation theorists, in regard to problems
with claims to recognition and difference, is the critique offered by Nancy
Fraser (2002). Fraser distinguishes two senses of misrecognition: as an is-
sue of ethics (identity) in which damaged self-identity, and thus harm to
the capacity to achieve the good life, is at issue (the approach of Taylor and
Honneth), or as an issue of justice (status), in which social groups have
been denied the opportunity to fully participate in social interactions as
peers or on a par with others. While misrecognition as ethics pushes dis-
pute toward potentially irresolvable evaluations of different claims to the
good life, misrecognition as justice can be tackled by the norm of partici-
patory parity (Fraser 2002, p. 27). Wynne runs both of these senses of
misrecognition together: institutionalized expertise ignores the capacity
of publics to arrive at autonomous meanings (2008, pp. 30 n.5, and
p. 28), must respect them much more than it does (2007, p. 101), and
needs to include them because collective notions—of what issues and con-
cerns should be—are at stake (2007, p. 109). By distinguishing speciªc
forms of misrecognition, ethical (identity) or justice (status), Fraser seeks
to avoid the trap where identity is recognized but participatory parity is
not addressed. Fraser argues that parity of participation is especially
justiªed where subordinated actors confront dominant actors. STS partici-
pation theorists could use this kind of distinction to tag demands for pub-
lic participation to claims about speciªc forms of misrecognition, espe-
cially to the effect that participation is justiªed to the extent participatory
parity is at issue. It seems, for instance, that much of Jasanoff’s and
Wynne’s critique of Collins and Evans hinges on misrecognition as an is-
sue of justice not ethics. Similarly, while Benhabib (as noted above) is
cited to support the claim that difference needs to be ‘recognized’, Ben-
habib rejects recognition of identities conceived of in either the essential-
ist or strategic/political sense of “seamless wholes” (1999, p. 405). Ben-
habib argues that if identities are ºuid and negotiable then group-rights
ought to be rejected, replaced by “groups as positional subjects [according
to] shared experiences of exploitation, marginalization and domination”
(pp. 405–406). By analogy with Benhabib, in controversies involving
technical claims public participation would be especially justiªed where
marginalization, discrimination and disadvantage were in play, but also in
the general sense that citizens ought to have an equal right to represent
themselves in public.
The key point to make here is that, were STS participation theorists to
deploy identity politics arguments in the spirit of Taylor and Honneth—
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216
Getting Political about Participation
where rights to participation include group rights and recognition of
identity—there appear no boundaries to public participation in policy-
making involving technical claims. Some will ªnd identity politics a use-
ful resource for just this reason. But it might come at a price, such as hav-
ing to defend claims that groups are treated in an essentialist fashion, that
misrecognition is used without sufªcient clarity, that group rights is ei-
ther incoherent or invites social fracturing rather than meaningful collab-
oration, and that identity politics is subsuming the effort to ensure partic-
ipatory parity and redress socio-economic inequity. However, as discussed
above, claims about recognition and difference can also be couched in a
way that does not rest so heavily on ethics and group rights. Thus Fraser
suggests participatory parity as a means to redress misrecognition, and
Benhabib does not allow claims to recognition and difference to translate
directly into group rights (as doing so encourages narcissistic participa-
tion). In each case, participation can be theorized as bounded to the extent
that dialogue ought not to focus strictly on either claims to the good life
or narrow perspectives of self. If Epstein’s study is any guide, one might
expect that STS case-studies may continue to challenge essentialist (even if
just strategically so) notions of identity, and thus justiªcations of public
participation within STS may wish to be circumspect about the constitu-
tion of the public(s) so invoked for such purposes.
