The Culture and Power of Knowledge: Inquiries into Contemporary Societies 9783110847765, 9783110131758

Citation preview

The Culture and Power of Knowledge Editors: Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The Culture and Power of Knowledge Inquiries into Contemporary Societies Edited by Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

W DE G_ Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1992

Nico Stehr is Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Richard V. Ericson is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

With 4 figures and 2 tables

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication

Data

The Culture and power of knowledge : inquiries into contemporary societies / edited by Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 3-11-013175-7 (Germany). - ISBN (invalid) 0-89925-811-1 (U.S. : alk. paper) 1. Civilization, Modern —1950— 2. Knowledge, Sociology of. I. Stehr, Nico. II. Ericson, Richard Victor. CB430.C85 1992 909.82-dc20 92-24708 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek

— Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

The culture and power of knowledge : inquiries into contemporary societies / Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson (ed.). — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1992 ISBN 3-11-013175-7 NE: Stehr, Nico [Hrsg.]

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced in any form — by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means — nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany Typesetting: Converted by Knipp, Dortmund / Printing: Ratzlow-Druck, Berlin / Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer Buchgewerbe GmbH, Berlin / Cover design: Johannes Rother, Berlin

Preface The essays collected in this anthology originated in an international symposium of the Royal Society of Canada, held at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in the fall of 1989. The conference was organized under the title of "Knowledge Societies". The theme of the conference - the evolving characteristic features of modern society - is of interest to a wide range of scholars from different social science disciplines. Thus, we sought additional essays, not part of the original symposium, to enhance the multidisciplinary character of the collection. The additional essays are authored by Ulrich Beck, Peter Drucker, Steve Fuller, Richard G. Lipsey, Judith Marquand, Arie Rip, Alain Touraine, and Wolfgang van den Daele. The publication of this anthology is an expression of gratitude to the many institutions who supported the international symposium. The Royal Society of Canada not only lent its name but also provided financial aid for the conference and publication of this volume. We are grateful to the officers of the Society and, especially, to Professor Karol J. Krótki of Academy II of the Royal Society, who not only served as the opening speaker of the symposium but supported it from the beginning. Additional financial support for the conference was received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Alberta, the Government of Alberta and Imperial Oil. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council also supported publication of this volume. Laura Hargrave assisted us ably in organizing the conference and provided assistance in the preparation of the manuscript. Edmonton, March 1992

Nico Stehr Richard V. Ericson

Contents Parti The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson Introduction I. Knowledge Societies II. Theories of Modern Society III. Toward a Sociological Concept of Knowledge IV. Researchable Issues Notes References

3 3 4 7 9 13 15 16

Partii Theoretical Perspectives Introduction

23

A Critical View of Modernity Alain Touraine

29

The Techno-structures of Society Gemot Böhme

39

I. Introduction II. Technology as the Self-preservation of Society III. The Technical Object and the Techno-structure IV. Technical Socialization and Release V. Society and Generation VI. Concluding Remarks Notes References

39 40 42 44 47 47 48 49

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society S. N. Eisenstadt

51

VIII

Contents

The Idols of Technology William Leiss

61

I. Bacon's Idols II. A Modern Idolatry III. Bacon's Wager IV. The Century of Environmental Crisis V. Appendix: Issues in the Perception of Environmental Risks Notes References

62 63 65 66 68 70 71

Part III Knowledge, Experts and Expertise Introduction

75

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency Zygmunt Bauman

81

I. Existential Foundations of Expertise II. Redeployment of Skills III. Self-reproduction of Expertise IV. Marketing the Expertise V. The Tendencies and Limits of Expert-Designed Life World Notes References

83 88 91 96 100 105 105

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers Nico Stehr

107

I. Knowledge and Expertise II. The Knowledge Society III. Intellectuals and Experts IV. Institutions and Expertise V. Conditions for the Growth of Experts VI. The Functions of Expertise VII. Conclusion Notes References

108 Ill 123 133 135 140 142 143 145

Contents

IX

Knowledge as Product and Property Steve Fuller

157

I. The Interchangeability of Knowledge and Power II. Embodying Knowledge as Professional Power III. From Knowledge Product to Intellectual Property IV. Conferring Validity and Value on Intellectual Property V. Is the Market for Knowledge Saturated or Depressed? Notes References

159 162 164 166 174 176 186

Part IV Science and Technology as Social Risks Introduction

193

Modern Society as a Risk Society Ulrich Beck

199

I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

The Paradigm of the Risk-society Risks of Modernization - Five Theses First Thesis: Knowledge is Dependent on Modernization Risks Second Thesis: Modernization Risks Exploding the Class-structure. . Third Thesis: On the Market Form of Modernization Risks Fourth Thesis: Conciousness Determines Being, Knowledge of Risks and Levels of Effect of Risks VII. Fifth Thesis: The Risk-society Engenders the Political Potential for a Dirigiste Politics of the State of Emergency Note

213 214

Science as a Societal Risk Producer Uwe Schimank

215

I II

199 201 202 204 207 208

The General Intersystemic Dynamics of Scientific Risk Production . . Some Institutional Determinants of the Societal Risk Potential of Research Behavior Notes References

217 222 228 229

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science Christoph Lau

235

X

I. Traditional Risks II. Industrial Risks III. New Technological Risks IV. New Risks and Societal Conflicts V. Science and Public Conflicts About Risks VI. Some Typical Strategies of Risk Definition References

Contents

236 237 238 240 242 244 246

Part V The Economic Structure of Knowledge Societies Introduction

251

The Changed World Economy Peter F. Drucker

257

Notes References

276 276

Global Change and Economic Policy Richard G. Lipsey

279

I. The World of 1950 II. The Shift to the New Order III. The World of 1990 IV. Economic Policy in Transition V. Conclusion Notes References

279 284 286 293 297 297 298

Learning and the Economy Judith Marquand

301

I. Introduction II. The Economists'View of Human Capital III. Knowledge, Competence and General Skills IV. The Learning Process and the Learning Cycle V. Learning and Innovation VI. Learning and Economics VII. Learning and the Economy References

301 302 305 307 309 310 312 313

Contents

XI

Part VI Empirical Analysis of Knowledge Production and its Social Consequences Introduction

317

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks: Twenty Years of Demythologizing the Experts Wolfgang van den Daele

323

I. II. III. IV. V.

Professional Analysis vs. Political Bargaining "We Do Not Know Enough!" "You Never Know Enough" The Professional Appropriation of Risk Controversies The Limits and Relevance of Professional Mandate in the Regulation of Risk References

324 325 329 332 334 338

Expertise as a Network: A Case Study of the Controversies over the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Organisms Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

341

I. Introduction II. Analyzing "Expertise" III. The Debate over Genetically Engineered Microorganisms (GEMS). . IV. Concluding remarks Notes References

341 342 346 355 356 358

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality Arie Rip

363

I. The Ozone Layer Debate II. Standards for Dioxin in the Netherlands III. Conclusion Notes References

365 370 374 376 378

On the Authors Name Index Subject Index

381 385 393

Parti

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society1 Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every comer of our minds. (John M. Keynes, 1936:viii)

Introduction All theories of society employ, quite properly, attributes of social relations which they designate as constitutive of the specific nature of the society. Thus, we have names such as "capitalist", "socialist" or "industrial" society. For the same heuristic reasons, we chose to label the emerging form of society as a "knowledge" society. The constitutive mechanism of social action and the identity of modern society is increasingly driven by "knowledge". In this introduction, we concentrate on some of the work necessary to develop a more differentiated, sociological concept of knowledge. We address the functions knowledge increasingly assumes in modern society, and the relations which exist between the production, the distribution and consumption of varied forms of knowledge. We use economic concepts quite deliberately, because among the crucial functions and transformations linked to knowledge today is that of knowledge as an immediately productive force. All of this leads us to propose the term "knowledge society" for the kind of society which appears to emerge at the present historical juncture. At the same time, we highlight some of the features of other theories of modern society and what might be considered competing terminology, for example, the "information" or "science" society. Finally, we enumerate what we believe are some of the more important researchable issues which follow from the transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies.

4

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

I. Knowledge Societies Robert E. Lane (1966:650) was one of the first authors to employ the term "knowledgeable society". He justified the use of this concept by pointing to the growing societal relevance of scientific knowledge, and defined a knowledgeable society as one in which its members "(a) inquire into the basis of their beliefs about man, nature, and society; (b) are guided (perhaps unconsciously) by objective standards of veridical truth, and, at the upper levels of education, follow scientific rules of evidence and inference in inquiry; (c) devote considerable resources to this inquiry and thus have a large store of knowledge; (d) collect, organize, and interpret their knowledge in a constant effort to extract further meaning from it for the purposes at hand; (e) employ this knowledge to illuminate (and perhaps modify) their values and goals as well as to advance them. Just as the 'democratic' society has a foundation in governmental and interpersonal relations, and the 'affluent society' a foundation in economics, so the knowledgeable society has its roots in epistemology and the logic of inquiry". Lane's conception of a knowledgeable society is tied rather closely to the promise of a particular conception of science and reflects both the great optimism of the early I960's and, in some instances, considerable trepidation and fear (e.g.,Marcuse 1964). The promise is that science can somehow constitute a society in which common sense - especially as exemplified in more irrational forms of thought which operate in central social institutions such as the political system and the economy - is decisively displaced by scientific reasoning. That is, as Lane stresses in his own conception, members of the knowledgeable society are guided in their conduct, if only subconsciously, by the standards of "veridical truth". And, in this sense at least, Lane's views only reiterate venerable conceptions of many classical social theorists who also anticipated an almost inevitable rationalization process of social conduct driven by the progress of science and technology. In The Age of Discontinuity, Peter Drucker (1969) also proposes the term knowledge society for modern societal relations. The general thesis presented in his book places "knowledge as central to our society and as the foundation of economy and social action". Drucker's concept is, in this general sense, close to the concept of a knowledge society as explicated in this introduction. Although Drucker's emphasis on knowledge is in many ways pioneering, it is not evident whether he attributes to the knowledge principle the same centrality for society as does Daniel Bell. Nonetheless, Drucker does describe some of the novel features and attributes of contemporary forms and structures of knowledge. Daniel Bell (1973) operates with the term "knowledge society" in the context of his discussion of the The Coming of Post-Industrial society, a designation for modern society. At times, Bell uses the concept knowledge society interchange-

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modem Society

5

ably with the term "post-industrial society". For example, he points out that the post-industrial society is in fact a knowledge society (Bell, 1973:212). The basic justification for such an equivalence is, of course, that "knowledge is a fundamental resource" of post-industrial society. Furthermore, Bell (1973:37) makes evident that he could have substituted "knowledge society" for "post-industrial society" because either term, or others, for example "intellectual society" (Bell, 1964:49), might be just as apt in describing salient aspects of the emerging structure and culture of modern society. The historical emergence of "knowledge societies" did not occur suddenly. It represents not a revolutionary development but, rather, a gradual process during which the defining characteristic of society changed and a new one emerged. Knowledge societies do not come about as the result of a simple uni-modal unfolding, and knowledge societies do not turn into some kind of one-dimensional social figurations. Knowledge societies become similar on particular dimensions even while remaining dissimilar in other respects. New technological modes of communication and transportation break down the distance between groups and individuals but the isolation between regions, cities and villages remains. The world opens up, creeds, styles and commodities mingle, yet, the walls between convictions of what is sacred do not come tumbling down. The meaning of time and place erodes while boundaries are celebrated. Modern society was, until recently, conceived primarily in terms of property and labor. On the basis of these attributes, individuals and groups were able or constrained to define their membership in society. While these features have not disappeared, a new principle, "knowledge", has been added that, to an extent, challenges as well as transforms property and labor as the constitutive mechanisms of society. One of the most significant outcomes of these developments2, at least with respect to social inequality, education and work, is the emergence of knowledgebearing occupations at the center of the labor force of modem society. This transformation is by no means fully captured by reference to growing employment in the service sector of the modern economy. In all sectors of the economy, knowledge-based occupations are rapidly increasing. Most available statistics on employment reflect only insufficiently ongoing changes in predominant occupational skills. However, information on the percentage of administrative, technical and clerical workers in the manufacturing industries in Great Britain between 1959 and 1982, for example, indicate an appreciable shift in the balance of occupations even within the manufacturing sector. Rueschemeyer (1986:139-140) underlines the peculiar mix of old and new, side by side, in knowledge societies. "Taken together, the power sharing of the different knowledge-bearing occupations has probably diluted the concentrations of power based on property, coercion and popular appeal; but that is a far cry from saying that the power of partial interests and the conflicts between them have become irrelevant or even muted." The rise of knowledge-based occupa-

6

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

Table 1: Percentage of administrative, technical and clerical workers in manufacturing industries, Great Britain

1959 21.1

1966 24.3

1970 26.7

1974 27.0

1978 28.4

1980 30.0

1982 30.6

Source: Cutler, Williams and Williams (1986:77)

tions, be they experts, counsellors or advisors, forms, therefore, one of the core attributes of advanced society. Of course, different types of societies, based on these core principles, reflect different constitutive mechanisms and their replacement. For example, bourgeois society was originally a society of owners. Later it became a "laboring society" {Arbeitsgesellschaft), and now it is gradually transforming itself into a knowledge society. The increased social significance of science in modern society is the major reason for analyzing its knowledge structure. Knowledge has always had a function in social life. Indeed, one could observe an anthropological constant: human action is knowledge based. Social groups of all types depend on, and are mediated by, knowledge. Similarly, power has frequently been based on advantages in knowledge, not only on physical strength. Furthermore, societal reproduction is not merely physical reproduction but always cultural, in that it necessarily entails reproduction of knowledge. A variety of ancient societies can be described as knowledge societies. For example, ancient Israel was a society structured by its religious-lawlike Toraknowledge. Ancient Egypt was a society in which religious, astronomical and agrarian knowledge served as the organizing principle and the basis of authority. Contemporary society may be described as a knowledge society based on the penetration of all its spheres of life by scientific knowledge. The advance of science into the life-world and economic production has been and may be described in various terms. It entails the penetration of most spheres of social action, including production, by scientific knowledge ("scientization"). In involves the displacement, although by no means elimination, of other forms of knowledge by scientific knowledge, mediated by a growing stratum of, and dependence on, experts, advisors and counsellors, and the corresponding institutions based on the deployment of specialized knowledge. It constitutes the emergence of science as an immediately productive force, and of knowledge as an increasingly important source of added value and the possibility of economic growth. It represents the differentiation of new forms of political action (e.g., science and educational policy), and the sustenance of political and social movements which draw on various forms of knowledge for goals, legitimacy and strategy. The advance of science also implies the development of a new sector of production, the production of knowledge with the attendant changes in power

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

7

structures (technocracy debate). Finally, there is the emergence of knowledge as the basis for social inequality, forms of life and life chances, 3 and as the drift of the basis of authority toward expertise. 4

II. Theories of Modern Society One of the first comprehensive sociological analyses of societies in which the knowledge producing sector attains decisive importance for social relations is Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973). Radovan Richta's (1969) theory of the scientific-technical revolution constitutes the socialist counterpart to Bell's theory of society. Bell (1973:212) argues that post-industrial society is a knowledge society for two major reasons: (1) "the sources of innovation are increasingly derivative from research and development (and more directly, there is a new relation between science and technology because of the centrality of theoretical knowledge)", and (2) "the weight of the society measured by a larger proportion of Gross National Product and a larger share of employment - is increasingly in the knowledge field". The pace and scale of the translation of knowledge into technology provides the basis for the possibility of modernity, thus, if there is a "radical gap between the present and the past, it lies in the nature of technology and the ways it has transformed social relations and our ways of looking at the world" (Bell, 1968:174). The recognition of the social and political importance of knowledge by sociologists is itself an instance of the general impact of knowledge on the development of contemporary society and of society's consciousness of this increased influence (cf. Richta, 1969:216). Indeed, as we observe in more detail later, a number of features of the theories of society which assign "objective knowledge" such a central position are in important and relevant ways selfexemplifying. Moreover, since all of these theories tend to stress the tempo of social and intellectual change, they are themselves promptly superseded by events. They are also often replaced so rapidly or become irrelevant because of the logic of their theoretical basis. It is not unusual to find that these theories including Daniel Bell's theory of post-industrial society, Radovan Richta's theory of scientific-technological revolution, Helmut Schelsky's (1961) theory of scientific civilization, or John K. Galbraith's (1967) theory of the new industrial state - adopt quite readily those principles of theory construction characteristic of classical sociological theories. Among such principles is not merely a considerable aura of optimism about the future, and the conviction that there is a radical, even revolutionary, break in social relations, but often also rather deterministic, lawlike assumptions about the tempo, the course and the direction

8

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

of social transformations. Classical theories of society looked to principles of theory building which attempted to capture social formations much more permanently. It is doubtful that these almost invariant features of classical theories of society are of much help in a stringent analysis of advanced societies. The rapid obsolescence of many theories of contemporary society is linked to the recalcitrance and elusive character of contemporary social forms and figurations. What justifies the designation of the emerging society as a knowledge society rather than as a science society, an information society, post-industrial society or as technological civilization? Much of the discussion about the information society5 is animated by a concern with the "production, processing, and transmission of a very large amount of data about all sorts of matter - individual and national, social and commercial, economic and military" (Schiller, 1981:25). But every society has to transmit information. Less, or very little, is said about the genesis and/or the substance of information, for example, the essentially contested character of information, the media of communication, especially human ones, or the reasons for the demand for, and changes brought about by, the contents of the information which is communicated. The notion of post-industrial society plays a significant role in any discussion of a theory of modern society if only because the most comprehensive theoretical model of the developments at issue here have, to date, been examined under that particular label. The category "post-industrial society" is not quite suited, and is to a degree misleading, because "industry" or manufacturing does not vanish in post-industrial society. True, industry is transformed, as Peter Drucker for example describes well in his essay, but it is misleading to think that it will somehow disappear. The manufacturing sector retains, certainly from an economic viewpoint, its relative importance in modern society. Moreover, one cannot really live without "industry", just as one cannot exist through leisure (société des loisirs) only (cf. König, 1979). The kinds of changes which occur in industry are the developments which take place with respect to the forms and dominance of knowledge itself in manufacturing. Finally, the notion of modern society as a "science society" (cf. Kreibich, 1986) is inappropriate because the term tends to mask important features of scientific and technical knowledge. In particular, the concept offers virtually no resistance to the prevailing notion of science and technology as producers of straightforward objective and truthful knowledge which is, in turn, the author of its own success, knows no boundaries of any importance, and ultimately eradicates all other competing forms of knowledge in society. There may well be appropriate terms other than the knowledge society to capture certain salient and distinct features of modern society. Ulrich Beck's suggestion to analyze contemporary society as a risk society, which produces and is subjected to an unusually large and peculiar set of risks, is among the formulations inviting consideration.

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

9

III. Toward a Sociological Concept of Knowledge For Daniel Bell (1973:20), while knowledge has been a part of the functioning of any society, what is unique about the post-industrial society is "the change in the character of knowledge itself. What has become decisive for the organization of decisions and the direction of change is the centrality of theoretical knowledge the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that, as in any axiomatic system, can be used to illuminate many different and varied areas of experience. Every modem society now lives by innovation and the social control of change, and tries to anticipate the future in order to plan ahead. The commitment to social control introduces the need for social planning and forecasting into society. It is the altered awareness of the nature of innovation that makes theoretical knowledge so crucial". Richta and his collaborators (1969:212-213) stress that science in modern society is no longer primarily "a factor of social consciousness" but a "productive force", and that "all productive forces are being converted in one way or another into applications of science". Under the circumstances of the scientific and technological revolution, "growth of the productive forces follows a law of higher priority, that is, the precedence of science over technology and of technology over industry" (Richta, 1969:34). The mere enumeration of these conceptions of knowledge already indicates that Bell, and others who have elevated knowledge to be the new axial principle of modern society, pause but briefly to consider the social nature of knowledge, particularly of scientific knowledge. Various definitions of knowledge are offered but there is, on the whole, a limited theoretical effort to critically analyze the crucial dimension, "knowledge as such", as a distinct problematic. Knowledge is essentially treated as a black box. The central question posed by the theorists of post-industrial society who have claimed that knowledge has become the agent of social change, is, for the most part, driven by a functionalist perspective, namely what are the consequences of objective knowledge for both society and the individual, and how can these results of knowledge be apprehended? Common to these approaches is also the observation that the tempo of social change accelerates and reaches an unprecedented pace and that the rapidity of societal change somehow parallels the growth in the scale of available objective knowledge. In order to demonstrate and appreciate fully the significance of the expansion of knowledge for societies, as well as the form of knowledge produced by science, it is necessary to formulate more fully a sociological concept of knowledge. One has to differentiate between what is known or the content of knowledge, knowing itself, and the function of knowledge for social action. What is it that we know? The Oxford Dictionary of Current English indicates

10

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

the following instances: "Every child knows that two and two make four. He knows a lot of English. Do you know how to play chess? I don't know whether he is here or not". These examples show that knowing is a relation of social actors to things and facts, but as well to laws and rules and also other actors. Constitutive for knowing is some sort of participation: knowing things, facts, rules, is "appropriating" them in some manner, including them into our field of orientation and competence. Knowledge can be objectified, that is, the intellectual appropriation of things, facts and rules can be established symbolically, so that in the future in order to know, it is no longer necessary to get into contact with the things themselves but only with their symbolic representations, for example, texts or fellow actors. This is the social significance of language, writing, printing, and data storage. Modern societies have made dramatic advances in the intellectual appropriation of nature and society. There is an immense stock of objectified knowledge which mediates our relation to nature and to ourselves. Thus, most of what we call knowledge and learning today is by no means the result of direct knowledge of facts, rules, and things, but objectified knowledge. Objectified knowledge is the highly differentiated stock of intellectually appropriated nature and society which may also be seen to constitute the cultural resource of a society. Knowing is then grosso modo participation in the cultural resources of society. However, such participation is of course subject to stratification and mediated by knowledge-bearing occupations. The life chances, life style and social influence of individuals and groups in modern society depend on their access to the stock of knowledge at hand. The general function of knowledge for social action therefore is that it performs the work of a capacity for action. Knowledge allows individual and corporate actors, within specific contexts, to set matters in motion. Modern society has increased its capacity for action immensely, although this does not mean that anything goes. The material appropriation of nature means that nature as a whole has gradually been transformed into a human product by super-imposing on it a social structure. This structure is in essence objectified knowledge, namely an explication and realization of what we know to be the laws of nature extended by engineering design and construction. The self-appropriation of society occurs through an analogous process: the production of data which are social facts and which constitute the social and political reality; the enforcement of rules which govern social conduct; and, the bureaucratization of community life. In a general sense, this advancement has been called, in other contexts, modernization or rationalization. The secondary nature is overgrowing the primary nature of humans. The real and the fictional merge and become indistinguishable. Theories become facts and not vice versa. That is, facts police theories. It is only after one acquires a sense of the societal significance of such opposites and oppositions that the full sociological significance of knowledge begins to emerge. Such a perspective assures that one realizes the extent to which

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

11

knowledge can form the basis for authority, that access to knowledge becomes a major societal resource and the occasion for political and social struggles. Although knowledge has always had a social function, it is only recently that scholars began to examine the structure of society and its development from the point of view of the production, distribution and reproduction of knowledge. 6 Applied to contemporary society, the question becomes whether knowledge can provide the principle for social hierarchies and stratification, for the formation of class structure, for the distribution of chances of social and political influence, for the nature of personal life and, finally, whether knowledge may also prove to be a normative principle of social cohesion and integration even though the variations and alterations in the reproduction of knowledge appear to be enormous. Paradoxically, efforts to entrench necessity in history or to eliminate chance from history seems to have produced, at least at the collective level, its opposite. The role of chance at the collective level continues to be part of the way society comes to be organized. Science and technology began as a marginal enterprise of amateurs in the 17th century, but modern science, especially after World War II, has received a large proportion of the public budget and constitutes a major source of investment for private capital. Individuals trained as scientists or engineers are a growing part of the labor force in modern society. The growth in the system of modern higher education is both the result and the motor of the increased importance of science and technology. Institutions which produce, distribute or reproduce knowledge are now comparable in size to the industrial complex. Furthermore, it is now often emphasized that no area of social life will remain unaffected by the impact of natural science and technology. In our view, the major change occurs in the production of scientific knowledge which provides, in turn, the foundations of the possibility of a knowledge society. The expansion in the social functions of scientific knowledge takes place without the elimination of, or a significant reduction in, the earlier functions scientific knowledge has had in society. Up to the end of the 18th century science had the function of enlightenment, of producing meaning or social consciousness. In the subsequent period of the emergence of industrial society, science became a productive force. In the latter part of our century science has evolved into an immediately productive force. Science also produces knowledge which, at least in the short run, serves no particular social or extra-scientific function. Science is perhaps the only institution in modern society which in the course of its development does not lose some of its original purposes to other sectors of society, for example as the result of structural differentiation and specialization. On the contrary, science increasingly absorbs certain functions in society. In addition, it expands by generating new purposes or by taking them on. Since science became a productive force in the 19th century it has ceased to belong exclusively to the superstructure of society. The change from functioning as a producer or critic of world-views to functioning as a productive force means

12

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

that important aspects of science are now part of the material basis of society. It is a productive force to the extent that its knowledge is frozen into machinery. In as much as it developed as "pure" science in the 19th century, it does not become a productive force. Earlier science was not mature enough to be applied to problems of production, while the material appropriation of nature, in the sense of efficient control over boundary conditions or production of pure materials, was not developed far enough to enable a realization of scientific results in dimensions relevant for production. In short, a change in the material and cognitive appropriation of nature in the 19th century turns science into a productive force and society into industrial society. As science becomes an immediate productive force in our century, it does not lose any of its previous possibilities but adds a decisive new possibility. Contrary to the situation in the 19th century, the production of knowledge now also becomes immediate social production unmediated by labor. In contemporary society a secondary structure on the basis of already appropriated nature is established. A considerable part of the total work within a knowledge society takes place at a meta-level, at a second level of production to which science contributes centrally. Production is to a large extent no longer metabolism with nature but presupposes that nature is already appropriated. This kind of production consists of re-arranging appropriated nature according to certain designs and programs. The rules which govern "secondary" production are social constructs rather than the laws of nature. The consequence is that new disciplines emerge whose output serves as an immediate productive force, e.g.operations research, theories of planning, decision theory, cybernetics, computer science etc. The production of data, theories, programs and systems is immediately productive because it tends to reproduce the knowledge structure of society. Production of knowledge is consequently social production. Reproduction of society means to an increasing degree reproduction of appropriated nature and of the self-appropriation of society. One outcome of these developments is that scientific knowledge, in the sense of an immediate productive force, becomes a societal resource with functions comparable to those of labor in the productive process. But unlike labor under capitalism, the owners of the resource "knowledge" in a knowledge society acquire power and influence because owners of capital cannot, as was still the case for corporal labor, reduce its content in production through substitution of capital. At best knowledge can be substituted through other knowledge. Notwithstanding the mechanization of brain work, there remains also always an irreducible rest of "personal knowledge" which can be converted into and valued as "intellectual" or "cultural" capital. On the basis of these considerations, the thesis of the emergence of a new and potentially dominant strata of knowledge-based occupations may be seen to take place.

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

13

IV. Researchable Issues Based on the preceding sketch, theoretical and empirical issues include: (1) Knowledge in knowledge societies; (2) the economic structure of knowledge societies; (3) the labor force in knowledge societies; (4) the transformation of major social institutions; and (5) governing knowledge societies.

A. Knowledge in Knowledge Societies Scientific and technological knowledge is of course widely identified as a "motor" of social change. However, this assertion is also treated without exception as a kind of black box. It is important to overcome the taken-forgranted status of this premise by asking what forms of knowledge transform societies, in what manner this happens, and with what consequences, including effects for the production and dissemination of knowledge itself. At the same time, one must not lose sight of the distinct possibility that scientific knowledge does not easily or even completely displace other forms of knowledge in society.

B. The Economic Structure of Knowledge Societies One of the important transformations in a knowledge society is the growing impact of knowledge on economic processes. However, we are only at the beginning of a better understanding of these transformations. A knowledge society of course is a society still affected by its economic substructure, but the question which needs careful scrutiny is the altered structure of that economy in response to the growing importance of knowledge as a factor in the relations and forces of production.

14

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

C. The Labor Force in Knowledge Societies The use of and dependence on knowledge in all spheres of human activity has reached an unprecedented level, and has produced far-reaching and virtually irreversible social consequences. But how and by whom knowledge is translated into social action, and therefore acquires authority and influence, remains largely hidden. The unprecedented growth in the volume of knowledge produces a new and increasingly influential group of occupations which mediate access between the intellectual division of knowledge (its specialized bodies) and the advice seeking actor(s), forced by circumstances and respect for knowledge to gain access to expertise. Nevertheless, the role of experts, counsellors and advisers or, in less conventional terms, of the myriad knowledge bearing and dispensing occupations in our lives, has been relatively ignored by social scientists. While considerable attention has been paid to "professions", they represent only a small, elite segment of what must be the most rapidly growing segment of the labor force. Equally obscure are the institutional contexts within which knowledge is employed and how these contexts may in turn affect the very mediation between knowledge, social action and the kind of authority knowledge may have. Also deficient is our knowledge about knowledge. Why is there such a growth in the demand for knowledge, for example, in the form of advice seeking? What kinds of knowledge are translated into social action? How does knowledge acquire authority even though in many instances it appears to be freely dispensed?

D. The Transformation of Major Social Institutions The growing importance of scientific and technical knowledge alters the fabric of other major social institutions. Taking the example of legal institutions, knowledge changes the development of legal norms, the enforcement of the law, the emergence of new forms of deviance, the court system (e.g.,the mediation process, land claims, the legal assessment of risks of all sorts) and the penal system. The institution of health care provides another significant example. In this field we are witnessing transformations in the social relations of caring, both formal and informal. In health care, the cross-cutting dimensions of property, labor and knowledge come into sharp relief. Phenomena as diverse as nurses' strikes, artificial life prolongation, and the new reproductive technologies illustrate the complex interplay of knowledge and social relations.

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

15

E. Governing Knowledge Societies Theorizing about modern society, modernization o n a global scale, and "modernity", usually incorporates the simple notion that w e are witnessing greater homogeneity in virtually all important aspects o f social and intellectual life. Such simple expressions about the nature o f modernity perhaps exemplifies the more c o m p l e x thesis that decreasing variation through time is one o f the crucial and predictable features of stabilizing systems. While it may well be true that decreasing variation is associated with or even brings about stable systems, the very premise that our age is an age o f decreasing variation ought to be examined rather carefully. It could well be that knowledge, in fact increases variation and therefore operates in the opposite direction. In short, are k n o w l e d g e societies increasingly contingent societies. The f o l l o w i n g essays address these issues and offer important insights for research. W h i l e advancing our theoretical and empirical understanding of k n o w l e d g e societies, they also point to the urgent need for major research programs on each issue.

