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IDS Governing Technologies Workshop Report

Prepared by Jody Ranck

Introduction. The “Governing Technologies: Challenges for Development” Workshop sponsored by IDS (May 24, 2004) brought together a diverse group of social scientists to engage with emerging socio-technical dimensions related to governance, technology and poverty alleviation. One of the objectives of the workshop was to foster a provocative debate on emerging debates within science and technology studies as they pertain to development policy issues across the spectrum of sectors. With the increasing importance of biotechnologies and information technologies in donor supported interventions the organizers felt it was timely to engage in a broad reaching discussion of the governance issues that these new technologies and institutions for managing socio-technical change must confront. Globalization increasingly entails forming new types of institutions to fill in the gaps where the market has failed or to marshal together the expertise and resources to manage ‘global’ problems such as climate change, hunger, water resources, and health. As major multilateral and bilateral donors, the private sector, foundations, and NGOs are either in the process of being formed, restructured or reorganized the issue of global governance of technologies and socio-technical interventions is becoming increasingly complex. Throughout most of the Cold War era governance was understood within a state-centric paradigm. This is no longer the case and we now face a myriad of institutions beyond and including the state creating a multi-centered governance universe which is inherently more complex. The prevalence of the internet and new forms of transnational networks allow for new configurations of politics, risk and knowledge. These phenomena can create new opportunities to mobilize technologies to alleviate poverty, improve health or agricultural yields, but also hold the potential to undermine communities, pro-poor policies, or local norms and institutions. The organizers of this workshop sought to bring together a wide range of researchers with expertise in relevant areas to identify emerging issues around the governance of technologies and to create new research agendas, debate, and networks which can play a role in future debates in this area. Additional governance issues surrounding technologies that the conference aimed to address included an examination of the assumptions around particular framings of the technical, or the science appropriated in the construction of global policy priorities. Issues such as how different conceptualizations of the body, fields, and crops are mobilized and constructed by local actors and the disjunctures and contradictions which may appear in relationship to global policy discourses are important areas of concern. Furthermore, there is increasing concern in the area of science and technology studies for the politics of citizenship. How do citizens, those proclaiming rights and responsibilities or placing demands for accountability on state or global institutions, engage with new technologies or technologies distantly removed from local contexts? How are local, national, and global agendas set and whose knowledge or science is mobilized in agenda setting contexts? What forms will activism around these technologies take? What are the ingredients for cognitive justice? Each of these questions must be answered through an acknowledgement of the increasingly deterritorialized forms of governance lying outside

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of the state. This poses challenges for how we understand political processes such as the regulation of drugs, vaccines, crops, or water resources. The mobility of bodies, microbes and capital add new dimensions to how we interpret global public goods, health determinants and political imaginations. The awareness of global poverty, violence, and risks has grown alongside the development of technologies, or alternatively, our ways of thinking about society and technology are co-produced. Inequities in health status globally are measured up against the broader institutional contexts where health policies are produced through networks of individuals and institutions sharing similar values, beliefs and interpretations of economies. This frequently creates new forms of opposition and political claims as we have seen in the activism around patents and anti-retrovirals (ARVs). With these issues in mind the workshop sought to identify key research priorities for social scientists in this rapidly changing environment. What are the key gaps in social science research and what types of capacities, theoretical tools, disciplinary collaborations and networks could effectively pursue these research areas in a productive manner? This entails critical and reflexive analysis of the disciplinary fields and tools used in the past that have drawn upon ITK to innovation systems to policy studies to science and technology studies to bioethics, political science and emerging theoretical work on biopolitics. After reviewing these areas we will need to determine what kinds of networks and partnerships can be formed to facilitate collaborative research with partners in developing countries, scientists and policy-makers to ensure that the research efforts can be carried forward in to arenas where it will become effective in fostering informed debate and policy development? The format of the workshop involved initial presentations or provocations (rather than presentation of research findings, for example) that would invite discussion and debate on the topics and addressed the following thematic areas:

1) Framing science, designing technologies: contrasting perspectives (Ian Scoones) 2) Attacking rural poverty through innovation (Joachim Voss) 3) Dilemmas around risk, uncertainty and public engagement (Melissa Leach) 4) Governing Drugs and professional expertise in health (Hilary Standing) 5) Issues of technological control and intellectual property (Farhana Yamin) 6) Dilemmas around rights and privatization-water (Lyla Mehta)

These thematic areas form cross-cutting clusters which will be discussed in the following manner:

• Framing and innovation—these are the ‘front-end’ issues of how R&D research agendas are set, the assumptions and effects.

• Risk and regulation—‘back-end’ issues of technology delivery, public. engagement through stakeholder forum, engageing with and regulating risks

• Access and control—issues around intellectual and material rights to technology generating processes and products, struggles.

An examination of these issues provoked a critical discussion of the emerging issues in the area of science and technology studies as well as provided a launching point for the creation of a novel research network that can bring together scientists and social scientists

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to address some of the most important health and development policy issues of the present. SECTION I. FRAMING POLICIES: The workshop began with a discussion of the framing of problems and techno-social issues and why this should matter to social scientists, scientists and policy-makers. This discussion is critical to thinking more reflexively about the politics of technology before espousing entrenched positions. Whose knowledge counts? What forms of networks of expertise and knowledge are mobilized to make a particular framing of a problem a ‘global priority’? The history of development studies and health is replete with examples of particular framings of problems lying at the heart of program failure. Ian Scoones provoked discussion through the following ‘provocation’ on framing issues. Framing science, designing technologies: contrasting perspectives-Ian Scoones. What does framing mean in this context? Ian Scoones opened the discussion by raising the issue of how ‘problems’ are framed in policy development and interventions such as the soil fertility initiative supported by donors in the 1990s. We often take the policy-makers’ framing of problems for granted but frequently the way that issues come into being as a particular ‘problem’ requiring new technologies or policy interventions are quite controversial and may be problematized very differently in various institutional and geographic contexts. Therefore we need to ask whose assumptions and ways of seeing the problem are responsible for a particular framing of an issue. IDS has spent a great deal of effort looking into issues such as ‘water scarcity’, ‘soil infertility’, ‘desertification’, ‘food insecurity’, and climate change in this respect. Particular ways of framing these issues may require particular policy solutions and often the prescriptions are found lacking. Therefore greater reflexivity is demanded in policy analysis and the social sciences. Scoones presented the case of crop and livestock change in three countries in Africa that IDS examined in a study for DFID. The researchers found that the way the problem was constructed and the underlying assumptions for explaining the complex ecologies in the region were linked to strict evolutionary models of ecological change. This worldview assumed that extensive agropastoral systems were a particular stage on the evolutionary path toward classic, intensive mixed farming systems. The solution to the problem pursued by DFID consequently was based on the assumption that the linear model of evolutionary change was the universal path pursued by all farmers and herders. The result was that actually existing pathways of change pursued by the poorest and most marginal groups were occluded from view and marginalized even more by the technical and extension efforts that were created on the basis of the strict evolutionary change model. Here was a perfect case study of how the framing assumptions led to policies that could adversely affect communities. Scoones highlighted that problematic assumptions behind particular policy frameworks are often the case in development. Indeed, there is an extensive social science literature on program failures echoing Scoones assertions. Throughout much of the 1990s into the present we find that these insights are increasingly predominant and there has been much

