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Michel Callon is Professor, Ecole des Mines, and Director, Centre for
Innovation, 62 Boulevard Raspail, Paus 70005, France.
Sociology and
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Modern societies thus enter into the age of suspicion because the
________________________________________________________
_
________________________________________________________
political and economic institutions guaranteeing the validity and
of science have been found to be in the wrong.
_legitimacy
_______________________________________________
I am not sure that this interpretation is an accurate one. There is no
doubt that relations between specialists and lay people have been
called into question, but ____________________________________
what seems more problematic to me is that
the issue is one of trust and of restoring that trust. In this paper, I
___________________________________________
would like to show that if indeed there is a crisis, it is that of the separation between science and society or, in other words, of the great
divide between ________________________
specialists and non-specialists. This boundary, patiently
erected over the centuries, exists not only in institutions but also as
models for the actors. And it is this boundary that is wavering. The
great divide is challenged from all sides because it makes the construction of a collective in which technoscience can find its place, difficult if not impossible.
In an attempt to understand this evolution and the crisis it spawns,
I wish to focus on the diversity of possible modes of participation by
_________________________________________________________
____________________________________________
non-specialists in scientific and technological debates. For the sake of
three models. Each of them should be conclarity I shall distinguish ____________
sidered both as a convenient way of making a confused and complex
reality intelligible, and as a reference that actors use when they reflect
From one model to
on practical forms of technological democracy. ________________
_________________________________________________________
the
next, what varies is the degree of involvement of lay people in the
_________________________________________________________
formulation and application of the knowledge and know-how on
which decisions are based.
______________________
The Public Education Model
(Ml)
the simplest and most widespread model, although probaIt is to this, __________________________________
the
least
suited to current challenges, that authors refer when they
bly
of
the
crisis of confidence in science and scientific institutions.
speak
It has the following characteristics:
scientific knowledge is
Owing to its universality and objectivity, ___________________
the opposite of lay knowledge, which is shaped by beliefs and
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
superstitions. The former can triumph only through the total
eradication of the latter. Not only must scientists teach the pub____________________
lic everything, they also have nothing to learn from it.
is a separate institution governed by its own norms. To
2. Science
__________________________________________________
succeed in its knowledge enterprise and guard against all forms
1.
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tell us, and its probability can be considered to be
minute. The risk perceived by the inhabitants of the neighbouring areas is, however, variable and may in certain circumstances
be so high that it seems out of touch with reality. Just ~as they
help to re-establish a climate of trust, so too educative and
information actions move the perceived and objective risks
closer together. Once the emotions and beliefs clouding their
minds have been dispelled, the citizens or consumers are in a
position to take rational decisions. Such decisions do not, however, exclude the existence of risks, for a society without risks is
a stagnant society; on the contrary, they accept tnem knowingly.
In this model, the legitimacy of political decisions has two
6. ____________________________________________________
sources. The first concerns the goals that are set and depends
______
only on the representativeness of those who speak in the name
of the citizens. The second relates to the resources mobilised to
meet these goals and is conferred by the scientific, objective and
universal knowledge, which makes it possible to foresee the
In order to be legitimate, a
effects produced by certain actions. ______________________
decision must have objectives approved by all citizens, but it
______________________________________________
must also be realistic, that is to say, it must not sell illusions and
must therefore recognise the force of facts and come to terms
with it. Political action is made of consultation (what do we want
to do?) and explanation (what can we do?).
specialists
The public education model (Ml) is based on the irreducible opposition between scientific and popular knowledge. No discussion is possible before superstitions, those assumed poisons of democracy, have
been eradicated.
This model, carefully maintained and reproduced, sometimes
encounters setbacks when the underlying assumptions are invalidated, with the impossibility of restoring their relevance. This relative
failure leads to the introduction of a second model, that of public
______________________________________________
debate, obtained
by deforming and extending the preceding one. This
second model _____________________________________________
proposes richer relations between lay people and sciAn
entists.
undifferentiated
_________________________________________________________
public consisting of individuals who act,
on
the
_________________________________________________________
circumstances, as citizens or consumers and can be
depending
_________________________________________________________
from
one another only by their level of knowledge, is
distinguished
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___________________________
by-differentiated publics (depending on their conditions in
replaced
life, their professional activities, their locality, age or sex, etc.). The
latter possess specific, particular and concrete knowledge and competencies, the fruit of their experiences and observations which, when
mobilised and debated in public arenas, enhance the abstract and
inhuman knowledge of the scientists.
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completed by the observations and knowledge of the natives.