Notes 1

2

3

4

This statement makes use of ideas first developed in Gemot Böhme and Nico Stehr (1986:7-29). We are grateful to Gemot Böhme for his permission to freely adopt and develop these notions. We must limit ourselves. Therefore we cannot address questions such as the issue of political or moral authority in knowledge societies (cf. Basiuk, 1977:266-274); how the development of science and technology can be controlled (cf. Kting, 1976; Richta, 1977:27); the measurement of the changing size and contribution to the Gross National Product of what Fritz Machlup (1962) called the "Knowledge Industry" (also Machlup, 1981, 1984; Rubin and Taylor, 1986); "mental labour" in advanced society (cf. Derber, 1971; Derber et al., 1990); the range of national and international policy questions raised in and by knowledge societies (cf. Bell, 1979:193-207); and - , or, whether a knowledge society must be a democratic society (cf. Lane, 1966:650; Richta, 1969; Merton, 1973; Bemal, 1954; Polanyi, 1962). In a much more restrictive sense, for instance in terms of the strata involved, the emergence of intellectuals as a new social class has been identified as the characteristic feature of advanced societies in which science and technology assume a decisive function (cf. Konrád and Szelényi, 1979; Gouldner, 1979). Whether this "class" constitutes a significant power elite or not, depends on much more detailed research. But the assertion is, even at this general level, controversial, even dubious, as Daniel Bell (1979:204), for example, stresses. Compare also the study by Steven Brint (forthcoming) on the influence of experts within the U.S. political system. The shift of authority toward expertise is, at the same time, accompanied by disputes

16

5 6

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson about the legitimacy and basis for expertise. Expertise becomes therefore an essentially contested attribute and the self-evident quality of expert knowledge is not always easily established and maintained (e.g.,Smith, 1986; Barnes, 1987). Wiio (1985) claims that the term "information society" can be found first in a report submitted to the Government of Japan in 1972. E.g.,. Malinowski (1955) and Machlup (1962).

References Aron, Raymond [1983] 1990 Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection. New York: Holmes & Emir. Barnes, Barry 1987 "Power Listens to Science". Social Studies of Science 17:555-564. Basiuk, Victor 1977 Technology, World Politics and American Policy. New York: Columbia University Press. Bell, Daniel 1979 "The Social Framework of the Information Society", pp. 163-211 in Michael L. Dertouzos and Joel Moses (eds.), The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Bell, Daniel 1973 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Bell, Daniel 1968 "The Measurement of Knowledge and Technology", pp. 145-246 in Eleanor B. Sheldon and Wilbert E. Moore (eds.), Indicators of Social Change: Concepts and Measurements. Hartford, Conn.: Russell Sage Foundation. Bell, Daniel 1964 "The Post-industrial Society", pp. 44-59 in Eli Ginzberg (ed.), Technology and Social Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Bernal, John D. 1954 Science in History. London: Watts. Block, Fred and Larry Hirschhorn 1979 "New Productive Forces and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism", Theory and Society 17:363-395.

17

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

Böhme, Gemot and Nico Stehr 1987 "The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations", pp. 7-29 in Gemot Böhme and Nico Stehr (eds.), The Knowledge Society. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1987. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Brint, Steven 1991 Retainers, Merchants and Priests. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cutler, Tony, Karel Williams and John Williams 1986 Keynes, Beveridge and Beyond. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Derber, Charles et al. 1990 Power to the Highest Degree. New York: Oxford University Press. Derber, Charles 1972 "Toward a New Theory of Professionals as Workers: Advanced Capitalism and Postindustrial Labour", pp. 193-208 in Charles Derber (ed.), Professionals as Workers: Mental Labour in Advanced Capitalism. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co.. Drucker, Peter F. 1969 The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society. New York: Harper & Row. Galbraith, John K. 1967 The New Industrial State. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1979 The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury Press. Holzner, Burkart, William N. Dunn and Muhammad Shahidullah 1987 "An Accounting Scheme for Designing Science Impact Indicators". 9:173-204. Keynes, John M.

Knowledge

1936 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan. König, René 1979 "Gesellschaftliches Bewußtsein und Soziologie: Eine spekulative Überlegung", pp. 358-370 in Günther Lüschen (ed.), Deutsche Soziologie seit 1945. Sonderheft 21 der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Konrád, Gyoergy and Ivan Szelényi 1979 The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power: A Sociological Study of the Role of the Intelligentsia in Socialism. Brighton: Harvester Press.

18 Kreibich, Rolf 1986 Die Wissenschaftsgesellschaft. Main: Suhrkamp.

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

Von Galilei zur High-Tech-Revolution.

Frankfurt am

Küng, Emil 1976 Steuerung und Bremsung des technischen Fortschritts. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Lane, Robert E. 1966 "The Decline of Politics and Ideology in a Knowledgeable Society". Sociological Review 31:649-662. Machlup, Fritz 1984 The Economics of Information Press.

American

and Human Capital. Princeton: Princeton University

Machlup, Fritz 1981 Knowledge and Knowledge Production. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Machlup, Fritz 1962 The Production and Distribution Princeton University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw

of Knowledge

in the United States.

Princeton:

1955 Magic, Science and Religion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor. Marcuse, Herbert 1964 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Merton, Robert K. [1970] 1973 "Social and Cultural Contexts of Science", pp. 173-190 in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Polanyi, Michael 1962 "The Republic of Science, its Political and Economic Theory". Chicago: Lecture at Roosevelt University. Richta, Radovan 1977 "The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Prospects of Social Development", pp. 25-72 in Ralf Dahrendorf et al. (eds.), Scientific-Technological Revolution: Social Aspects. London: Sage. Richta, Radovan et al. 1969 Civilization at the Crossroads: Social and Human Implications of the Scientific and Technological Revolution. White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences Press.

19

The Culture and Power of Knowledge in Modern Society

Rubin, Michael R. and Mary Taylor Huber 1986 The Knowledge Industry in the United States, 1960-1980. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 1986 Power and the Division of Labor. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Schelsky, Helmut 1961 Der Mensch in der wissenschaftlichen Verlag. Schiller, Herbert I.

Zivilization.

Köln/Opladen: Westdeutscher

1981 Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Smith, Anthony 1986 "Technology, Identity, and the Information Machine". Daedalus 115:155-169. Stehr, Nico 1978 "Man and the environment". Archive for Philosophy of Law and Social 74:1-17. Wiio, O.A. 1985 "The Information Society: Is it Really Like This?". Intermedia 13:12-14.

Philosophy

Part II Theoretical Perspectives

Introduction Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The essays in Part Two identify salient features of modern society - especially its emphasis on science and technology as the basis of reason, action and progress - as well as various critiques of modernity that suggest we are on the verge of post-modern society. The authors provide an overview of classical and contemporary sociological theories, an assessment of the present conjuncture, and suggestions regarding where we are heading intellectually and practically. As such the essays in Part Two not only further the issues raised in Chapter 1, they also provide an excellent overview of the theoretical approaches and practical concerns that inform the essays in Parts Three through Six. Alain Touraine identifies modernity as involving forms of rational knowledge used by agents of progress to overcome obstacles to change. Modernity seeks to replace traditions with reason, socially and culturally based controls with scientific or technological action, particularism with universalism, and reproduction with production. Sociology has played a significant role in the modernist quest. In particular functionalism serves as an essential ideology for modernism, helping to rationalize and give order to the fluctuating, equivocal, changing world by defining social norms in terms of social utility. Touraine notes that there are several lineages of social and political thought that have criticized modernism. This allows him to make the key point that there are several post-modernismi, rooted in different traditions, and that some of them are not recent or new. For example, the mid-nineteenth century theorists such as Nietzsche and Freud expressed the contradiction between creativity and social integration, and emphasized the need to eliminate "the subject" as constructed by modernist agencies of control to repress individual drives. Foucault's work continued the critique of the modernist "subject" as a construct that subordinates individuals to social utility. Shifting to a different type of example, Touraine notes that while sociology has always sought unity between system and actor, empirical sociology has always shown the opposite: the gap between institutions and motivations and the limits of social control. Touraine also points to the persistence of anti-rationalist, culturalist, political movements that reject the view

24

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

that there is similarity and continuity among processes of social transformation, or correspondence between norms and motivation. The radical separation between society and actors by these movements leaves no place for sociology, or at least for functionalist sociology as the ideology of modernism. Finally, Touraine points to the more recent empowerment of minority or oppressed groups who are able to voice a defense of their identities against modernist forces and thus become less dependent upon intellectuals to represent their causes. This has led intellectuals to experience directly the decomposition of one aspect of modernity, namely the traditional role of authorized knowers who speak on behalf of the supposedly less knowledgeable and less articulate and thereby impose rationality for them. Touraine believes that while various intellectual and political strands are decomposing classical conceptions of modernity, nothing satisfactory has appeared as an option. Post-modernism is at most a negative definition of a culture unable to defend itself against, variously, an objective view that exalts the megalomania of large organizations, a subjective view that becomes transformed into conformity and repression, and an elimination of the subject that yields aggressivity, individualism, and the triumph of the market. Touraine sees dangers in all of these views and the options they urge, and suggests that the solution is a revised definition of modernity that blends forms of rationality with respect for cultural specificity and difference. The modernist tendency of elites and bureaucrats to impose their rationality on subordinates must be replaced by an effort to combine instrumental rationality with cultural specificity. Modernity must incorporate a sensitivity to the dialectic between rationalization and subjectivation, providing a recipe whereby universalistic values and specific experiences and traditions can be blended into efficient, democratic, welfare-oriented action. Shmuel Eisenstadt juxtaposes contemporary images of post-modern society with predominant images of modern society in classical and contemporary sociological and other intellectual discourses. Modernism operates with a sense of progress, and attendant ideas of justice, equality and fairness, in order to provide visions of different worlds and versions of universalistic and total change, especially regarding economic/industrial/technological development. Post-moderaist views no longer express a strong belief in progress, especially the economic/industrial/technological nexus of progress, instead emphasizing "quality of life" and "post materialist values". Modernism operates within the ethos of cognitive rationality, most fully expressed in science, believing that conscious effort can lead to understanding and changing human and natural environments. Post-modernism doubts the cognitive rationality of science and its ability to effect progress, and therefore undercuts the epistemological and ontological hegemony of science. Modernism asserts symbolic distinctions that link and integrate different arenas of life, for example, regarding public and private spheres, ages, gender, social class, truth and aesthetics. Post-modernism blurs these distinctions and thereby brings into question demarcations of social boundaries and offers a

Introduction

25

plurality and levelling of hierarchy. Modernism offers a template for structuring life-spans or careers. Post-modernism weakens the rigid and homogenous features of this template, and hence also the boundaries of organizations and institutions, and of roles based in all-encompassing societal or institutional frameworks. Modernism features strong socio-political centers backed by centralized bureaucracies and a specialized division of labor. Post-modernism is characterized by a political de-centering, as diverse occupational, political and sectorial formations become entwined. In modern society mobilization is largely in terms of the construction of the socio-political center and access to it as a vehicle for participating in economic progress. In post-modern society political mobilization is animated less by economics than by access to a fuller range of social, cultural and spatial arenas of participation. Eisenstadt considers the reasons for the shift to post-modern sensibilities. He believes that the extension of universal education and the mass media have fostered cultural egalitarianism and pluralism which in turn encourage people to resist traditional distinctions of what is rational, reasonable and worthwhile. The displacement of the liberal market model with a blend of welfare state and Keynesian models, combined with egalitarian sensibilities, has also fostered de-centralization and pluralism in politics. Unlike Touraine, and other social theorists including Daniel Bell and Jürgen Habermas, Eisenstadt does not see the post-modern trend as implying a "dangerous" disjuncture between culture and social structure. Rather, he sees what Touraine advocates, namely the transformation and re-articulation of the relations among social structure, culture and political activity, leading to new types of association that respect different mentalities and sensibilities. Eisenstadt reserves his advocacy for sociology, which must revise the assumptions of its basic concepts, which are derived from modern society, in order to make them more attuned to post-modern trends. Gemot Böhme's project is precisely what Eisenstadt advocates. Böhme's essay represents a preliminary attempt to reconceptualize some of the basic tenets and classifications of sociology. He focuses in particular on the way technology has been traditionally conceived in modernism in means-ends terms, as cause or object, and urges that instead we focus on the "technologizing" of society: how technology is itself constitutive of social structure, social action and social norms. To this end Böhme suggests that we think of technology not as an instrument of competency or process, but as materially or intellectually appropriated nature or society. Technology is not so much a means to an end as a form of praxis, used as much in the bridging of identities as in the bridging of rivers. Moreover, it is not the individual technical object that is socially relevant but the "techno-structure". Using the example of the elaborate infrastructure of the automobile, Böhme indicates that the individual technical object is only what it is by virtue of being connected to a larger complex network.

26

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

Böhme argues that techno-structures animate the social body, and determine the life of individuals, who must connect with them as consumers in order to enjoy full social participation. Technology creates new possibilities for human behavior, behavior which in itself is technically patterned and/or whose form is dictated by techno-structures. For example, there is the trend of communication technologies being used to foster social action that is impersonal and not face-to-face. There are new forms of system integration (inclusion and exclusion) based on the ability to be a part of information networks and thereby access information. Thus integration is based less on property and work and more on the ability to connect to "terminals" of social networks to give off and receive information. A related point is that there are new forms of social solidarity, for example as provided through the mass media. In combination the techno-structures constitute the knowledge society as a society that is highly organized to know itself. This is also a "registration society" that routinizes surveillance, or the production of knowledge about populations for their supervision and control. Techno-structures effect new modes of exclusion. They make a lot of things and people socially irrelevant. This effect of techno-structures is a source of great social anxiety, and can be seen as a core contributor to the negativism expressed by post-modernists. However, Böhme suggests that this predicament can be converted to a positive source of hope and liberation. There is emancipation in fragmentation. William Leiss reminds us of Francis Bacon's faith in experimental science and technological innovation as a means of overcoming the "idols" or false notion or ideologies that stand in the way of progress. Bacon believed that science and technology would overcome the idols of the tribe (inherent limitations of the human mind and senses), the cave (forms of culture and education that frame understanding, create "blinders", and form prejudices), the marketplace (limitations of language, especially as it is used to understand moral situations) and the theater (false notions perpetuated by great systems of thought). Leiss observes that while Bacon's vision for science and technology has in many respects been realized beyond his wildest imagination, there have arisen new idols of science and technology. The new idol of the tribe is scientism, an arrogant belief in the superiority of science and technology as the way of knowing compared to all other ways of interpreting the human experience of the surrounding world. The new idol of the cave is the belief that every breakthrough in science and technology is a triumph for humanity in general, thereby dissociating the techniques themselves from their various influences on specific institutional contexts. The new idol of the marketplace is the belief that science and technology mark a qualitative break with all previous human history, rendering us immune to the "superstitions" that ruled other civilizations. The new idol of the theater involves deference to an assumed determinism of science and technology, which leads people to think that they must bring their values and

Introduction

27

institutions to shape and alter technologies. In an appendix to his paper, Leiss shows that these four new idols of science and technology are exemplified in contemporary perceptions of environmental risks. Leiss argues that the four new idols combine to give people a sense that they are subject to scientific and technological forces beyond their control. In any case people are willing to acquiesce to these forces because they feel they benefit so much from technological progress. Leiss argues that while science and technology weigh heavily, they are not institutionally pre-determined and must be guided by enduring values. Many technological nightmares stem from human choices and the human penchant for lack of self-control. One problem is that current controls are largely internal to science and technology, rather than being based on what Bacon expressed as "sound reason and true religion". Moreover, existing checks, as exemplified in risk analysis and management, are very limited in their capacity to address synergistic effects, and wider economic, social and political divides across nation-states which often accelerate problems. Leiss counsels that people should not expect things that science and technology are incapable of delivering, especially certainty. Instead people should use their social and political institutions to respond to the threat of global environmental degradation, including as part of the effort a set of reasonable expectations about what science and technology can contribute. Leiss warns against the scapegoating of science and technology in the face of environmental problems. Consistent with Touraine, he urges a blend of enduring human reason and values, combined with keen scientific judgments and ingenious uses of technology, as the basis for pulling back from irremediable environmental problems. Science and technology cannot harmonize human interests, but human mentalities and sensibilities can harmonize the use of science and technology for safer control of the environment.

A Critical View of Modernity Alain Touraine

I. We cannot discuss modernity in general without referring ourselves explicitly to the concrete historical tradition of Western Europe and of its areas of cultural influence during the last centuries. I am not suggesting that this tradition is the only possible or real one; I just want to give a precise and coherent meaning to a notion which is too loosely used. Modernity in the Western tradition has been defined by the progressive triumph of reason over traditions, of scientific or technological action over systems of social and cultural control, of universalism over particularism and of production over reproduction. Modernity has always defined itself by its conflict with what it considers as irrationality, from customs to privileges, from all forms of ascription to religion. Modernity has never been considered just as a set of material transformations, or the result of a growing social density; it has always been associated, from the Renaissance and the Reformation to the Enlightenment and to Positivism and Scientism, with an active fight of agents of progress against obstacles to necessary changes. Modernity is the historicist expression of "objective reason". Instead of contemplating a rational world, created by a logos and adjusting himself to its laws, modern man creates a new world and a new image of man which is defined by the creative power he conquers when he understands the laws of nature and uses them to strengthen his control on natural forces. Politically, modernity means identification of voluntary action with natural laws of history. The Marxist tradition is the most influential school of modern politics. When Marx or Lukács refer to class consciousness, they never describe a class subjectivity, as we spontaneously do, they name social actors which are, at the same time, agents of realization of a necessary historical development. This identification of social movements with objective transformations leads Lukács

30

Alain Touraine

to consider the liberation of the working class and the economic modernization as parallel and almost synonymous processes of change. Finally this "classical" image of modernity means, for private life, liberation from repressive norms, tolerance, respect of minorities and a positive view of pleasure, success, self interest and sex. This dynamic view of modernity, which led Schumpeter to define capitalism as creative destruction and many writers to praise the permanent revolution which is introduced by progress, could very well eliminate all references to social order. This view could lead to an image of social life as a flow of permanent changes, although such a view leads to contradictions and to the impossibility of understanding systems of social regulations, laws and education in particular. It must be completed by a representation of social order. This problem is so central that the answer to it has been offered very early, actually much before the period of rapid economic transformation which began in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries in England and the Netherlands. Social norms can no longer be derived from the conformity of behavior to God's will, to the Father's words; they must be defined by reference to social utility, by the functionality of institutions and behavior. Functionalism, as a school of social thought, is an essential element of the general concept of modernity. It was introduced by Machiavelli and became the central principle of classical political philosophy, from Hobbes and Rousseau to Durkheim and Parsons. The classical view of modernity as progress has been transformed into the central ideology of the new "republican" or "liberal" elites of secularized Europe and the Americas. It has constantly been at the same time a "revolutionary" instrument of destruction of "Ancient Regimes" and an ideological way of submitting traditional or irrational categories - especially workers, colonized people, women and children - to the rule of an enlightened male bourgeois western elite.

II. The main weakness of this ideology of modernity is the direct counterpart of its strength. It is a critical, "negative", and destructive or revolutionary view. In consequence, as the "traditional" world disappears and the universe of achievement grows at the expense of the universe of ascription, modernity becomes less active and finally aimless. During a short period of time, rationalization became a central principle of social action. This period corresponded to the first phase of industrial society, when industry was limited to the production of new machines and other capital goods, mainly railways and arms. During a short century, society appeared to be a

A Critical View of Modernity

31

large workshop and Britain was supposed to manufacture goods for the rest of the world. A small part of Western Europe and of North America appeared to be entirely dominated by this ideal of rationalization, in military and administrative activities and in economic life. But from the end of the XlXth Century, even in "puritan" countries, this situation rapidly changed when consumption patterns began to be transformed. Here Europe clearly lagged behind the United States, but after the Second World War, thanks to a long period of steady growth in Europe, North America, the Far East, and Latin America, with the more and more deviant exception of communist countries, a production-oriented industrial society was transformed into a mass consumption society. Rationality stopped being a definition of goals, a central principle of social life; it was reduced to mere instrumentality and subordinated to demands as they are expressed on the market. This basic transformation has not been easily accepted by social scientists. While managers easily learned to subordinate methods of production to consumer demands, after the victory of Alfred Sloan, builder of General Motors, over Henry Ford; who maintained the old "engineer's" view of automobile industry, social scientists and social philosophers often reacted negatively to this subordination of industrial production to demand. They considered it as a decline of rationality and the triumph of irrationality and especially of conspicuous consumption and cheap eroticism. Horkheimer's nostalgia of objective rationality and his rejection of subjective and instrumental rationality which became so influential in western countries during the 60's and the 70's, helps us to understand that the concept of rationalization should be considered as one of the last images of a rational word created by a logos and which identifies human nature with nature in general, with universal laws of reason. It substituted a monism for the Christian dualist tradition. The most influential school of thought, from the second half of the XlXth Century, rejected a modernity which was identified with mass consumption and mass politics, looking backward to Greek or Hebraic myths to rescue the principle of rational thought. From Nietzsche and Freud to surrealists and to last generation structuralists, rationalism developed itself beyond superficial scientism or positivism, through efforts to discover human nature's biological or linguistic laws. While the historicist period, from Hegel to Marx, had been dominated by the idea of the development of the subject through history, its dialectic and its contradictions, the "post-modern" thinkers, and especially Nietzsche and Freud so near each other, gave a high priority to the elimination of the subject as a dangerous illusion, as the instrument of repression of natural drives by agencies of social control and socialization. Subjectivation, said M. Foucault, is nothing but the transformation of human beings into "subjects" of society. Subjectivation is the subordination of individuals to social utility. This criticism is devastating because it reveals a deep contradiction between creativity and social integration which were considered as complementary by the Enlightenment and philosophies of progress, from Condorcet to Marx.

32

Alain Touraine

It would obviously be a mistake to consider these anti-modernist views as anti-rationalist; on the contrary, they are hyperrationalist, as the example of Horkheimer clearly shows. The movement back to the Greek or to the Jewish tradition corresponds to the inevitable separation of references to rationality form references to subjectivity. While the study of social behavior gives a central importance to subjectivity, from economic demands to social movements, philosophers and anthropologists eliminate the subject, criticize subjectivation as subordination to a utilitarian, and even more to an authoritarian, society. Political philosophers, following H. Arendt, breaking with functionalism, separate political order from representation of social interest and democracy from progress.

III.

Sociology developed itself on the ruins of philosophies of history, when system and actors clearly appeared not to correspond to each other. Literature preceded by far sociology in that discovery. At the end of the XlXth Century, the world of subjectivity became anti-rational, from Baudelaire to Rimbaud and from Proust to Joyce, and often merged with social movements. Too often sociology tried to come back to a lost unity between system and actor. It was the central preoccupation of Durkheim, and even more, during the short-lived movement back to an optimistic and a non-critical view of modernity, of T. Parsons, but sociological studies have constantly followed an opposite trend, emphasizing the absence of correspondence between institutions and motivations and the limits of social control and socialization. Modern thought is dualist again, after two short centuries - XVIIIth and XlXth- of triumphant monism and of identification of modernity with rationality. This rupture is more easily understood if we go beyond social science debates and consider the XXth Century history itself. The XlXth Century identification of economic progress and social liberation has been strongly challenged by the XXth. We all agree that technological and scientific progress increases abundance, profits, military power and communication, but on the other side, we observe that all social actors whose subjectivity has been crushed by rationalization, from industrial workers to colonized nations and from women to children, reject a social domination which tries to legitimize itself by its modernity. The distance between system and actors has become so wide that the world of production and communication appears to be entirely separated from "private life", as it is expressed in particular by youth culture. Our society is divided between computers and sex. D. Bell rightly says that the logics of production and

A Critical View of Modernity

33

consumption are opposed to each other. Sartre tried to combine in a post-Marxist way subjectivity and social determinism in the rather obscure concept of "situation", which led him to accept, after Lukács, the liberation. But this strange attitude, proclaimed at the very time of the publication of the Kruschev report, was rejected both by "humanists" and by "gauchists". This last group drew radical conclusions from the absence of correspondence between system and actors. It rejected all reference to the subject and even more to consciousness, considering them as "false consciousness", that is as "effects of the system", and substituted Es for Ich, coming back to a radical Nietzschean and Freudian view, opposing social rules to libido. During the 70's, structuralist philosophers attacked all figures of the subject, digging a ditch which could not be crossed between meaning and consciousness. Beyond a permanent critique of all-powerful systems of domination and manipulation, the individual can only find creativity in arts. Michel Foucault, during the central part of his intellectual career, was the most influential exponent of these anti-subject crusades, when he reminded us that the progress of subjectivation through Christianity and the growing reference to subjectivity in modern times means the transformation of human beings into subjects of a more and more impersonal Prince. Far from this anti-subjective cultural philosophy, antirationalist, culturalist political movements have appeared everywhere. Totalitarian regimes, - Nazi, communist or nationalist - , repeatedly proclaimed their intention to create a new man, to defend or recreate collective identities and to invent specific different types of modernization. The concept of development was criticized and many ideologists entirely reject the idea of modernity, emphasizing the complete differences among processes of transformation, beyond the fact that they all use the same technologies. This complete separation had been announced by Weber: the triumph of instrumental rationality is linked with an insuperable war of the Gods. Sociology disappears: if the correspondence between norms and motivation, which was a central principle of classical sociology, appears to be a naively conservative presupposition, the complete separation between society and actors destroys the very existence of sociology.

IV. For many people it seems appropriate in such a situation to abandon the idea of modernity. Hyper-modernists, an accelerated avant-garde, easily transformed themselves into post-modernity. This notion does not intend to define a new era; it is only the acknowledgment of the decomposition of modernity. More concretely, this notion manifests many intellectuals' feeling that their traditional

34

Alain Touraine

role has disappeared. They constantly defended repressed, silent or exploited categories against all kinds o f power, not because they were better or more creative, but because they represented, even unconsciously, progress, that is the natural development of modernity against private interests and irrational privileges. Industrial workers are not more liberal than entrepreneurs but they were supposed to represent productive forces against capitalist power. In the same way, colonization was attacked as destructive and irrational and this political criticism referred more directly to rationalist arguments than to culturalist views. Today, the situation on which intellectuals' influence was based has disappeared. Actors are more than agents of impersonal processes; they speak for themselves, they defend their interests, their culture, including their prejudices or their aggressive trends. It becomes impossible to identify oppressed categories with reason or to consider them as God's children, because when they reach power, they usually build authoritarian regimes. It is not impossible to defend freedom and terror at the same time; we can understand that terror sometimes appears to be a necessary instrument to save a democracy which is threatened by foreign invaders or internal enemies, but we know too well that terror is generally transformed into a permanent form of government. T h e modernist ideology disappears; few social scientists still think that abundance, democracy and personal happiness progress together or that it is necessary to accept the fate of a sacrificed generation to build a bright future for everybody. On the contrary, modernity is more and more identified with impersonal market forces or with military power, while subjectivity seems to be linked with antimodernist defense of a threatened individual or collective identity. On one side, democracy is limited to free circulation of goods, human beings or ideas; on the other side, it is identified with independence. The two definitions are entirely alien to each other, as much as the poor men's and rich men's worlds are separated at the international level and within each country. The intellectual result o f this extreme dualization is that nobody can grasp what modernity is. Liberals too easily forget that a vast majority does not participate in the market and that populist, fundamentalist and aggressive political forces dominate most of the world while market economies are unable to stop the growth of poverty or marginality; neo-communitarian movements subordinate human behavior to a so-called tradition o f system o f values which has no historical reality and is used mainly as rationalization o f a despotic power. Between market and culture, between impersonality o f the new religious rules, there is no room for social actors, no integration of rationality, social goals and convictions. The postKantian and Weberian view o f the absolute separation between ethics o f conviction and ethics of responsibility, between charisma and rationalization, has reached its most destructive consequences.

35

A Critical View of Modernity

V. This decomposition o f the classical concept o f modernity leaves us in a dangerous situation. W e must choose among equally unsatisfactory solutions. A

purely

o b j e c t i v e v i e w o f modernity is easily reduced to the growth o f large organizations and the exaltation o f p o w e r and abundance. A n opposite, subjective v i e w

of

modernity is too easily transformed into conformity to community rules and repression

of

individual

demands.

The

elimination

of

the subject and

the

liberation o f emotions leads either to aggressivity or to the triumph of uncontrolled

market

processes

where

the lowest

forms

of

individualism

destroy

sublimated values. Finally post-modernism is a negative definition o f a culture which is unable to defend itself against the previously mentioned forces and which expresses the crisis of intellectuals themselves more than new

value

orientations. For this reason, it seems advisable, instead o f abandoning completely the idea o f modernity, to revise it and especially to criticize its exclusive identification with rationality. T h e idea that the process o f modernization can be reduced to the passage f r o m a society to a secular f o r m , f r o m religion to reason and f r o m ascription to achievement, cannot easily be accepted and is not much more than a specific i d e o l o g y which has probably never prevailed, except in some limited intellectual circles, like the Encyclopedists. Modernity was first o f all related to Christianity, at least in the western world, that is to the separation o f spiritual and temporal power, to the conflict between the Emperor and the Pope. A n d it triumphed with dualist v i e w s o f man, among which the most influential one was Descartes, with his idea o f the t w o substances, o f the double nature o f man w h o is part o f nature and able to understand it with his reason, but, at the same time, has been created by G o d at His o w n image, that is as a f r e e and responsible being. W h i l e modernity was identified with reason by the ideologists o f absolutism monarchical or republican - history shows the parallel development o f Renaissance and Reformation,

that is o f

rationalization

on

the one

side and

of

subjectivation on the other, as conflicting more than complementary tendencies; and, after a long century o f religious war, the g r o w i n g influence o f natural law theories, f r o m Grotius to Pufendorf, and more concretely to the A m e r i c a n and French Declarations o f Rights. Thus modernity is not the passage f r o m religion to reason but the rupture o f c o s m o l o g i e s which identified natural laws with G o d ' s intentions and merged Greek philosophy with H e b r e w or Christian revelations. Entering modernity eliminating

finalism.

means separating, disconnecting

nature and

subjectivity,

T h e degree o f modernity must be measured not by the

degree o f secularization but by the degree of separation and combination between t w o complementary and conflicting processes; rationalization and subjectivation.

36

Alain Touraine

The XVIIIth Century materialism and XIXth Century philosophy of history were not the destruction of Christianity and traditional societies but the destruction of this dualist image of society. They destroyed the very core of modernity and reduced it to a purely destructive liberation from ascribed statuses or privileges and traditional values. The result, which has been so clearly analyzed by the Frankfurt School, is that they identified modernity with instrumental reason and created a total rupture between homo oeconomicus and homo culturalis, and at the same time between a ruling elite and all oppressed and exploited categories, which constantly opposed to conquering rationalism the defense of their own culture and identity.