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talk of a crisis in development studies over past failures. There has also been a growing interest in expanding the possibilities for public participation in technology development and policy and rethinking the institutional mechanisms and processes that could facilitate greater public engagement. Important questions of which publics and which poor will benefit and exactly how to create avenues for effective participation are emerging as central issues and questions. Exactly what do we mean by participation and what can we expect from participatory technology and policy development efforts? Participatory Technology Development. Participation in technology development is not new, particularly to agricultural development. “Farmer First” and ITK movements have all contributed to the debate and new ways of thinking about technology development (eg. Particpatory Technology Development, Participatory Rural Appraisal, Participatory Plant Breeding, etc.). However, the effects of participatory technology development schemes have been limited with a few important success stories. For the most part, participation has been highly localized, focused more on adaptation and not on up-stream innovation, and the framing processes have not been that open to debate and questioning. Since the interest in participation took hold in the 1980s the policy contexts and ways of framing development issues have also shifted. Unfortunately our thinking around these issues has lagged behind technological changes that can create new risks. First, we are now in an era when problems and solutions are framed in global or continental terms. New conventions to regulate environmental affairs such as the Convention for Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocaol on Biosafety, the Kyoto Protocol, or the Desertification Convention have become the dominant forms of regulatory institutions responsible for defining and negotiating problems. These institutions have the authority to marshal resources and expertise to address the problems, and to define how capacity building shall be conceptualized. Participation is also an important component of these institutions, yet how does one go about thinking and doing participation at the global, regional, or even national level? Perhaps we need to put a good deal more thought into how we conceptualize democratic practice in science and technology development at a global level and ask what we expect from participatory processes? The institutional context for technology innovation is increasingly moving away from the public sector where forms of accountability and mechanisms of public involvement, albeit limited, are present. Today we have the private sector driven by global markets and a new set of key actors and challenges ranging from IP, confidentiality agreements as well as different scientific practices and products. There are also concerns that the privatization of the public sector will also lead to a change in priorities that can adversely affect the poor in terms of products suitable for their livelihoods. For example, in agricultural biotechnology products have largely been developed for a particular form of farming system (high labor cost, high input, export oriented, commercial agriculture) with little relevance for small-scale farmers, this includes the Bt cotton/corn varieties. This raises the key question of what are the prospects for encouraging more effective design and innovation systems in the private sector and what institutional mechanisms and processes can be mobilized for developing appropriate products for small-scale, low-income farmers?

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Most participatory technology development programs in the past have focused on low-end technologies and how these are adapted to local conditions. But the new technologies that are increasingly of interest to donors are characterized by having very different R & D processes that are expensive, based in laboratories, and have a variety of risks and uncertainties associated with the ecological, health, and economic effects. This has created a much more homogeneous set of technologies expected to provide results globally which is doubtful when put into practice. This is an important barrier to developing pro-poor technologies. Scoones ended with several key observations and questions that were the topics of discussion:

1) We will need to examine issues from broader development debates concerning power and participation, ownership of agendas, and rights based approaches (see Mehta below) and bring this set of concerns into the science and technology development arena. What can we learn from the successes and failures of participatory schemes in other development arenas that can be useful for STS debates?

2) We will have to distill key experiences out of the participatory technology development experience while simultaneously expanding these debates to the broader question of how technology and policy agendas are framed. By opening up the framing of policy debates can we see the exclusions enacted in various policy arenas and ways to provide more democratic approaches to policy development?

3) We will need greater focus on a critical reflective capacity—rooted in democratic systems of accountability—for broad-based deliberation on technology development pathways and policy framing at all levels ranging from the local to the national and international organizations. How can we move beyond the stakeholder forum or citizen jury model to accomplish these goals?

Framing Issues Discussion: Following the presentation the discussion focused on the following issues:

1) A key issue is the disconnect between global policies and the underlying assumptions and science supporting global conventions, partnerships, etc. and the local framings of the issues. Frequently global issues rely upon epistemic networks of experts sharing similar values, beliefs, politics and particular scientific perspectives which run the risk of marginalizing local constructions of the problem, diverse histories of marginalization and other forms of knowledge. We need to ask what exclusions take place in global framings of issues.

2) Distributional issues of knowledge agency emerge which demand that we ask questions about whose knowledge, who takes part in policy formation and who may be left out? Access to information and knowledge is crucial as well.

3) When technologies have demonstrated their utility in pilot projects how can these experiences be successfully scaled up? Are there contingencies in local contexts that make models difficult?

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4) With the growing importance of public-private partnerships we need to begin asking what mix of actors is optimal for any given problem or context? Ideologically motivated perspectives overlook the shortcomings of both the private and public sectors.

5) The issue of scientific practice and culture is a growing issue and we need to ask what type of institutional environment can produce greater reflexivity where risks and the politics of scientific knowledge production can be discussed openly.

6) With the critical role of the private sector in most areas discussed, particularly biotechnology, we have seen the problem of market failures emerge where public-private partnerships have sought to create markets. On the other hand, there are markets that private firms aggressively pursue in developing countries. How are markets constructed by the private sector and are these perspectives valid?

7) Most innovation has used existing knowledge but notions of ‘innovation systems’ suggest that research processes further upstream which include participatory approaches much earlier in the R&D cycle can be more far reaching than merely adapting ‘innovative’ technologies to local contexts. Can we find examples to illustrate these views?

8) Outcome mapping approaches as used by IDRC could play a more important role. Outcome mapping challenges traditional evaluation methodologies that view the impact of programs in more linear terms resulting strictly from the intervention itself. Most outcomes are far more complex and are a result of a much wider range of factors than one organization or a single intervention. Outcome mapping could be useful if more widely used in technology assessments for helping us to understand if the programs we’re talking about are actually working or why they have failed. How can these methodologies be adopted more widely and assist policy formation?

9) An important conceptual gap in many of the technology programs at present is the lack of coalitions or networks between upstream and downstream actors in the technology development process. There is now quite a bit of interesting work in science and technology studies examining the users of technologies and how we need to pay more attention to how users and developers interact.

10) We need to create more thoughtful processes by which donors and funders can respond in a more socially and politically sophisticated way for setting policy priorities. Much policy-making takes place in contexts with rather limited groups or networks of individuals. How can this process be made more democratic and open?

11) In much policy development we have an array of intermediary institutions whom speak on behalf of the poor, the users of technologies, women in developing countries, etc. We often find tensions between advocates and those they speak on behalf or the representations of users in the minds of technology developers, health policy-makers, etc. Greater attention to these dynamics and the framing assumptions used by various parties can be unpacked and re-examined so that more effective policies can be created through more reflexive approaches.

12) Innovation can be viewed as the creation of a new product or an effect of new institutional learning processes. Each has its own dynamics—social scientists

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have an important role to play in understanding the two dynamics and discerning important lessons for technology development.

