Sociological Forum, VoL 6, No. 3, 1991

Notes and Insights

Beyond Deference and Demystification in the Sociology of Science and Technology: A Reply to Otero

Freder ick H. Butte l i

A response to Otero's criticism of the thesis of the nonrevolutionary character of biotechnology is developed within a larger consideration of the relatively small amount of attention high technologies have received within the sociology of science. It is argued that the "new sociology of science" of the past decade has been a major advance on midcentury functionalist perspectives that took an essentialist, deferential view toward science. The new sociology of science, based on the demystification of science through a relativist view of scientific knowledge production, is nonetheless limited in several respects in its applicability to contemporary issues relating to high technologies. Otero's criticisms are considered in the light of the continuing need for uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology, and for developing a perspective on science and technology that avoids both uncritical deference and excessive relativization of these forces for social change.

KEY WORDS: biotechnology; high technology; sociology of science; sociology of technology; new international division of labor.

INTRODUCTION

Gerardo Otero's commentary on my (Buttel, 1989) critique of the ex- plicit and implicit claim that biotechnology will prove to be a "revolution- ary" technical form provides an opportunity to consider his arguments in a wider frame. Thus, I will attempt to address the specific points of criticism he raises about my paper while simultaneously pointing out the larger

1Department of Rural Sociology and Program on Science, Technology and Society, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853-7801.

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sociological relevance of what might strike some as a specialized, if not esoteric, debate.

I would like to begin this rejoinder with some observations on the intellectual context of these issues. I will begin by recounting a personal experience that I believe is useful in understanding the dominant thrust of the contemporary sociology of science and technology. When I first became interested in this field of work, a well-known sociologist of science re- marked to me that sociologists of science, while generally among the most knowledgeable of sociologists concerning scientific method, if not sociologi- cal methodology as such, almost never teach "methods" courses in sociology departments. Most sociologists of science, it was pointed out, would feel uncomfortable in such a role, and even if they were interested in doing so, most departments would be suspicious of such a person taking on a role so central to modern sociological canon.

The reasons for this apparent mismatch of expertise and assignment lie in trends in sociology at large, and in factors internal to the closely intersecting fields of the sociology of science and social studies of science that bear brief explication. The contemporary sociology of science and tech- nology has its origins in two closely interrelated viewpoints. First, it is prem- ised on a near-obligatory denunciation about what is held to be an idealist, essentialist, overly rationalistic, deferential posture toward science: that of midcentury functionalist sociology of science, typified by Merton (1938/ 1973). Mertonian sociology of science focused on science as a self- regulating system of knowledge generation made possible by its reward sys- tem, competition, and its system of norms---or in other words, by virtue of the fact that its structure and processes are distinct or demarcated from nonscientific activity and discourse. The Mertonian perspective has been criticized, on mostly sound grounds (although also often ritualistically and gratuitously), on account of its having served to deny that the actual char- acter of science--the nature of the knowledge that is producedmis within its purview; because of its idealized view of the internal workings of science; and because it has had little to say about the role of science and technology in social change. It also declined in persuasiveness as a result of the larger trend of sociological opinion having turned away from the midcentury style of sociological functionalism.

Second, post-Mertonian sociology of science (see especially Collins, 1983; Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Mulkay, 1979; Pinch, 1986; Woolgar, 1988) has accord- ingly had as its organizing rubric the demystification of scientific practice and scientific knowledge production. This new sociology of science has been typified by the proposition that science cannot be distinguished from nonscience on the basis of its "decision rules." Among the bases for the

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claim of lack of demarcation are that the rules of scientific method are seldom brought to bear comprehensively (even in the physical sciences wherein their functioning is typically thought to be most thoroughgoing), cannot in and of themselves distinguish between progression and retro- gression in scientific knowledge, and tend to be overridden by or subor- dinate to linguistic and communication rules of the sort that operate in everyday discourse. The new sociology of science has thus sought to dem- onstrate that scientific knowledge is neither an unproblematic reflection of natural reality, nor a straightforward derivative of experiment and ob- servation. Scientific knowledge is held to be not unlike other social knowl- edge in its being "socially constructed." The sociology of science, and the larger field of social studies of science, has thus moved in an essentially dramaturgical direction, away from a Mertonian "sociology of scientists" and toward a sociology of "scientific knowledge production" in which con- cepts such as social construction, relativism, reflexivity, and repre- sentation are now most central.