VI. But what is the relationship between rationalization and subjectivation, between the negative, critical continent of modernity and its "positive" reference to the subject and its freedom? The answer is not a philosophical but a sociological one. Rationalization is synonymous with achievement and is a common goal for all actors of a modern society. But while the identification of modernity with rationality corresponds to ruling elites, interests and ideologies, to all kinds of enlightened despotism, the defense of personal freedom always corresponds to the interests and orientations of dominated groups or individuals. In short, the subject is a social movement, is the central principle of dominated groups' social movements. Between the complete identification of modernity with rationality, on one side, and on the other side, communitarian movements of Lebensphilosophie, there is a social - instead of cultural - conflict between rationalization and subjectivation. Its main subjective expressions have been then conflict between absolute monarchies and bourgeois individualism in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, the conflict between managers' rationalization methods and the defense of workers' individual and collective autonomy, and, more recently, the defense of individual personality in front of technologically modernized cultural industries like medical care, education or mass media.

A Critical V i e w of Modernity

37

VII. This social conflict can be transformed into a cultural contradiction not only if some social actors - in general, power-holders - identify themselves completely with rationality, as F.W. Taylor did in the last century, but, in an opposite way, if social actors reject rationality and are interested only in their cultural specificity and difference. All social actors must refer both to rationality, to their own freedom and to their cultural identity. To resist enlightened despotism - of the communist type, for example - actors must not only defend their own freedom of choice, but their own cultural - in particular ethnic or religious - identity. There is no stable synthesis between the two faces of the subject: the liberal and the communitarian ones, the references to personal freedom and to collective rules. The subject is permanently swinging between critical attitudes and positive commitments, between a negative Sartrian I and a positive we. In central countries, the couple rationalization-freedom tends to be predominating but it is threatened by a utilitarian individualism which tends to destroy subjectivation because, as specialists of marketing well know, individual choices can be easily transformed into highly predictable behavior which are determined by social statuses of personality structure. In peripheral countries and in under-privileged groups in rich countries, communitarian movements are more influential, even when they defend - as most Islamic groups do - pro-modern or at least pro-industrialization orientations. In all cases, the degree of modernity can be defined by the capacity of a given individual or group to combine instrumental rationality with cultural specificity. If we look back to European definitions of the Nation, especially in the XVIIIth and XlXth Centuries, we observe that the too-often mentioned opposition between the French and the German definitions, between the decision to live together and the community of destiny, between the French Revolution or Renan, on one side, and Herder, on the other, is artificial and even misleading. While French authors defend a universalistic view of modernity, they identify it with their own nation and with its history, as it is especially visible in Michelet's writings and in Renan himself, while Herder, as heir of Lutheranism and Enlightenment, never separated Volksgeist from an analysis of modernization. Both the German and the French concepts of nation were modern because they integrated universalism and particularism. Western liberal conservatives like to identify the West with universalism and third-world countries with particularism, an opposition which was formulated in a systematic way by T. Parsons' pattern variables. Such statements are purely ideological and very far from historical reality and observable behavior. XlXth Century British or French and XXth Century American nationalism were and are strongly particularistic, and there is no reason to consider that the influence of Buddhism or Confucianism is only

38

Alain Touraine

particularistic. Modernity can be measured by the capacity to understand different people's universalistic orientations, to perceive truth and authenticity in others' words and behavior, as Habermas so convincingly says.

VIII. The historicist view of modernity, the identification of rationalization, achievement and individualism, has lost its self-confidence. The decline or disintegration of voluntaristic regimes and ideologies cannot revive it, no more than did the so-called general crisis of capitalism and imperialism demonstrate the identification of revolutionary regimes with personal freedom. One century ago, many people believed in the identification between economic growth and personal freedom and they called it progress. Nowadays, if a growing number of people all over the world trust market economy and non-authoritarian democratic regimes and cultural tolerance, very few identify this liberal consumption-oriented view with the idea of progress. They rather defend it because it is an obstacle to authoritarian or totalitarian power. It is true that the direct transformation of individual demands into market economy and its isolation from convictions, creeds or even representations, is probably the most widely accepted view of modernity itself, especially now that the "weak" systems have proved stronger than stiff authoritarian regimes. But this is a partial view of this type of society: it forgets the existence of a high rate of social disorganization and of a large proportion of marginal people. On the contrary, we must recognize that manipulation, exclusion, repressive integration and direct repression are as essential in defining this agnostic liberalism as free market, mass communication and negative liberty. We should, on the contrary, consider as more modern the social systems which recognize better the complementary and conflicting relationship between rationalization and subjectivation. At the end of the XlXth Century, we rightly called "progressive" the first steps toward industrial democracy and Welfare State. Why should we not defend similar views today and consider as modern all forms of combination between economic efficiency and human rights, of universalistic values and specific experiences and cultural traditions, to avoid the dangerous rupture between hegemonic economic and political elites and identity-oriented dominated groups?

The Techno-structures of Society Gernot Böhme1 When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering. (Hegel, 1986:xxx)

I. Introduction According to this famous quotation from Hegel, philosophy arrives late on the scene. I ask myself whether sociology does not come even later, perhaps too late. If the desideratum of a sociology of technology was first voiced in 1982 (cf. Jokisch, 1982) and sociological research on technology has only recently been established, then sociology really is too late. Of course, in a certain respect there has been a sociology of technology for a long time, at least since Marx in the traditional sense of "Technology and Social Change". Traditionally, technology has been viewed as a cause or as an independent variable with social change as the consequence. Or alternatively, technology has been studied by making the practitioners of technology, i.e. the engineers, their social behavior and their social role the object of investigation (cf. Hortleder, 1973, 1974). But regardless of whether technology was viewed as a cause or as an object, as a sociologist one did not deal with technology directly and did not allow technology to intrude upon sociology. Although this might be due to a lack of expertise on the part of sociologists, it is more likely due to a deep-seated aversion to acquiring the necessary expertise. A general contempt for the narrow-mindedness of the technical arts is certainly still at work here. In sociological circles matters pertaining to technology are an affront to good taste. They are as out of place and as scandalous as a locomotive once was in the middle of a landscape painting or a telephone in lyric poetry. But technology has made inroads into sociology, perhaps even undermined it. Technology has penetrated the social structure, the forms of social action and normative expectations. More to the point, technology has itself become a social structure, a form of social action and a part of the norms of action (Deutsches Institut für Normung, 1984). It is no longer a question of technology as cause or object but a question of the technological forms of social life. To be more precise, it is a matter of comprehending the progressive technologizing of social reality and its attendant problems. Although sociology must make up for lost time in its relation to technology and

40

Gemot Böhme

is having difficulty catching up with its object of inquiry, social reality, public demand is coming to its assistance. Here I have in mind generous financial support by governmental and social forces, which have high hopes that social research on technology will find ways of alleviating the strains involved in the transition to a super-technological phase. The reduction of these tensions is all the more urgent as this new revolution is not sustained by any emancipatory hopes. Indeed, a rather conservative rhetoric of "protection", "security" and "preservation" is being used to justify it. In this situation, a sociology that wants to remain independent would hardly be well-advised to surpass this rhetoric by searching for the characteristically human element in pre-technical life worlds. To state what is actually the case is often criticism enough. Social theory understood as a theory of social reality, should offer direction by helping us to achieve an understanding of man's social nature in technological civilization.

II. Technology as the Self-preservation of Society First of all, we must construct a sociological concept of technology. It has been pointed out that this means bringing "things" back into sociology (Linde, 1982). The notions of technology as capability, as procedure or as competence have been familiar in sociology for a long time. As opposed to Ellul's view that every methodological procedure assessed for efficiency is a case of technology (Ellul, 1954), what interests me is comprehending the significance of technical objects for civilization. Otherwise, one can only understand the technicalization in which we find ourselves as the continuing expansion of the means-end rationality Max Weber found to be characteristic of western culture. The social significance of the technical apparatus, however, lies deeper. In the end automatic manufacture is not really a more efficient kind of work, just as talking on the telephone is not really a conversation. Just as we have had to realize in the natural sciences that after 200 years of development the thermometer is not a means of improving the perception of warmth because what counted as experience was changed by its invention, so we must equally realize in the social sciences that after technologizing social structures and social action have not merely become more efficient but something else altogether. An analogy with man's relation to nature may serve as our starting point. Technical reality can here be defined as materially appropriated nature. The material appropriation of nature does not just mean that one simply uses nature's forces and materials. We do that with each breath. The material appropriation of nature, however, presupposes isolation, purification and separation; by the same token it partly checks the spontaneity of nature and implies the arrangement of nature into socially determined functions. I might mention here

The Techno-structures of Society

41

that the spontaneity of nature is thus forced into latency, so that it only manifests itself in deviation, e.g. in rust (cf. Böhme, 1976; Böhme and van den Daele, 1977). Technical reality can thus be defined as socially appropriated nature. However, it would be wrong to stop here. The more abstract concept of "material appropriation" can be applied to society as well. Accordingly, the other half of technology would consist in the material self-appropriation of society (Böhme, 1984a). What does this mean? Well, the state has sometimes been defined as the self-appropriation of society (cf. Burdeau, 1964:120). This definition is not meant to apply to any form of the state but only to the modern state, that is, the state with statistics or the state as a bureaucratic apparatus. Self-appropriation of society means that society becomes an object to itself. This implies not only a certain type of social organization but also that explicit knowledge of society exists, e.g. social science. In order to elaborate this point we must refer once more to the analogy of technology as appropriated nature. About the time of Marx, i.e. in the first half of the 19th century, it became necessary to distinguish between tools and machines and correspondingly between handicraft and technology. As is well known, among other classifications Marx characterized the machine as frozen natural science (cf. Marx, n.d.xh. 13). He thus singled out an aspect of technology which was not really central in his time but is characteristic for modern technology, namely its scientification. To be sure, technology today is still the material appropriation of nature, that is, it is based on the production of pure substances, the isolation of environmental factors and on the separation of forces. But this material appropriation of nature is guided by scientific appropriation on the one hand, while on the other the domination of nature is effected in the technical apparatus on the basis of explicit knowledge. That is to say, it is not "manipulation" (in the original sense of the term) but "regulation". The domination of nature by means of modern technical apparatus rests therefore on the fact that one knows explicitly which laws govern the processes in the apparatus. I say "one", and not the "user", because this knowledge of the internal processes of an apparatus can itself be objectified and built into the apparatus as a control mechanism - so that the user does not regulate himself but only enters signals for the built-in control mechanism. Handicraft or traditional technology has always required of man some accommodation to nature, namely physically intuitive capacities, abilities, or skills, whereas modern technology requires scientific knowledge. What is the significance of this interlinking of material and intellectual appropriation in the technicalization of society? The intellectual appropriation of society persists in the social science which grew out of the close relationship between the state and statistics and has been developed along the lines of August Comte's notion of a physics of society. It is a sociology which aims to make society available and controllable through data. This presupposes a material appropriation just as it

42

Gemot Böhme

does in the natural sciences. In the terms of our analogy, it means the preparation of pure substances, the isolation, the separation, and the control of boundary conditions. In order for society to be controllable through knowledge, it must itself be organized in terms of knowledge: social processes must be differentiated according to function and arranged according to models, and social actors must be disciplined in a way which makes their behavior amenable to data collection or makes their social role and activities relevant only insofar as they produce data. We have thus obtained a concept of technology, which first of all encompasses both nature and society and secondly makes reference to "things", not competency and processes. We are dealing with technology whenever we are concerned with materially or intellectually appropriated nature or society. One can then speak of modern technology or society when knowledge of the functioning of the apparatus or the society is in turn itself objectified and available as a programme. The original census project in the Federal Republic of Germany was a large scale project along these lines. It was not supposed to be a counting strictly speaking, that is, an aggregating of individuals to wholes, but rather a one-to-one mapping of the population onto data for purposes of simulation and control. However, this intended duplication of society onto data bases takes place even without a census. Thus construed, social science's concept of technology results in conceptualizing society as a machine, as Lewis Mumford attempted with the concept of the megamachine in his study of Egyptian society in the age of the pyramids (Mumford, 1977). Thus, if one wants to characterize modern society from this perspective as a knowledge society it is necessary to stress that it is not a matter of knowledge about how society may be in itself, but of knowledge of a society which is already organized with respect to its knowability.

III. The Technical Object and the Techno-structure We need to take a new approach. The first approach was concerned to bring things back into sociology. This entailed developing a notion of technology which was not just another version of means-end rational action but one which made reference to technical structures. Now I want to explain why it is not the technical object itself that is relevant from the sociological perspective but the technostructure. I use the expression "techno-structure" (Böhme and Stehr, 1986) instead of "technical systems" on the one hand to call attention to the fact that the technical structure of something else could be at issue, e.g. of nature or of society, and on the other because the concept of system is narrower in that it denotes a structure for which a unifying principle, boundaries, etc. must be given. In stressing that it is not the individual technical object that is socially relevant but

The Techno-structures of Society

43

the techno-structure, I want to call special attention to two points. Firstly, the individual technical object is usually only what it is in virtue of being connected to a larger network. Secondly, technology today is no longer simply a means to an end but must be regarded as a form of praxis. There are, of course, individual technical objects, which can be employed in spatial isolation from other technical objects. A wrist watch seems to be an object of this kind, whereas a telephone is apparently a different kind of thing because it only makes sense if it is connected to a network. However, upon closer examination it becomes apparent that many ostensibly isolated technical devices make sense and do what they are supposed to do only if they are situated within a network or are employed within the context of a larger structure. For example, a car, viewed as a technical object, is only really efficient in the context of a system of streets, petrol stations, garages, insurance schemes, codes of laws, etc.. Without this whole fabric or structure a car is like a fish out of water; it cannot survive very long. The difference between a car and a telephone diminishes even further when we consider the automobile leasing system or the practices of certain business machine manufacturers, who never actually sell their machines but only rent them. The individual apparatus is becoming more and more simply a connection to a network. This network itself can be material but it is usually not only material, implying a network-like organization of society in accordance with particular technical functions. In this case, therefore, it would be wrong to speak of technology (in the narrow sense) and of its social consequences for two reasons. First of all, in our first approach we opened up the possibility of understanding the processes of society's self-organization into specific functions as technicalization. And secondly, when the techno-structures of society are in place, they certainly can be used for much more than simply as terminals of a particular kind or generation. Nevertheless, it is useful to point out that particular technologies, production technologies for example, are necessarily important in order to counteract the illusion that a change in the conditions of production is actually possible while retaining the same means of production, or the illusion that the export of technologies into Third World countries will leave the indigenous social organization unchanged. Such techno-structures are naturally very diverse, hard to pin down and difficult to demarcate. They pervade the body of society like a fungus. However, since our society is a society in technological civilization it would be completely inadequate merely to investigate it simply in terms of class, social strata, associations or in terms of state, market and family. Today the life of the social body is largely determined by these techno-structures and the life of the individual is determined by his potential to connect up and thus be a customer. In justification of the concept of the techno-structure I pointed out above that the social significance of technology cannot be adequately apprehended if technical objects are only understood as means. Certainly, there is a use of technical objects purely as means but this use is no longer characteristic of

44

Gemot Böhme

advanced technical civilization. The conception of the technical object as a means harks back to examples like "I eat with a fork". It would certainly be possible to get food into one's mouth by other means but one usually eats with a fork. However, when we examine even such an obvious and trivial example we discover that especially from the sociological point of view a fork does not simply represent a means to effect purposive action. In the case of eating it becomes evident that the use of the means is itself an end, namely that of the distancing and stylization which occurs in the process of civilization (Böhme, 1984b). Thus, even this example, which was introduced in order to illustrate the means character of technical objects, already demonstrates that these technical objects effect a change in the pattern of social behavior itself. To believe that social relations or social behavior exist as such and that one can then simply employ technological means in their performance is to underestimate the social import of technology considerably. Some human behavior owes its very possibility to the existence of technology. Although there are pre-technical counterparts to such behavior in most cases, we would not understand the first thing about the reality of our technical life world if we considered calling someone on the telephone mediated conversation, driving a car accelerated walking or taking a photograph a more precise way of painting. Certainly we can understand this change of patterns in some cases by viewing technology as a type of institution (Ulrich, 1979), that is, as the permanent instalment and normative regulation of particular patterns of behavior, or by claiming a transition from normative ethical practice to purposive-rational behavior (Habermas, 1968). However, in general we have to address the fact that it is a matter of behavior which in itself is technically patterned or whose form is dictated by a technostructure.

IV. Technical Socialization and Release Having introduced these concepts, I would like to venture several theses on what society in technological civilization is or can become. We should, however, keep in mind that not everything that happens to a person - what he or she does and what affects him or her - is a matter of society. The thesis "everything is social" sounds radical but is actually without real substance. Social life assumes its contours precisely by excluding some things from the realm of social relevance. That was certainly the case among the Greeks, who sharply distinguished the different degrees of citizenship from the status of the private man. Historically the lines of division have varied considerably. As we know bourgeois society created the private sphere through the creation of the public sphere, e.g. the private sphere

The Techno-structures of Society

45

of the family. This did not mean that the family as such was not part of the social realm but that it was only socially relevant en bloc, or as represented by the head of family. The internal events in the family were socially irrelevant. Similarly we should expect that in determining new forms of social life techno-structures will also create a new polarity of social attraction and repulsion, i.e. socially integrating some aspects of human life, while releasing others. 1. A fundamental question for every society is what creates its unity and sustains its coherence. Durkheim called this organizing principle "solidarity" and distinguished a mechanical and an organic form. In the mechanical form of solidarity men are formed into a social whole by a common religion or by common values. In the organic form of solidarity a division of labor fulfils this function, in that the multiplicity of occupations supplement one another in such a way that socially they form a whole, a complete worker, as it were. These two forms of solidarity correspond approximately to the distinction between traditional and modern social formation. What I now want to claim is that techno-structures are beginning to assume the function of social integration. In particular I am thinking of the networks of supply and waste disposal, but also of the so-called mass communication media, which in a certain sense provide an equivalent for mechanical solidarity. Whereas in traditional societies the common culture and in modern societies the market mediated co-operation of individual manufacturers produced the appearance of a unified society, together a technical integration of the social formation is developing alongside of and in competition with these older forms through the vast, network mediated interdependence of all activities. Recently Habermas has attempted to formulate empirically what is happening here by means of the pair of concepts "system" and "life world" (Habermas, [1981] 1984). Although he initially introduced this distinction as one of perspective (outsider perspective vs. participant perspective) (Habermas, 1984:179), this distinction appears later as competing forms of integration: system integration versus social integration (Habermas, [1981] 1984:275). Even though the contemporary social formation is the subject of Habermas's discussion there is only a passing mention of technology (Habermas, [1981] 1984:274). Had it been otherwise I think it would become evident that system integration is increasingly a technical integration, in which the long-established modern media of money and power are being replaced by the medium of information. What Habermas calls social integration, namely linguistically mediated co-ordination of action, strictly construed, does not integrate society as a whole. For this sort of integration encompasses the whole of society at most through the telecommunication networks while the integration of the life world always remains a local matter. Hence we are not dealing with two competing forms of integration here but only with the technically-mediated system integration, which clearly also presents itself from the participant perspective, the perspective of the user. On the other

46

Gemot Böhme

side, we have the realm of everyday communication in the life world which in the face of system integration is increasingly being forced into a position of social irrelevance. Naturally, whatever is marginalized is potentially disruptive or at least subversive. 2 However, this is not a case of competition between forms of integration but rather a matter of a dialectical correspondence, like that between bureaucracy and corruption. 2. Our second question, a complement of the first, concerns the form in which the social existence or non-existence of the individual, his or her membership or non-membership in society is determined. The question is: what possibilities or characteristics must an individual possess in order to participate in the life of society as a whole? In hitherto existing social formations the individual was integrated into the life of society as a whole mainly through property or work. Today it is becoming apparent that the individual enters the social realm as a connection, a terminal or a code, that is, by means of a key, which gives him access to the social networks. Although this does not mean that someone who does not have the necessary connections, terminals or credit cards at his disposal does not exist at all, it does mean that he does not exist socially. This is not surprising; as I pointed out, even in bourgeois society not every natural man or woman was a person but only the head of the family as the representative of all family members. Today one can probably say that someone who does not have a telephone in the United States is socially non-existent. In the economic sphere something similar is to be found in the tendency to dispense with cash. Whereas buying things with money still retains the semblance of an exchange of value, even if only symbolically, in the credit card system data are merely transferred by entering a personal code. Purchasing with money is thus reduced to the status of a means which makes local commerce possible between non-persons. When evaluating the technicalization of society we must take into consideration that integration always involves disintegration, and socialization always involves social de-socialization at the same time, as I mentioned at the outset. As discouraging as the perspectives revealed by technological socialization are, I think the associated releases into the realm of the socially irrelevant should be viewed as a new chance. I must concede, however, that if one locates emancipation today not in the socialization of man but in his social fragmentation, it must seem like giving up altogether compared to the hopes of someone like Karl Marx. It may be, however, that the true liberation of work actually consists in its being made socially superfluous by the technicalization of production. Moreover, it may well be that the rediscovery of the body taking place today is the complement of the fact that physical presence is no longer necessary for social action, which is technically mediated and initiated through codes. 3 And finally, it may be that the extraordinary development and intensification in personal communication is a

The Techno-structures of Society

47

sign sociologically that face-to-face communication has become irrelevant (Habermas, [1981] 1984).

V. Society and Generation In trying to comprehend society in technological civilization by means of the concept of techno-structure sketched thus far it is clear that we are not trying to deal with society in all its forms, but rather with a social formation that is now making its appearance. The hitherto existing forms of society will remain in place; other forms will be superimposed on these and the existing social formations will occasionally collide with the techno-structure. If one wants a relevant theory of society, that is, social theory which provides orientation in technological civilization, the theory must of necessity include some science fiction (cf. Stanislav Lem). Otherwise sociology will again arrive too late. The growing importance of technology in the social formation requires a great deal of imagination in theory construction and a dynamic understanding of the concepts themselves. Thus I would like to call into question everything said so far by suggesting that we not speak of society at all but of generations. The concept of a generation would have two distinct advantages as opposed to the concept of society. On the one hand it would express the limitedness of the historical range of assertions in the social sciences. On the other it would allow us to describe social life from the perspective of what will issue from it for the coming generation. What I have said so far would thus have to be reformulated as follows. Our generation produces vast quantities of waste, dissipated energy and toxic substances over and above natural reproduction; our generation produces data and it produces techno-structures. Data and techno-structures determine the social possibilities of the coming generation, just as the production of the environment determines the possibilities of their organic life. The arrangement of these techno-structures determines what will be socially possible in the future and what and who will be released, that is, forced into the realm of social irrelevance.

VI. Concluding Remarks In the preceding I have attempted to re-conceptualize basic sociological categories so that they will apply to society in technological civilization. In accord with the dynamics of technological development these categories should express

48

Gemot Böhme

tendencies. The subject of a theory of society in technological civilization is for that reason not so much technology in society and its consequent social change but the technicalization of society itself. The production of technology belongs to social reproduction: with technology we produce social structures. I have only discussed two examples here: namely, solidarity or social integration on the one hand and the social nature of the individual on the other. It is evident that techno-structures have arisen as a new form of integration in addition to and partly in place of existing forms of integration. Until now the developing techno-structures have hardly been utilized politically. That they could be so used is demonstrated by the defensive struggles for privacy of information. As the classical mechanisms like work lose their power to integrate, integration by means of data and networks will become all the more important. The constantly growing sectors of the population who fall outside of working society and become marginalized groups will still continue to belong to society as a whole, in terms of consumerism and entitlements. For in order to receive their social benefits the poor, the elderly, etc. must be registered. In this sense one could claim that we are on the way from a working society to a registration society. The discussion of the social nature of the individual showed that in technological civilization physical presence is increasingly becoming superfluous for social action. We could summarize this in the following way: the social existence of the individual has been transferred to a juncture of terminals, connections and 'credit' cards. These two examples provide only starting points for a possible theory of society in which the existence of techno-structures is really taken seriously. The next step would consist in the analysis and re-conceptualization of social conflicts or basic antagonisms. If society reproduces itself through technology and if a generation structures the life-forms of the following generations through its technology, then it is clear that the question of which technologies should be pursued will bring social antagonisms into prominence, technological politics will then become the focus of political disputes. The critique of technology has long since moved beyond a critique of culture; it has become an arena for social conflict (cf. Böhme, 1980). Indeed, after the accident in Chernobyl the question of technological development seems to have become the social conflict which absorbs or suppresses all others.

Notes 1 2 3

Previously published in Thesis Eleven (1989, 11:104-106). Revised version published with permission. Love as subversive force was classically portrayed by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four. In his novel The Dead Souls Gogol described very elegantly how one can still exist socially although physically dead. The social existence of serfs consisted in their tax

The Techno-structures of Society

49

registration as property. Since this registration only took place every five years several "dead souls" always existed. Today a dead person could continue to exist socially if persons only function as a bundle of connections.

References Burdeau, Georges 1964 Einführung in die politische Wissenschaft. Neuwied: Luchterhand. Böhme, Gemot 1984a "The Knowledge-Structure of Society", pp. 5-17 in G. Bergendal (ed.), Knowledge Policies and the Traditions of Higher Education. Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International. Böhme, Gemot 1984b "Die Gesellschaftlichkeit von Technik und Natur". Zeitschrift für Hochschuldidaktik 8 (Special Issue 9): 10-26. Böhme, Gemot 1980 "Technikkritik als gesellschaftlicher Konflikt". Wechselwirkung 6:54-57. Böhme, Gemot 1976 "Quantifizierung und Instrumentenentwicklung". Technikgeschichte

43:307-313.

Böhme, Gemot and Wolfgang van den Daele 1977 "Erfahrung als Programm: Über Strukturen vorparadigmatischer Wissenschaft", pp. 183-236 in Gernot Böhme, Wolfgang van den Daele and Wolfgang Krohn, Experimentelle Philosophie. Frankfurt amStehr Main:(eds.) Suhrkamp. Böhme, Gemot and Nico 1986 The Knowledge Society. Boston and Dordrecht: Reidel. Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. (ed.) 1984 Regeln und Normen in Wissenschaft und Technik. Berlin and Köln: Beuth. Ellul, Jacques 1954 The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Habermas, Jürgen 1968 Wissenschaft und Technik als 'Ideologie'. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Habermas, Jürgen [1981] 1984 Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1986 Philosophy of Right. London: E. Bell.

50

Gemot Böhme

Hortleder, Gerd 1973 Ingenieure in der Industriegesellschaft: Zur Soziologie der Technik und der naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Intelligenz im öffentlichen Dienst und in der Industrie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hortleder, Gerd 1974 Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Jokisch, Rodrigo (ed.) 1982 Techniksoziologie.

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Linde, Hans 1982 "Soziale Implikationen technischer Geräte, ihrer Entstehung und Verwendung", pp. 1-31 in Rodrigo Jokisch (ed.), Techniksoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Marx, Karl n.d. The Capital. London: Nelson. Mumford, Lewis 1977 Mythos der Maschine: Kultur, Technik und Macht. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Ulrich, Otto 1972 Weltniveau: In der Sackgasse des Industriesystems.

Berlin: Rotbuch.

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society S.N. Eisenstadt

I.

I would like to make some tentative suggestions about the core characteristics of what has been lately designated as post modern society. The very use of the term "post-modern" society does of course assume that this type of society is different from the modern ones. Hence it is necessary to ask what has been usually meant in the relevant literature by this latter term. What is, or has been, the image of modern society that prevailed - even if perhaps only implicitly, but because of this probably even more forcefully - in large parts of classical and contemporary sociological and intellectual discourse, and against which the concept, or possibly even the reality of post-modern society has lately developed? A central aspect of this image is the very close interrelation or combination of, on the one hand, a forceful vision of ontological reality together with, on the other hand, a set of basic rules defining and regulating the major arenas of social life. This vision crystallized and entailed a secular definition of ontological reality, yet a vision imbued with very strong transcendental orientations rooted in the transformation of the predominant premises of medieval and early modern European civilization. These aspects have been most fully epitomized in the great revolutions - the English Civil War, the American and French revolutions which ushered in the era of modernity, and later on in some of the major social movements, especially the socialist ones. The development of Enlightenment and modern science are also central. On the ideological level, the great revolutions were characterized by the intensification, transformation, and combination of several basic religious themes which were predominant in the European civilizations, especially of the eschatological vision, of the view of history as continuity progressing toward the future of the Christian vision, of the course of history and redemption, of bridging the gap between the City of Man and the City of God.

52

S.N. Eisenstadt

The ideologies of these revolutions did also strongly emphasize the temporal dimension of human life, a very strong "this-worldly" orientation, an emphasis on activity in this world. Such activity did not entail the acceptance of the existing order, but rather emphasized attempts to reconstruct the existing order and centers in terms of some transcendental vision beyond its given reality, as well as according to criteria of justice and equality which were usually conceived as being part of that order. In parallel, both the great revolutions and the socialist - and to some extent the national - movements had, despite their strong future orientations, a strong reference to a past, to an imaginary human communal past. They included also a very strong evangelistic missionary and chiliastic orientation, albeit together with strong "this-worldly" orientations. In these revolutions and movements there developed a highly articulated ideology of social protest, especially in a Utopian emancipatory vein, i.e. ideology based on symbols of equality, progress, and freedom, presumably leading to the creation of a better social order. This ideology emphasized also novelty and totality of change, a strong universalistic missionary zeal oriented to the creation of a new type of man and ushering in a new historical era, possibly the era of culmination of progress and of reason.

II. The central initial focus of the new definition of ontological reality has been, as has been so often stressed in the literature, that the exploration and even mastery of continuously expanding human and natural environments and destiny and their direction can be attained by the conscious effort of man and society, an effort oriented to or guided by a very strong transcendental vision. The central premise of this vision was the possibility of active formation of crucial aspects of social, cultural and natural orders by conscious human activity and participation. The fullest expressions of this attitude could be found in the incorporation, and partial predominance, of science and of the scientific approach in the premises and parameters of the cultural order; that is, in the predominance of the assumption that the exploration of nature by man, the continuous expansion of scientific and technological knowledge, can transform both the cultural and social orders, according to the premises of this ontological vision. This belief in the endless exploration, as well as the potential mastery over internal and external environments, implied the blending of "Zweckrationalität' and "Wertrationalität'', of " l o g o s " and "mythos", of theory and process alike, most fully epitomized in the ethos of cognitive rationality, a combination which provided the great motive force of the continuous expansion of this vision.

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society

53

III.