SECTION II. RISK AND GOVERNANCE. The intense debates over globalization and agricultural biotechnology that have emerged since the mid-1990s bring to the forefront the need for reflexivity and critical approaches to the issues of ‘framing’ and the politics of risk. The stakes often include alternative framings of risk and the boundaries of risk assessment. These issues are obviously not limited to agricultural biotechnology alone but are manifest across sectors and technologies. The presentations from this section of the workshop sought to provoke alternative ways of framing risk debates that could be analytically fruitful for social scientists in contributing to the creation of an alternative ground for critical public engagement with risk politics that moves beyond polemics. Dilemmas around risk, uncertainty and public engagement-Melissa Leach Melissa Leach provided a presentation on the issues surrounding risk, or ‘back-end’ issues dealing with regulating risks. The issue of risk is particularly important in the context of developing countries where we have the twin issues of unequal distribution of benefits and risks as well as the fact that those who may be taking the risks are already standing at the margins of survival. New technologies are raising even more difficult issues for risk and regulation since we increasingly encounter not only risks that are calculable and based on known outcomes, but we must also confront uncertainty and ignorance about possible consequences of technologies. We now see how technical notions of risk are increasingly problematized in the public sphere when publics challenge technical risk assessments for broader analyses of risk that include social consequences. Examples of this include farmers’ movements in India who have challenged the role of biotechnology in corporate led commercial agriculture. Leach noted that there are also important framing questions around risk as well. Publics assess benefits and risks of new technologies through an interpretive lens that borrows on their cultural and political worlds as well as experiences that may clash with the administrative-bureaucratic notions of risk which are embodied in science policy and regulatory institutions. These phenomena are quite evident in the realm of health and immunization campaigns where we have an increasing number of PPPs around specific diseases. This disease specific manner of thinking about infectious diseases contrasts with some African notions of the immune system and immunization where particular herbs, talismen and ways of interpreting infants’ risks along a continuum of vulnerability within the particular pathways of a child’s life are quite different from biomedical notions of risk. Perceptions of risk are also related to the perceived meanings and motivations of health care providers, gender struggles within the household, and a host of issues that clearly do not reflect purely epidemiological notions of risk. Examples such as the resistance to the OPV in the Kano state in Nigeria over the past year reflect a history of ethnic/religious tensions and current geopolitical issues. Frequently dismissed as “rumors” by UNICEF/WHO, since they do not reflect the idiom of science, these alternative framings of risk are reflect important histories and rationalities which need to

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be engaged with in a thoughtful manner. Furthermore, some technologies such as vaccines may not be viewed as ‘new’ at all—variolation and other forms of vaccination predate the encounter with Western colonial powers but the ‘new’ vaccines are interpreted within a new configuration of power relations and historical experiences in the post 9/11 context. What the examples above lead to is a need for engaging with alternative framings of risk and technologies and how the complexities of these framings can be mutually understood by all parties and new lines of communication created to promote more effective regulation of technologies. New forms of relationships between those institutions responsible for promoting technologies to citizens’ groups and the media in developing countries and elsewhere are required. Compared to past experiences with participatory strategies for accountability with governments and corporations we now face a far more complex set of institutions that include the hybrid PPPs that make the twin issues of governance and accountability more difficult to disentangle. We now have not only bilateral and multilateral donors but the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, IAVI, Rollback Malaria, Medicines for Malaria, etc. There is more to the issue of governance and risk than creating incentives, sanctions and regulations so that the poor to not bear the burden of risks. PPPs and the Global Fund have the aim of poverty reduction as part of their mandates, however they have yet to engage with the alternative framings of benefits, risks, and uncertainty associated with global infectious disease eradication vs. the local constructions of risk, vulnerability. Engaging with these tensions will be necessary for long-term success of these programs. What are the risks and ethics behind particular agendas and the processes through which agendas are formulated? A great deal of empirical work on the ethics and risk politics in PPPs needs to be accomplished in order that accurate accounts of best practices of PPPs can be disseminated. SECTION III. REGULATING TECHNOLOGIES The primary means through which states and non-state agencies have sought to manage risk is through the regulatory mechanisms of the state. However, many of the assumptions that have guided regulatory efforts over the past century may no longer be as relevant. Fluidity of national borders as people, capital, products and knowledge become increasingly mobile represents a serious challenge to how regulatory discourses have been conceptualized. Furthermore, transnational institutions are increasingly calling for harmonization of regulatory regimes. These efforts ignore the differences in economies, histories of state formation and professional disciplines as well as leave contested scientific knowledge unchecked. While we may find certain advantages to harmonization there is great room for the marginalization of the poor or pro-poor agendas. The following presentation discusses these issues and has important implications for questions such as who bears the risk in a regulatory regime? Whose knowledge counts? How should we characterize the diversity of regulatory environments in analytically useful ways? What do globalization, diverse histories of medical expertise and new information flows mean for how we organize professions and create relationships of trust?

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Governing Drugs and professional expertise in health-Hilary Standing/Gerry Bloom The presentations by Gerry Bloom and Hilary Standing addressed the issues of regulatory cultures and health professions and access to drugs. The initial observations critiqued the manner in which the health sector has been conceptualized within the health professions where decontextualized and normative solutions for addressing health care delivery that do not reflect empirical realities have become quite prevalent. Increasingly national boundaries and the categories of health professionals used globally do not adequately reflect the multiple contexts of health care use and ‘regulatory’ realities of the present. Much of the current thinking is based on the realities of the 20th century which privileged the nation-state as the primary context for the consumption of health care. Furthermore, the issues of trust, uneven access, legitimacy of professions and competency of health professionals have come to the forefront in some surprising ways. Bloom and Standing noted that the public/private distinction in health care delivery may not be helpful analytically for understanding how individuals access health services. In many countries in the South the majority of pharmaceuticals are provided by the public sector and we have pluralistic health sectors where governments are rarely the monopoly supplier of drugs and services. Public sector health workers frequently work privately and what constitutes a private sector provider can cover a wide array of practitioners depending on the country. The health sector must be understood as having organized and unorganized economies depending on the level of regulatory control and authority over the public and private sectors in any given context. In the emerging knowledge economy, as it pertains to health care, we are seeing a proliferation of agents who have access to various forms of health knowledge which they sell in the marketplace. Individuals can obtain health information from pharmacies, the media, as well as from a plethora of different providers. This knowledge/information pluralism increasingly raises the issue of quality of information and trust. Bloom notes that opportunities exist for e-pharmacies in some developing countries with adequate internet infrastructures and access but their success will depend heavily on branding strategies that create levels of trust and quality of information and drugs in the context of unregulated pharmaceutical markets tainted by counterfeit medications. Branding, franchising and the establishment of trust will become increasingly important areas for social scientists to explore. Standing extended this discussion to the domain on health care professions and expert knowledges. Since the late 19th century the medical professions in much of the world have mobilized tightly controlled professional guilds and associations combined with internalized ethics to guarantee a certain degree of autonomy from both the state and the market. This has created numerous contradictory characteristics and tensions around monopoly control and regulatory standards, interpersonal trust and scientific judgement, mediating risk and uncertainty while providing reassurance. The health care sector is also characterized by greater degrees of differentiation in power, status and remuneration among different providers. In the North this has created conflicting views over the future of health professionals. In developing countries the health professions and the market can be quite different. Higher levels of pluralism and incomplete professionalism (semi- and unqualified practitioners) raise the risk of incompetent treatment and care. Dual markets where the elite and/or urban based have access to medical elite and the poor have