This complementarity of universal and local knowledge, with
the latter enriching the former, is also to be found in the testing
of new drugs, where patients are capable of very subtle analyses,
as in the case of phenomena of addiction to psychotropic substances. The competencies of lay people go much further than
that: they include abilities to carry out sociological analyses
which lead them, for example, to relativise the content of certain scientists standpoints by relating them to their professional
or economic interests (is such-and-such, a researcher in favour
of transgenic plants, not influenced by his position as scientific
adviser to a major industrial group?). Scientists are, moreover,
always limited by the narrowness of their specialty and are
therefore as powerless as the lay persons when addressing ethical or economic issues.
2. Since science produced in laboratories is at best incomplete, at
worst unrealistic
the
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anonymous consumers, by differentiated publics with particular and contrasting competencies and points of view. It would
be tedious to compile an exhaustive list of these procedures; we
shall mention only the most significant.
Inquiries and public hearings are used to gather the opinions,
suggestions and comments of the different actors or groups of
actors who wish to express themselves. With the focus group
method, used by public authorities and firms alike, a collective
dynamics is created at the same time as a contrasting representation of viewpoints and interests. In this case, instead of individuals being questioned, several homogeneous groups are
organised in relation to variable criteria, for the purpose of formulating their own arguments and recommendations. Local
information committees, which have proliferated during recent
years in France (in the fields of waste, industrial hazard or water
management), constitute mini-parliaments where decisions
and measures concerning particular territories or situations are
discussed: knowledge, hypotheses, forecasts and arguments are
compared and sometimes experiments are conducted. The consensus conferences which flourished in the Scandinavian and
English-speaking countries, and which Japan and France are
adopting, organise a strictly bound dialogue between lay people
and scientists on themes of general interest. What is mobilised
in these cases, more than local indigenous knowledge, is the
irreplaceable capacity that non-specialists have to assess the
political, cultural and ethical implications of certain research
(e.g., genetic cloning) in order to frame it and limit researchers
freedom.
3. These procedures, which establish public arenas for debate,
tend to muddle the usual boundaries between specialists and
non-specialists. These boundaries give way to the proliferation
of divisions criss-crossing the scientific community and the public alike. Agreement is obtained through compromise, which
most often is the outcome of complicated strategic games. In
this model the light is not shed by a brilliant and self-confident
science; it is generated by the comparison of opinions, knowledge and judgements which, being separate and distinct, are
mutually enriching. The actors, rather than being forced to
adopt behaviours and an identity in which they may not even
recognise themselves, are in a position to negotiate.
or
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relies essentially on the existence of consultation and open
debate. This is as true for the firm that wants apprehensive
farmers to agree on the validity of its project to spread sewage
sludge, as it is for the public authorities who explore the diverse
options for managing nuclear waste.
This form of legitimacy has its own specific limits: it comes up
against the thorny question of representativeness. Who should
be included in the debate? Who represents whom? Model 2 is
useful for avoiding scientists monopoly over speech but, once
open, the question of representativeness is difficult to close. In
Model 2 it is a permanent issue.
The
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4.
By participating in the collective action of production and dissemination of the knowledge and know-how concerning it, the
group does not experience its relationship with specialists in a
mode of trust or mistrust since it is on an equal footing with
them. Nor does it, as in Model 2, merely reaffirm a threatened
identity; it participates in the construction of a new, reconfigured identity which gives it access to social recognition. The
patient suffering from a serious genetic deficiency, by participating actively in the hybrid collective, creates a new identity for
which s/he strives to achieve recognition and in which s/he
recognises himself; for example, from being hardly human, with
no existence, condemned by a weakness which ne tries to hide,
s/he progressively transforms himself into a public being in his
own right, the victim of an error in genetic coding, but in all
other respects similar to his fellow beings. This constructed and
negotiated identity, together with the knowledge and techniques comprising it, maintain a completely original relationship with science. In this case, genes are no longer external realities which impose their merciless logic on human beings
reduced to little more than the consequence of a biological
determinism; they
are
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the first
entists ; that of Model 2 is the question of representativeness. The viaof Model 3 depends on the difficult conciliation between the
defense of minorities, whose identity depends to a large degree on
the knowledge produced, and the achievement of a common good
which is not carved up by particular interests. As the example of
genetic diseases suggests, technoscience contributes towards this
possibility of conciliation. The recognition of genes explains the
handicap and makes it possible to work on it, while simultaneously
serving as a basis for actions which might eventually be beneficial to
the majority.
bility
Conclusion
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fit into Models 2 and 3 and the hybrid forums they organise. All of
these issues imply an active contribution by lay people, either to
enrich, complete and boost scientific knowledge produced in a laboratory, or to participate directly, at least on certain occasions, in its
production. Each of these cases involves the intervention of the particular publics or concerned groups (for example, the populations
shown by epidemiological surveys to be at-risk) who take action and
who, by participating in knowledge production, struggle to define and
transpositions.
REFERENCES
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