This emphasis on the potential mastery over internal and external environments, on the fusion of Wertrationalität and Zweckrationalität, extended beyond the realm of nature into the social arena and into the conception of the socio-political and economic order, and it entailed a very specific vision of society, the vision of modern society. Among the most important aspects of this vision of society - modern, often also designed as "bourgeois" society - which were closely related to this ontological vision, has been a very peculiar combination of, on the one hand, symbolic, ideological distinctions between different arenas of life, together with the development of very specific symbolic institutional and organizational linkages between them. Among such major semantic distinctions were those between family and occupation, work, and culture; between public and private realms; between different age-spans; between the sexes; between different social classes, within each of which the former distinctions were elaborated in different constellations; and, between such dimensions of human experience as virtue, truth, beauty, or aesthetic experience. At the same time these different arenas were connected symbolically, organizationally and institutionally in several distinct ways. On the personal level these arenas were connected through a very clear structuring of life-spans, of patterns of careers of different strata of population and of different sectors within them. On the macro-societal level these different semantic arenas were closely connected by the connection between, on the one hand, strong emphasis on economic-industrial development and on technological-economic creativity; with, on the other hand, the creation of the new types of major socio-political centers as the major arenas in which the charismatic dimension of the ontological and social vision should be implemented. While, needless to say, this vision of modern and industrial society - as portrayed in both scholarly and popular literature - was certainly not accepted by all sectors of the modern societies subscribed to it, there can be no doubt that it has been, for a very long period of time, the most predominant and hegemonic one. Even those who opposed it - the romanticists; the prophets of Entzauberung like Nietzsche or Max Weber, with his image of the iron cage of modernity; later on the Frankfurt school, Habermas, and even Foucault - opposed this specific vision and cannot be understood except in terms of their references to it. The strong impact of this vision on the development of modern society can first of all be seen in the nature of the predominant social and political movements of protest that have developed in this period, i.e. the 19th and early 20th century. In the initial stages of the development of modern and industrial society, most movements of social protest revolved around the revolutionary image of the

54

S.N. Eisenstadt

broadening of the scope of participation and channels of access to the centers, changing or reforming their cultural and social contents, solving the problems of unequal participation in them and finding ways to attenuate or overcome, through the policies of the center, the most important problems arising out of industrialization and the development of capitalist economy. It was the reconstruction of the centers of societies that constituted the major goals of most social and national movements in this period of modernity, and these goals were perceived as embodying the most important charismatic dimension of the modern sociocultural order. Or, in other words, it was the construction of the socio-political center, the quest for access to it, and participation in it, in combination with the vision of economic progress, that constituted the major foci of the orientations and movements of protest of modernity. The fullest illustration of such movements of protest has been in the classical "nation-state" and "class struggle" as envisaged by most revolutionary and reformist socialist movements, as well as by the various nationalistic movements.

IV. This image, and to no small extent also the reality of modern society, persisted as the dominant, even if certainly not the only one, until the end of the Second World War. Several crucial developments have taken place in contemporary Western industrial societies which have undermined this original vision of modern society and many aspects of its basic ontological premises and modes of definition and regulation of different arenas of social life alike, and it is these developments which have given rise to the possibility of using the term post-modern, not only with respect to various forms of art or architecture, but possibly also to the social and cultural order as a whole. With respect to the definition of ontological reality there has developed - both in "high" intellectual and academic, as well as broader public discourse - a growing tendency to a distinction between Zweckrationalität and Wertrationalität, and to the recognition of a great multiplicity of different Wertrationalitäten. While in the more extreme cases such orientations did seemingly totally deny the validity of science or of technology as part of the overall ontological and epistemological map of contemporary societies, most of these new trends were characterized by the acceptance of the partial validity of these arenas without attributing to them any longer that epistemological or ontological hegemony or predominance that was characteristic of the earlier visions of modern and cultural societies. Cognitive rationality - especially as epitomized in the extreme forms

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society

55

of scientism - has certainly become dethroned from its hegemonic position, as has also been the orientation to the "conquest" or mastery of the environment whether of society or of nature. Closely related to these changes in the basic ontological premises there have taken place far-reaching trends in the older symbolic, ideological distinctions between different arenas of social life. There have developed strong tendencies to the blurring or recombination of these arenas and to the crystallization of a multiplicity, plurality of semantic-ideological connections between public and private, work and culture, occupation and residence, and to the emergence of the new types of definition of various arenas of life in terms of such connections. No single such definition has developed as hegemonic. This whole trend was characterized by a growing emphasis on possible plurality of visions, yet they all seemed to share some attempts of such new combinations, of some new ways of combining a "bracketed out" "Zweckrationalität" with different modes of "Wertrationalität" - be they aesthetic, social or moral - and of creating a variety of combinations between them. These cultural orientations could trace their antecedents back to Vico and Dilthey. Many of the persons espousing these views seemed to bring together an extreme interpretation of the Wittgensteinian concept of different "language games" - implying the basic impossibility of mutual "translation" between such games - with some interpretations of post-modernity. This is especially true of Lyotard, and before him Foucault, who denied the validity of the presumed predominance of the scientific world view, of any strong orientations, of any future common to the whole of humanity; of any idea of progress - and stressed instead multiple futures. It denied also the existence of any common criteria especially those such as liberty, freedom, or progress - according to which different societies, particularly contemporary ones, and the trends of their developments can be compared or evaluated.

V. The reasons or "causes" of these cultural, intellectual trends have been multiple. Some have been abundantly discussed in the voluminous discussion on post-industrial society, namely the growing importance of education and knowledge as the major bases for occupational advancement. While this growing importance of education - and the extension of universal education - has certainly not abolished class distinction and inequalities, it has yet introduced a very strong element of cultural egalitarianism and of dissociation of the old type of status relations between occupational and cultural arenas. This

56

S . N . Ei sen Stadt

element has also, of course, been reinforced by the mass-media; by the unique combination of homogenization of many of the messages of these media together with the broadening, through these very media, of access to different, pluralistic arenas of cultural creativity and production which tended to be much more dissociated before. Another important reason for the development of these trends has been the growing transformation of the overall structure of political economy in Western democratic societies, from an overwhelmingly "liberal market" model to one based on a combination effected by the development of welfare state and Keynesian policies - of market and distributive policies, and of the concomitant, even if paradoxical, weakening of the charismatic importance of the center, and to a restructuring of social strata which we shall discuss in the next paragraphs. These trends do not necessarily attest to dissociation between culture and social structure, as has been claimed for instance by Jürgen Habermas or Daniel Bell, but rather to the transformation and recrystallization of the relations between them, to new types of association among social structure, culture and different levels of political activity and organization. It is these transformations that constitute some of the core characteristics of post-modern societies. Among the most important aspects of this confrontation have been first a weakening of the former relatively rigid, homogeneous definition of life patterns, and hence also of the boundaries of family, community, or of spatial and social organization. Second, the development of a strong tendency to the dissolution of most of the major roles from encompassing, society-wide, symbolic and institutional frameworks. Occupational, family, gender and residential roles have become more and more dissociated from "Stände", class and party-political regional frameworks. Such various roles tend more and more to crystallize into continuously changing clusters, with relatively weak orientations to such broad frameworks in general, to the societal centers in particular. Third, there has taken place a redefinition of many roles and role clusters, especially the occupational and citizenship roles. Thus, for instance, in the occupational sphere, there has developed first, the growing inclusion of community or "service" components into purely professional and occupational activities. There tends also to develop a growing dissociation between high occupational strata and "conservative" political and social attitudes, creating generations of high executives with political and cultural "leftist views" and with orientation to participation in new "permissive enclaves" or subcultures. In the political sphere and in the definition of the citizenship role there have developed tendencies to the redefinition of boundaries of collectivities: to growing dissociation between political centers and the social and cultural collectivities, and to the development of new nuclei of cultural and social identity which transcend the existing political and cultural boundaries. Fourth, one of the most important institutional changes connected with those

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society

57

tendencies has been the development of various structural, semi-liminal enclaves within which new cultural orientations, new modes of search for meaning - often couched in transcendental terms - tend to be developed and upheld, partially as counter-cultures, partially as components of new cultures. These enclaves, in which some people may participate fully, others in a more transitory fashion, may serve in some situations as reservoirs of revolutionary activities and groups, but on the whole they tend to serve as loci or starting points of far-reaching changes in roles and cultural orientations.

VI. The combinations of these changes in the symbolic definition of different arenas of social life and of structural changes gave rise to a growing diversification of the process of strata formation, to the development of a very diversified criss-cross of political, sectorial and occupational formations. Thus, instead of the situation characteristic of the "modern" and "industrial" society, in which different strata had relatively separate cultural traditions and focused around some broad common political symbols, there has continuously developed greater dissociation among the occupational, cultural and political spheres of life. Different strata have no longer separate totally different "cultures" as before; they tend more and more to participate in common aspects, foci and arenas of culture in general, and mass culture in particular. These developments have given rise to very complicated differences in styles of life among different status groups and new status sets; new patterns of status or class conflict and struggles; new types of status or "class" consciousness; and the weakening of any overall, especially "class" or "social" ideological orientations, in the crystallization of such consciousness. Concomitantly, a new and distinct type of status struggle has developed around the type of various welfare benefits distributed by the state. The major focus of class conflicts and struggles has been focused around the state as a distributive, and to a smaller degree regulative agency. B y its very nature, this struggle is occupationally dispersed with but little overall ideological political orientation. While the concrete "economic" foci of such status or "class" struggles have become dispersed between the different types of demands of various occupation groups towards the state, the political and ideological expressions of status consciousness became less and less focused around such economic problems and much more, even if on the whole in a rather vague and unfocused way, around the degree of access or participation in the center or centers of the society, around the

58

S.N. Eisenstadt

center/periphery axis, and/or around the development of distinct styles and patterns of life. All these tendencies have been connected with a very far-reaching shift from viewing either the technological-economic or the political centers as the basic arenas of the charismatic dimension of the ontological and social visions. The center, the political center, is still the major arena for the distribution of resources, but it no longer constitutes the major focus of the charismatic dimensions and orientations of various social movements - or of large sectors of the society. All these developments have culminated in a shift in the nature of the new movements of protest that developed from the sixties on, starting from the students' rebellions, and up to the more recent ecological movements, those stressing growing participation in work, different communal orientations and the like. Instead of conflictual-ideological focus on the center and its reconstitution which characterized the earlier "classical" social movements of modern and industrial societies, the new ones were oriented at what one scholar has defined as the extension of the systemic range of social life and participation. Perhaps the single simplest manifestation of the change in such orientations has been that from the emphasis on the increase in the standard of life which was so characteristic of the fifties as the epitome of continuous technological-economic progress to that of "quality of life", a transformation which has been designated in the seventies as one from materialist to post-materialist values.

VII. All these developments and trends have far-reaching implications for the place of religion in the post-modern or post-industrial era. In some ways they have attested to the correctedness of the fear of Entzauberung (Disenchantment), in others belied it. They have attested to the correctedness of the fear of Entzauberung because the strong connection between uniform, homogeneous transcendental visions and overall institutional structure, of overall collectivity, has indeed become weakened, may perhaps be on the verge of disappearance. At the same time, however, this has not necessarily denoted the disappearance of various transcendental orientations from the cultural panorama. Rather, what has happened was the development of a multiplicity of orientations to the transcendental realm, focusing in different ways on different arenas, thus often giving rise to new religious sensibilities. Such sensibilities have become most visible in the various new role enclaves, as well as in the multiple attempts at finding new definitions of different dimensions of ontological reality. Thus indeed very far-reaching transformations have taken place in all Western,

Some Observations on "Post-modern" Society

59

and to some extent also Eastern, European societies. At the same time, however, the basic institutional framework of the center, of the political regimes, has not disintegrated or broken down. The overall crisis or breakdown of these institutions, of liberal democracy or of capitalism, which has often been predicted, has not taken place; instead w e probably witness a transformation of the basis of their legitimation. Such a mode of transformation of legitimacy, combined with far-reaching social changes and with institutional and regime stability, is indeed rather unusual in the history of human societies. It certainly belies the experience of modern societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It may well be that w e are witnessing here a new civilizational format, the nature of which is, of course, very difficult for us to grasp. It seems to me that we, or at least I, are only at the beginning of the stage of formulating the questions appropriate to the new situation. The very posing of such questions will also necessitate revising many of the assumptions behind some of the basic concepts of social science, such as religion, class or state. The way in which w e have used these concepts, as they have been developed in modern social science, was of course greatly influenced by the influence of the modern industrial society. We face now the necessity, basing ourselves on the shoulders of the giants of social science but going beyond them, to revise not so much the concepts but above all the assumptions on which they were based, taking into account both the new contemporary Western experience as well as that beyond the West.

The Idols of Technology1 William Leiss

Standing at the threshold of modern times, Francis Bacon saw in experimental science and technological innovation the keys to humanity's future. Human history to that point, he thought, was an endlessly repeated cycle of despair and false hopes. The false hopes were fed by the old illusion that a few cheap tricks and the right magical formulas would unlock nature's treasury where unlimited wealth and power lay. The despair arose from humanity's seeming inability to escape from subjection to the natural forces that periodically visited famine, disease, pestilence, and destruction upon it. And that despair was perpetuated by established religion, with its fondness for handing out apparently endless punishments to Adam's descendants for the crimes committed in Paradise so long ago. The theologians of the day regarded these sinners as having already at their disposal quite sufficient means for doing mischief, and so viewed as alarming and inadvisable the prospect of an enlarged human technological capacity. And there was another source of despair: the routines of society and politics. To Bacon society offered the depressing spectacle of equally undeserving sycophants competing for the available insignia of honor and preferment, along with the right to squander frivolously their disproportionate shares of the far too limited stock of material wealth. Politics was for him what we call today a "zero-sum game", where any person's success in advancing to greater power and influence inevitably was in direct proportion to his or her capacity to ruin someone else's fortunes in equal measure. These wastrels and experts in bureaucratic maneuvering were so attentive to the business of enhancing their own shares of the available spoils at the expense of others that they had no time to devote to enlarging society's economic product as a whole. Bacon was obsessed with the idea that all this could be changed, and so simply, if only society's rulers could be persuaded to champion his project for the conquest of nature by promoting the mechanical arts. He despised the condescending attitude toward the experimental sciences that pervaded the intellectual establishment of his day, and he tried to shock his contemporaries out of their complacency by insisting that the human mind, as well as human hands, required adequate technological "instruments and machinery" for its work (cf. Bacon in

62

William Leiss

Robertson, 1905:257; Leiss, 1972:ch. 3). These comments introduced his great book, The New Organon; or, True Directions concerning the Interpretation of Nature (1620), in which Bacon tried to identify the obstacles that blocked the way to a scientific approach to the understanding of nature.

I. Bacon's Idols Those obstacles are epitomized in four types of "idols". For Bacon the idols are "false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein", which work actively against a true understanding of scientific method - a remarkable anticipation of the later concept of ideology. 2 The "idols of the tribe" stem from the inherent, universal structure of the human mind, such as the limited range of our senses, the tendency to draw conclusions from insufficient evidence, and a search for certainty in areas where there is no reasonable basis for it. The "idols of the cave", on the other hand, arise from particular forms of culture and education, which frame the outlooks of individuals and are expressed in particular prejudices; these cultural "blinders" strongly influence our perceptions of events and channel our understanding of the world in ways designed to reinforce the hegemony of approved traditions. The "idols of the marketplace are the most troublesome of all", Bacon says. These are errors hidden in our languages themselves and come from the conventional usages of words as they evolve over time. Habitual modes of expression, which reflect the past experiences of generations, are applied to new situations, and people using those expressions cannot see that the words they are using do not really describe the events to which they are being applied. Finally, the "idols of the theater" are the false notions that are perpetuated by the great systems of thought, especially religion and philosophy, that happen to become predominant in particular cultures and spawn dogmas which resist questioning and attempted refutation. In his Utopian fantasy, The New Atlantis, Bacon imagined a setting in which the obstacles to his program existing in his times would be swept away completely. But even Bacon would have been astonished and made a little uneasy, I think, at the prospect that within a few centuries Western society would be driven by purely secular ambitions and would elevate experimental science and technological innovation to so privileged a position in its pantheon of public values. The great triumphs of science and technology are among the most cherished accomplishments of the modern age; and in ironic reversal, they are also the sources of some of our new idols.

The Idols of Technology

63

II. A Modern Idolatry Our idols of technology are the false notions that have grown up around modern society's fervent commitment to technological progress. In the first place, the sustained successes in technological innovation throughout modern times have given rise to characteristic systems of thought in which are embedded our own "idols of the theater". In such thinking we are given the impression that modern conditions compel us to bring our values and institutions into conformity with the nature of those technologies themselves. We encounter statements to this effect all too frequently, for example in discussions about the coming of the so-called "information society". One Canadian federal government report on this subject states with a flourish that "the advent of microelectronics is rapidly and irreversibly leading to a major and fundamental transformation of western society". This is a good example of what may be called "technological hyperbole", which is the systematic and unwarranted exaggeration of the general social effects that may be expected from introducing new technologies. It is often matched by "technological fetishism", which consists in making far too much of the specific characteristics of new technologies themselves, as if they could be expected to wreak magical transformations in our lives. Second, there is the notion that our commitment to science and technology itself marks a qualitative break within all previous human history, which beguiles us into thinking we are now immune from the "superstitions" that ruled older civilizations. What misleads us here is that our everyday language has become so saturated with technical jargon and scientific pronouncements that we pay too little attention to the autochthonous drives, expressed in the fear and hatred of peoples and customs different from our own, still humming deep within us. So the attempt to devise one of the very latest and most complex technologies imaginable, the so-called "strategic defense initiative" (better known as "star wars"), which if it could work as planned would be a triumph of human ingenuity, was announced by the same political leader whose discourse at that time also told of his implacable determination to overcome the forces of an "evil empire". This deceptive quality of our everyday language expresses well our own set of the "idols of the marketplace". Third, there is the idea that every technological breakthrough is a triumph for humanity in general, and thus that we don't have to worry about the actual distribution of costs and benefits that attend its utilization. Those persons who are actually affected by the introduction of new technologies traditionally have not been called to give evidence on its consequences, and we hear only about general increases in economic productivity and social welfare. This is especially true when, due to the structure of international trade, the benefits are confined largely to the innovating country and major negative impacts are felt among nameless

64

W i l l i a m Leiss

regions abroad. In this pervasive dissociation of the intrinsic characteristics of techniques themselves, on the one hand, and the actual short-term social impacts which result from their uses under existing institutional arrangements, on the other, is found our own set of the "idols of the cave". And fourth, the undeniable achievements of our modern science and technology, and their clear superiority over every earlier human approach to the investigation of natural forces, soon gave rise to an attitude of arrogant superiority toward all other ways of interpreting the human experience of the surrounding world. Beginning in the seventeenth century this "scientism" first set about stamping out its competitors among other systems of natural philosophy, and already by the nineteenth century it had turned its scorn on traditional religious, social, and ethical paradigms: The "scientific method" would suffice, it was claimed, as the sole "rational" approach to any and every question of values, social justice, and ultimate meaning. Scientism remains a lively and forceful part of our intellectual landscape, and the various modes of its expression represent our own set of "idols of the tribe". Through the idols of technology we are led to believe that, if we hope to extract the collective benefits from new technologies, we shall have to make certain changes in the way we behave, changes which otherwise we might not wish to carry out had we not felt compelled to do so. This vague sense of subjection to forces beyond our control is indeed the combined, overall effect of the four types of our contemporary idols of technology. Since the promised benefits from technological progress can be substantial indeed, we are left with the impression that we are under technology's thumb, so to speak. The belief that we are under pressure from the technological imperative cannot be just dismissed as a simpleminded mistake. The scope and pace of technological change has been and remains a looming presence among us, its relentless march throwing up new problems while the older ones are still being apprehended and long before they have been addressed at all adequately; and our awareness of this pressure is compounded by our realization that no individual industrialized nation can insulate its existing share of economic wealth against continued challenge from innovating forces elsewhere on the globe. The common mistake is not that such pressure exists, nor that it is heavy indeed (for it is), but that our institutional responses to it are somehow predetermined and thus cannot be guided by choices grounded in enduring values. The history of the modern era may be taken as a case study about our collective fascination with the products of scientific and technological innovation - and about our inability to exorcise our persistent anxiety over whether those products can lead us into the promised land of universal abundance and contentment. We have dreamt of how complete mastery over the environment will spring from our science and its instruments, with all matter and energy harnessed to our desires, and finally with the capacity to engineer life itself, putting the evolutionary fate of

The Idols of Technology

65

all existing species, as well as new ones designed to our specifications, at our disposal. We also have recurring nightmares about those instruments, nightmares in which inexplicably we lose control over the process of technological change, in which our instruments appear to take on a life of their own and lead us to a place where things are not at all as we expected, or desired, and moreover where there are no markers showing us the way back. I understand these fantasies about autonomous technology to be a metaphor about the paradox of control with respect to the relation between humanity and nature. The instrumentalities furnished by modern science and technology, which finally appeared to realize humanity's long-sought mastery over its external environment, turn the species' own lack of self-control into the means for an orgy of environmental degradation and intraspecies violence that threatens its own viability.

III. B a c o n ' s

Wager

Francis Bacon urged his contemporaries to take a chance on the immense benefits that sustained technological innovation would bring to society as a whole. He acknowledged that there was a risk that the enlarged human powers won through artful control over natural forces could be used for destructive or mischievous ends. But, he argued, the scale of the risk paled in comparison with the immensity of the promised benefits, and thus it was a risk well worth taking. Besides, there was a good way to manage the risk: In a famous passage in The New Organon, he reassured his readers that "sound reason and true religion" would guarantee that the exercise of human power over nature would be carried out responsibly. Over the ensuing centuries established religions were displaced in industrialized societies as guarantors of responsible behavior in such matters. Instead the effort to manage the risks stemming from technological applications has been internalized within the interactions between science and society. In a number of important senses managing the process of technological innovation in modern industrial societies is nothing but the assessment, communication, and management of risks. Through an understanding of the nature and consequences of risks, governments, businesses and the public seek to monitor and control those industrial products and practices that are potentially harmful to human health, the well-being of other species, and ecosystem functions. These attempts are classified under a variety of headings, the most commonly used of which are risk assessment or risk analysis, risk perception and acceptable risk, risk communication, and risk management. Managing the risks associated with technological innovations in practice means

66

William Leiss

both government and individuals making difficult choices on highly complex matters. Industries, regulatory authorities, and citizens must determine levels of acceptable risk for environmental and health hazards - for instance, those caused by toxic chemicals. They do so through such operations as choosing appropriate extrapolation models to estimate human health risks on the basis of animal test data. All these parties must also make choices about how to balance estimated health and environmental risks against the estimated economic and social benefits to be derived from using toxic chemicals, in full knowledge of the likelihood that new information accumulated in the future will show that certain earlier choices were incorrect. For members of the public, managing the process of technological innovation means making choices about the truly bewildering array of risks present in industrial societies, both voluntary (such as smoking or skiing) and involuntary (such as airborne lead or occupational hazards). This means, among many other things, deciding how to regulate one's exposure to voluntary risks, how to rank risks in relation to each other, and deciding how much governments should regulate hazardous products and processes and should spend on reducing risks associated with them. During the first few months of 1989, for example, there were significant public controversies in North America about a variety of health and environmental risks. There were widespread reports of contamination of food supplies by pesticides residues, leading to estimates in the daily press of a significant number of additional deaths from cancer for the population as a whole. There was an even more animated controversy over a chemical (alar) used as a growth regulator for apples, because the focus of debate was on the possibility that children were especially at risk due to their heavy consumption of apple juice. And the massive Alaskan oil spill highlighted the risks of catastrophic environmental damage to animal species and economic losses to fisheries industries.

IV. The Century of Environmental Crisis As the twentieth century draws to a close the endemic struggle for political domination among land-based empires, which finally in the Second World War had reached truly global dimensions, appears to have run its course, having been stymied by the very technologies of destruction it brought into being. The entertainments afforded to military bureaucracies by localized conflicts remain, but only the most sanguine warmongers among us believe that there will be anything left salvaging after general nuclear weapons exchanges. We stand at the threshold of a new era which will be marked by environmental

The Idols of Technology

67

crises on a global scale. Some of them will be simply a function of pressures on environmental resources from a larger human population in the so-called economically underdeveloped world: In China and elsewhere, they will face the bitter truth that they have no hope of escaping the age-old scourge of inadequate satisfaction for basic needs via the route mapped out by the richer nations, namely by squandering fossil fuel energy and dumping their wastes wherever they chose. Other crises will stem from the accumulated global residue of centuries of earlier industrial development and environmental degradation - atmospheric pollution, toxic chemical wastes, climatic change, massive deforestation, loss of fertile soil, radioactive wastes, reduction of biotic diversity, ocean pollution and contaminated freshwater supplies. These and other hazards will be the inescapable reality of everyday life in the twenty-first century. Moreover, many of these threats are of such a massive scale, and have such momentum driving them, that no action we take now, no matter how drastic, and no existing or foreseeable political or technological remedy, no matter how sophisticated, can forestall their irresistible magnification. Nothing can stop the destruction of tropical forests in the near future, and we shall be fortunate to preserve a few specimens here and there for tourist attractions. If by some miracle all manufacture and uses of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were halted today, the migration of CFC compounds already present at lower atmospheric levels to the upper atmosphere, and their destruction of ozone there, would continue for decades to come. Our existing technologies around the world are hooked on fossil fuel energy sources, and no amount of alarm about global warming can cause an appreciable reduction in fossil fuel use for many years. In confronting such problems we will find that the risk assessment and risk management strategies we have in hand are, by and large, quite accomplished techniques for addressing very specific problems, one at a time, that are limited in scope. For example, an estimate of the risks and benefits of a particular pesticide, considered all by itself, where reliable test data results have been obtained, and assuming that it will always be used in carefully controlled applications by persons who will take the required safety precautions. Even here we must note that such risk estimates will always carry a measure of uncertainty, and that there may be later evidence of environmental or human health hazards that were unforeseen due to incomplete knowledge. But in the coming century of environmental crisis we will be faced with many problems that do not have such neatly structured dimensions. The solutions we possess or can devise are mostly for single problems, but there are undoubtedly a host of synergistic effects among toxic agents of which we are only dimly aware. We can do nothing about some of the dangers that are painfully obvious, due to the inherent momentum in current uses described above. Above all, so many of our incipient crises are spread across nations whose economic, social, and political situations diverge sharply, and there are few grounds for being optimistic

68

William Leiss

about forging a common front against them. Bitter complaints about international inequities attend every international conference on global environmental issues. At some point, I suspect, we shall be brought to the brink of collective despair about the trajectory of modern civilization and the paradox of control in the relation between humanity and nature which it set before us. The scientific and technical instruments themselves will be denounced, often and loudly, as the chief villains of the piece. There may be calls to begin the trek back across the historical threshold where Bacon stood and offered his wager. If so one must hope that wiser voices will prevail and be heard to say that only the hand which inflicts the wound can heal it (there is a line to this effect somewhere in Hegel's work, I believe). We shall need every ounce of technological ingenuity and scientific understanding to pull us back from the abyss of irremediable environmental disaster. But there is no hope of healing so long as the illusion persists that those instruments themselves can bring about the harmonization of human interests.

V. Appendix: Issues in the Perception of Environmental Risks There is a remarkable contemporary parallel to Bacon's "idols" in the recent literature on "risk perception", in which various types of popular misunderstandings of the nature of health and environmental risks have been categorized. A brief consideration of this contemporary idolatry shows the enduring power of Bacon's approach. In general, a "risk" is a situation defined by lack of control, lack of information, and lack of time (cf. MacCrimmon and Wehrung, 1986:ch. 1). Above all, then, risks are characterized by an irreducible element of uncertainty about the outcome. Environmental risks are the probabilities of harm, to humans, other species, and biospheric ecosystem functions, resulting from both natural hazards (such as earthquakes) and human technologies (such as toxic chemicals or the clearing of forests). Since there are so many different types of simultaneous environmental impacts, it is usually very difficult to isolate and quantify particular cause-and-effect relationships; thus estimates and simulations often are the best that can be done. Also, presumed human health effects have to be extrapolated from animal test data, using complex models. The resulting "numbers" usually are given in the context of ranges of uncertainty. All of this makes the nonscientific public very nervous, in part because they have been taught in schools that "science" is meant to yield certainty in knowledge, unlike the deceptive tools of the fine arts, the social sciences, religion

The Idols of Technology

69

and philosophy - a Baconian legacy! Where possible environmental hazards become issues of public concern, there is often a high degree of tension between "the experts" and "the public". This tension has been compounded by the somewhat condescending attitude of many technical experts towards the nonexpert public. Their concern was how to devise novel ways for conveying the pure, rational knowledge content, inherent in scientific risk assessments, to the relatively unsophisticated members of various publics, using the accepted channels of communication. Thus the emphasis was on technically-assessed risk itself; the presumption was that, once the rational content of technical risk was conveyed more effectively, the "irrational" resistance of publics to the calculations of acceptable risk which were derived from technical risk assessments would evaporate. More recently the risk practitioners have learned not to discount the public perception of risk. Perceived risk is now much better understood than in used to be, thanks to a decade or more of intensive research. The results of this research have been summarized in an article by Vincent Covello, who gives a concise account of the ten most significant characteristics of the perception of risks (cf. Covello, 1989:9-12): 1.

People often have inaccurate perceptions of risks. The risks of dramatic causes of death, for example, are overestimated; judgements are influenced by memorable imagery, media coverage, and personalized accounts. Harm due to familiar risks is underestimated. 2. People have difficulty understanding probabilistic information. Cognitive biases and reasoning fallacies are common with probabilities. 3. People respond emotionally to information. Risks associated with things that are dreaded (cancer, radiation) evoke much stronger feelings than other types, irrespective of the degree of likelihood of harm. 4. People have an aversion to uncertainty in risk information. Psychological strategies are employed to reduce uncertainty; probabilities are "converted" into statements of fact. 5. People ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Research shows that strong beliefs, once formed, are highly resistant to change when new information is presented. 6. When beliefs are weakly held, opinions are easily influenced by the way in which information is presented. Several well-known studies have demonstrated this effect. 7. People often consider themselves personally immune to risks. 8. People ignore information if it is perceived to lack personal relevance. 9. People often perceive accidents as "signals". For unfamiliar or dread risks, even minor occurrences can cause large shifts in opinions. 10. People will use fear of environmental risks as a proxy for other social concerns. Conflicts in society often represent the play of different values, and

70

William Leiss

the representation of environmental risk can be used as a "card" to be played in interest group politics. Items #1 and #2 in this list are good instances of the "idols of the tribe", since they arise out of deep-seated characteristics in the human mind. The "idols of the cave", we may recall, stem from the cultural and educational "blinders" that affect our perceptions. Items #3, #7 and #8 all relate to the perception of risk (which is always risk to an entire population) in terms of its personal significance. The sharp distinction between individual and social group fate may be regarded as itself a product of our culture and as an illustration of the idols of the cave. The "idols of the marketplace" are rooted in the conventions of language, and items #4 and #6 tell us that we are influenced by the way in which statements about risk are couched. Finally, the "idols of the theater" are the illusions produced by traditional systems of beliefs, such as those of organized religion. Items #5, #9, and #10 represent characteristics of perceived risk that are based on the interplay of traditional belief systems, which have existed for a long time, with current scientific information about environmental risks. It seems to me that the conclusion which legitimately can be drawn here is the same one with which the paper ended: We expect things of our sciences and technologies that they cannot deliver, no matter how clever and sophisticated they become. They cannot bestow certainty on a world in which random events, the genetic variations among individuals in species populations and subpopulations, and other factors will always produce outcomes that cannot be predicted at the individual level. In many cases they may never be able to isolate the specific "causes" of individual agents of environmental impact, due to the number of actors and the complexity of their interactions. And, as noted above, the scientific assessment of risk in probabilistic terms generally runs counter to deeply-rooted habits of thought. Thus our main task will be to find ways of responding sensibly, through our social and political institutions, to the threat of global environmental degradation with a reasonable set of expectations about what our scientific and technological ingenuity can contribute to this effort.