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little access to higher end professionals are common. Furthermore, the regulatory capacity of the state is highly variable. This makes the effects of emerging changes in the health care sector very different and the rapid spread of health related information and gatekeeping roles of the medical profession may have quite different effects in the context of a mobile universe of services, personnel and regulatory discourses. These differences in health professions and regulatory cultures make the use of 20th century regulatory knowledge and practices quite problematic when extended to developing countries. While the concept of specialized medical expertise and training may still be quite important, we will need to rethink many aspects of governance of technologies and health beyond these traditional categories. The issue of boundaries is important—what does/should come under what level of governance of expert knowledge? How will boundaries of expertise be restricted and patrolled? How will health seeking transactions be governed? In the context of minimal governance of procedures and knowledge in the presence, how can standards of practice be created? This requires coming to terms with unregulated markets in health care. How will effective coalitions be created to support agreed upon rules for governance? What sorts of intermediate institutions will be necessary? These questions lead to a radical rethinking of the whole concept of regulation in the context of a rapidly transforming knowledge economy in health. Some countries in the South are undergoing a demographic transition that makes it very difficult to speak of the South in totalizing terms. In many countries there is also lack of trust in the state as well as NGOs to provide public sector health services. Is regulation the answer to this lack of trust? The private sector is complex and difficult for most states in the developing world to adequately regulate. Bloom suggests that in the contexts of weak states with diminished regulatory capacity an alternative would be to use branding and franchising mechanisms to encourage proper drug use and consumer behavior. In states with relatively little regulatory power whatsoever and direct form of intervention through basic health programs may work better. But clearly regulatory efforts will need to move beyond simple bureaucratic interventions. Unorganized and unregulated markets are the primary means that the poor frequently access health services and also the source of the greatest harm to the poor due to asymmetries of information. Therefore new programs to provide ARVs to the poor will encounter these asymmetries in information and unregulated markets that are already raising concerns about new forms of risk. Private and public sector health providers may sell ARVs in unregulated markets for a variety of ailments possibly leading to more drug resistant strains of HIV. There is also the issue of wasted resources spent on inappropriate treatments. Will providing ARVs to the poor in the context of inadequate health infrastructures contribute to drug resistance and how do we confront the ethical issue of curtailing ARVs to the poor if this happens? How countries respond to the leakage of ARVs will be critical. ARVs also require the proper knowledge and training of providers so that the drugs are used appropriately. Bloom noted that we are also seeing that the poor must know much more about the treatments than those who have access to better health care infrastructures.

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This boils down to a question of citizenship—citizens in the knowledge economy increasingly have the responsibility of knowing more about technologies but this produces new inequalities and burdens as well. We are also seeing many examples of the community becoming the source of regulation. Policy-makers will have to take into account the political economy of health information and patterns of drug availability and use in light of the growing role of the community in the context of unorganized markets. This brings together questions of citizenship, the politics of information, configurations of authority/expertise, and growing inequalities in access. Once again we need to revisit how global prescriptions for how to conduct a rational drug use policy comes up against local patterns of drug use, medical cultures and hierarchies (each with its own history). Making global regulatory policy frameworks which travel locally will require greater attention to the local dynamics of trust (where branding and franchising models may be important to examine) and how communities construct their own practical logics concurrent with local, community-based forms of regulation. The presentations by Bloom and Standing raise these issues as well as questions about how we conceptualize the diverse range of economies, market transactions and regulatory regimes which do not fit easily within categories of ‘unregulated’ or ‘regulated’. How do regulatory regimes effect the politics of citizenship and what obligations and responsibilities are implied given the introduction of new technologies such as ARVs and diverse regulatory environments? Whose risk is regulated by whom? What are the local forms of regulation or ‘policing’ that may interact, contradict or reinforce national and global standards? How does the private sector respond to these environments and what products are produced? How do consumers/citizens make decisions to use technologies and what assumptions do the makers of the technologies have about users in different regulatory contexts? Regulation and Risk Discussion Issues:

1) There is a need to rethink what we mean by ‘regulation’ given the degree to which many health economies are unregulated. There are vast markets where the regulatory arm of the state has little effect. How do communities/individuals regulate pharmaceuticals (seeds?) and what are the public health challenges that these situations pose (eg. increase risk of drug resistance?)?

2) Within these unregulated contexts we find a great deal of R & D—what implications does this have for the types of products and whose interests do they serve?

3) Within many developing countries such as India, China and Brazil we see an epidemiological transition that is beginning to resemble industrialized countries. This transition might force us to rethink the notion that the infectious diseases are associated more strongly with developing countries and diseases of aging, for example, in the industrialized countries. The notion of ‘diseases of the poor’, while having some analytical validity, may need to be rethought in order to better understand the politics of pharmaceutical regulation and research.

4) More research into the dynamics of branding and trust with seeds and pharmaceuticals needs to be done in emerging markets. How does trust develop in unregulated markets? Where do people get their information?

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5) We are now seeing new types of complex and sometimes contradictory relationships emerging between professionals and ‘competent consumers’. ICTs are playing a mediating role and we need to rethink the roles of professions with consumers/citizens and the effects of the knowledge economy on citizenship and responsibilities of consumers/citizens to know more about treatments, risks, etc. What effects do these changes have on how we think about consumers and citizens?

6) Dual public/private economies exist in health markets that are becoming increasingly complex and professionals can also be located in both markets. How do we understand these markets and what effects do they have (eg. leaking of ARVs from state run programs into private sector)? How do we think about the ethical issues of equity and access under these conditions?

7) Given the diverse histories of regulation in different national contexts and global attempts to harmonize regulatory regimes what can we expect from harmonization? What are the limits and exclusions of global regulatory standards? How do emerging alliances between India and China, for example, affect the negotiations over standards?

SECTION IV. ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGIES. The rise of a plethora of PPPs in recent years attests to the interest in enhancing access to new technologies in the south. While much of the debate tends to focus on producing technologies at price points that are attainable by the poor there is growing recognition that the issue is far more complex. Debates over patents have been a priority as well but we need to reassess the terms of this debate in light of present scientific practices, research collaborations and developing IP regimes. Rights talk is also a significant part of the public discourse over access to technologies and resources. While frequently providing an important launching ground for political movements that aim to improve the livelihoods of the poor, rights discourses can also limit political participation or become too abstract to have the desired effects their mobilization sought. The presentations that follow sought to open up this debate in ways that may shed more empirical light on scientific practices in agricultural research stations, water resources, and global climate treaties which may have a great deal of relevance to debates in other sectors. Attacking Rural Poverty Through Innovation-Joachim Voss Joachim Voss addressed the perseverance of rural poverty in most of the developing world where the number of undernourished people has doubled to reach nearly 40% of the population. Natural disasters, socio-political conflict, disease and malnutrition are contributing factors exacerbated by lack of access to education, information, new technologies and resources. Agricultural subsidies in the North also result in tremendous export losses and increased poverty in the South. Furthermore, they result in capital-intensive farming that relies heavily on fertilizers and pesticides and water over-use that collectively contribute to environmental deterioration. For a time there were many who contributed the problem of land degradation to the poor rather than a more appropriate view that examines the mutually reinforcing cycle of