The "new sociology of science," with its dramaturgical approach and emphasis on the ordinariness of the construction of scientific knowledge, has made very significant contributions to sociology (particularly sociologi- cal theory) and to the interdiscipline of social studies of science. In par- ticular, its posture of the ordinariness of science can be a very powerful tool for avoiding deference and awe toward science and technology, for reminding us that science is a social product, and so on. Recently, however, it has been scrutinized on a number of grounds, two of which are germane to the debate between Otero and myself. One such basis of criticism is that 1980s sociology of science has itself begun to succumb to its own limits of internalism. Thus, there is a growing recognition that the new sociology of science is much like the old in one crucial respect: its focus has been on science as a largely self-contained system (albeit one in which the values and practices of society at large come into play). The bulk of constructivist research, in fact, has emphasized the basic physical sciences, because they are ostensibly more paradigmatically "scientific" in their practices and are less contaminated by interests in society at large. 2 As a result of preoccu- pation with the construction of scientific knowledge, and with the ghost of Mertonian sociology, the sociology of science has largely come to neglect science-society relationships, which surely are among the most critical

2Also, for many sociologists of science the preference for the "pure," natural sciences as the object of research came from the need to go beyond Mannheim's sociology of science. Mannheim stopped short of extending his analysis to the pure sciences because there it seemed to him that truth was established without any reference to social processes. Thus, the natural sciences represented a "hard case" for the sociology of science in demonstrating that social processes of knowledge production were operative even under such conditions.

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aspects of science as a social institution. In particular, the sociology of sci- ence often has too little relevance to what is an evidently salient aspect of science: its role as a material-productive and political-ideological force in social change (Brante, 1986).

A second, related criticism of the new sociology of science is that it has falsely seen as self-evident the distinction between science (which is considered empirically interesting) and technology (which is thought to be insufficiently paradigmatic, and thus less interesting, or too "messy," for inquiry). Criticism of the science-technology distinction, and of the ten- dency to focus on a limited subset of scientific knowledge production (e.g., particle physics, quarks--and even molecular biology, in instances where it is sufficiently "pure," "basic," and amenable to an internalist focus), has been made with particular force because of its having been advanced by some of the 1980s' leading constructivists (Barnes, 1982; Bijker et aL, 1987; Latour, 1987).

BEYOND THE NEW SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE: TECHNOSCIENCE, SCIENCE-SOCIETY

RELATIONSHIPS, AND HIGH TECHNOLOGY

Molecular biology and its applied arm, biotechnology, are a good ex- ample of "technoscience," Latour's (1987) concept for depicting the artifi- ciality of the science-technology distinction and the need to consider the broader social context of science. Molecular biology and biotechnology are characterized by their particularly short "distance" between "basic" and "applied" research. Thus, the criticisms of the new sociology of science noted earlier are particularly apt in the context of biotechnology, as well as other high-technology forms such as new materials and information tech- nologies. The new sociology of science has only recently begun to venture into the field of science--society relations and messy areas of science and technology such as biotechnology. Much of the work thus far on messy science remains within a constructivist frame, that is, the "social construc- tion of technical systems," which is potentially useful but limited in under- standing the social and political-economic significance of technological change. The sociology of science, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Nelkin, 1984; Yoxen, 1986), has accordingly been relatively uninvolved in research on and debates over high technology.

The main title of this paper refers to the need to transcend deference and demystification in the sociology of science and technology. My earlier paper should be seen as an argument against social scientific deference toward biotechnology and other high technologies, regardless of its bases:

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either often-exaggerated claims by its scientific, corporate, and institutional proponents concerning the power and benefits---or the revolutionary prospects - -of this technology, or the essentialism of Merton and his followers. I remain of the opinion that social scientists, including both advocates and critics of high technologies, have generally appropriated many of the claims of the high-technology establishment in an uncritical way. In my view there is a need to avoid scientific deference and the overly rationalistic conception of science these claims imply. But this imperative should not be seen merely as a call for extending the new sociology of sci- ence's relativism, and its radical demystification of science, to new, more messy areas of "science" (even though such an approach would be valuable and can contribute in this regard). Relativism alone cannot grapple with new technology as a social force, particularly if it is a potentially revolu- tionary one. My paper can thus be seen as a preliminary attempt to develop a conceptual scheme for examining one particular aspect of science-society relationships--that of the role of new technical forms in large-scale social change--in a way that transcends both deference and demystification. It also touches on, by no means exhausts, some of the potential linkages be- tween the sociology of science and sociology of technology (e.g., the role of start-up firms as a new organizational form in research and development, the dynamics of the transformation and commercialization of "basic research," the social construction of knowledge claims in financial and regu- latory fora; see especially Wright, 1986).