Notes 1

2

This paper is drawn from the opening and concluding chapters of my book (Leiss, 1990), and appears here with the permission of the publishers, McGill-Queen's University Press. The text of the paper itself was presented at the Main Symposium of the Royal Society of Canada, "The Idea of Progress: Promises and Realities", held at Université Laval on 6 June 1989; the Appendix appears here for the first time. The four idols are set out in Sections 38-68 of The New Organon (Bacon, 1960).

The Idols of Technology

71

References Bacon, Francis 1960 The New Organon and Related Writings. New York: Liberal Arts Press. Covello, Vincent 1989 "Informing People about Risks from Chemicals, Radiation, and other Toxic Substances: A Review of Obstacles to Public Understanding and Effective Risk Communication", pp. 1-49 in William Leiss (ed.), Prospects and Problems in Risk Communication. Waterloo: University of Waterloo Press. Leiss, William 1972 The Domination of Nature. New York: Braziller. Leiss, William 1990 Under Technology's Thumb. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. MacCrimmon, K.R. and D.A. Wehrung 1986 Taking Risks: The Management of Uncertainty. New York: The Free Press. Robertson, J.M. (ed.) 1905 The Philosophical

Works of Francis Bacon. London: George Routledge and Sons.

Part III Knowledge, Experts and Expertise

Introduction Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The essays in Part Three demonstrate that the study of experts and expert systems is a key to understanding the structure, organization and direction of knowledge societies. These essays are largely programmatic, pointing to gaps in knowledge about expert systems and raising important questions for research. However, they also fill gaps. They offer innovative conceptions of expert knowledge and practice, explain why the use of expertise has become such a prominent feature of everyday life, and examine the effects of this use on social relations and on our understanding of knowledge itself. Zygmunt Bauman addresses what experts offer, what it is about the life-world that leads people to seek experts, why people grant authority to experts, how expertise enhances the need for itself, and the effects of expert systems. His primary substantive vehicle for this task is expertise regarding personal identity, not only psychoanalysts and other expert counsellors but also, for example, the advertising industry as it relates products to subjectivity. Experts offer proper images, expressed in symbolic objects that are supra-individual, shared, socially accepted and authorized. These images are the basis for distinctions about identity, providing the totemic significance of one's place in social order. Experts also offer rationality, or at least a certification of the rationality of one's beliefs and actions. The distinctions and rationalities they offer are authoritative because they are derived from the overarching authority of "science". The expert is the interpreter and mediator between "science" and the personal, subjective needs of the client, between the objective and the subjective. That is, his or her job is to understand both the needs of the client and how "science" can best satisfy them, while at the same time ensuring that both the definition of the problem and the solution has social approval. Clients buy into expertise in terms of their perception of the expert's technical functions rather than her or his "humanity". Bauman points to the contemporary difficulty in commitment to personal relations requiring exchange of intimate information and emotions, and a spirit of negotiation and compromise. Beyond the interpersonal level experts have "identikits" that are already formatted for ready acceptance by consumers: they bear the marks of social approval because

76

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

others have already accepted them and are using them, and because they are authenticated and guaranteed by experts as people who have the authoritative trademarks of "science". People defer to experts because they assume that personal suffering is remediable: it has a specific cause that can be targeted and remedied and, moreover, they feel a duty to seek a solution because science and technology make solutions possible and hence problems intolerable. Furthermore, people realize they are not self-sufficient in identifying causes and seeking solutions. The everyday life-world is experienced in terms of multiple dependencies. The only skill required is where to find the expertise. Ironically, once expertise is found the individual is subject to new forms of dependency, as the expert subjects him or her to "Taylorization" (simplification of choices) and "Fordization" (removing skills from the operator to the machinery or system). Paradoxically, the client nevertheless perceives the expert's effort as an act of liberation and experiences a sense of increased freedom. Thus, even obvious failures are responded to with a search for better, more efficient expert service. In these conditions of legitimacy, experts are readily able to enhance the need for their services. However, there are a number of additional features of expert systems which make expertise self-enhancing. Expert systems create sub-systems that require new expert solutions. Expert practices generate new technical capabilities that are subject to searches for new applications; in Bauman's words "skills seeking application masquerade as problems needing solution". A purpose-orientation, including a specific problem/specific solution format and an attendant focus on narrow questions of effectiveness, means that experts operate with a sensibility of needing to iron out every little wrinkle and are blind to system effects. This is the very condition of expert success, for if systemic effects were taken seriously experts would at best hesitate too much, and at worst subvert themselves. Over time, expertise becomes its own legitimation, its own cause, proliferating new problems and arenas of operation. This is fuelled by the fact that expert services are commodities, mediated by the market and profit-seeking, which encourage a constant search for novelty. The sensibility of a duty not to neglect possible solutions to problems is perpetuated, leading to a dismissal of arguments to abandon a particular line of development as technologically meaningless and therefore irreverent and irrelevant. The above considerations are relevant to Bauman's analysis of the effects of expert systems. In the everyday life-world choice is narrowed into that which is rational and safe, so that the drama of life is turned into a tightly-formatted entertainment. Bauman offers the poignant example of the shopping mall, a world that is "purely" simple, safe, and transparent, anesthetized by the experts for the security of the customer who feels always "in the right". Rationality - especially as expressed in efforts to define efficiency in quantitative terms, and in the single problem/single cause/single solution format - delegitimates ethical judgment and

Introduction

77

erases morality. Expert systems, exemplified by computer systems, also undercut judgments about the moral responsibility and accountability of individual actors, as expert authority becomes ceded to the system. In the process moral mentalities and sensibilities are blunted to the point where the only question is scientific rationality and technical efficiency. Nico Stehr provides a programmatic essay on the place and work of experts, or occupations that actively communicate and apply knowledge. He uses extant literature to query existing conceptualizations and to suggest new ones, and points to the paucity of empirical research addressing most of the important questions. Stehr observes that most social scientists take for granted knowledge about knowledge and have therefore failed to theorize it adequately. He offers many suggestions for the development of theorizing. For example he reviews the characteristics of knowledge as a commodity and public good and as having virtually no limits to its growth. He considers how knowledge penetrates all social arenas. He theorizes about how and why knowledge expands, is a stratified phenomenon of social action, is mediated by experts, and is the basis of authority and exclusivity. Stehr recommends research on how and by whom knowledge becomes translated into social action, thereby acquiring authority and influence. Specifically, there is a need for inquiries concerning how experts enable and restrict action, set standards, define what counts as knowledge, control knowledge, and determine the efficacy of knowledge. Stehr stresses that these inquiries should focus on expertise in all areas of life. Existing research has concentrated on advice offered to those at the apex of power, and to a lesser extent, on expertise in the service sector of the economy. Stehr calls for research on all sectors of society. In keeping with Bauman, he notes a particular need for research on the ways in which experts are used to deal with the most mundane practical realities of everyday life. Such an approach transcends work that represents experts as a new class, special class, or for that matter, as a part of any particular class at all. It thereby fosters appreciation of the new configurations of power in which experts are implicated. As Stehr writes, "the democratization of expertise is characteristic of our age". We know little about how knowledge is transformed as it is translated into different practical uses by experts and by technical applications in expert systems. Instead of limiting our understanding to the instrumental or technical rationality of professionals, we need to research the knowledge base of occupations and professions. Researchers must ask what types of knowledge are developed by whom and for what purpose by examining expert-expert and expert-client relations. In this connection experts should be studied as interpreters and mediators among those who create knowledge as a capacity for action and those whose job it is to take action. The expert is to be studied as he or she engages in

78

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

"transformative activity": using specialist knowledge in helping people to construct their existential circumstances as the basis for action; and ending reflections for the purpose of action. The consequences of this transformative activity should also be researched, for example examining the extent to which experts control and make decisions for their clients, and the extent to which experts legitimate decisions their clients have already made for themselves. Attention should also be given to the consequences for knowledge: how knowledge is transformed, altered or created in new ways as a consequence of being used by experts, how the reproduction of knowledge is also production. With respect to all of the above, there is a need to examine the institutional contexts in which experts work, in particular to be sensitive to how knowledge and its contexts tend to be fused. Another area of inquiry identified by Stehr is the way in which experts, through their uses of knowledge, contribute to social stratification. Knowledge and expertise are commodities that are costly, subject to concentration, and therefore stratified. Experts themselves contribute to the concentration, exclusivity and costliness of their own knowledge products as part of constructing their own authority, their own locations of rank, privilege and influence. However, above and beyond experts' own participation in processes of stratification, knowledge affects, and is affected by, a radical transformation in the structure of the economy. Symbolic or knowledge-based inputs increasingly determine productive and distributive forces in the economy. We have moved from a material through a money to a symbolic economy in which knowledge has become the leading component of the productive process. Wealth is increasingly generated by creativity and the manufacture of information. The economy has become driven not only by demands for creative individuals and information laborers, but also by an increasing supply of highly educated and skilled individuals in search of creative knowledge work. The above considerations point to the need to examine the growth of knowledge-based occupations. Stehr reviews existing studies, pointing to the inadequacy of the categories they employ and their failure to conceptualize knowledge adequately. He then offers some explanations of the growth of knowledge-based occupations. In conjunction with the economic aspects addressed previously, growth relates to the increasing rationalization, social differentiation, segmentation and compartmentalization of society. These developments mean that people must seek solutions to their everyday problems beyond the immediate resources available to them in everyday life. Furthermore, the accelerated growth of knowledge itself is an important component in any effort to explain the proliferation of knowledge-based occupations. Steven Fuller takes up Stehr's call for more adequate theorizing about expertise through an examination of how experts think and act. Fuller develops a materialist conception of knowledge and points to its relevance for theorizing

Introduction

79

about the knowledge society. He does not derive the inspiration for his materialist conception from fellow philosophers in the academy, who have always had difficulty with questions related to the empirical indicators of knowledge, with treating knowledge as both in the world and about the world. Instead he turns to the expertise of economists and lawyers, noting that in their work these experts have had to take seriously the ontological status of knowledge as thing-like. By seeing knowledge as a physical object shared by people engaged in particular systems of social relations, economists consider knowledge in the way they consider other products that are consumed, and lawyers consider knowledge in the same way they consider other property that is possessed. There are many insights available to knowledge-society theorists if they see knowledge as a product in the way that economists do, and as a property in the way that lawyers do, rather than as immaterial in the way that metaphysical philosophers do. Being thing-like, knowledge has the capacity to empower its possessor. For example, it empowers academic disciplines, professional groups, and those who people them. The producer of academic discipline knowledge is empowered through presenting knowledge as distinct, as judged by peers within the discipline. The professional's power is enacted in the very process of being an intermediary through whom others must pass to achieve their ends. The fact that knowledge empowers its inventors, creators and re-creators is exemplified in law, which is increasingly called upon to normatively regulate knowledge production and use. Epistemologists fail to consider the diverse material containers of knowledge (e.g., books, people, databanks), and how these are differently distributed and accessible, i.e., participate in diverse social relations and are structured in hierarchy. Their resultant tendency to view knowledge as indivisible is shared to a degree by economists, in spite of the fact that economists talk of knowledge as power: "Knowledge is what enables you to get what you want at a price". The ambivalence in economics about treating knowledge as divisible and fully embodied is resolved in law, whose business it is to make judgments and prescriptions about how knowledge is to constitute social relations and who is responsible in this regard. That is, law routinely treats knowledge as divisible, and indeed, created. Treating knowledge in materialist terms as divisible and created casts light on important questions concerning epistemic validity and economic value. Knowledge treated as divisible leads to questions about process costs of knowledge as a good, as experienced by both producers and consumers. Economists typically ignore process costs for consumers, but these costs are important, especially since they help us to understand structured inequality in the knowledge system. Fuller offers the example of buying a book as a "material container" of knowledge: the cost to the consumer may not only be the retail price of the book itself, but the multifaceted cost (financial and otherwise) of acquiring the educational level

80

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

(e.g., university degree) required to understand and use the book. Knowledge treated as created leads, for example, to questions about the opportunity costs of knowledge discovery. Fuller illustrates by asking what opportunities might be lost, including aspects of validity, through closure on an open-ended research situation? Furthermore, how does science as a good not only make evident a reality, but also foster new lines of inquiry? Fuller also suggests that seeing knowledge in materialist terms will advance theorizing about the significance of the volume and variety of knowledge in knowledge societies, addressing the question, "Do we know too little or too much for our good?". Is the "glut" or implosion of knowledge enabling or constraining, enhancing a capacity or an incapacity for action? For example, following Brenner, Fuller asks whether the market succeeds because of a confidence in knowledge about the market and the place of one's competitors in it, or because of ignorance about it, which creates fear of losing out to competitors and thereby stimulates new knowledge and innovation. Fuller wishes to stimulate reconsideration of how we look at each side of the power/knowledge equation in terms of production/distribution. Intellectuals, especially philosophers, tend to focus on the production of knowledge, but need to consider more how it is distributed across sectors of society, for example by experts and through expert systems. They have also tended to focus on the distribution of power, but need to consider more how and why power gets produced and distributed in particular ways. This shift in focus, placing more emphasis on the distribution of knowledge and the production of power by experts and in expert systems, can be facilitated by turning to the expertise of economic theorists of knowledge as product and legal theorists of knowledge as property.

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency Zygmunt Bauman You make love; they make sense. (A slogan advertising the use of condoms in the latest TV commercial)

Consider the following case.'A decade or so ago Emily Cho offered to American women a computerized fashion-advice service. The questionnaire, which the prospective clients were asked to fill, inquired about the image the client wanted, and how it should be modified to convey the individuality - indeed, the uniqueness - of her self and character. The rest was to be done by the computer, which would find out how the client should build up her wardrobe most likely to attain both purposes. Emily Cho's enterprise proved to be a huge success. And this is why: ... when she [Emily Cho] set the service in motion, her first instinct had been to draw the clients' attention away from the idea that their private hopes and dreams were being fed into a coldhearted computer. But it was soon brought home to her that the idea of the computer was precisely what appealed to the women. They welcomed the involvement of technology, because they could believe that the clothing suggestions were particularly accurate and scientific. To some extent, they liked the endorsement of the machine. What they demanded was a clear-cut formula of dressing well, rather than capricious ideas springing from another woman's brain. At the same time, Miss Cho found, they needed to believe that that other woman - Miss Cho herself - was somewhere around, to supervise, and reassure them that they had not turned over the serious, delicate question of their image to a distant, possibly runaway machine.

There are a few important observations one can make while trying to make sense of Emily Cho's and her clients' experience. First, it seems that what explains the fact that the clients took up Emily Cho's offer so keenly was that they found themselves facing a contradiction they could not easily resolve: they felt both the need to belong and the need to be individuals. Squaring the two needs with each other was seen as difficult and thus requiring help. Individuality, one may say, will not do on its own, unless it is communicated and understood as such - and that means shared with others. Second, both the membership and the individual uniqueness were seen as

82

Zygmunt Bauman

attributions which are not given naturally, but need a conscious effort to be brought about and sustained; they have to be "built up". Building them up was seen as the task (perhaps a duty) of the person involved. Third, the task of building-up entailed making both the membership and the individuality into images, that is objects perceptible to others; these must be proper images, that is such as are certain to be read out properly and interpreted according to the person's intention. They must be expressed in a supra-individual, shared and authorized code. Fourth, access to a shared code meant in practice the expression of membership and individuality in symbolic objects that have guaranteed socially accepted meanings, so that probability of misreading is reduced. Such objects, it was assumed, exist. The task is to locate them, and eventually obtain them. In the described case, they could be obtained through a market transaction. Fifth, contradictory claims being made by the market operators as to the hermeneutic value of competing objects, an authority (an impartial, "objective opinion", more solid and reliable than the view of merely "another person") was sought to reduce uncertainty and increase the chance of the right choice. Such an authority was willingly - and with relief - accredited to science, as an institution armed with in-built guarantees of non-partisanship and dispassion (it was of such an institution that the computer served as tangible embodiment). Sixth, direct access to science being barred to ordinary persons, a mediator was needed to translate personal, subjective needs into questions which could be answered in impartial and reliable, but hermetically sealed, highly technical language of science, and to translate back the scientific verdict into a practical advice for the layperson. The person could understand her needs, but only science knew the best way of satisfying them. The mediator combined the capacity to understand with the power of knowledge. Such a mediator is called expert. The expert is a person capable, simultaneously, of interrogating the fund of trustworthy and supra-personal knowledge and of understanding the innermost thoughts and cravings of single person. As an interpreter and mediator, the expert spans the otherwise distant worlds of the objective and the subjective. He bridges the gap between guarantees of being in the right (which can be only social) and making the choices that one wants (which can be only personal). In her own account of the experience, Emily Cho emphasized the importance of the "humanity" of the mediator. Let us note, however, that for her clients Cho was an entity present, much like her computer, mostly as a "belief'. We do not know whether the clients ever engaged in a personal intercourse with the head of the company; we do not know even if they ever met her in person. The clients believed that she existed, but for all they knew she was the "being" on the receiving end of the questionnaire they filled and the source of the customized fashion-guidance they received. What seemed to make Emily Cho's existence important to the clients was not her "humanity", but the function of mediation and interpretation she performed. In principle, a mechanical contraption capable of

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

83

performing the same function could replace her without serious damage to the satisfaction of needs which made her services desirable in the first place. Joseph Weizenbaum (1976) found out (much to his surprise, and soon to his dismay), that his computer programme simulating a psycho-analytical session was enthusiastically welcomed not only by psychiatrists, who saw in it the chance of allowing people to "talk about themselves, unburden themselves, gather insights into their troubled behavior" in numbers much greater than the availability of trained analysts would permit - but also by the prospective patients (indeed, the very presence of the computerized simulation of the psychiatrist "released" a potential patient "latent" in the exposed persons). Before his discovery, Weizenbaum (much like Madame Cho) believed that human intercourse was the crucial component of psycho-therapeutic process; that the process was effective in a morally acceptable way mainly thanks to the interaction of a human in need of help and another human ready and willing to help. As it transpired, however, the patients did not mind speaking to an "inhuman artifact", as long as its openings looked adequate to what they felt was their problem, and its follow-ups were correct, that is logical, responses to the statements preceding them. In fact Weizenbaum's secretary, who watched him working on the programme for many months and hence could not possibly entertain any illusions as to its contrived nature, once started "conversing" with the computer, and after exchanging just a few sentences became enough engrossed in the "conversation" to feel embarrassed by the presence of her professor and so to ask him to leave the room. The expert, in other words, is defined not so much by the qualities and possessions which characterize him, but by the function he (she, or it) is perceived as performing by the recipients of the services. In this sense demand precedes the supply (though, as we will see later, supply acquires its own momentum and soon begins to produce its own demand). One would suppose that there must be something in the socially determined existential modality of modern man and woman which creates the need of experts and their service, the expertise.

I. Existential Foundations of Expertise According to Niklas Luhmann (1986), with the passage from a pre-modern, stratified society to the modern, functionally differentiated one (that is a society in which divisions cut across the social locations of single individuals), "individual persons can no longer be firmly located in one single subsystem of society, but rather must be regarded a priori as socially displaced". All individuals are displaced, and are displaced wherever they find themselves at the moment and whatever they find themselves doing at the moment. There is no single place in

84

Zygmunt Bauman

the society in which they are truly at home and which can bestow upon them a natural identity. Individual identity becomes therefore something to be yet attained and presumably to be created by the individual involved. Following the path long before indicated by Georg Simmel, Luhmann seeks the causes of the individuals" tendency to interpret their situation "in terms of their own person", that is their preoccupation with self-definition, self-identity, self-assertion, - in short, their individualism - in the ever increasing differentiation, complexity, and hence opacity of interactive networks. General categories do not suffice now for self-identification, which may be reached only in the form of personal uniqueness. At this moment, however, we encounter the paradox on which the existential condition of members of modern society rests. On one hand, the individual needs to establish a stable and defensible difference between own person and the wider, impersonal and impenetrable social world outside. On the other hand, however, such a difference, precisely to be stable and reliable, needs social affirmation and must be obtained in a form which also enjoys social approval. The subjective world which constitutes the identity of individual personality can be only sustained by means of intersubjective exchange. In such an exchange, one partner "must be able to lend his support to the world of the other (although his inner experiences are highly individual)". Luhmann calls such an exchange love. It must be clear from the way in which the notion of "love" has been introduced, that in Luhmann's use it is semantically independent from traditional romantic associations of the term and, indeed, does not refer at all to personal feelings or emotional states in general; Luhmann reaches, so to speak, to the "functional underlayer" of what is at the surface an emotionally charged relationship. In Luhmann's idiosyncratic use, "love" stands for a particular mode of communication, in which persons may engage in principle with or without experiencing the affections which the term in its traditional and popular usage would impute or demand. There is, therefore, an inherent discrepancy between what is required for the function of the love-like intercourse to be fulfilled, and the criteria the persons are inclined to apply in their evaluation of love relationship as valid or sham. In social practice, love relationships are bound to be tension-ridden and generate profound anxiety. Since it is assumed in the popular interpretation of love that love-relationship may be effective only when accompanied by "true feelings", all practical instances of love intercourse must be contaminated by a gnawing suspicion that the partner may cheat by "acting out" the feelings deemed necessary yet missing. The search of love, determined by the modality of modern existence and hence bound to be resumed ever anew however bitter the experience has been thus far, is therefore fraught with attempts to overcome the uncertainty and find reliable methods to weed out fraud and tell the "true love" from the mere "acting out" by a phony. Such attempts become all the more obsessive and feverish the more autonomous, i.e. unique, idiosyncratic, and hence bizarre from the point of view of the

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

85

"norm", the individual personality becomes. Self-reliance makes the need of love, if anything, more overwhelming than in the case of a self-effacing, heteronomous and submissive personality. Yet with the growth of personal autonomy the probability of social approval diminishes. Thus, paradoxically, the greater the need, the less probable its satisfaction. In Luhmann's functional sense, love is a mode of communication characterized by transforming an inner experience of one person into the action of another. "The lover, who is expected to affirm idiosyncratic selections, is obliged to act, because he is confronted with a choice that has to be made" (that is he has to choose between validating or dismissing the selections); "the beloved, on the other hand, has only experienced something and expects him to identify with that experience. The one has to become involved, whereas the other (who is also forever tied to a projected world) only had to make the projection". For the lover, the task is a tall order, and the demanding criteria by which his performance is to be judged make it particularly burdensome. In ordinary love relationships, prospective lovers take up the task nevertheless, mostly in the hope to apply the essentially a-symmetrical pattern reciprocally, and receive in exchange for their efforts services similar to those they rendered to their partners. "Ordinary" love relations postulate reciprocity - that is, they demand that each partner agrees to assume simultaneously or successively both the "projecting" and the "affirming" roles, to "project" and to "act", to be a beloved and the lover at the same time. They postulate, therefore, that the interaction is not initiated (not to mention sustained) merely by the needs of one of the partners, but by a mutual attraction of both sides, which induces them "to stick together for better or worse"; in other words, by passion. Considering the importance of the function love is expected to perform for the "a priori displaced" inhabitant of the modern world, passion seems to be however a much too fragile and fickle foundation for the hope that the function will be fulfilled on every occasion, continuously and in the required volume. The costs of maintaining it at a sufficiently high level of intensity over long periods are enormous while, as we have seen before, the primary needs which have made love a necessity do not by themselves generate and nourish affections. To the primary function of love relationship, passion is coincidental, neither inevitable nor necessary. It is only the method of securing the implementation of function through imposing reciprocity on the essentially a-symmetrical pattern, which makes it both. But it also makes the sustenance of reciprocity, and hence the implementation of function, dependent on the continuity of passion, and hence vulnerable. Some time ago Richard Sennett (1977) coined a name destructive Gemeinschaft for a relationship to which both partners obsessively pursue the right to intimacy - to "open oneself up" to the partner, to share with the partner the whole, most private truth about one's inner life, to be "absolutely sincere", to wit hide nothing, however upsetting the information may be for the partner. In

86

Zygmunt Bauman

Sennett's view, stripping one's soul naked in front of the partner thrusts on the latter's shoulders an enormous burden; the partner is asked to give agreement to things which do not necessarily arouse his/her enthusiasm, and to be equally "sincere" and "honest" in reply. Sennett avers that no lasting relationship, and particularly not a lasting loving relationship, can be erected on the wobbly ground of mutual intimacy. The odds are overwhelming. The partners set for each other demands which neither can meet (or, rather, do not wish to meet, considering the price); both suffer and feel tormented and frustrated, and more often than not they decide to call it a day and stop trying. One or another partner chooses to opt out, and to seek self-assertion elsewhere. Destructiveness of the communion sought by the partners in love is caused, as we have seen, first and foremost by the requirement of reciprocity. Once aimed in both directions, intimacy makes negotiation and compromise necessary. And it is precisely negotiation and compromise which one or both partners are too impatient, or too self-concerned, to bear lightly. After all, two distinct, often contradictory personal projections must be accepted and affirmed simultaneously - a task always difficult and often impossible. No wonder one finds demand for a substitute for love (and if there is demand, an offer will soon follow): something which would perform the function of love (i.e. supply confirmation of inner experience, having first patiently absorbed full confession), without demanding reciprocity in exchange: that is, explicitly admitting the inherent asymmetry of the relationship. Here, we may postulate, lies the secret of the astounding success and popularity of psychoanalytic sessions, psychological counselling, marriage guidance, etc. In all such and similar cases, for the right to "open oneself up", make the innermost feelings known to another person, and in the end receive the longed-for approval of one's identity, one needs only to pay money. By the same token, one obtains a service without assuming the obligation to reciprocate. Monetary payment transforms the patient's or client's relation to the analyst into an impersonal one (and thus absolves the patient from the sin of self-concern and lack of concern for the partner), and offers an acceptable substitute for the patient's mutuality. And so one can, so to speak, be loved without loving. One can be concerned with oneself, and have the concerns shared, without giving another thought to the person who has taken the obligation of sharing as a part of business transaction. The patient buys an illusion of being loved. (It has to be mentioned, though, that the one-sided love being "against nature", i.e. in sharp disagreement with the socially accepted model of love, psychoanalytical exercise is notoriously plagued with the patients' tendency to mistake the "as i f ' conduct of the analyst for an expression of "true love", and to respond with a behavior which steps beyond the strictly business-like, impersonal and admittedly asymmetrical terms of the agreement; such transference obliquely proves, if a proof was needed, the essence of psychoanalysis as a paid-up substitute for love). Psychoanalytical techniques are just one specimen of a much wider category of

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

87

goods and services (marketed in our kind of modern society), which respond to the need of love substitute. The market puts on display a wide range of "identities" from which one can select one's own. Commercial advertisements take pain to show the commodities they try to sell in their social context, that means as a part of a particular life-style, so that the prospective customer can consciously purchase symbols of such self-identity he or she would wish to possess. The market offers as well tools of "identity making" which can be used differentially, i.e. produce results which differ somewhat from each other and are in this way "personalized". Through the market, one can put together various elements of the complete "identikit" of a DIY self. One can learn how to express oneself as a modern, liberated, carefree women; or as a thoughtful, reasonable, caring housewife; or as an up-and coming, ruthless and self-confident tycoon; or as an easy going, likeable fellow; or as an outdoor, physically fit, macho man; or as a romantic, dreamy and love-hungry creature; or as any mixture of all or some of these. The advantage of market-promoted identities is that they come complete with the label of social approval, and so the agony of seeking confirmation is spared. Identikits and life-style symbols are introduced by people with authority and supported by the information that very many people approve of them by using them or by "switching to them". Social approval does not need therefore to be negotiated, it has been, so to speak, "built into" the marketed product from the start. With such alternatives available and growing in popularity, the original method of solving the self-formation problem through reciprocal love stands ever smaller chance of success. As we have seen before, the negotiating of a mutual approval is a tormenting experience for the partners in love. Success is not possible without dedicated and long-time effort, and self-sacrifice on both sides. In all probability, the effort and the sacrifice would be made more frequently and with more zeal, were not the "easy" substitutes available. With the substitutes widely promoted and easy to obtain (the only sacrifice needed is to part with a quantity of money) there is, arguably, less motivation for a more laborious and time-consuming effort. Often the first hurdle is enough for one or both partners to wish to slow down or leave the track altogether. More often still, the substitutes are first sought with the intention to "complement" and hence later, however, the substitutes unload that relationship from its original function and drain off the energy which prompted the partners to seek its resurrection. One of the manifestations of such a devaluation of love, which has been discussed by Richard Sennett, is the tendency of eroticism to be ousted and supplanted by sexuality. Eroticism means the deployment of sexual desire, and ultimately sexual intercourse, as a hub around which to build and maintain a lasting love relationship: a social partnership of a stable kind, bearing all the features previously ascribed to personal intercourse, to one function only, that of the satisfaction of sexual desire. Such a reduction is often supplemented by special precautions aimed at preventing the sexual relationship from giving rise to

88

Zygmunt Bauman

mutual sympathy and obligation, and thus growing into a fully-fledged personal partnership. The "emancipation" of sexuality from the context of eroticism, most fully expressed in romantic love, leaves love relationships considerably weakened. They now lack (or have to share with other users) a most powerful resource, and find their stability still more difficult to attain. It is the failure of the "ordinary" reciprocal model of passionate love to resolve acute problems generated by the "a priori displacement" of the modern person that creates the need for marketed substitutes of love. With the growing availability of such substitutes, the weaknesses of traditional patterns are blatantly exposed, made salient, odious and intolerable. The comparative psychological cost of insisting on traditional solutions is perceived then as increasingly unbearable and unacceptable, which further expands the demand for substitutes and - the market mechanism being what it is - leads in the long run to their greater availability. And so on ... . The two factors are locked in a double bind of mutual reinforcement, with the traditional love solutions progressively devalued and devoid of attraction, and expertise as the substitute ever more in demand and available in growing scope and quantity. Expertise being, so to speak, a love without love (love without the risks of reciprocity; love without the cumbersome dependency on passion), it does not need to be offered by a human partner. On the user's side, nothing in principle bars the replacement of human experts by computer expert systems, or electronic conversationalists of Weizenbaum's ELIZA type (though such artificial intelligence replacements, filling the niche previously reserved for intimate inter-human bonds, cannot but be invested by their users with qualities appropriate to the place; hence the cultist elements in the users' attitudes and widely noted tendency to personalize the electronic partners of intercourse). If anything, the added value of high technology augments the authority of offered expertise and thus strengthens its impact as it magnifies its perceived effectivity and heightens associated expectations. The paradox of individuality which can be constructed only through social confirmation is the existential foundation of expertise. It offers the general pattern of which specific needs of functionally differentiated expertise may be seen as special cases.