If STS participation theorists were to play down any alignment with
the identity politics approach, then one avenue to pursue would be to play
up the alignment with Jurgen Habermas. As noted above, Habermas
stresses actual deliberation by real citizens. Of most relevance here is the
problem Habermas speciªcally addresses in Between Facts and Norms
(1996a): how to sustain democracy in complex societies faced with prob-
lems, the solutions to which incorporate the kind of technical skill and
specialist knowledge not possessed by ordinary citizens. Habermas appears
to concede that administrative systems of the State must be granted au-
tonomy to make technical judgments without relying on public input, for
in complex societies the public can only direct uses of knowledge (p. 300),
and because will formation in the public sphere is said to lack the ability
to mobilize the requisite knowledge required to judge technical matters
themselves (p. 320). But this seems broadly compatible with what
Jasanoff and Wynne say; both call for mechanisms to control the scope of
expert judgment, especially where expert judgment is allowed to pre-
sumptively impose upon the public what an issue is supposed to mean. In-
deed in Wynne’s critique of Collins and Evans he is denying to science the
sole right to determine meaning, not denying expert judgment itself
(2007, pp. 107–09). Where the normative afªnity with Habermas arises is
in Habermas’ ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ thesis (1984, 1987), which
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Perspectives on Science
217
is a cautionary tale about allowing administrative and instrumental
systems—characterized by the steering mechanisms of power, money and
purposive action—to colonize (or recast,
like colonial masters) the
lifeworld (shared, taken-for-granted understandings and assumptions, na-
ively mastered capacities; the horizon within which individuals realize
their projected ends). As noted above, Jasanoff and Wynne speak similarly
of the danger of colonization. Jasanoff cautions against expert institutions
being allowed to impose understandings on publics’ “radically ‘other’
ways of understanding the world . . . rooted in different life worlds”
(2003a, p. 392). Wynne cautions against “technoscientiªc–commercial–
policy actors” being “allowed [to] dramatically . . . enlarge its material,
symbolic, economic and psychological intervention into global social
lifeworlds” (2007, p. 104).
Setting aside the extent to which system and lifeworld can in fact be
decoupled (Habermas equivocates on the question, admitting the life-
world can never be “completely husked away” (1987, pp. 310–11)), the
animating drama of the colonization thesis is the idea of an intervention,
an imposition, or something out of place and beyond its scope. I suggest
STS participation theorists utilize the same kind of animating drama and
thus share normative afªnities with Habermas. On the one hand this cre-
ates a general normative justiªcation for public participation, as demo-
cratic check upon the colonization of the public sphere. But how far does
this participation go and what form does it take? Here the distinctions
Habermas makes in Between Facts and Norms (1996a) might inform a more
speciªc normative justiªcation for public participation in matters involv-
ing specialist knowledge. For one thing, Habermas conceives of society as
constituted by a host of spheres of action, but only the political sphere me-
diates them all, so that administrative systems cannot act paternalistically
but political systems can. Thus for Habermas normative questions about
issues and concerns are a matter for the public sphere, in part because the
closed language of expert groups is subordinate to circulating common
languages in the public sphere (p. 436). Habermas formalizes this in
terms of weak and strong publics (thus creating the conditions for medi-
ated and deferred democracy, as discussed above in relation to deliberative
democrats). Weak publics refer to the informal deliberations among ordi-
nary citizens about salient political issues. Strong publics refer to formal
institutions (such as the law and parliament), burdened with both deci-
sion-making requirements and the trappings of socio-economic and power
relations. Habermas seeks to preserve the radical and transformative po-
tential of weak publics by keeping them at the periphery (p. 362), thereby
maximizing their reºexivity (pp. 370, 442; Wynne similarly constructs
reºexivity as inversely proportional to power, see Durant 2008). Moreover,
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218
Getting Political about Participation
weak publics are to set the agenda within which strong publics operate
(p. 184).
In Habermasian terms, public participation—qua weak public—in
matters involving specialist knowledge is normatively justiªed because
such peripheral social actors are reºexive enough to challenge and (re)in-
vigorate society, because informal, deliberative, even anarchic social talk
mitigates elitism and channels the lifeworld into strong publics, and be-
cause the bottom-up agenda-setting aspects of weak-strong public rela-
tions creates the basis of social legitimation for strong public decisions.