Otero's paper, in taking my conceptual scheme seriously, arrives at a view that the scheme is ad hoc, and accordingly at a considerably different set of conclusions about the incipient revolutionary nature of biotechnology. A good many of Otero's points are well taken, and he is on the mark when he notes that my concepts (or criteria for assessing the epoch-making potential of a new technology) have an element of imprecision. Here I will address several of the points raised by Otero that are most central to his criticism and to my larger agenda of rethinking the path taken in the sociology of science over the past decade or two.

First, I resist seeing my concepts and criteria as being ad hoc, unless one is prepared to see their classical origin, in the work of Schumpeter, as being similarly limited. My point is not that Schumpeter is the last word on science, technology, and social change, but that Schumpeter's work is at least as useful as any other body of scholarship I am aware of for or- ganizing empirical observations on the revolutionary status of new tech- nical forms. It should also be stressed that Schumpeter's theorization of the relations between technology and social change was a product of its time, in which the notion of "national economy" was, along with the national state and society, the self-evident unit for social science analysis.

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The trends over the 40-plus years of postwar socioeconomic changenfor example, completion of the interstate system (following decolonization), but with greater intrasectoral integration across national bordersNhave begun to eclipse the conceptual shorthand of, and analytic priority given to, "society" (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989). My provisional use of Schumpeter's scheme admittedly does not take this reality into account, and Otero's more global account is a needed step.

Second, I take Otero's principal criticism of my work to be that my arguments ignore the fact that biotechnology is very likely to contribute to agrarian restructuring within the evolving framework of the "new international division of labor." This criticism logically has three compo- nents. One is that agriculture will be pivotal, in a direct or causal manner, to large-scale social change. The second is that biotechnology will involve major social dislocations and significant political-economic restructuring-- that it, for example, portends another "Green Revolution." Another is that the notion of "international division of labor" is an adequate framework for anticipating these impacts. I will briefly address each of these points of criticism.

As much of the agriculture-food industries, agrarian societies, and ag- ricultural households may be directly or indirectly affected by biotechnol- ogy, I do not believe Otero has presented any persuasive reasoning or evidence that global restructuring will be "agriculturally-led" as such. Agriculture obviously remains important, in terms of provisioning of labor forces, self-provisioning of peasant households, environmental impacts, and so on. But agriculture should be seen as a prototypical declining sector that will mainly be a recipient, rather than the genesis, of the major forces of social change (which incidentally at the point appear to be contradictory ones of international integration through financial-capital mobility and re- gionalization of the world economy into U.S., European, and Japanese spheres of influence).

Otero's argument that the revolutionary nature of biotechnology, at least in relation to agriculture, can be revealed by seeing biotechnology as a successor to the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s is, in fact, one of the most common claims within the biotechnology as "biorevolution" rubric. The argument, most simply put, is that the "gene revolution" will repeat the pattern of social change and dislocation attendant to the Green Revolution in the Third World of the past several decades. I agree that, within limits (Buttel et aL, 1985; Buttel, 1990), the likely performance of biotechnology in the Third World will be to more or less parallel the Green Revolution experience. Peasant economies will be disrupted, there will be increased agribusiness penetration, food and other primary production systems will be transformed, and there will be very significant changes in

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the participation of various developing countries in the world market (with some becoming more aggressive, export-oriented new agricultural countries, and with others becoming more dependent on imports of food and other commodities).

My point about biotechnology, however, can be made with particular strength vis-a-vis how social science must evaluate the Green Revolution, and the likely parallels of the biorevolution to the Green Revolution. In historical retrospect, the most significant legacy of the Green Revolution has arguably been to forestall social change by providing a technological substitute (increased food production and, in some cases, declining relative food prices; Lipton with Longhurst, 1989) for income and wealth redistri- bution, redistribution of wealth from the industrial to the developing worlds, and other reforms, as well as social revolutions (Oasa, 1987; Oasa and Koppel, 1987). The Green Revolution generally made possible the modernization of archaic agrarian social relations (e.g., haciendas, estates, landlord-dominated landholding systems, subsistence production), but without overt political intervention (such as massive land reforms), and accordingly has generally perpetuated or reinforced unequal landholding systems, urban-industrial domination on the countryside, First World domination of the terms of economic development policies, and has con- tributed to what Otero calls the "disarticulation" of Third World societies and economies.