II. Redeployment of Skills From the point of view of the user, the expertise offers socially approved solutions to individual discomforts and anxieties, having first articulated them as problems requiring solutions. Offered solutions are problem-specific. The prob-

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

89

lems, however, also need social approval. The expertise enters the life-world of the individual at the stage when diffuse and vague personal unease is expressed in the inter-personal language of individual problems to which there are supra-individual (i.e. objective) solutions. Availability of solutions precedes the translation. Indeed, the interpretation of personal discomfort as a set of unresolved problems carries authority in as far as socially approved solutions are available. The authority of the expertise rests on three closely interrelated assumptions. First, personal suffering (physical or spiritual) is an essentially remediable condition, and hence it cannot and should not be tolerated. It is the duty of the individual to seek escape from unhappy condition; persistence of discomfort is a proof that the duty has been neglected. Second, each case of unhappiness has its specific cause, cut out in such a way that it can be "targeted", acted upon directly - in order to be neutralized or removed. Unhappiness is therefore explicable in terms which make remedial action feasible. The duty of the individual is to seek such an explanation. Persistent non-specificity of suffering proves that the suffering person lacks knowledge and skills needed to trace its cause. Third, for each case of suffering (or, rather, for each cause of suffering) there is, or ought to be, an adequate remedy. Among the remedies on offer, one is the most adequate. It is again the duty of the individual to seek and find that remedy. Persistence of suffering is an evidence of absence of knowledge and skills necessary to do it. Jointly, these three assumptions construe individuals as inherently non-selfsufficient entities. The individuals so construed must rely on forces they do not control to gain satisfactory control of themselves. Life in society is inconceivable without a set of skills which enable individuals to interact with others while preserving their own integrity (i.e. reproducing themselves as subjects capable of interaction). Such skills are available in any society, and they are always socially transmitted. Contrary to the suggestions of its numerous critics, the contemporary society composed of "a priori displaced" persons is not an exception. "De-skilling tendency", disappearance of social skills' etc. do not and cannot happen in this kind of society any more than in any other type. History of societies has been, however, a history of learning as much as of forgetting: a history of devaluation and abandonment of some skills and their replacement by new ones. Modern history saw a gradual yet relentless ascendance of such skills as involve the mediation of extra-personal, socially supplied tools between the individual motive and the action aimed at its implementation. The new skills dislodged and eventually evicted the skills which enabled the individuals to act without recourse to external help: the "short-circuit" skills, which allowed individuals to act upon their motives with resources "naturally" at their disposal. Modern men and women share the fate of Tom and Jerry of the famous cartoon, oblivious to the timeless tradition of the cat-and-mouse struggle conducted with

90

Zygmunt Bauman

the help of the old fashioned weapons of paws and fangs and outdated strategies of hide-and-seek, using instead ever more sophisticated high-tech equipment and ever more complex and ingenious technologies of elaborate ambush and highspeed escape. Modern society, in other words, is a site of mediated action. Few if any daily and mundane tasks may be accomplished without the assistance of supra-individual knowledge wrapped into a tool or mechanism, or delivered in a verbalized form of spoken or printed briefing. The skills needed for the effective performance of the task are enclosed in artifacts or in the step-by-step instruction. The skills the individuals deploy on their own serve the need of locating and getting access to artifacts or instructions adequate to the task they wish to perform. More often than not, only such tasks are contemplated and only such actions embarked on, which have been made feasible by the available or known means. This is not necessarily a novelty, nor is it a unique feature of modern society. Contrary to the logic of action implied by the model of "rational agent", in all social contexts the accessible know-how defines the range of actions likely to be considered and undertaken. What is indeed a modern novelty is the fact that the know-how question is irretrievably split into two parts: one related to the actual performance of the task, another related to finding and using the reified or personal carriers of the former. Of the two parts, only the second is required of individuals engaged in activities within the scope of their life-world, and likely to be possessed by them. The living cannot sustain their own life. The process of life is itself mediated. Using a popular metaphor, one can say that in line with other sectors of modern social systems, the life world of modern individuals has been subjected to the processes of Taylorization and Fordization. As we know, the first process consists in the simplification of choices with which individuals who are engaged in direct productive operations are confronted. Reduced to the bare essentials and cleansed as much as possible of all random and irrelevant factors, the situation in which such individuals are placed turns into an instrument with which the decision-makers higher up in the hierarchy manipulate, and in the end determine, the choices. Successful Taylorization spares the operators the torments of uncertainty and hesitation, as the decisions which remain to be taken by them personally are guided by single-factor criteria and hence lend themselves to an easy and reassuringly rational calculation. The second process - that of Fordization - consists in removing the skills from the operator and transplanting them onto the machinery he operates. It is now the object of labor which turns out to be skillful; skills have become elements of the actor's environment. Successful Fordization shifts responsibility for the results of action from the operator to the implements he operates, and in principle allows the individuals to engage in a well-nigh infinite range of skill-demanding activities, much in excess of the skills they themselves might have mastered. The combined effect of the two processes is the elevation of a superstructure of expert decision-making above the level of the actual task-performance, coupled

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

91

with the shifting of all skill-demanding decisions away from the performers. This effect is achieved through the reduction of tasks the performers confront to the most elementary and straightforward operations (like swallowing the right kind, expert-prepared and expert-prescribed pill to neutralize a complex inter-personal problem), and in its turn it further promotes such a reduction. Reduction is experienced as liberation from cumbersome necessities of life and feels like freedom. What it hides is growing incompleteness and insufficiency of the individual and the ever more complex structure of dependency without which the life process is not any more possible. As the dependency is activated by the urge to seek assistance, it tends to be, paradoxically, experienced as freedom rather than its limitation. The assumed availability of solutions makes living with unresolved problems unbearable. Hence the solutions are actively sought, and finding them is perceived as an act of liberation and increase in freedom. With the absence of personal skills of dealing directly with the problems, and the availability of solutions solely in the shape of marketable implements or expert advice, each successive step in the endless problem-solving, experienced as another extension of freedom, further strengthens the network of dependency. The hold of supra-individual expertise over the life-world of the individual is self-reproducing. Once established, it displays virtually infinite capacity for growth. Since it is perceived as a condition of liberty rather than as oppression, its expansion is also unlikely to encounter resistance. Failure of a particular implement or recipe to deliver on its promise does not bring disillusionment, it only triggers off demand for better, more efficient expert service. If the individuals pause for a moment of reflection, they will most certainly identify the prospects of happy, problem-free life with the unstoppable progress of expert knowledge and the technology it spawns.

III. Self-reproduction of Expertise To put it in a different way: the expertise creates and enhances the need of itself. The substitution of expert skills for the personal ones does not mean solely the provision of more effective and fool-proof, as well as less onerous, means to deal with the extant problems. It also means the creation and a principally unlimited multiplication of new problems which render expertise indispensable. And this in two different ways. First, the very efficiency, decisiveness and radicality with which the concentrated, focused, scientifically-based expert knowledge, unlike the traditional and socially diffuse skills, allows the expert to deal with the task at hand, tends to create imbalances in other areas of the life-world system. Unanticipated side

92

Zygmunt Bauman

effects call for new expertise and create demands for its further ramification. Otherwise mutually isolated segments of the expertise network supply ever new tasks for each other and in their overall effect, even at the moments of individual defeat and disgrace (or, rather, particularly such moments), reinforce the standing of the network as a whole. Second, the more focused and specialized a given field of expertise becomes, the chance grows that new skills (technical capabilities) will be invented which at first will have no clear application. Their presence, however, will bring into relief areas of life-world previously unnoticed; will re-define previously neutral or easily coped with elements of life routine as vexing (made intolerable by the very fact of not having to be tolerated anymore), as factors causing inconvenience or suffering, and hence as problems; will create an urge to "do something" about them, reshape them or remove. As the information about new skills is disseminated, the urge is generated to purchase, hire and apply them. Instead of achieving the promised reduction in the number of problems which beset the management of the life-world, the progressive refinement of expert skills rebounds in the multiplication of problems. Skills seeking application masquerade as problems needing solution. The first way in which expertise-demanding problems are multiplied in the course of their resolution has been perceptively and wittily analyzed by Gregory Bateson (1973). Problem-oriented sciences and technologies are guided by perception of purposes: "What happens is that doctors think it would be nice to get rid of polio, or typhoid, or cancer". Once the purpose has been achieved, the doctors discover further problems and formulate further purposes; "Medicine ends up, therefore, as a total science, whose structure is essentially that of a bag of tricks". Some tricks are extremely valuable and their discovery brings freedom from quite real troubles. And yet "Cannon wrote a book on The Wisdom of the Body, but nobody has written a book on the wisdom of medical science, because wisdom is precisely the thing which it lacks. Wisdom I take to be the knowledge of the larger interactive system - that system which, if disturbed, is likely to generate exponential curves of change". To help visualize the overall results of the expert-type purpose-oriented thinking, Bateson (1973:404) offers a parable of Eden: On one of the trees there was a fruit, very high up, which the two apes were unable to reach. So they began to think. That was the mistake. They began to think purposively. By and by, the he ape, whose name was Adam, went and got an empty box and put it under the tree and stepped on it, but he found he still couldn't reach the fruit. So he got another box and put it on top of the first. Then he climbed on the two boxes and finally he got that apple. Adam and Eve then became almost drunk with excitement. This was the way to do things. Make a plan, A B C and you get D.

They began to specialize in doing things the planned way. In effect, they cast out from the Garden the concept of their own total systemic nature and of its total

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

93

systemic nature. After they had cast God out of the Garden, they really went to work on this purposive business, and pretty soon the topsoil disappeared. After that, several species of plants became "weeds" and some of the animals became "pests"; and Adam found that gardening was much harder work... Eve began to resent the business of sex and reproduction. Whenever these rather basic phenomena intruded upon her now purposive way of living, she was reminded of the larger life which had been kicked out of the Garden. So Eve began to resent sex and reproduction, and when it came to parturition she found this process very painful. The message of the parable is plain. Each problem-resolution begets new problems. In fact, it is the purpose-oriented action which bears main responsibility for generating these aspects of human condition which are experienced as uncomfortable, worrying, and in need of rectifying. Chasing a specific remedy for a specific inconvenience, human action is bound to throw out of balance both the system-like environment of action, and the relations between the actors themselves. It is this artificially created imbalance which is later experienced as a "problem" and thus seen as the warranty for the articulation of new purposes. There is, however, one more message in the parable less easy to pinpoint. It shows in Eve's re-definition of the "larger life" necessities (which she presumably bore before with equanimity) as cumbersome, annoying and unendurable and, above all, unwarranted. With the purposive thinking firmly in the saddle, no pain, suffering or just reality slightly short of promised and hence imaginable perfection seems to carry meaning and therefore needs to be lived up to. Instead, it is now perceived as contingency; as a discomfort which ought (and, with due determination and right skills and resources) to be removed from life altogether. In this process, again, the capacity of purpose-thinking for self-propagation and expansion is revealed. The second way in which the self-multiplication of expertise-demanding problems is assured has been analyzed with striking poignancy by Jacques Ellul. Technology, says Ellul (1980a:267), develops because it develops; technology proceeds in a causal, never in a goal-oriented fashion (Ellul, 1980b:243). These blunt statements seem to contradict our argument so far, which pointed to the crucial role of purpose as the moving spirit of the expansion of expertise and its instruments. Contradiction is only apparent, however. The purpose-thinking supplies the general legitimation for the strategic role claimed by expertise and technology in the management of daily life. Once the authority has been reached that "man in our society has no intellectual, moral, or spiritual reference point for judging and criticizing technology", mostly because a closed circle has been created so that "nothing can have an intrinsic sense; it is given meaning only by technological application" (Ellul, 1980a: 318), technology does not need anymore a legitimation to keep it on course. Expertise and technology become their own legitimation; their very availability justifies their need and their claims to an increasing share of social resources and growing social esteem.

94

Zygmunt Bauman

Technology never advances towards anything but because it is pushed from behind. The technician does not know why he is working, and generally he performs a certain task, to succeed in a new operation. ... There is no call towards a goal; there is constraint by an engine placed in the back and not tolerating any halt for the machine... The interdependence of technological elements makes possible a very large number of "solutions" for which there are no problems. ... Given that we can fly to the moon, what can we do on it and with it? ... When technicians came to a certain degree of technicity in radio, fuels, metals, electronics, cybernetics etc., all these things combined and made it obvious that we could fly into the cosmos, etc. It was done because it could be done. That is all (Ellul, 1980a: 272-273, 280).

In other words, expertise becomes its own cause (rather than its own purpose). It is not an "expertise for its own sake". It is, rather, the expertise because there is already one, because that which has been created "cannot be wasted" and because it is condemnable - unwise and shameful - not to do what one is, in principle, capable of doing. Major advances in the development of expertise and its technological implements are measured now by the discovery and targeting of the "problems" to which it has become capable of providing "solutions", rather than by finding solutions to already perceived and articulated problems. The thus far accumulated knowledge and know-how generates more knowledge and know-how, while in their turn the new knowledge and know-how seek feverishly their application. They re-chart human condition as the object of their "new and improved" practices. Because of the causal, rather than teleological, determination of the advances of expertise and its uses, it is in practice inconceivable that the ensuing development may grind to a halt. In particular, it is unthinkable that a facility already available, or thought to be within reach, may be laid aside and not be used deliberately because of some other, non-technical considerations, like for instance its moral side-effects, or philosophical conceptions of the intrinsic value of human autonomy. Whenever the latter clash with the application of technological potential, they are automatically classified as retrograde and by the same token reactionary and condemnable. Alternatively, as the development of technological expertise is not subject to any specific purpose but the duty not to neglect what is possible to attain, all reasons for which a particular line of development might be abandoned are a priori de-legitimized and dismissed as technologically meaningless and therefore irrelevant. All in all, the extrinsic, non-technological reasons are denied the right and authority to interfere with the direction the development of expertise and technical capability may take. The essence of the self-legitimation of expertise (and at the same time of its declaration of independence, self-sufficiency and moral immunity) is contained in the increasingly fashionable commercial slogan: "everything you can do, you can do better", and in its obverse, "it is a crime, or a sin not to do better if you can".

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

95

With the majority of these products, supply comes before demand and the technical discussion on the characteristics of the products takes the place of any analysis of social demand. These technical arguments are twofold. On the one hand, since these new technical capabilities have appeared, it is necessary to utilize them so as not to be behind the times; on the other hand, their use allows one to do more, better and with less effort than before, and this can only lead to greater happiness (Scadigli, 1982:41).

Two additional factors do not allow expertise to stop and its grip on the life-world to weaken. First, as each act of expert problem-solving is focused on the task at hand, and as the perfection of expertise is measured by its ability to define the tasks at hand "more precisely" (i.e. circumscribe them more narrowly), the more effective the applications of expert knowledge become the less likely the experts are to glean the effects of their actions on the areas left out of focus. The effects of individual, area-specific expert practices spill far beyond their ostensible (falsely assumed to be autonomous) sector of application and come into contact with other expert practices which more often than not are equally narrow-focused. Expert practices, therefore, combine into a system; but the system emerges ex post facto, as an unanticipated consequence of many actions which can be effective only if they refuse to anticipate the systemness of their consequences. No one overviews the process of system emergence, and no one may scan, much less control, the operation of the emergent system. Yet this "getting out of control" is not the result of complacency or an oversight. Neither can it be rectified or prevented. Were the systemic consequences of expert practice taken into account, effectivity of expertise would be undermined. Voluntary blindness to systemic consequences is the unavoidable condition of expert success. The spectacular results of expert intervention have not been achieved despite this blindness, but because of it. The choice is between blindness and impotence. Expertise thrives thanks to its skill of atomization, of splitting natural systems into an every growing multitude of ever smaller and hence more manageable tasks. Short of surrendering the very essence of its power, it cannot but generate, therefore, a nature-like, unplanned and uncontrolled, yet man-made system out of the by-products of its own success. If this is the case, however, then the very progress of expert knowledge and practice adds to the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the system. New problems continue to be produced, and with them new demand for expert action; no self-healing is conceivable if the disease is an outcome of interference with a natural self-equilibrating mechanism. Damage done by expertise may be cured only by more expertise. More expertise means, in its turn, yet more damage and more demand for expert cure. Second, access of expertise to the life-worlds of its clients (and vice versa) is mediated by the market. Expert services offered either in a pure form or in the wrapping of consumer goods are commodities; while serving the needs of the consumer, they also bring profits to the merchandising agents. New expert offers

96

Zygmunt Bauman

promising to tap (or, rather, to generate) as yet non-satisfied demand are from the latter point of view particularly attractive thanks to the extra gains expected to be creamed off because of the temporary scarcity of supply. Market forces encourage novelty. Since the new offers are aimed at the heretofore absent needs, their promotion entails however a financial risk. On the whole, only a small part of new products captures imagination of the consumer enough to bring substantial profit. The few successful innovations must pay for the bulk of abortive ones. Since it is virtually impossible to predict which of the products will succeed in their efforts to create their own consumers, market forces emulate the prodigal extravagance of piscine procreation: thousands of expert offers must be hatched, for a few to reach secure (and profitable) life. Under the circumstances, no market agent can ever afford to suspend the search for novelty, lest it should be snatched by the competition.

IV. Marketing the Expertise Contemporary consumer markets do not adjust the level of supply to the existing demand, but aims at the creation of new demand to match the supply potential. The scope of demand eventually created depends on the effective assignment of use value to the supplied products. Prospective consumers will be willing to pay for the product if, and only if, they accept that they have a need which the product promises to gratify. As Marshall Sahlins (1976:169) convincingly suggests, The social meaning of an object that makes it useful to a certain category of persons is no more apparent from its physical properties than is the value it may be assigned in exchange. Use-value is not less symbolic or less arbitrary than commodity value. For "utility" is not a quality of the object but a significance of the objective qualities.

A product is unlikely to be sold unless a "utility" is imputed. The exchange value it can legitimately hope for will depend on the scope and attraction of such utility. The advent of Information Technology made this rule even truer than it ever was before. Information is, in Gordon B. Thompson's apt expression, an "ethereal good", very cheap to produce, even cheaper to reproduce, and not disappearing in the process of being consumed. Because of such unusual attributes, ethereal goods have "to win" their "consensus value". "The value of ethereal good is a function of attraction given to that good by the society." "Utility", or the social attraction, of ethereal goods grows with their use and hence the latter must be monitored for the exchange value to be established and possibly boosted, as in the case of "Pop Twenty" or Book best seller lists (cf. Thompson, 1982:88-89). But

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

97

for a product to acquire utility, it has to be first given "significance", and that means that a connection must be established or successfully imputed between the product and a need of which the consumer may or may not be aware. Through the creation of new needs, new potential utilities, and thus also new exchange-values, are brought into being. In as far as the expertise remains a commodity, it falls under the general market rule. The first problem which all expertise must face is therefore the creation of a need for itself, strong enough to generate a supplyclearing demand. We have discussed before the reasons for which a generalized demand for expertise can be considered as firmly and irrevocably established. Such reasons, let us recall, are related to the fact that the life-world cannot be any more sustained and reproduced without assistance of the experts of their products, and to certain immanent features of expert practice responsible for the continuous reproduction of demand for new expertise on an ever growing scale. If the discussed reasons assure that all needs, past or prospective, must be met with some kind of expert-managed solution, and that new solutions will be always offered to past or prospective needs, they contain no guarantee of success, however, for any particular kind of expert commodity. "Utility" of an already socially accepted expert product must be sustained against the odds of new competitive challenges, and new "utilities" must be created to make room for new, and previously not offered, expert products. Exchange value of expertise must legitimize itself in terms of its use value. Use value, in turn, must invoke the needs of the individual consumer. The invoked needs are of a general, and thus overtly or tacitly recognized kind. The merchandizing of expertise consists in the focusing of such general needs on a specific expert product. There are several general needs to which appeals are most frequently, and successfully, made. In the case of some of them, new expert products promise to replace the absent or forgotten skills which once served their satisfaction. In the case of some others, new expert products promise to do better what their predecessors failed to do, thereby accomplishing a double feat: sustaining the popular trust in the capacity of expertise "as such" to deliver on its promise even if its individual offers are not up to the task, and at the same time discrediting and devaluing past expert products which have reached the peak of their selling potential, so that room can be made for the continuing output of expertise. In both types of cases, the expert backing for the merchandized products is the decisive selling point. Expert backing offers the consumer the craved-for certainty and balance of mind instead of the doubt and anxiety which would become the lot of the individuals once left to their own, discredited, skills or insufficient resources. Expertise promises individuals means and abilities to control their own life-world. It presents the dependency on the experts as the liberation of the individual; heteronomy as autonomy. We have already discussed at some length the mechanism which allows such dependency, disguised as freedom, to penetrate (or, depending on the point of

98

Zygmunt Bauman

view, to be admitted into) the life-world of the individual through the activities aimed at the establishment of self-identity. Similar mechanisms enter the service of other general needs. Closely related to the need of self-construction is the need of distinction - or, which amounts to the same, of the acquisition and manipulation of one's placement inside the social order, previously operated mostly by heredity and ascription (both resilient to individual manipulation), now purchasable and consumable products which have been taken over as the essential building blocks of the new totemic system (Sahlins, 1976:176-177). We may add that such products, imbued with totemic significance, offer individuals several things at once. They allocate specific patterns of life-style to specific rungs of the social ladder. They offer kits containing all the necessary symbols with which any life-style can be assembled. And they supply a social (though not necessarily "money back") guarantee that such assembly will indeed result in the genuine product. In other words, totemic products offer the overall framework within which all the future selection of life-projects must be located, define the acquisition of expert-produced skills and expert-produced objects as the prime vehicle of such selection, and inject the selection with certainty of social approval. In such a way, individual energy of self-assertion, through the DIY labor, is harnessed in the service of the reproduction of social order. Expert advice and expert-designed objects which allow their possessors to act in a way authorized by expert knowledge cater also for another crucial need of the individual: that of rationality. Modern society is characterized by a radical intolerance of any form of life different from itself. It can conceive of such difference only as ignorance, superstition or retardation. A form of life may be admitted into the realm of the tolerable and offered a citizenship status in the land of modernity only if first naturalized, trimmed of all oddity and in the end subjugated: only in a form, that is, in which it can be fully translated into the language of rationality, which is modernity's own. Assumption of own monopoly for meaningfulness and of the right to judge all forms of life from the superior vantage point of this monopoly is the essence of modern social order. The assumption makes "the error of one's ways" a constant possibility and a permanent source of fear. Certification of rationality of one's acts and beliefs becomes a residence permit which must be constantly renewed and can be renewed only on the ground of good behavior. As Hans Peter Duerr (1985:126) points out, "scientists constitute the force that does the categorizing, the intellectual "police force". They do not form one particular contingent, but are grouped into troops with different tasks. Some of these units could with a bit of malice be seen as virtual storm troopers. In a blatant and rather transparent way, they mount the defence against what is strange". As in the case of any police force, the scientists' power to permit and to forbid is difficult to evade. Yet the ways through which the scientists arrive at their decisions are, for the lay member of society, even more difficult to fathom. The two circumstances together cast science as the collective manager of the source of uncertainty and thereby

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

99

reproduce the classic pattern of power and dependency. Lay members of society must be rational, but they cannot be rational without being guided by the verdicts of science and without being offered algorithmic, or at least heuristic prescriptions for action that carry approval of the experts. Lay desire to be rational lubricates the fly-wheel of expertise. Need to be rational is grounded, as it were, in the apparently ineradicable "messiness" of the life-world. The latter inevitably entails contradictory messages, drives which point in opposite directions, needs which cannot be satisfied without sacrificing or endangering other needs. Most importantly, it is pregnant with a constant threat of error. One wrong turn may lead the individual into a blind alley or take him to a point of no return. Messy life-world might have its rewards, but no doubt it is fraught with conflicts and so its blessings cannot but be mixed. A "varied and unprogrammed exchange" with human and natural environment is "full of difficulties, temptations, hard choices, challenges, surprises" (Ellul, 1980a:314). The enshrinement of rationality of choice and conduct is itself a choice, a preference for order against muddiness, security against surprise, constancy of results against variety of gains and losses. It denigrates randomness and glorifies unambiguity. Moreover, it presents full clarity of the life-world and a chance of gains without risk of losses as a realistic possibility and thus as a sensible purpose to be strived toward. It promises a world free of uncertainty, spiritual torments, intellectual hesitations. Not that such a sanitized world is to be uniform and dreary in its lack of alternatives and choices. But in such a world, however dazzling and full of temptation, variety will be tamed, and its sting will be pulled out. Variety will be retained only as a choice between actions which are all rational and safe, so that the drama of life will turn into entertainment. In such a world, the very chance of wrong choice (i.e. irrationality) will be eliminated, and hence the very distinction between rationality and irrationality will cease to exist. The ultimate limit of rationality is its self-transcendence resulting in irrelevance. In a Shannon-inspired "informational" vision of the world and human practice, which stayed tacitly as the intellectual background for most of the contemporary strategy of technological progress, the "evil empire" was that of noise, or randomness. The random equals chaotic equals uncontrolled. The proclaimed target of information technology has been the elimination of noise. In practical terms, this means full control of the message by the sender (which includes the power to determine an unambiguous reception of the message by the recipient). With all random interferences with the message and all choice of its interpretation subdued or eliminated "it is precisely autonomous action which is repressed (or repressively tolerated) by the technological society" (Woodward, 1980:XIX). The ultimate limit of the war against noise is a fully controlled life-world and complete heteronomy of the individual located unambiguously on the receiving end of information flow and having his choices safely enclosed within strictly defined frame.

100

Zygmunt Bauman

The great American institution of the malls offers a glimpse into such a world, coming closer than any other aspect of contemporary life to the ideal type of triumphant rationality. Malls are an escape from the messiness of the "real world". They offer a controlled, physically and spiritually secure environment for an alternative life-world, in which the joy of choosing is not polluted by the fear of error, as any choice has its propriety guaranteed in advance. Unlike the "real" one, the world of malls is free from overlapping categories, mixed messages and semiotic unclarity rebounding in behavioral ambiguity. In the mall, environment is carefully monitored (literally and metaphorically), neatly split into thematic sections, each reduced to clear-cut, stereotyped and easy to read symbols with virtually all danger of ambiguous interpretation removed. Inside the mall the experts do not merely offer a guidance through the mysteries, and safe passage around the traps, of the world. Experts have created this world, and created it according to their own thoroughly rationalized design which for the reason of being rationally designed contains no mysteries nor traps and thus claims to be better - simpler, safer, more transparent - than the world left behind the thick walls and the electronically operated gates. In the expert-made world, the very irrationality has been colonized, everything is rational, and thus rationality loses its militant edge. Even surprises are carefully programmed. The exhilarating experience of going on a binge, letting oneself go, being unreasonable - can be safely enjoyed. Even catastrophe is a concept in a game ingeniously designed by the experts and conducted according to rules which prevent it from running out of hand. The malls do not sell commodities only. They sell an alternative life-world, one in which control and responsibility is ceded to the experts, and ceded willingly and joyously, as the surrender is rewarded with the comfort of always being in the right. In the malls, it is the project of expert-designed life-world that is merchandized and market-tested.

V. The Tendencies and Limits of Expert-Designed Life World Michel Benamon wittily classifies writers concerned with the prospects of an expert-led, technologized world into four groups, according to the classic "four humors". They range all the way from happy technophiles (guided by Agape; McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller being most prominent among them), through anxious technophiles (Logos; Lewis Mumford of the '30s), hopeful technophobes (Eros, Goodman; Illich; Roszak; late Marcuse), up to desperate technophobes (Thantos; Ellul; late Mumford; earlier Marcuse; cf. Benamon, 1980:67); from

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

101

apostles of Good Tidings to the prophets of imminent doom. All the categories agree, however, that the change perpetrated in the life-world of modern man by the elevation of expertise and unstoppable technologization of human environment has been radical and in all probability irreversible. The human world will be never again be the same as it was before the ascendance of technology. Whether the change amounts to greater happiness or deeper misery is bound to remain a moot issue. Depending on their own degree of optimism, anxiety or despair, observers and analysts have focused and will focus their descriptions and diagnoses on what they consider the more attractive, or the less prepossessing traits of the expertly designed future. They would belittle therefore the significance of such attributes as detract from the unity of their vision. And yet they would hardly deny their presence. Though assigned widely varying importance for human well-being (and, sometimes, even varying value), certain features of the new world are nevertheless almost universally acknowledged. In what follows some such features, which seem to be crucial for any assessment of the prospects of expert-led society, will be briefly discussed. There is an aspect in the Shannon-initiated informatic revolution which seems to possess particularly far-reaching consequences for the new shape of the expert-guided world: the explicit bracketing away, and implicit denigration of the "content" of the message, now fully replaced by the consideration of the measures of quantity. Information as a measurable value has been divorced - and emancipated - from the semantic "content" of statements (Roszak, 1986:10-12). The historical act of divorce had two closely related results. First, the quality of both the sender and the receiver of message has been made irrelevant to the evaluation of information, now focused exclusively on what is happening "in the wire" between speaker and listener - on the task of delivering the message (whatever its content, and whoever has sent it) undistorted. This means not so much the neutrality or vaunted non-partisanship of information technology, as its unambiguous slant in favor of control (more precisely, in favor of the determining force of the sender over the recipient, secured through hiring the services of an information-processing expert; in favor of information as an object and a means of management). Second, information can be evaluated solely by its volume, with disregard of its content. Information theory allows diagnosis of information and set preferences for its improvement without referring to the matters of significance or importance (or, rather, it leaves the right to decide the worth of transmission entirely in the communicator's hands). Indeed, the theory and the technology which it spawns and legitimizes have no means of distinguishing between sets of information in any other terms but their respective volumes. Two sets of information equal in quantity (as defined by accepted method of measurement) are equivalent in all other respects (in fact, "other respects" cannot be sensibly spoken about at all). This new position is well captured in the highly popular game of "Trivial Pursuit", that rehearsal of irrelevance of the semantic

102

Zygmunt Bauman

aspect of information and an entertaining method of self-instruction in the quantity as the sole measure of quality of knowledge and its holders. The irrelevance of qualitative considerations (that is, who sends the message, and what message is being sent) reaches beyond the purely cognitive sphere. It leads as well to the delegitimation of ethical judgment. In this, expertise follows the general trend of modernity, which set off to isolate, discredit and suppress all "irrational" factors in human behavior and social organization, i.e. all factors not related to the enhancement of effects and lowering of costs of goal-fulfillment. Modernity set the ideal of rationality apart from that of reasonability: rationality has been purified of all attributes but those of efficiency, and emancipated from constraints imposed by other reasons claiming (once upon a time successfully) the right to compete with the cause of optimal efficiency (in the market version of the latter, with cost-effects analysis) in evaluating the preferable methods of action. Diffuse and non-specific interhuman obligations which constitute the core of moral behavior and moral judgment, had to be the first to go. Together with other processes of modernization, the development of expertise heavily contributed to the eviction of morality. By its nature, the expert vision of the world as a collection of narrowly circumscribed "problems" to be analyzed in their own terms and then "solved", is an enemy of morality. In the space projected by that vision, moral questions cannot be legitimately posited; they are bound to remain foreign bodies, extrinsic factors, a noise which must be stifled for the sake of the clarity of the message.