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poverty and land degradation. The problem of land degradation has become a major factor in reducing the ability of agroecosystems to withstand shocks as well as become important sources of sustainable livelihoods. Understanding the nature of this crisis is crucial to develop strategies to improve the lives of the poor. Land degradation is a result of the complex interaction of socio-economic factors and biophysical processes. Land conversion, inappropriate agricultural management practices driven by inappropriate incentives and policies, and trade-related incentives are all contributing factors in the land degradation crisis. The CGIAR programs have historically focused on increasing the productivity of a subset of factors involved in agrobiodiversity but now need to create more holistic approaches and manage large scale biodiversity management. Spatial analyses and biotechnology are important tools in deepening the knowledge base of biodiversity and its functions. The key to successful strategies is to restore the ecosystem services and asset base of the poor. The general strategy is to combine stress-adaptation in crops with research to improve soil health and quality. Small investments by farmers in improving soil fertility have also demonstrated payoffs in increased productivity. Another challenge is how to determine where and how an intervention is the most cost-effective in terms of risk and investment. To date CIAT feels that an R & D strategy that focuses on combinations of adoptable technologies that are profitable in the short- and long-term will assist farmers the most. Participatory strategies also help engage civil society while enhancing their social capital and creating the social infrastructure to take advantage of new technologies. To address the land degradation problem CIAT has a strategy that works along six fronts. First, threat analysis for changes in land uses, climate change, economic globalization, and urbanization must guide strategies. We must coordinate the data for these issues that at present lie scattered in a form that is not readily used by stakeholders and policy-makers. Second, the spatial distribution of target species for landraces and wild relatives must be better understood and information collection coordinated. Third, local communities and conservation agencies need to document and translate their management information and practices in order to create better networks. Fourth, we need to acquire more knowledge about functional diversity of plant functions in terms of economically important traits (drought resistance, low phosophorous, soil acidity, etc.). With modern biotechnologies we can screen massive germplasm libraries for the presence of genes responsible for these traits and variation. This information can help orient conservation efforts as well as play a role in gene enrichment for advanced crops through technologies such as marker assisted breeding. Fifth, a focus on benefit sharing with returns to local communities who can become better informed keepers of agrobiodiversity while also earning higher incomes. Farmers might also be able to exploit a wider range of genotypes. Sixth, training and capacity building and information sharing at all levels (government, professionals, NGOs, communities, farmers) is central and ICTs can play an important role in information sharing. A central concern at CIAT is how to link farmers to markets in order to increase incomes. There is no single solution, but rather a mix of strategies is required. Gender differences mean that different strategies may need to be pursued with women and men. CIAT has

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been developing programs where farmer groups work with local organizations to develop rural agro-enterprises in a given territory. ICTs are increasingly useful in interventions that are linking old and new technologies such as community radio and theater to enhance access to markets and information. If more training and thought were put into these programs through appropriate content development and orientation greater gains may be seen. CIAT also feels that rural communities play a central role in problem solving and local experimentation and has designed participatory approaches that build on these strengths. CIAT also utilizes participatory monitoring and evaluation methods to ensure local ownership of processes. The methodologies used have also encouraged the fusion of biosciences with farmer knowledge resulting in alternatives that have been technically sound and locally relevant. Learning Alliances that link major international NGOs, rural communities and other organizations are becoming an important component of CIAT’s work. The objective is to further the development of participatory approaches that have been implemented on a large scale in Africa, Southeast Asia and tropical America. These alliances also serve as important mechanisms for disseminating the lessons learned. Rural Planning is another form of intervention similar to the Learning Alliances. CIAT uses GIS and works closely with local communities and municipal governments in order to make these other actors more responsive to rural communities and more relevant to rural innovation. This approach uses a scenario planning approach where a group of stakeholders in a given rural territory define a desirable future based on community needs and a cross-sectoral approach. After multiple options are debated a collective vision and strategy to turn the vision into reality are created. Research efforts are then developed around this vision and strategy. From participatory approaches such as these CIAT hopes to increase our knowledge of the causes of land degradation and create more effective approaches to improve rural incomes and capacities of communities to access and appropriate relevant information. Voss’ presentation raised important questions about the forms of collaboration and the necessity of creating new forms of networks for research and policy development in the area of agriculture and biotechnology which may be useful in many other sectors such as health, water resources, scientific-legal policies, etc. What makes the networks that Voss mentions work? What lessons around the politics of knowledge can we distill from these experiences? Can we create new forms of networks that bring together social scientists, communities and scientists in a constructive way? Finally, what kinds of scientific practices emerge from these settings and how can we build on this to create a pro-poor scientific culture? Issues of Technological Control and Intellectual Property- Farhana Yamin Farhana Yamin addressed issues of access to information and the effects of IPRs on access in developing countries. IPRs can tie up a great deal of information related to utility, safety, dissemination and timing of use of technologies. Therefore marginalized

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actors are at an informational disadvantage in the policy and regulatory processes. Privatization in the OECD countries combined with growing linkages between universities and the private sector has the potential to exacerbate this problem. Governments, on the other hand, are creating and responding to demands for “objective” advice on risks, advantages and consequences of new technologies. This advice is also necessary for creating an attractive business environment that also requires proper legal institutions. With the interest in harmonization of regulatory standards these pressures grow even more. However, science and technology policies remain firmly embedded within national structures as nations pursue comparative advantage through support of national firms. There are exceptions such as the TRIPS requirements around IPRs for all kinds of technologies that in turn limits the room for maneuver. Even here there are rules for violating TRIPS based on consumer preferences and ethical/moral objections. WTO rules that allow countries to discriminate in favor of particular technologies (or against technologies deemed inappropriate) are even more complex and difficult to apply successfully than rules on products. Science and technology governance and policy-making may take place predominantly through national bureaucracies but we should also not lose sight of the array of other institutions such as markets, IPR offices, courts/tribunals, research bodies, NGOs and citizen groups who can create, close and influence formalized policy spaces in even unregulated domains such as the web. Existing and new S&T networks that cross sectoral, geographical and regulatory boundaries have the potential to strengthen the informational base for marginalized actors in S&T debates. Networks will be increasingly important since this is the manner in which knowledge-intensive industries are integrated. The creation of new networks should be a central concern for social scientists interested in science and technology studies. One of the gaps in knowledge is the relative scarcity of global reports and assessements on S&T per se which examine natural and social science issues relating to technological developments. Global reports are an important area for consideration and there are some such as the IPCC, FAO, World Bank/UNDP development reports, UNESCO World Science Report, World Health Report, etc. However, these need to be assessed for how issues are selected, by whom, and how they frame issues and how the reports are funded. What participation procedures exist for different actors, especially for marginalized actors and different forms of expertise (dominance of cost-benefit analysis in climate change, the use of DALY’s in health reports which assume diseases and burdens are shared universally)? In many development circles these global assessments, reports are criticized for homogenizing issues and experiences and consequently harmful to marginalized groups. However, these views can also be self-fulfilling and often neglect to ask crucial questions about whether these reports can also act as a counterweight to hegemonic forms of policy-making in global debates characterized by extreme inequalities in knowledge/power and governance deficits. Dilemmas around rights and Privatisation- Lyla Mehta. Lyla Mehta used the example of access and control of water resources to illustrate the paradoxes and dilemmas of rights-based and market-led approaches to water access as

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well as some of the tensions between global solutions to local problems. Water security is increasingly characterized in debates through either rights-based arguments for entitlements and/or a call for the private sector to assume a role in market-based approaches to water access. Furthermore, a host of different players have emerged in the water sector with very different estimates of the resources required to address water scarcity as well as the range of issues that water policies should address. Access to water also requires important science and technology inputs. Increasingly the global debates on water are constructed around the state vs. market opposition and policies and technologies are developed on the basis of this polemic. But Mehta warned that this opposition is increasingly counter-productive and we need to ask how poor people’s access to basic services can be enhanced and become more equitable along with a critical discussion over the exact role of the private sector has to play to reach these ends. Quite often the policy position statements and visions for water security have a normative and presecriptive character but contain little empirical evidence to support their positions. The current policy environment for water security debates s upon two primary policy discourses. The first views water and sanitation as fundamental human rights following criteria set out under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and further elaborated under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1986). The ‘water as a human right’ framing of water security moves beyond the notion of water as a basic need and creates specific national and international legal obligations and responsibilities. In practical terms it would make a basic allocation of a fixed amount of litres per person. Access to minimum water allocations would ensure proper hygiene, improve health, and enhance the sense of ‘dignity’ of households. Yet, the use of rights talk is a rather blunt instrument leaving many questions unanswered:

• Who would assume responsibility for ensuring that water is provided to all as a basic human right? Who would be held accountable if rights were violated? Who will enforce claims?