Given the emphasis upon weak publics, Habermas thus ties his concep-
tion of rights to the protection of deliberative procedures. Rights thus
“presuppose collaboration among subjects” (p. 88), meaning Habermas is
not a strict liberal in the classical sense of emphasizing private rights con-
ceived of as pre-political endowments. Rather, because social identities are
formed intersubjectively through socialization in lifeworlds, private au-
tonomy can only be secured by ensuring civic autonomy (participation in
democracy). Marginalized and disenfranchised social and cultural groups
thus assume importance for Habermas as the lifeworld within which social
identities are formed, and thus their incorporation into weak publics en-
sures the reciprocal creation of both individual and civic autonomy. This
brings a more speciªc, almost literal, sense to saying the public has a right
to participate in deliberations about science. Moreover, the recognition of
social and cultural rights becomes important for lifeworld maintenance.
Yet here we begin to see how Habermas limits claims to difference and di-
versity, in part by rejecting group rights. Lifeworlds are not to be pre-
served along the model of endangered species: rights are legitimate only
when exercised as individual liberties, cultures only deserve protection to
the extent they promote individual autonomy and reºexivity, and the eth-
ical integration of group members around a conception of ‘the good’ must
be uncoupled from abstract political integration if there is to be a com-
mon horizon of interpretation (Habermas 1994).
Habermas holds that recognizing difference and diversity is about se-
curing the interdependence of private and civic autonomy, and as such
rights are tied to the idea of a common democratic culture. Public dis-
course is bounded by the idea that democracy cannot give up on the ideal
of consensus. Habermas thus imposes conditions on public speech: moral
discourse aims at impartiality and a perspective not tied to egocentrism
and ethnocentrism, whereas political-ethical discourses express the au-
thentic self-understanding of a particular community (1996a, pp. 107–
108). Participants in deliberative exchanges should not rest content with
ethical-political discourses, but ought to push “beyond contested interests
and values” and seek to establish “deeper consonances [Übereinstimmungen]
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Perspectives on Science
219
in a form of life” (p. 165). For Habermas, were participants in deliberative
exchanges to rest content with ethical-political discourse, and reject the
assumption that consensus is possible in principle or that negotiated
agreements (Vereinbargung) ought to be sought, then “political disputes
would forfeit their deliberative character and degenerate into purely stra-
tegic struggles for power” (1996b, p. 1493). What kind of application to
public disputes, involving technical claims, might this Habermasian
perspective inspire? One account has noted potential limitations. Barry
Barnes and John Dupre (2008, pp. 220–41) discuss Habermas’s answer
to ‘should we allow the manipulation of human genomes?’ Habermas
recommends repair be allowed but enhancement denied, that manipula-
tion ought to be resisted where it would violate nonpersonal forms of hu-
man dignity, and that the credo ‘born not made’ means our ethical self-
understanding militates against enhancement. Barnes and Dupre think
Habermas ultimately speaks to power in seeking to reconcile the views of
two great institutions—science and the churches. Barnes and Dupre praise
as well as criticize this effort, ªrst noting efforts to cultivate agreements to
disagree serves valuable coordinating functions in value-pluralist socie-
ties (p. 238), but then suggesting Habermas has abandoned the project
of public engagement and taken up camp with powerful institutions
(p. 239). Their solution is to recommend the “need for unending debate”
in the absence of “indefeasible answers” to how publics should participate
and how epistemic authority ought to be apportioned to different social
actors (p. 240).
But is this a decent interpretation of Habermas? Does a negotiated
agreement abandon public engagement, or protect democracy by ensuring
strong publics do not colonize weak publics? And are the lifeworlds of
weak publics being protected if ‘made not born’ endangers private auton-
omy? And should we accept Barnes and Dupre’s implied normative posi-
tion, that a public engaged is one embarking upon an unending conversa-
tion? Might this not ultimately fragment the lot of us into whatever
ethical-political position we take to be sacrosanct? And is public partici-
pation justiªed to the extent that it fails to challenge anyone to move be-
yond what they recognize in the mirror, or do we justify it to the extent
we might want to do more, as a collective, than that?
References
Barber, Benjamin. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory politics in a new age.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Barnes, Barry and John Dupre. 2008. Genomes: and what to make of them.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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