Instrumental reason converts each dilemma, however genuine, into a mere paradox that can then be unraveled by the application of logic, by calculation. All conflicting interests are replaced by the interests of technique alone. ... It is, in fact, entirely reasonable, if "reason" means instrumental reason, to apply American military force, B-52's, napalm, and all the rest, to "communist-dominated" Vietnam (clearly an "undesirable object"), as the "operator" to transform it into a "desirable object". ... People, things, events are "programmed", one speaks of "inputs" and "outputs", of feedback loops, variables, parameters, and so on, until eventually all contact with concrete situations is abstracted away. Then only graphs, data sets, printouts are left. And only "we", the experts, can understand them ... (Weizenbaum, 1976:251-253).

In the expert-drawn chart of the world, moral problems are not merely delegitimized; they are invisible. "Problem", defined from the start with an eye on the search for "solution", has no room for moral, and other technically irrelevant, parameters. Dealing with problems, the experts have no occasion to fathom moral significance of the situations they deal with and those they wish to bring about. The ultimate recipients of "solutions", men and women whose life-world is affected and transformed, at no point enter the process of calculation. They have been beforehand dissected into so many organs, functions, specialized roles none of which comes anywhere near capturing the total human relation in which alone

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

103

moral judgment comes into its own. In its resolute drive towards more technical efficiency, expertise must dissolve all "totalities", as it focuses instead on their accessible and manageable segments. This perpetual tendency of expertise has recently received a formidable extension, and a potentially sinister twist, with the advent of information technology, and particularly the new totalities of large interconnected computer networks. To the development of such totalities, the awesome expertise ingrained in the software production, like all technically smart expertise, can contribute in a piecemeal fashion only. Continuously, new fragments are added to the total system with little, if any, knowledge of their impact on the set of programmes which had been fed in before. Despite (or is it because?) being an utterly artificial, man-made-product, the computer system develops nevertheless in a nature-like, spontaneous and uncontrolled mode, so that no one is capable of overviewing its total effect. Geoff Simons has suggested that the largest software systems grow in an uncontrolled, increasingly incomprehensible, fashion. If a problem arises, a new piece of programme is written on an immediate technological "fix": it may solve the problem in a short term, but its long-term effects on the established programmes are unknown and totally unpredictable. Hence the largest computer software systems evolve in a disorganized fashion, particular programmers understanding bits here and bits there, but no one understanding the system as a whole (Simons, 1985:161).

One of the most remarkable consequences of the loosening connection and growing incommensurability between the operations of any single programmer and the capacity of the software system as a whole, is the flotation of responsibility for the ultimate outcome of computer-mediated action. Such flotation is not, of course, a novelty introduced by the computer age. The advent of computer systems only added new momentum to an old and permanent tendency of technically oriented expertise, and enabled it to develop on an unprecedented, heretofore inconceivable scale. As we have seen before, expertise can perform adequately only if the systemic consequences of the problem-oriented performance are lost from sight or deliberately put aside. And yet before the advent of the computer age it was other experts who dealt with side-effects of expert practices; there was always an identifiable person standing behind every action. One could engage in an interminable argument as to the actual degree of each person's responsibility, and as to which one of the many interconnected actions bore the decisive causal relation to the given effect. The argument could, however, be conducted (however counterfactually and inconclusively) in personal terms. It is this possibility which the advent of computer systems all but excluded. The "free floating" responsibility becomes now, in addition, irreparably depersonalized. The old stratagem of "hot potato" can be now discarded. As the recent "bug scare" among the users of most sophisticated software has shown,

104

Zygmunt Bauman

there is no way of tracing the vagaries of the computer system to legal or physical persons who could be blamed for the event. Ceding the expert authority to the computer system puts paid, once for all, to the question of moral responsibility for actions with most formidable human consequences. This ultimate achievement of expertise in its so far the highest, computerized, form, has been spotted and capitalized on by the nuclear war strategists. Admitting that, however loud the sabre-rattling and pretensions of "we really mean it", the prospect of a human decision-maker taking personal responsibility for the nuclear Armageddon is difficult to visualize, and concerned that the most devastating nuclear deterrence potential is effective only if credible (i.e. if "the enemy" believes that it will be used) - the strategists work hard on designing a "Launching-on-Warning" system, which would exclude entirely all human participation from the whole process of information processing and decision taking. More than any network of experts with its notorious "free-floating" responsibility, computerized system can be trusted with complete and definite freedom from such "delaying factors" as moral scruples. Computerization of expertise radicalizes the long tendency to eliminate constraints imposed on technical efficiency by moral inhibitions in another fashion: by decisively extending the psychological and morally vulnerable distance between decision and its effects, between operators and the human objects of the operations. Not only may the operations be now disowned by the operators, as they cannot be any more sensibly defined as "their" operations; they are also removed from the operators at a distance which renders the chain of causes and effects, and even more the final outcome, all but invisible. What is invisible does not thrust itself upon the operator as a moral problem. It may hide itself effectively instead behind the thicket of technical problems the operator confronts. Loyalty to the task at hand exhausts the moral problematics the expert is likely to face. Between this microcosm of personal ethics and moral significance of expertise-saturated action stands the impenetrable wall of the anonymous and incomprehensible computer system. To quote Weizenbaum again, the high-class experts who advised American generals on the matters of "scorched land", defoliation etc. during Vietnam war, "were able to give the counsel they gave because they were operating at an enormous psychological distance from the people who would be maimed and killed by the weapon systems that would result from the ideas they communicated to their sponsors" (Weizenbaum, 1976:275). Ethical blindness of the experts rebounds on the life-worlds they serve. As articulated and processed by the experts, individual problems shed their original moral connotations. Even if generated originally as issues of moral significance and ethical choice, they re-emerge from expert processing as matters of rationality and technical efficiency. They are now questions of selecting right means to the chosen ends, and the likelihood of reaching the end with minimal costs supplies the only legitimate criterion of distinguishing right from wrong. Another popular game through which the inhabitants of the updated life-worlds rehearse and train

Life-world and Expertise: Social Production of Dependency

105

themselves in the n e w life w i s d o m presents under the name o f "scruples" (a name which o n c e carried an ethical load), the uncertainty as to which of the adversary factors can be ignored with less damage to the desirable outcome of action. This is, one would suspect, the only meaning of scruple allowed in a life world in which responsibility has been taken over by expertise, only to be purified of the burden of moral judgment. 2

Notes 1 2

As reported by Kennedy Fraser in New Yorker on 11 May 1981, pp. 126-35. I have discussed this topic at length in Bauman (1989:chap. 8); cf. also Bauman (1990).

References Bateson, Gregory 1973 "Conscious Purpose versus Nature", pp. 402-414 in Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: Paladin. Bauman, Zygmunt 1990 "Effacing the Face: On the Social Management of Moral Proximity". Theory, & Society 7:5-38.

Culture

Bauman, Zygmunt 1989 Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Benamon, Michael 1980 "Notes on the Technological Imagination: Theories and Fictions", pp. 65-75 in Teresa de Lauretis, Andreas Huyssen, Kathleen Woodward (eds.), The Psychological Imagination: Theories and Fiction. Madison: Coda Press 1980. Duerr, Hans-Peter 1985 Dreamline: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization. Oxford: Blackwell. Ellul, Jacques 1980a Technological System. New York: Continuum. Ellul, Jacques 1980b "The Power of Technique and the Ethics of Non-Power", in Kathleen Woodward (ed.), The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture. Madison, WI.: Coda Press.

106

Zygmunt Bauman

Luhmann, Niklas 1986 Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard. Roszak, Theodore 1986 The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Cambridge, Mass.: Lutterworth Press. Sahlins, Marshall

Thinking.

1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scardigli, Victor, François Plessard and Pierre-Alain Mercier 1982 "Information Society and Daily Information Technology Impact on the Society held in Dublin 18-20 November Sennett, Richard 1977 "Destructive Gemeinschaft", pp. Crisis. New York: Oxford.

Life", pp. 37-54 in Liam Bannon et al. (eds.), Daily Life. EEC Conference on the Information 1980. Dublin: Tywoly Inter. Publishing. 171-197 in Norman Birnbaum (ed.), Beyond

the

Simons, Geoff 1985 Silicon Shock: The Menace of Computer Invasion. Oxford: Blackwell. Thompson, Gordon B. 1982 "Ethereal Goods: The Economic Atom of the Information Society", pp. 86-70 in Liam Bannon et al. (eds.), Information Technology Impact on the Daily Life. EEC Conference on the Information Society held in Dublin 18-20 November 1980. Dublin: Tywoly Inter. Publishing. Weizenbaum, Joseph 1976 Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers1 Nico Stehr

The general purpose of this essay is to outline the theoretical significance and practical importance of the growing stratum of experts, counsellors and advisors, or of knowledge-based occupations in contemporary society. The basic claim is that this stratum of occupations is the fastest growing segment of the labor force. This growth and the increase in the dependence on experts has to be seen as part of a more profound transformation of modern society into a knowledge society. Thus, the contours of such a society, especially the replacement of labor and property by knowledge as the constitutive mechanism of social action, are briefly sketched. The central focus is, however, on the peculiar place of experts in knowledge societies, the reasons for the demands for expert knowledge, the nature of expertise, the peculiar attributes of knowledge bearing occupations and, generally, the culture and power of knowledge in contemporary society as it is mediated and represented by knowledge-based occupations. This requires a critical analysis of the existing literature which is sensitive to the issue and has registered, in various ways, the phenomenon of knowledgebearing occupations. It is necessary to point out the inadequacies of existing categories, but it is also possible to peel off useful ideas. It is neither the aim of the essay to reanimate or even resuscitate the increasingly obsolete notion of a "new" class (cf. Bell, 1979) for it is rather doubtful that emerging societies will have the kinds of masters past societies had. Experts are far too fragmented intellectually to perform such a historical role. They also have the most diverse allegiances. 2 Nor is it the goal of this discussion to resume the "de-skilling" debate. Clearly, efforts to revive the notion of class are related to the controversy about the distribution of skills. But my analysis is not about skills, it is about knowledge. The notion of "experts" is a difficult one and requires considerable reflection. However, the variety of claims to expertise suggests that while experts at times try, for obvious reasons, to embrace the cognitive authority of science, their "knowledge" most often is not submitted to the authority of science and is therefore co-determinous with what is accepted by the scientific establishment (cf. Barnes, 1985:90-112). Thus, I would like to examine, first, in somewhat greater detail, the related notions of knowledge and expertise.

108

Nico Stehr

I. Knowledge and Expertise The use of and dependence on knowledge in all spheres of human activity has reached an unprecedented level and has produced far-reaching and virtually irreversible social consequences. In manufacturing, for example, knowledge is increasingly replacing the classical factors of production (cf. Drucker's essay in this volume). At the same time, our conceptual clarity and insight into the nature of knowledge is deficient. Though the importance of knowledge is stressed almost everywhere, it is also, at the same time, often simply treated as a black box and introduced into many discussions in a narrow fashion without much theoretical reflection (e.g., Eulau, 1973). If one defines the kind of knowledge which is particularly influential in modern society, for example as represented by the knowledge of the research front in science (and technology), then such knowledge, of course, is not only easily set apart from everyday knowledge but becomes identical with "elite knowledge" (Freidson, 1986:4). Taken to its extreme, this thesis leads, so it seems, to the notion of the technical state in which the logic of technology becomes the logic of political action (e.g., Schelsky, 1961). Correspondingly, the emerging groups of experts, especially scientists and engineers, often are narrowly located at the apex of the social hierarchy in contemporary society and are seen, therefore, as something akin to an almost elusive elite of specialists mostly in the employ of the already powerful and influential who can afford to purchase their service. Our knowledge about knowledge often is taken-for-granted. Among the paradoxes of a knowledge-based society is, therefore, not only "how much of the communication of knowledge falls to specialized agencies and channels outside any social control or visibility" (Birnbaum, 197lb:431) but also how limited or one-sided theoretical attention to these matters has been. New knowledge appears to be almost always better than old knowledge. 3 One might of course presume that the new knowledge drives out old knowledge because it is more adequate, but this need not be the case. At least, it might be difficult to find criteria which allow for a reasonable comparison. In contemporary society, knowledge is, in any event, changing rapidly. Constantly, worlds are lost and worlds are produced. Rapid changes produce fear but also opportunities to translate knowledge, that is, to construct different worlds. But how and by whom knowledge is translated into social action, thereby acquiring authority and influence, remains largely hidden. The unprecedented growth (and decay) in the volume of knowledge, fueled by expanding sites for the production of new knowledge, especially universities and research organizations, corresponds to the rise of a new, increasingly influential and rapidly growing group of occupations of various types of "experts" or of knowledge-based work.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

109

Despite evidence of considerable disenchantment about the merits of expertise, even fear about a "tyranny of the experts" and the loss of citizenship in modern societies (cf. Lieberman, 1970), everyone must (still) defer, and is, under some circumstances, forced to defer to the authority of experts today, not only in matters of grave and far-reaching consequences, but also in many of the most mundane routines of everyday life. For example, we all express our doubts about the validity of daily weather forecasts, yet the planning of daily activities and routines are to a considerable extent affected by such forecasts. Although there is, on the surface at least, nothing novel about the influence of experts, the role of knowledge and the occupations which mediate access to knowledge take on rather different qualities in advanced societies than heretofore, even in what are known as industrial societies. As a matter of fact, the noun "expert" did not come into usage until the middle of the nineteenth century. 4 In a society where experts and expert knowledge are indispensable, it seems that the extent to which one has to invoke and blindly rely on virtues of another age, namely to believe in the solidity of such knowledge and trust expert advice, has by no means diminished; as a matter of fact, the ability to believe and trust has become an even more urgent private and public necessity (cf. Lübbe, 1987). Ordinary and extraordinary life in a modern society are held together by the "cement" of expert knowledge and trust in the solidity of expert knowledge. But that is not to say that the increase in the dependence on expert knowledge has somehow slowed the growth of problems or eliminated many of them, rather, the opposite appears to be the case (cf. Perl, 1971; King and Melanson, 1972). Moreover, there likely is a relation between both developments because it is by no means sufficient or even accurate to suggest that knowledge once produced need not be produced again. 5 Knowledge may only be produced once and then re-produced innumerable times. Yet, re-production often becomes a form of production of knowledge and constitutes one of the salient tasks experts perform. The notion of a "class" of experts which will become increasingly powerful and influential in society has already been used for some time as a building block in the design of modern utopias. For example this thesis is advanced by Bennis and Slater in their The Temporary Society (1969) or, in Heinz Eulau's (1973) idea of a "consultative commonwealth", which is the probable outcome of the interrelation between "skill" revolution in contemporary society and some of the social consequences of modern technology. But even in more tempered, less technocratic and Utopian designs, the fascination appears to be with a "class of high status 'brain workers'" (Ladd, 1970:262; Benveniste, 1972), rather than, as will be the case in this instance, on a much broader and richer spectrum of knowledge-based occupations, found in all sectors of the economy, not merely the tertiary sector, and on all socioeconomic levels. Even today, a preoccupation with high-level experts, with those who advise the "prince", is in most analyses the primary conception of the expert in modern society Under rare circumstances only is knowledge a medium which travels easily and

110

Nico Stehr

unimpeded, that is, uncontested and not subject to interpretation. The growing stratum of "experts" therefore command considerable social influence and even honor in contemporary society, although the extent of this influence tends to be underestimated or masked. The very nature of the tasks performed by this new stratum already signals its potential power over the lives of many individuals in contemporary society, especially by way of a determination of the priorities of their action and definitions of the situation, in the first instance. As Rueschemeyer (1986:104) therefore underlines, experts have considerable impact on the lives of many: "they define the situation for the untutored, they suggest priorities, they shape people's outlook on their life and world, and they establish standards of judgement in the different areas of expertise - in matters of health and illness, order and justice, the design and deployment of technology, the organization of production". It is dubious whether assertions about the growing importance of knowledge-based occupations in advanced societies can immediately be translated and examined, with any benefit, into categories designed for the analysis of a very different kind of society, namely industrial society. Talk about a new class, different forms of class antagonism, new styles of political and economic conflict (cf. Galbraith, 1967; Larson, 1984:29) are not of significant help. New phenomena require a displacement of theoretical perspectives, and new perspectives generate novel insights. The central issue in advanced society or what is called the knowledge society here, is not that power is changing hands, but that the nature or the content and substance of exercising power, and, therefore, the means and the scope of social control is changing as well as the ways in which society reproduces itself and stays integrated. Knowledge, ideas, and information - to use quite deliberately very broad and ambivalent categories - are most peculiar entities with properties unlike those of commodities or secrets, for example. If sold, they enter other domains and yet remain within the domain of their producer. Knowledge does not have zero-sum qualities. Knowledge is a public good. When revealed, knowledge does not lose its influence. While it has been understood for some time that the "creation" of knowledge is fraught with uncertainties, the conviction that its application is without risks and that its acquisition reduces uncertainty has only recently been debunked. While it is very reasonable and in some sense urgent to speak of the limits to growth in many spheres and resources of life, the same does not appear to hold for knowledge. Knowledge has virtually no limits to its growth. Georg Simmel made the same observation, shortly after the end of World War One, although for him the lack of any real limits to the growth of knowledge (cultural products) above all signals a serious intellectual danger for individuals and society. It signals the danger of a "tragedy of culture" in which the growing cultural objectivations exceed the ability of the individual to absorb the plentitude of knowledge in any meaningful manner. Human products take on a life of their own while constraining human conduct. But as he stresses, "everybody can contribute to the supply of objectified cultural contents without any consideration

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

111

for other contributors. This supply may have a determined color during individual cultural epoches, that is, from within there may be a qualitative but not likewise quantitative boundary. There is no reason why it should not be multiplied in the direction of the infinite, why not book should be added to book, work of art to work of art, or invention to invention. The form of objectivity as such possesses a boundless capacity for fulfillment" (Simmel, [1919] 1968:44). For Simmel, the important and dangerous outcome is a broad discrepancy between the volume of cultural products and the ability of the individual to assign meaning to them, as I will briefly discuss later. Knowledge is often seen as a collective commodity par excellence; for example, the ethos of science demands that it is supposed to be made available to all, at least in principle (compare Merton, [1942] 1973). But is the "same" knowledge available to all? Is scientific knowledge when transformed into technology still subject to the same normative conventions? 6 What are the costs of the transmission of knowledge? Knowledge is virtually never, despite its reputation, uncontested. In science, its contestability is seen as one of its foremost virtues. In practical circumstances, the contested character of knowledge is often repressed and/or conflicts with the exigencies of social action. 7 The apparently unrestricted potential of its availability, which does not affect its meaning, makes it, in peculiar and unusual ways, resistant to private ownership (Simmel, [1907] 1978:438). Modern communication technologies ensure that access becomes easier, and may even subvert remaining proprietary restrictions, although concentration rather than dissemination is also possible and feared by some. 8 But one could just as easily surmise that the increased social importance of knowledge, and not so much its distinctiveness, may in fact undermine the exclusiveness of knowledge. Yet the opposite appears to be the case and therefore raises anew the question of the persisting basis for the power of knowledge.

II. The Knowledge Society The variety of theories of contemporary, modern society agree that one major attribute of modernity, knowledge, in one form or the other, takes on decisive significance for social relations. Knowledge has always had a function in social life; as a matter of fact, one could justifiably speak of an anthropological constant: human action is knowledge-based. Social groups of all types depend on and are mediated by knowledge. Similarly, power has frequently been based on advantages in knowledge and not only on physical strength. And, last but not least, societal reproduction is not merely physical reproduction but in the case of humans always cultural, i.e. the reproduction of knowledge. In retrospect, one is

112

Nico Stehr

therefore able to describe a variety of ancient societies as knowledge societies. For example, ancient Israel was a society structured by its religious lawlike Tora-knowledge, while in ancient Egypt religious, astronomical and agrarian knowledge served as the organizational principle and as the basis of authority. Contemporary society may be described as a knowledge society based on the penetration of all its spheres of life by scientific knowledge. Marxist theories of society have always assigned decisive importance to the forces or means of production for societal development since "man's understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body ... appears as the great foundation-stone (Grundpfeiler) of production and of wealth" (Marx, [1957-58] 1971:705). Contemporary Marxist theories, especially through the notion of the Scientific-Technological Revolution developed by Radovan Richta and others, have analyzed scientific and technical knowledge as the principal motor of change. Max Weber's seminal inquiry into the unique features of Western civilization stresses the pervasive use of reason to secure the methodical efficiency of social action. The source of rational action and, therefore, of rationalization is found in particular intellectual devices. The theory of industrial society, as developed by Raymond Aron, which encompasses both socialist and capitalist forms of economic organization, stresses first and foremost the extent to which science and technology shape the social organization of productive activities and, therefore, other forms of life in society. More recent theories of post-industrial society and similar efforts at forecasting the course of social evolution of industrial society, in particular those by Daniel Bell, have elevated theoretical knowledge as the axial principle of society. Correspondingly, various theoretical efforts are under way which stress the emergence of a new group, or even class, of individuals who deal in knowledge and are able to translate such knowledge into power, esteem and honor. Other groups in society are forced to rely on the knowledge-bearing counsellors, and are therefore subject to a new form of dependence. Whether the focus is on a kind of pervasive professionalization, on intellectuals as a new class, on scientists and engineers as the new priests or, even more generally, on experts as a knowledge elite, the central premise is always that the possession and control of the scarce resource of "knowledge" is a most valuable means in modern society. The knowledge referred to in these theories, and the groups of individuals which acquire influence and control with it, tend to be conceptualized rather narrowly. Paradoxically, perhaps, there is a tendency to overestimate the efficacy of "objective" technical-scientific or formal knowledge. Theories of modern society lack sufficient detail and scope in their conceptualization of the "knowledge" supplied, the reasons for the demand of more and more knowledge, the ways in which knowledge travels, the rapidly expanding groups of individuals in society who, in one of many ways, live off knowledge, the many forms of knowledge which are considered as pragmatically useful, and the various effects which knowledge may have on social relations.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

113

The emergence of knowledge societies signals first and foremost a radical transformation in the structure of the economy. Although the central thesis will be that we are witnessing the emergence of a new structure of the economy in knowledge societies, Durkheim's specification of the status of economic factors for a primarily sociological analysis, first introduced at the end of the last century for his central category, namely the division of labor in society, remains valid, although interest here centers, of course, on the use of the category of knowledge. Durkheim ([1893] 1964:275) draws a distinction in the use of the category of the division of labor by sociologists and economists; for the latter, "it essentially consists in greater production. For us, this greater productivity is only a necessary consequence, a repercussion of the phenomenon. If we specialize, it is not to produce more, but it is to enable us to live in new conditions of existence that have been made for us". Productive processes in industrial society are governed by a number of factors, which appear to be on the decline in their significance as conditions for the possibility of a changing, particularly growing economy: the dynamics of the supply and demand for primary products or raw materials; the dependence of employment on production; the importance of the manufacturing sector which processes primary products; the role of manual labor and the social organization of work; the role of international trade in goods and services; the function of time and place in production and of the nature of the limits to economic growth. The most common denominator of the changes in the structure of the economy seems to be a shift from an economy driven and governed, in large measure, by "material" inputs into the productive process and its organization to an economy in which transformations in productive and distributive processes are determined much more by "symbolic" or knowledge based inputs. The economy of industrial society is in short, initially, and primarily a material economy and then changes gradually to a monetary economy; for example, Keynes' economic theory, particularly his General Theory (1936), reflects this transformation of the economy of industrial society into an economy affected to a considerable extent by monetary matters. But as more recent evidence indicates, the economy Keynes' described now becomes a symbolic economy. The changes in the structure of the economy and its dynamics are increasingly a reflection of the fact that knowledge becomes the leading dimension in the productive process, the primary condition for its expansion and for a change in the limits to economic growth in the developed world. In the knowledge society, most of the wealth of a company is increasingly embodied in its creativity and information. In short, the point is that for the production of goods and services, with the exception of the most standardized commodities and services, factors other than "the amount of labor time or the amount of physical capital become increasingly central" (Block, 1985:95) to the economy of advanced societies. 9 Central attention of any sociological analysis of modern society therefore has to concern the peculiar nature and function of knowledge in social relations and, of course, with the main carriers of such knowledge.

114

Nico Stehr

A. A Sociological Concept of Knowledge

In a preliminary way, I would like to define knowledge as a capacity for social action. Knowledge also is an anthropological constant. 10 If restricted to this conception, however, knowledge is hardly capable of sociological analysis. Sociological inquiry requires some idea about the extent to which knowledge operates not merely as a condition for social action but as a stratified phenomenon in social action. The notion of knowledge as a capacity for social action has the advantage, it seems to me, that it enables one to stress not merely one-sided but multifaceted consequences of knowledge for action. The term capacity for action signals that knowledge may be left unused" or may be employed for irrational ends and leaves room, therefore, for a "dialectical" theory of the use of knowledge. The definition of knowledge as a capacity for action indicates strongly that the realization and implementation of knowledge is dependent on or, occurs within the context of specific social and intellectual conditions. Knowledge, as an element of power, generates, for example, not merely coercive, distorting and repressive consequences, as many conceptions of power would imply, but has productive and enabling features as well. And a more developed theoretical notion of power requires the ability to incorporate both attributes of knowledge as a capacity for action. Obviously, scientific and technical knowledge represent such "capacities for action". However, scientific knowledge as a capacity for action should not be seen as a resource which is not contestable or subject to interpretation and can be reproduced at will.12 The special importance of scientific and technical knowledge derives not so much from the fact that it is at times treated as if it essentially uncontested (or, objective) but that it constitutes an incremental capacity for social action or an increase in the ability of "how-to-do-it". Knowledge as a capacity for action enables one to set something into motion. Scientific and technical knowledge regularly adds to the ability of individual and corporate actors to affect their circumstances of action. It is of course the case that other factors tend to represent capacities for action and a basis for power because they are, in relation to the potential demand, scarce. Knowledge is not quite such a resource. Galbraith (1967:67) claims for example, that power "goes to the factor which is hardest to obtain or hardest to replace ... it adheres to the one that has greatest inelasticity of supply at the margin". Knowledge, as such, is not really a scarce commodity, though two features related to it are scarce: (1) What is scarce and is difficult to obtain is access to incremental knowledge, not merely another additional or "marginal unit" of knowledge. The greater the tempo with which knowledge ages or decays, the greater the potential influence of those who manufacture or augment knowledge,

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

115

and, correspondingly, of those who transmit such increments. (2) If sold, knowledge enters, as already indicated, the domain of others, yet remains within the domain of the producer, and can be spun off once again. This signals that the transfer of knowledge does not necessarily include the transfer of the cognitive ability to generate such knowledge, for example, the theoretical apparatus which yields such knowledge in the first place and on the basis of which it is calibrated and validated. Cognitive skills of this kind therefore are scarce. But they are not the only skills in demand since knowledge constantly has to be made available, interpreted and linked to emerging local circumstances. Whether scientific knowledge is particularly effective in practice, as most of its proponents would argue, is not at issue. The collective capacity to act, the extent to which our existential circumstances are socially constructed, has increased immeasurably in modern society. But one should not deduce from that, perhaps in an almost linear fashion, that the capacity to act of units of the collectivity for example, the individual, small groups or even large entities such as nation-states has simultaneously been enlarged immeasurably. On the contrary, the potential in principle to transform and construct at the collective or cumulative level in fact goes hand-in-hand with an increasing inability even of large social entities to affect their fate. That is, the capacity of the whole to make their history should not be misread to mean that this ability necessarily can be parlayed into planned, anticipated or even desired change. The fact that the human species makes its own evolution does not easily, if at all, translate into the ability of parts to do the same. However, the group of occupations, designated here as counsellors, advisers, and experts is needed to mediate between the complex distribution of changing knowledge and those who search for knowledge to enable them to act because "ideas travel" as "baggage" of people, and skills are embodied in people (cf. Collins, 1982). A chain of interpretations must come to an "end" in order to become relevant in practice and effective as a capacity of action, and this function of ending reflection for the purpose of action is largely performed by experts in modern society. Among the difficult, even notorious issues, in this context, is the thesis that knowledge represents power. One needs a much clearer sense of the meaning of the components of this all encompassing and consequential equation before a sensible discussion about the interrelation between power and knowledge can be developed fruitfully. How is power held, and who holds power where? Why and what knowledge might engender advantages? And, finally, the question of knowledge and power always is, as C.W. Mills ([1955] 1967:606) reminds us, the problem of the relations of women and men of knowledge with men and women of power or, of their possible identity. It is not surprising to find observers who make quite contradictory global assertions about the effect of knowledge in advanced societies on power or of power on knowledge. Anthony Giddens (1973:262), for example, cautions against overgeneralizations in this area: "The 'functional indispensability' of the expert in

116

Nico Stehr

the political and economic administration of the contemporary advanced societies no more necessarily gives him power than was the case in the pre-industrial world". Other observers, of course, suggest that the identity and nature of modern society is determined by experts whose command of specialized knowledge or technical expertise provides for their control of societal institutions and individual identities. Somewhat more narrowly, the emergence of intellectuals as a new social class has been identified as the characteristic feature of advanced societies in which science and technology assume a powerful role (cf. Konrád and Szelényi, 1970; Gouldner, 1979). Whether this social stratum constitutes a power elite, or even a new social class, depends on more detailed theoretical reflections and empirical examination of the relevance and status of these traditional notions. However, it is most likely that the term social class is inappropriate to the system of social inequality in knowledge societies. Daniel Bell (1979:204), for example, indicates, "such an elite has power within intellectual institutions but only influence in the larger world in which policy is made" (my emphasis). But these and other critical observations about the limits to the power of this new stratum or, the very idea of a "new class" as an essentially "muddled concept" (Bell, 1979),13 has not discouraged others from boldly sketching, with self-exemplifying intentions, the dawn of a new age as the result of the construction of "political knowledge" (e.g., Brzezinski, 1958). It does not take merely hindsight to know that these images were driven more by wishful thinking than rigorous analysis. For the central point about experts of the emerging knowledge society is that they will not be masters of this society. This is not so much the result of their humility or unwillingness to assume power but the outcome of forces they master. The very employment of these forces, namely knowledge and expertise, unwittingly perhaps, diminishes the ability of any group to assume a "master position" in society. In as much as knowledge is enabling, and if it only de-mythologizes itself, clients of experts always also loose a measure of their dependence. Even if the emergent "knowledge stratum" had sufficient coherence and community of interest, which is doubtful, it would unlikely be able to form a social class, in the sense in which the term has been understood in the last century in social science discourse, because the scientification of social relations generates an essential fragility of social structures which dissipates and operates against formations attempting to monopolize decisions. Traditional accounts of power stress that power is employed by individuals or collectivities on occasion. That is, power is not seen as a persistent, always present feature of social action, as say certain beliefs of individuals, but as a resource utilized under special circumstances which warrant use and determine the specific form it takes. Under such circumstances the threat of its use, which alone is always present, is not sufficient any more. Conformity, punishment, revenge, conquest, even slaughter are seen as the typical manifestations of the exercise of (brutal) power. Finally, repressive, coercive and distorting features, as

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

117

the main outcome of the exercise of power, and specific collectivities or individuals, which are its victims, are examined primarily in the study of power. It would be misleading to suggest that expert knowledge is, for some reason, void of these features of power and that, therefore, traditional accounts of power are impotent in the face of the influence, control and authority exercised by experts, counsellors and advisers. And, it would be equally misleading to maintain that the power of knowledge displaces power based on other resources in modern society. Nevertheless, in knowledge societies, the balance in the uses of different forms of power changes; knowledge, rather than the more traditional forms of coercive power, becomes the dominant and preferred means of constraint and control of possible social action. Thus, one surely needs to emphasize that the kind of power which may in fact flow from specialized knowledge - the extent to which access to such knowledge can be restricted and is in turn somehow in demand - should not be confused with a more traditional and more consequential form of power, namely political power, in the sense in which one typically encounters this term in political theory. Political power, at least in the context of most liberal political theories, involves the ability to restrict or otherwise circumscribe individual freedoms, the raw capacity to impose one's will even against the will of others, to enforce obedience, and to threaten and administer coercion, which includes the use physical force. Political power also is personal power. Obviously, this is not or, at least not primarily and directly, the kind of power which experts, advisers, and counsellors wield. Because they do not control the means of political power, one is justified to question the ability of this group to monopolize and control society in any direct way. The form of power which may flow from specialized knowledge or the appropriation of discourse (Foucault, 1970) is predominantly, and that means by no means exclusively, of a different nature: It is primarily cognitive or theoretical, at times it also can be material, for example, as the result of the introduction of technical artifacts into the situation, but it likely affects primarily the self-conception of individuals. It does not have an overtly coercive influence, at least in most instances, and one can expect, as a result, that this form of power is not perceived as repressive, and is, therefore, quite distant from the exercise of more traditional forms of (political) power. Expert knowledge provides its clientele with a different grasp and hold upon the world and, in the final analysis, transforms both the world and the individual. In an analogous definition, Rouse (1987:211) stresses that he proposes to examine power, in this case the power of science, which has to do "with the ways interpretations within the field (of practices) reshape the field itself and thus reshape and constrain agents and their possible actions". However, Rouse (1987:244) also argues that it is no longer possible to sustain, in the light of the increasing application of scientific knowledge and technical artifacts, a "political distinction between the exercise of power over human bodies and the development and use of capacities to control and manipulate things".