• Can a universal basic water requirement be conceived, independent of cultural norms, climate, or technology?

• How is the demand for water as a human right different from previous efforts to provide water for all?

• How would questions of redistribution be addressed? There are other tensions related to the manner in which rights based claims to water may reinforce the power of the state rather than civil society members and/or the private sector. Water as a human right remains a rather abstract principle and of limited utility in practical terms as far as the politics of water goes. Water security is also couched in the rhetoric of privatization with related discourses of ‘cost recovery’, user fees, integrated water markets as a ‘global public good’. UK water related activities increasingly use the private sector in provisioning affordable and sustainable water supplies in contexts where government interventions have not been as successful in the past. Water under this rubric becomes an economic good and pricing is a key factor in ensuring efficient use of water resources. Proponents of this view also see

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a congruency between rights discourses and water as an economic good. Willingness to pay (WTP) becomes one of the important price setting features despite criticisms that this methodology black boxes the gender differences and power relations within households which naturalize women’s responsibilities for collecting water and the devaluation of women’s time and labor in general. The privatisation of water services is frequently supported through the mediation of international financial institutions’ ‘seal of approval’ that allows for loans and risk insurance provided that institutional spaces (legal reforms/tenure) are opened up for the private sector to play a greater role in water services. Private water companies have had little incentive to service non-profit making sectors due to the monopoly position of some public water service providers. To date the experience with privatization has been mixed. In Bolivia privatization has led to improved billings and collections and enhanced access. In other cases, such as Manila, water prices have increased beyond the agreed upon levels with resulting increases in cut offs. Chile’s experience with privatization has resulted in the erosion of people’s informal rights to water despite the World Bank’s claims that Chile is the paradigmatic example of free markets enhancing access to water. Some evaluations of the Chilean example demonstrate that the poor are worse off. There have been important biases in privatization of water services as well. Programs tend to have a bias toward the urban sector and drinking water while neglecting rural areas and sanitation. The administrative difficulties of cross-subsidization and emphasis on profits have frequently impinged upon particular people’s rights to water. Despite these different visions of how to address the issue of water resources Mehta emphasizes that public and private systems frequently co-exist, however the assumptions behind WTP that households will invest in better water supply systems rarely hold true due to inequities in power relationships at the household and community levels. Water is not simply an economic resource but has cultural, religious and symbolic dimensions for communities that can transcend strictly rational economic decision-making. Once again we see the tensions between global discourses that view water predominantly as an economic resource marginalizing these other attributes and dimensions of water. There is no guarantee that constructing water scarcity and water in general as an economic resource will automatically lead to the efficient allocation of scarce resources. With private firms typically focusing on more affluent customers there is little reason to believe that pricing policies will enhance access for the poor. The alternative to free market approaches, as embodied in participatory/community-based interventions, has illustrated the shortcomings of particular framing assumptions as well. Criticisms have tended to focus on the ahistorical and apolitical understandings of local, community-based institutions and the tendency to overlook the manner in which state and local institutions frequently overlap. The neglect of power relations within communities is quite common. Other approaches which frame water as a ‘common good’ and advocate for central management and control of water have also run roughshod over local communities rights to water resources.

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Where this discussion of water resources leads to is a more empirically based approach to examining policy decisions and a political analysis of water security that can move from local to state to global units of analysis. Universal solutions frequently overlook the complex local realities of power, the multiple meanings of water in a manner that the ideological poles that dominate policy making can adequately capture. Important questions must be raised to understand the right mix of policy approaches:

• Do rights go hand in hand with responsibilities? Whose rights? Whose responsibilities?

• What tensions emerge between universal standards and the local politics of poverty/livelihood concerns?

• How does one address the lack of financial resources and institutional capacity for administering various policy prescriptions?

• Should the question be framed as free basic water for some vs. basic water for all? • What technology choices are available and what are the framing assumptions

about the problem that the technology is supposed to fix? • What do local communities actually think about basic services such as water as

rights/water as economic goods? • Can endorsing social and economic rights temper market forces and minimize

social costs? • Do rights-based initiatives (such as South Africa’s Free Basic Water policy) really

make a difference to poverty reduction and help improve people’s acces to water? • Is is possible to pursue rights based approaches and market-led approaches

simultaneously?

Discussion Issues-Access and Control: 1) The debates over intellectual property issues are beginning to shift and soften

from debates that dominated in the 1990s. Some of the relevant emerging issues to follow would be the dynamics of open source molecular biology and new institutional and learning alliances that are forming. Other questions remain as to whether the effects of TRIPS will make biotechnology prohibitively expensive for developing countries and public sector research. What are the costs of contesting weak patents in the courts and will NGOs and the public sector have the resources?

2) What capacities do national agricultural research stations have for accessing IP in private domain and what types of collaborations are emerging? Are research priorities changing in these stations as relationships with the private sector grow? What strategies are these stations pursuing to patent their work and make the work openly available? Could they use additional assistance from specialists in patent law?

3) There are questions about the commodification of science and the imaginaries of scientists. When there is increasing pressure to turn research into products and business models that can become profitable will we see fewer scientists working on public sector activities that can benefit the poor? Is there enough professional validation for non-commercial research or can we create new forms of incentives for innovation for products that the poor can use?

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4) An emergent open source molecular biology ‘movement’ is becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly in agriculture. What political economies are formed, what types of science are practiced, what are the limitations and potential for these alliances in actually developing products the poor will use? Will concerns over bioterrorism result in policies that stymie open source molecular biology?

5) We will need to pay greater attention to nascent international legal regimes that form part of the governance structure of technologies and ask important questions about whose voices are included beyond donors and northern advocacy groups? What procedures and protocols need to be opened up to greater public debate and how do we determine whom the stakeholders are? What exclusions do we find in the protocols?

6) We increasingly find debates about technologies, resources and the environment framed in ‘rights based’ languages. Yet we have seen how globally defined rights can often become a rather blunt instrument for handling complex political realities. We will need to critically assess rights based arguments in light of national and local exigencies and understand the tensions that emerge. Who pays for rights that carry resource implications? What other political discourses are present that may be better suited to managing concrete problems? In the example of water rights we see how this plays out in the legal system and the conflicts and contradictions between formal and informal rights to water resources and how these framings come up against alternative framings of ‘water scarcity’. What lessons can we draw from the water resources example and do they have ramifications for other technologies?

7) We discussed the politics of science in the making of the global climate change regime. The example of climate change offers important lessons for how we need to re-examine the underlying values of scientific constructions of the problem at hand and the multiple ways these values may be contested. This is more than an academic exercise and assists in uncovering the particular exclusions that any given framing of an issue may entail. We also can find a “political economy of fuzziness and ambiguity” in assessments that demand attention to how ambiguity and uncertainty in the science is handled politically and scientifically.