Biotechnology will very likely cause this pattern to be repeated-- quite possibly, as Otero suggests, with an even more polarizing or differ- entiating impact than was the track record of the Green Revolution. It should be kept in mind, of course, that the socioeconomic impacts of the Green Revolution, particularly with respect to social differentiation and exacerbation of class polarization, were quite variable, with those impacts having been most widespread in areas such as the South Asian Punjab (Lipton with Longhurst, 1989:302-305)), and considerably less so in con- texts of less inequality in landownership and rural political power. My point, however, is that social dislocations and other socioeconomic im- pacts, even quite pronounced ones such as those that occurred in the af- termath of the Green Revolution in the Punjab, are not coterminous with large-scale social change in the neo-Schumpeterian sense. The countries that experienced widespread Green Revolutions are, in terms of their world-economic positions, a mixed lot: ranging from downwardly mobile "semiperipheries" (Mexico and Argentina) and upwardly mobile, newly in- dustrialized countries (such as Taiwan and Korea) to stagnant agrarian societies (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan). Indeed, much like Otero, one can anticipate that many dislocations and patterns of world-economic mobility will accompany the penetration of biotechnologies in the Third World,

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even though my ex ante instincts tell me these impacts are unlikely to be revolutionary in the sense I referred to in my original paper, that is, in terms of being a modality for bringing about forms of social organization that represent decisive breaks with the past. At least as far as Third World agriculture and the larger matter of the reorganization of the "world sys- tem" are concerned, the biorevolution will very likely serve mainly to re- inforce the subordinate position of most of the Third World in the global economy and geopolitics.

It is also useful to consider the limits of the "new international di- vision of labor" (NIDL) framework (Frobel et al., 1980) as an adjunct to Otero's larger argument about biotechnology as an epoch-making tech- nology. The NIDL framework was developed in the late 1970s as an ex- tension and refinement of classic ("stagnationist"; see Roxborough, 1979) dependency theory to account for apparent trends of widespread reloca- tion of industrial production from the advanced countries to low-wage export processing zones in the Third World, and of economic crisis and deindustrialization in the advanced countries. A number of serious ob- jections to the NIDL theory and thesis have been raised (e.g., Berry, 1989; Jenkins, 1984; Lipietz, 1987), including but not limited to the fact that North-to-South industrial relocation has actually been quite circum- scribed (e.g., Jenkins, 1987: Chap. 6). While new technology is clearly implicated in the changing coordinates of the world economy, it is not clear to me that the NIDL framework is adequate for understanding these dynamics.

Finally, it is worth noting that contemporaneous with the writing of my original article there was just beginning to be a growing tide of claims, from the same quarters that promulgated the notion of the revolutionary nature of biotechnology almost a decade earlier, to the effect that the fruits of this new technology will be slower and less encompassing, and the impacts more modest, than originally thought (see, e.g., Pollack, 1989). I mention this not only because it should be taken as evidence against Otero's position, although I believe it does have some implications along these lines. As with the earlier pronouncements about the revolutionary status of biotechnology, the more recent denials should be seen as socially con- structed, "interested" knowledge claims. In particular, they appear aimed at restoring confidence among investors and science policymakers, who had become impatient with the industry's slow development, and among public interest groups, who had become alarmed about the potential social and environmental impacts of the new technology. There remains to be done, however, some important inquiry as to how the appeal to and subsequent denial of revolution on the part of scientific groups, state officials, and cor- porate actors have been rhetorical resources used to influence science

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policy and investment decisions. Accounts such as Block's (1990) of the rise of the ideology of national competitiveness through high technology can be complemented by more thorough study of the construction of this ideology in corporate, scientific, and political quarters over the past decade. This issue, incidentally, is one that could be pursued to advantage in uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology.

CONCLUSION

My disagreements with Otero should not obscure the fact that both Otero and myself are committed to pushing sociological analysis of science and technology forward: by bringing both society back into science (Cozzens and Gieryn, 1990) and science back into the study of social change (Yearley, 1988), and doing so from a global standpoint. Our debate should be taken as a demonstration of the fact that science--society issues relating to new technology are an urgent priority for research. I would also stress that sociological research on technology, both high technology and otherwise, should not be construed in a specialized way that unwit- tingly serves to limit interchange with the sociology of science, or that reinforces either uncritical deference toward or gratuitous demystification of science. There are a number of encouraging trends in the sociology of science (e.g., Cozzens and Gieryn, 1990) that can be built upon in this respect, and that can both yield a sociology of science and technology and increase the interchange between this branch of sociology and the study of social change (e.g., Yearley, 1988).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Trevor Pinch for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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