Cross-cutting themes and issues: Throughout the discussions which examined fields ranging from agriculture, health, the environment and water resources we identified several cross-cutting issues. In fact, many of the traditional disciplinary boundaries between fields such as health and agriculture, for example, appear increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant. Nutrition and new methods for biofortification depend on both adequate food security mechanisms as well as health policies and interventions. A growing area of concern associated with the expansion of ARV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa is the effect of chronic malnutrition on equity and fairness in ARV distribution. ARVs are toxic to those lacking adequate nutritional levels, thus disqualifying many individuals from effective treatment. Declines in food security for low-income households also alter risk ecologies and nutritional status in a way that increases risk of infection with HIV and other infectious diseases. Vector borne diseases are another example of how the health and agricultural sectors need to be examined concurrently. The format of the workshop

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was useful in illustrating the need to question disciplinary boundaries and traditional ways of thinking about science and technology or development policies. The presentations also reveal how debates around water access are very relevant to debates in health, agriculture and the environment. While there are certainly subtle differences in terms of how debates are constructed within different sectors the issues themselves tend to transcend the boundaries and boundary-making exercises of the disciplines. What this insight lends itself to is the need for interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral networks of scientists and social scientists in different geographic contexts to engage in comparative and collaborative research. One of the important sources of policy and program failure may actually lie with the use of flawed framing assumptions and sectoral and/or disciplinary approaches which are no longer that relevant. This can only be tackled through a concerted attempt to create new forms of socio-technical networks where these issues can be debated, experiences compared and new approaches to technology design, policy-making and citizen engagement developed. REACHING A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA The final session of the conference focused on the goal of creating a consensus around emerging research themes that should become priority areas for social scientists and could form the basis of new forms of research collaborations and networks across the themes discussed throughout the conference. New lines of communication and types of forums are required for effective policy development in all of the areas addressed by the conference. The governance of technologies has become increasingly dispersed and complex with the move away from purely state-centered governance regimes. Theoretical paradigms that have held sway in policy studies in the past may not be the most useful in understanding the present situation. What follows is a preliminary research agenda identified by participants in the conference.

1) A much greater understanding of how locally rooted R & D articulates with research agendas in the private sector or actors working farther upstream is necessary. The traditional approach that much participatory technology development focused on was largely about technology adoption downstream. Can locally rooted processes drive upstream R & D? To this end an agenda that examines in a nuanced manner the following salient issues would be useful:

• Processes of innovation in diverse contexts • Institutional histories of success/failure: case studies of successes and

failures that point out key factors would be useful. • What lessons can we glean from learning alliances and how successes

from these programs can be scaled up? • What social processes inform research agenda priority setting? How can

these processes be made pro-poor? Are there successful processes that can provide insights?

• How are ‘users’ constructed by the developers of technologies? How do these match reality and how do users themselves adapt and modify technologies?

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2) Global technology assessments: we need a better comparative understanding of the processes and political economy of the production and framing of global agendas.

• What knowledge claims inform these assessments and what types of mechanisms are created to develop trust in these mechanisms?

• Are there mechanisms to encourage reflexivity in knowledge claims given the contested nature of the science?

• How are ambiguity and uncertainty handled by scientists and policy-makers?

3) Cultures of Science and incentives to develop pro-poor technologies • Are there contexts where pro-poor science and technology practices

emerge in greater frequency and what incentives and institutional cultures can promote this form of scientific practice?

• Can pro-poor scientific practices emerge from within a private-sector institutional space given the pressures for commodification/profits? What successful examples do we have to draw upon and are they transferable?

• Can the private sector play a role in open source molecular biology without diverting attention away from markets with less profit potential and for niche products that lack widespread market appeal?

4) Rethinking regulation in an unregulated world: trust, citizens, institutions and local/global tensions

• There is a need to map the regulatory environment across the diverse contexts within the developing/industrialized world and to develop new forms of comparative vocabularies that match reality better than the current way of speaking about regulation.

• How do these diverse regulatory regimes affect the poor (and which poor)? How do communities and diverse localities ‘regulate’ products and their uses? What incentives/sanctions are in place?

• How is the private sector using the concept of “branding” to develop relations of trust in an information saturated environment? What symbols and meanings carry weight in different contexts?

• How do diverse groups of poor individuals and communities access information, take responsibility for acquiring the correct information, and appropriate technologies (eg. ARVs)? Can new interventions be created to assist the poor in obtaining their informational needs?

5) Reworking the relations between ‘consumers’ and ‘competent expertise’—defining roles and boundaries with institutional and technical options

• We are seeing an increase in information-based goods and services in developing countries—what are the implications of having major new players and fierce competition? Are the poor being left out?

• The political ecology of risk—why do some groups organize to collectively embrace risks and innovate and others are more risk averse? Are there other ways of understanding ‘risk’ in these contexts? How do some parties embrace risk while others remain risk averse or construct ‘risk’ in other terms?

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• A critical examination of the assumptions behind a large number of PPPs who are working to create ‘pro-poor’ technologies—are the assumptions behind these interventions accurate? Which poor are they concerned with and what other groups exist? Are there trade-offs between the public and private sectors in negotiating PPPs and what are the effects?

• Are rights based approaches good for the poor as their proponents believe? Under what conditions can rights-based approaches be used effectively and when should other forms of political solutions be applied?

• What sorts of theoretical and methodological tools do we need to map the relevant 21st century technological politics landscape? Many policy-makers and donors have assumed they ‘know what is going on’ but our discussion on framing issues has revealed that the political processes behind many seemingly widespread global problems are flawed. How can we better understand what is going on around livelihoods, technological change, political processes when these are all co-constructed?

NETWORKING THE SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL: A NEW RESEARCH

NETWORK INITIATIVE Following the conference members of IDS and the Sustainable Sciences Institute drafted a proposal for a new research initiative that could address the gaps and challenges identified during the workshop. A proposal to create a new forum that could utilize the Bellagio Conference Center to address the policy challenges of the present and future and involve an interdisciplinary, geographically dispersed set of researchers was drafted. Social science input into the technology development process is sorely needed and the forum we are proposing will be able to serve as an important resource to foundations, governments, public-private partnerships and industry. This forum could become a source of socio-technical innovation provided that a core group of individuals and institutions take the responsibility of organizing and networking with research institutions, governments, and NGOs to distil the lessons learned from the debates, conceptualize alternative policies and follow them through implementation and evaluation. The goal is to create a site where critical and reflective capacity in the social and political dimensions of science and technology programs in the developing world can be addressed in a provocative but non-polemical format. With many of the initiatives around the globe falling into either anti-science or pro-science (with little reflexive or social engagement) camps, this network can offer a very important and new direction for discussion and debate of the socio-political dimensions of technology and development. The initiative would include journalists, policy-makers, social scientists, philanthropists, scientists and NGO representatives. The network would be launched through an initial forum with core members of the network and would address health and agricultural issues initially (but this would be extended to other domains as we have seen there is tremendous overlap with other sectors). The initial meeting at Bellagio would build on the core themes of this workshop: Framing Science, Framing Policy; Rethinking Regulation; Reconfiguring social arrangements for Innovation, Control and Access; and Re-working Relations of

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Expertise. The core research group could involve individuals and institutions such as the following:

• IDS-Ian Scoones/Melissa Leach • SSI-Jody Ranck • Brian Wynne (University of Lancaster) • Andy Stirling • Shiv Visvanathan • Members from Africa and Latin America

We will also create a core researcher network that will have members attending each of the theme meetings in Phase 1 with one of their goals being to build up the network of networks. This core groups would have the following members.

• IDS Researchers (Leila Gupta, Farhana Yamin, Hilary Standing, Gerry Bloom, etc.)

• Sustainable Sciences Institute: Maria Elena Penaranda (Costa Rica) and others from the SSI network in Latin America

• IDRC fellows from developing countries • Nikolas Rose (London School of Economics, BIOS programme) • Paul Richards (Wageningen University, technology group, West Africa and

agriculture) • James Wilsdon (Demos) • Karin Knorr Cetina (Institute of Science and Technology Studies, University of

Bielefeld, S&T studies, epistemic networks) • Innovation, Control, Access: Joachim Voss (CIAT), Roger Brent/Sydney Hook

(Nobel Laureate) from the Molecular Sciences Institute, Richard Jefferson (CAMBIA)

• Anthony So (open source molecular biology, Duke University/formerly of Rockefeller Foundation), Farhana Yamin (IDS), CGIAR researchers,

• Regulatory themes—Dorothy Mulenga (Ministry of Science and Technology, Zambia), Tewolde Egziabher (Ethiopia), Representatives from regulatory institutions/NGOs in Zimbabwe, Kenya, India, Brazil. Steven Epstein (AIDS activism and regulation in US), Paul Rabinow (politics of biotechnology, global perspectives)

• Calestous Juma (Harvard University, science policy in Africa) • Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University, New Delhi Social Science working group

on vaccines and immunization) • John Mugabe (journalist, Africa and technology policy) • SciDevNet journalists • Shiv Visvanathan (India, politics of biotechnology-India) • Alan Irwin (sociology/STS) • London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene scientist(s), Victoria Hale

(Institute for Oneworld Health, non-profit pharmaceutical company, pharmacologist)

• Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University, risk and science) • Aarti Gupta (Cartagena Protocol, politics, Biosafety)

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We also plan to have organizational partners from developing countries and each of these partners will play an active role in working groups where they could leverage their experience and expertise. The network of partnering organizations can also serve as a useful means for dissemination of research findings. A preliminary list of participants is as follows: Africa-

• ACTS (Executive Director—Prof. Judi Wakhungu) • African Technology Policy Studies Network (Executive Directore-Dr. Osita

Ogbu) • NEPAD-Science and Technology—John Mugabe • Association for Strengthening Research in East and Central Africa-Sam Chema • African Agricultural Technology Foundation-Eugene Terry

Asia- • DG Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India-Ramesh Mashelkar • Centre for Science and Environment-Head, Sunita Narain • Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, India-Pushpa Bhagarva, founder • Third World Network-Martin Khor

Latin America- • Carlos Correa-Programme on Science and Technology, University of Buenes

Aires, member of CIPR • FONDECYT-Julio Berdegue, National Fund for Science and Technology

Development International-

• Third World Academy of Sciences • International Foundation for Science (Michael Stahl) • InterAcademy Council-co-chair, Goverdhan Mehta • OECD Global Science Forum • Commission on Intellectual Property Rights (CIPR), chair, John Barton,

Standford • SARD initiative/International Farming Systems Research Association (via Clive

Lightfoot) • World Bank, Bob Watson • CGIAR-Boru Douthwaite, Jaquie Ashby (CIAT)

Phase 2 of the initiative would create a series of working groups around core themes where an interdisciplinary group would work toward developing key white papers on chosen themes. The working groups would initially share resources and host meetings at respective institutions to develop high level working papers detailing past histories, successes/failures, framing issues, overview of risks, key political dimensions and proposals for collaborative research and engagement with core issues. Journalistic accounts of findings will be distributed to SciDevNet, Nature, Science, public-private partnerships, foundations, and major development publications and media outlets. A list of possible themes and participants (IDRC) could be as follows:

• Biopolitics of vaccines (Melissa Leach, James Fairhead, Jody Ranck, Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University and New Delhi working group), Susan Craddock

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(geography, University of Minnesota), IAVI representative, malaria researchers from London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and University of Lancaster, Randall Packard (historian, malaria eradication), PATH representative(s) working on Rotavirus, Hepatitis B vaccine, William Muraskin (CUNY, historian of vaccine initiatives)

• Biofortification: Food and Nutrition Links: Cornell University, Dept. of Nutrition, Joachim Voss (CIAT), Johan Pottier (anthropology of food), Stephan Brush (UC Davis, anthropology), Chosani Njobvu & Diana Banda (University of Zambia, food security), IFPRI researchers, Gates Foundation representative,

• Clinical and agricultural trials: Harry Marks (historian, clinical trials), Jody Ranck, Lori Heise (ethics, microbicides), HAVEG (South Africa, clinical trials, politics, University of KwaZulu-Natal), IAVI/PATH representatives, industry representatives, Melissa Leach, James Fairhead.

• Anti-retrovirals, risks and roll-out: Gerry Bloom (IDS), Paul Farmer (Harvard University), Botswana and Uganda researchers, Helen Epstein (journalist), Bristol Myers, GSK, Merck representatives, Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa), National AIDS Council (Zambia), Nguyen Kim (MD/medical anthropologist, McGill University, West Africa research), African and Indian NGOs involved in providing ARVs, Ann Swindler (UC Berkeley, sociology, organizational theory and ARVs),

• Branding, licensing and trust in drugs and seeds : Gerry Bloom/Hilary Standing (IDS), PATH, Robert Tripp (ODI, UK), National seed company representatives (Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, China), CIPRO representative (generic drugs)

• Public-Private Partnerships for innovation and delivery: IAVI, Medicines for Malaria Venture, CIAT, representatives from plant genome initiatives, Rwanda Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Abel Dushimiyimana, Malaria Vaccine Initiative, Carol Nacy (Sequella, TB PPP), Acambis (Dengue Fever Vaccine, UK), Vijay Samant (malaria vaccine, Calif.), Gurinder Shahi, (CEO of life science consultancy Bioentreprise Asia, Singapore), Gil Walt (expert on ethics and politics of PPPs), Kent Buse (health policy, PPPs), Victoria Hale (Oneworld Health, non-profit pharmaceutical company, San Francisco, her developing country collaborators should be included as well)

• Vector-borne diseases: health, livelihoods, landscapes: Randall Packard (history of malaria), WHO/TDR representatives from scientific and social science perspective, David Turnbull (social scientist, Australia), CIET Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Tropicales (Tropical Disease Research Centre-based in Mexico but operating worldwide), Kenya Medical Research Institute, Wellcome Trust Network associates in Africa, ICDDR, B (Bangladesh, diarheal & infectious disease experts).

• Beyond transgenics—Joachim Voss, Corey Hayden (anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, bioprospecting), specialists on apomixes, Paul Rabinow, Ian Scoones, CGIAR representatives

The final phase of the network’s activities would involve meeting to assess the impact of the network on policy development worldwide and strategies for how to make a greater impact on policy studies. The participants would also conduct an analysis of strategies and alliances that have emerged and how to sustain these networks in and beyond

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developing countries. Our goal would be to create self-sustaining working groups by the end of three years that could play a continuing role in policy formulation and development in the field of science and technology policy. We also hold the potential to play a significant role in assisting developing country institutions to develop expertise in science and technology studies, a field that has received little attention at the university level in most developing country universities but has become increasingly important in the context of globalization and emerging technological change.