118

Nico Stehr

The presence of expert knowledge is rarely circumscribed, and, therefore, only called for occasionally, and its effectiveness somehow is not limited to specific, for example, political or economic conduct. Knowledge-bearing and knowledgedisseminating occupations exercise cognitive authority and influence by restricting courses of possible action of individuals and groups, by setting and defending certain normative standards of social action, by defining what counts as knowledge, by restricting the circulation of relevant knowledge and by imposing means for assessing the efficacy of expert knowledge. But, individually, experts, counsellors and advisers may at times, indeed, appear to be rather powerless. However, the general nature of the change in the mode of exercising power is evident, for in advanced societies, influence, authority and power is more and more mediated by knowledge. From a different vantage point, the same development is, of course, expressed as a shift in the mode of exercising power in modern society from, under normal conditions, coercion to manipulation (e.g., Birnbaum, 1971a:402). Whether such terminology is preferable should be left open for the time being. However, as the balance in the mode of exercising power shifts, the use of coercive power becomes the exceptional case and should not completely color the discussion of power relations in advanced society. The kind of knowledge which may convey power has to be specified too, for it is unlikely that all forms of knowledge function as resources which yield power, or function equally well in generating power in all contexts. The power knowledge may or may not convey, depends, therefore, on the available alternative or competitive forms of knowledge, as well as the alternative capacities for action, generally, and power, specifically. The power of specific knowledge may well depend on the weakness of its contenders and not so much on any inherent authority it can or must invariably command. A suggestion by Alfred North Whitehead in his Science and the Modem World is perhaps a first useful departure. In the context of a discussion on the emergence of specialization in science, he comments that "effective knowledge is professionalized knowledge" (1926:282) but warns at the same time of the dangers inherent in a loss of "directive wisdom" which is the outcome of more comprehensive and therefore less specialized reflection. Whitehead's observations are a useful reminder that it is most difficult, theoretically and empirically, if not impossible, to disentangle either knowledge from the social organization in which it originates - for its form and content is affected by the context of its production - or to try to disassociate knowledge from the context of its "transmission" to a particular clientele. Who holds power should be analyzed in conjunction with the question of how power is held where. The issue, therefore, of whether "men of knowledge exercise power by virtue of their intellectual capacities and educational attainments, or are these ancillary to other aspects of their roles when they do occupy posts of power" or, what is but the same, "whether power accrues to institutions primarily concerned with producing knowledge, or whether other institutions use knowledge acquired from other sources" (Birnbaum, 1971b:420)

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

119

may, of course, be posed in this manner, but is doubtful that one can thereby formulate a sensible empirical and theoretical issue for it really cannot be resolved in the final analysis. Knowledge and its context tend to be fused. One can and must, however, discuss the various interrelations between knowledge and institutions. But it would appear to be futile, or unnecessary to attempt to resolve, with some finality, whether it is knowledge itself which is the institutional basis for dispensing power.

B. Experts, Counsellors and Advisors The terms counsellor, adviser and expert all lack precise and well-established meanings. It would not be sensible, therefore, to argue or attempt to maintain meaningful and consistent definitional distinctions among these terms. I shall use the terms counsellors, advisor and expert interchangeably. In each case, however, the labels signify an increasingly important way of life in knowledge societies. With the considerable growth in their number, kind, and demand in contemporary society, the meaning of these terms has also undergone a notable and multiple inflation. Advising and counselling in some sense are by no means novel activities. Many have made a living as experts or advisers, especially to the powerful, in the past. But the adviser is no longer merely someone whose advice is proffered to a political leader to whom the expert is in close personal contact (cf. Goldhamer, 1978). This conception is exemplified for example by Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, Metternich, Bismarck, Lord Cherwell or Henry Kissinger. This form of advice still flourishes, however, in all political jurisdictions. The democratization of "counselling" is characteristic of our age, and accounts for the growth of the number of advisers and counsellors, and for the transformation of the tasks associated with these long established occupations. In all modern societies, not only are the state and large business corporations major consumers and employers of knowledge-bearing and knowledge-disseminating occupations, but so are groups and individuals in virtually all situations of the life world. This includes guidance in the conduct of mundane and also rather personal affairs of individuals and their families. Moreover, the terms expert, counsellor, consultant or adviser which are descriptive of certain forms of occupational activity, are not necessarily widely employed as the identifying labels of occupations or professions. Rather the traditional identifying labels remain priest, banker, nurse, travel agent, teacher, social worker, economist, lawyer, engineer, police officer, mediator, banker, real estate agent, insurance broker even though the institutional settings in which these expert services may be rendered have been transformed, the recruitment process substantially changed,

120

Nico Stehr

the advisory process altered, and the function of these knowledge-based services changed considerably. Before describing the group of experts, advisers and counsellors in greater detail, a number of other possibly competing categories must be considered, since they could be seen to encompass the former group of occupations. Of particular pertinence is, of course, the category of professionals, yet the functionalist theoretical account of the professions long dominant in sociology has close intellectual affinity to Max Weber's discussion of non-economic domination in modern society (cf. Gipsen, 1988) and, therefore, his ideal type of legal authority, its bureaucratic organization and its class of civil servants.

C. Herrschaft kraft Wissen One of the most famous and consequential analyses of the authority of knowledge and experts is, of course, Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy or more generally, his theory of the foundations of modern political power, for "bureaucratic administration means fundamentally the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge" ("Herrschaft kraft Wissen") (Weber [1922] 1964:339). The primary source of the "superiority of bureaucratic administration lies in the role of technical knowledge which, through the development of modern technology and business methods in the production of goods, has become completely indispensable", therefore, as Weber ([1922] 1964:337-338) argues, "it makes no difference whether the economic system is organized on a capitalistic or a socialistic basis". Bureaucracy is capable of attaining levels of efficiency, reliability, precision or modes of rational control which no other form of authority is able to attain. The authority of the administrative apparatus derives from legal norms 14 and continuous work carried out by officials in offices generates and is based on technical knowledge. Thus, there is a convergence of legal norms and knowledge; the effective application of general, legal norms requires the use of general, abstract knowledge. Rational bureaucratic knowledge thrives in a social environment which has been "dehumanized". Bureaucracy provides the sentiments demanded by the external apparatus of modern culture most effectively and develops its characteristic features especially well, "the more it is 'dehumanized', the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as its special virtue by capitalism. The more complicated and specialized modern culture becomes, the more its external supporting apparatus demands the personally detached and strictly objective expert, in lieu of the lord of older social structures who was moved by personal sympathy and

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

121

favor, by grave and gratitude" (Weber, [1922] 1968:975). Modern bureaucracy succeeds in rationalizing the irrational. It is decisive for Weber ([1922] 1976:565), therefore, that despite the realm of relative unregulated conduct even in highly rational settings (for example, in the legal system) that "prinzipiell hinter jeder Tat echt bürokratischer Verwaltung ein System rational diskutabler 'Gründe', d.h. entweder: Subsumption unter Normen, oder: Abwägung von Zwecken und Mitteln steht". Legal authority becomes subject to routinization and antinomies, and conflicts can arise. Bureaucracies not only accumulate knowledge, but attempt to protect it from access by "outsiders" (cf. Weber, [1922] 1976:572-573), or, while political leaders are increasingly "dilettantes" the experts can only be controlled and kept at bay by other experts (Weber, [1922] 1976:574). Who controls the administrative apparatus? According to Weber ([1922] 1964:338), such control is only to a degree possible by the non-specialist; in general, the "trained permanent official is more likely to get his way in the long run than his nominal superior, the Cabinet minister, who is not a specialist". The ability of the state to implement effectively its action, and the relative superiority of rational bureaucratic knowledge is, however, limited as Weber already knew. They only group which can escape the control of rational bureaucratic knowledge most surely is the capitalist entrepreneur. At least he is the only one able to maintain relative immunity from legal authority. However, it is interesting to note why Weber ([1922] 1976:574) believes that the capitalist is, more or less, beyond the reach of state bureaucracy. The ability of the state to intervene in economic affairs is, according to Weber, on the whole not very effective because of the superior knowledge of the facts by the capitalist enterprise and the ability of the corporation to shield pertinent information from outsiders even more effectively than civil servants. The large and varied group of occupations working to disseminate knowledge in modern society, however, are not only employed by the state. As a matter of fact, many are self-employed. The class of civil servants and professionals display considerable kinship, not only from a theoretical point of view, but also from a comparative historical perspective. Therefore, they can be discussed in conjunction. For example, despite important differences in their historical careers, the German bourgeoisie and the Anglo-American middle classes had many commonalities because both "rose to prominence largely on the strength of those qualities that are shared by the models of profession and bureaucracy" (Gipsen, 1988:563).

122

Nico Stehr

D. Professions, Professionals and Experts

The range of occupational tasks I would like to combine into the group of knowledge-bearing and knowledge-disseminating occupations is not identical with the widely used concept of the professions or better, the 'relentless drive in every field of human employment" (Gross, 1971:277) toward some form of professionalism. At least the concept is not limited to the widely dominant notion of professions and professionals associated particularly with the self-understanding of professional associations in North America and England. That notion chooses to ignore many other and historically specific forms of "professionalization" (cf. Rueschemeyer, 1986). Even if one tries to work with the dominant theoretical model and acknowledge, as Wilensky (1964:141) has pointed out, that there may well "be a general tendency for occupations to seek professional status, remarkably few of the thousands of occupations in modern society attain it" (also Goode, 1969:267). But more significantly, most of the scholarship concerned with professionals, especially the work associated with the functionalist conception of the nature and the position of the professions in modern society (cf. Parsons, 1939, 1969; Goode, 1957), has chosen to ignore the knowledge base of the professions. The recent impressive critiques of the functionalist perspective on professions has, for the most part, avoided examining the convergence between the alleged ethos of the professions and their faith in science as a powerful utilitarian force, as a motor of social evolution and as a source of historical progress. 15 The ideological critique of the ethos and the position of the professions in modern society 16 has rarely extended to a critical analysis of the very resource which is said to legitimize such a special role in society. The unanalyzed knowledge-base is assumed to be mainly "scientific", in the narrow sense of the term, and, therefore, immune to sociological analysis, in particular, a sociology of knowledge of professional knowledge (cf. Stehr and Meja, 1990). Although some of the traditional professions may well be much more differentiated today and transformed as a result of their numerical growth, the new demands placed on them, and the changes in the knowledge base as well as in their institutional setting, their impact on society continues to be, last but not least, a result of their collective organization and their ability to mobilize politically. The category of occupations at the center of attention here, experts, advisors and counsellors generally, provides, in this respect at least, a much more diffuse picture. The result is probably that its influence occurs much more via the work of individual practitioners than collective organization and the constraints an organization may impose and enforce. From the point of view of the impact of the professions on society at large, some groups among the professions appear to have withdrawn from public discourse, at least in some cultures. Academic professionalization in North America, for example, is associated with privatiza-

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

123

tion or depoliticization, a concentration of intellectual energies and resources on the narrow audience of fellow specialists (cf. Jacoby, 1987). But the differentiation which goes hand in hand with professionalization at the same time increases the importance of the knowledge-bearing occupations identified here since the withdrawal from public discourse of certain producers of knowledge does not reduce the demand and the need for some of their products. As a matter of fact, it may well heighten the importance and power of those who mediate between specialists and the public. Despite the differences in emphasis, the extensive theoretical discussions and empirical research concerned with the professions is of value for my purposes because it provides initial insights into the societal function and conditions for the growing demand for skills which are based primarily on the control of certain forms of knowledge. From a comparative historical perspective, both the groups of professions and bureaucrats are not so much a phenomenon sui generis as they are part of a development which encompasses both social formations. They are part, although the efficacy of instrumental rationality is exaggerated, of the "rise of expertise and certification as specifically middle-class techniques for advancement and for legitimizing privilege, rank, and power (vis-à-vis aristocratic resistance and democratic pretensions alike), intertwined with ideologies of 'culture,' science, and public service that function in a context of all-pervading instrumental rationality, specialization, and secularization" (Gipsen, 1988:564-565). The stress on the enabling features of bureaucracy and professionalization has to be balanced, however, with a view of the constraining features of these social formations, as well as the ambivalence of professional, bureaucratic and formal knowledge.

III. Intellectuals and Experts For this reason, and the fact that the role of the intellectual is, perhaps, best described as emerging in a particular form of society and as representative of that historically specific form of society, a clear delineation between the intellectual and the expert should be drawn. Experts are not intellectuals although intellectuals may at times be experts. In many ways, experts do not displace intellectuals. Yet, both intellectuals and experts live off a disjuncture between common sense knowledge and expert or general knowledge. The disjuncture is, of course, largely the creation of, or is maintained by, intellectuals and experts. Experts emerge as a separate stratum and ultimately exceed, by a large margin, the number of intellectuals in modern society. But more important is the observation that experts (and counsellors, advisers

124

Nico Stehr

etc.) are typical occupations in a society which has become a knowledge society. For the sake of simplification, intellectuals are creatures of industrial society, while experts are the fastest growing segment of the labor force in knowledge societies. Intellectuals stress general knowledge, experts specialized knowledge. Intellectuals therefore tend to employ communicative skills and rely in their reasoning on "symbols of general scope and abstract reference" (Shils, 1968:399-400). In the same sense, as Shils also stresses, although in a somewhat ambivalent manner, intellectual interests arise from the "need to be in cognitive, moral and appreciative contact with the most general or 'essential' features of man, society, nature and the cosmos". In contrast to most other, more conventional groups of occupations, discussions concerned with intellectuals typically emphasize specific cognitive attributes, for instance the extent to which intellectuals engage in and rely on general and abstract notions in their work. Similarly, the rather common idea that intellectuals contribute, above all, to the construction and elaboration of the tradition of "high culture" in a society, signifies that the function of intellectuals is of a specific cognitive quality. The distinction which should be drawn between the strata of intellectuals and experts becomes even clearer when one considers Merton's ([1945] 1957:209) brief but succinct delineation of the social role of intellectuals in his discussion of the place of intellectuals in public bureaucracy. Merton limits the term intellectual to persons who "devote themselves to cultivating and formulating knowledge". Intellectuals, therefore, may be said to have an explicit, and publicly sanctioned active role in the creation and development of knowledge. The extent to which their active contribution to the formation and development of the public fund of knowledge is their defining characteristic becomes especially clear if one contemplates the role of a teacher or an announcer: If one merely communicates the contents of a textbook or reads the script prepared by someone else, one does not function as an intellectual. In fact, one is then merely " a cog in the transmission belt of communicating ideas forged by others" (Merton ([1945] 1957:210). But contrary to Merton's strict separation between forging and communicating ideas, which relies on the idea that "objective" knowledge travels easily, it is by no means self-evident that the announcer or the teacher refrains completely from transforming the knowledge to be delivered. One has to allow for the possibility that, in most instances, the transmission of ideas does not occur without being affected by the kind of transmission and the context in which it takes place. However, what remains significant is that the teacher or the announcer are not expected to be producers of knowledge. For intellectuals the latter is a most legitimate activity. The, at times, disparaging observation that experts typically have "tunnel vision" becomes relevant. The notion of tunnel vision simply alerts one to the fact that experts, in contrast to intellectuals, are, for the most part,

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

125

trained to "examine specialized aspects of problems that blinds them to other issues" (Pacey, 1983:36).

A. The Service Sector and the Service Class The group of advisers, consultants and experts is by no means based exclusively in the service sector of society (which is, at best, a very elusive term) nor do they necessarily perform services. They may also be found employed in the primary or manufacturing sector of the economy of a society. 17 If the performance of services, especially in contrast to the manufacture of goods, is seen as restricted by its institutional location, namely to the tertiary sector of the economy, then the work and the function of the category knowledge disseminators may well be much broader. In any event, much of the discussion of the diverse structure of the service industries and of service occupations in modern society, their size and prospect, really does not shed much light on the issue identified here as more significant both to the growth of the economy and the structure of its labor force. From a Neo-Marxist perspective, the emergence of a group of occupations said to form the service class, or third force within the structure of social inequality, constitutes a particular theoretical challenge because these groups may be located between capital and labor. Hence, considerable effort is expended to assimilate such an intermediate stratum of occupations to either side of the ledger. However, aside from their elusive class position in advanced societies, the notion of a service class is, on the whole, rather vague. This group represents, according to Goldthorpe ( 1982:162), the "class of professional, administrative and managerial employees" both in the public and private sector of the economy. Among the common characteristics of occupations comprising this class are, for example, their location within a set of interlocking institutions serving capital, discretion and autonomy, superior work conditions and entry regulated by credentials. For Lash and Urry (1987:162-163), the origin of this class can be traced to a loss suffered by capitalists, first, at the turn of the century in the United States, and later in other industrial societies. The loss occurred in a "class struggle" between capital and "modern management" which the latter won, invoking a version of Taylorism. Thus, the service class today represents, following these conceptions, for the most part, "modern, scientific, rational 'management'" and therefore a much smaller segment of the labor force than the group of experts, advisors and counsellors.

126

Nico Stehr

Table 1: Proportion of the U.S. Labour Force Participating in Knowledge-Producing Activities, 1900-1986

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Knowledge Workers

Non-Knowledge Workers

10.7 14.6 18.3 21.6 23.4 28.3 33.3 39.7 41.2

89.3 85.4 81.7 78.4 76.6 71.7 67.7 60.3 58.8

Source: Machlup and Kronwinkler, 1975; Rubin and Huber, 1986.

B. Knowledge Workers One of the still somewhat unknown and relatively unexplored suggestions for a new way of categorizing modern occupations and for analyzing the structure of the labor force may be found in Fritz Machlup's (1962) work on the Function and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Its main aim was to quantify the contribution of "knowledge", in the broadest sense of the term, to the post-war economy. For Machlup (1962:7) "knowledge" encompasses anything "that is known by somebody and 'production of knowledge' any activity by which someone learns of something he has not known before even if others have". Machlup (1962:363, 382-387) concluded that the "knowledge industry" accounted for some 29 percent of the Gross National Product in the United States in 1958 and that "knowledge workers" made up slightly less than 32 percent of the labor force in 1959 in the United States. In 1970, the proportion of all knowledge-producing occupations as a percentage of the economically active population had grown to 39.7 (cf. Machlup and Kronwinkler, 1975:755). Knowledge workers were defined by Machlup as occupations which produce and transmit knowledge. Since the occupational statistics of the U.S. Bureau of the Census do not produce the necessary information directly, the census occupational categories were re-defined into "knowledge-producing" and "nonknowledge producing" groups. In some cases, somewhat arbitrary decisions had to be made. For example, fifty percent of all physicians and surgeons were excluded from the group of knowledge-producing occupations on the assumption that "only half of their work is diagnostic and therapeutic advice and prescrip-

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

127

tion". The result is that Machlup classifies of the Census category "professional, technical and kindred workers" in 1950 some 20 percent as non-knowledge producing and in 1970 approximately 19 percent. Among "managers, officials and proprietors (except farm)" the proportion of non-knowledge producing occupations are, in 1950, 41.7 percent and in 1970, 21.6 percent. All "clerical and kindred workers" are classified as knowledge workers, approximately half of the "sales workers" and, finally, a small percentage, in 1970, for example, 3.6 percent of the total, of the class of "craftsman, foreman and kindred workers" as knowledge producing. However, Machlup classified as knowledge workers occupations located both in the manufacturing and the service sector although none of the occupations found in agriculture qualified. Since 1970, in a further attempt to update the same line of inquiry, Rubin and Huber (1986:3, 197) conclude that the proportion of the GNP devoted to knowledge production increased to 34 percent in 1980, and 41.23 percent of the United States labor force were knowledge-producing employees. These figures suggest, therefore, that the size of the "knowledge-producing labor force" has doubled in twenty years. The definitions Machlup and his collaborators have employed are, on the one hand, rather broad. For instance, it is doubtful whether it is meaningful to count, without differentiation, all clerical and kindred workers as knowledge workers. In 1970, the group of occupations the Census Bureau groups as "clerical and kindred workers" accounts alone for 45 percent of the knowledge workers Machlup identifies in total. At the same time, Machlup's effort to re-categorize the Census data is probably too restrictive. Especially noteworthy in this regard is his attempt to assign occupations, in an either/or fashion, mostly on the basis of the occupational title, to the class of knowledge or non-knowledge producing workers. The outcome could well be that the proportion of "craftsmen, foremen and kindred workers" or "operatives and kindred workers" (none classified as knowledge workers) who perform "knowledge work", at least as part of their required tasks, is much too small. One has to recognize, of course, that Machlup tried to make the best out of an unsatisfactory data base. The occupations enumerated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census are simply not a very reliable statistical basis for efforts to discern trends which ignore occupational titles. Bell (1973:212) argues that the figures on the proportion of the GNP spent on knowledge production and transmission would have to be much smaller than Machlup's estimates although he employs Machlup's term and indicates for instance that the "manual and unskilled worker class is shrinking in society, while at the other end of the continuum the class of knowledge workers is becoming predominant in the new society" (Bell, 1971:4). However Bell (1973:213) insists elsewhere that the proportion of the GNP allotted to education, given a more narrow definition of educational expenditures, should be about half of what Machlup allows, namely 7.5 percent in 1969 rather than 14.7 percent. Yet even Bell's more conservative figures imply a doubling of relative expenditures in this field in twenty years.

128

Nico Stehr

Labor force statistics are a difficult, even contentious matter. They are of course socially constructed categories and most of the categories commonly in use do not make reference, at least not on the surface, to such matters as the time spent on, let alone relative importance of "knowledge production" or "knowledge transmission" and changes over time, as part o f the task typically associated with conventionally classified or labelled occupations. In light o f these shortcomings it is not surprising that the question of the form of knowledge associated with specific occupations is not addressed at all.

C. Knowledge-based Occupations The definition and discussion of the role and importance o f experts typically is narrow in a number of relevant senses. First, it tends to be mostly concerned with those who advise women and men at the apex of power, that is, in executive positions of influential societal institutions. Exemplary of this are individuals who command political power. One of the issues to which too much attention has been paid, as a result, is whether experts in fact replace the powerful, and therefore constitute the real source of power in a society increasingly dependent on expertise o f various kinds. O f course, experts advise the powerful; however, one misses the peculiar growth of advisers, experts and counsellors if the focus is restricted in this manner. Second, there is the widespread assumption that experts, as clients of science and technology, are limited to and empowered by offering versions of instrumental or technical rationality. And this means that the potent influence o f experts is said to derive from the very nature of such knowledge, in particular its definite character, its workability, the ease with which it "flows" across boundaries and the decisive and penetrating insights it conveys to those who deal in such knowledge and to those who are able to avail themselves of expertise. The flow of knowledge from above to below and the kind of knowledge which is exchanged or imparted is, at best, taken for granted. The axiom simply is that scientific knowledge passes, virtually unimpeded, first from the producers to the experts, then from the experts to clients. 18 As long as one assumes that the kind of knowledge in which experts deal is of a unequivocal kind, it becomes difficult, in some respects at least, to understand why there is a growing demand for advice and counsel. Third, concerns are rarely with the advisory process itself, that is, they are seldom linked to the immediate and broader social configuration of clientele and experts. The question is: are experts merely the media of knowledge or do they play an intellectually much more active role in the "transfer" of knowledge?

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

129

Moreover, what social processes account for the apparently rapidly growing need for expert knowledge? Fourth, the consequences of transaction between clientele and experts are rarely examined in the context of most existing discussions. They are not made a focal point of discussion because the advice, on the whole, is presumed to be efficacious. In short, the discussion of the power or lack of power of experts typically is informed by premises which could well be erroneous. One needs to examine critically each and every one of these views and therefore whether experts decide or legitimate. Past discussion of the role of experts proceeds on the basis of well worn dichotomies such as the distinction between means and ends of social action or scientific-technical and political knowledge. Finally, one cannot ignore the changing societal context in which these developments are taking shape. For example, is advanced society in the form of the knowledge society or post-industrial society really a novel type of society that constitutes a break with industrial society and poses unique costs and benefits to occupations which deal in knowledge? Conflating the thesis that experts advise, for the most part, the powerful, with the conviction that the means and ends of social action can be separated decisively, as well the affirmation that it is primarily coercive power which makes for the defining characteristics of power relations, because it, in the final instance, produces the decisive difference, leads to rather sterile discussion. It leads to reflections on whether experts are really the new power elite or whether the shift to expert power alone constitutes a sufficient change in the nature of society, for example for a change from industrial to post-industrial society. An excellent example in this respect is Birnbaum's (1971a:403) observations that "those who command concentrations of power and property are able to employ technical experts - for good or for ill. That expertise is bought, either in the form of bureaucratic organizations producing knowledge, or in the services of individual technical experts. When technicians do rise to actual command positions, they cease to function solely as technicians but function as men in command, men with power". Using a label Giddens (1980:263) proposes for consideration, such an analysis may be best served if one labels the kind of high level experts "technocrats", and kindred advisers as a nascent "ruling class" in advanced societies. But even Giddens does not consider the evidence in the case of advanced capitalist or state socialist societies sufficient to warrant such a conclusion. In an attempt to delineate more clearly the unique characteristics of the growing segment of the labor force in modern society which I have in a general way designated as knowledge-based occupations, it is perhaps helpful to clarify, first, their status with respect to knowledge itself, secondly, their relation to clients and the institutions and sectors of the economy in which they may be typically found and finally, offer a few, first observations about the nature of the

130

Nico Stehr

advisory process in which these occupations find themselves engaged daily in their work. I would like to define those who consult, provide guidance to others, counsel or give expert advice, as the group of occupations engaged in transmitting and applying knowledge. It is of course the case that the verbs "transmit" and "apply" usually convey a meaning which is not quite the meaning they ought to have in this discussion. In this instance, the terms transmit and apply do not mean that knowledge flows, is passed on or communicated in a manner which leaves it virtually untouched and unaffected by the work of knowledge-based occupations. On the contrary, the transmission and application of knowledge is an active process. The re-production of knowledge involves almost invariably production of knowledge. It is difficult not only not to learn in the process of applying knowledge (Dasgupta and Stoneman, 1987:3) but it also is virtually impossible to leave knowledge, as it is transmitted and applied, unaffected and untouched by this very process. These first outlines of how knowledge-based-occupations relate to the currency in which they deal, namely knowledge itself, is probably not very satisfactory. It is not very satisfactory because the outlines of what differentiates experts, counsellors and advisers from other and larger segments of the labor force is still rather vague and inconclusive. One can argue that all occupations are somehow knowledge-based. Knowledge is an anthropological constant. Knowledge has and always will play a role in all occupational activities, as it does in most other human activities. It is therefore important to further differentiate with respect to knowledge and the typical product or output. There are a number of categories available which aim for distinctions of relevance here; for example, the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge would appear to be such a distinction. That is to say, knowledgebased-occupations would then refer to that growing part of the labor force which deals in theoretical knowledge. However, neither this nor similar distinctions are quite satisfactory because even occupations which may be said to deal in theoretical knowledge cannot do without practical knowledge. Thus, any distinction with respect to knowledge has to recognize from the beginning that certain practical craft-like-skills and procedures are essential to all occupations. But the segment of the labor force of interest to us, above all, acquires, manipulates, organizes and communicates knowledge, more accurately knowledge about knowledge. The typical product or output of knowledge-based occupations obviously is knowledge and not a technical artifact. The execution of the job is identical with the consumption of its outcome, namely knowledge. 19 Therefore there is, in contrast, the more traditional segment of the labor force which leaves its knowledge in place. In many instances, such knowledge cannot even be communicated, it can only be acquired by observation, imitation, participation or trial and error. Such knowledge, skills would probably be a better term, is invested in artifacts, processes and products. Skills are robust, specific and

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

131

concrete while knowledge, especially contemporary knowledge, is much more fragile, general and abstract. But the skills of workers and craftsmen (cf. Montgomery, 1979) and knowledge of experts are functional equivalents with respect to the power (or, functional autonomy) they confer on those who possess knowledge and skills. In short, the peculiar relation to knowledge of knowledge-based occupations has to do with the fact that knowledge itself becomes the focal point of its activity. But that activity is, of course, dependent in turn on skills not communicated but "objectified" in the outcomes of the work experts, advisers and counsellors do. For experts, advisers and counsellors knowledge is an immediately productive force. These distinctions make evident as well why the discussion of knowledgebased-occupations is not germane to the debate about the transformation of the working class in capitalist society as the result a de-skilling process of the labor force (Braverman, 1974) and similar efforts or critiques of attempts to revitalize the notion of class (e.g., Stark, 1980; Hunter, 1988). The group of occupations of interest in this context stands in a peculiar relation to the clients of the services offered by a "knowledgeable" stratum (cf. Lerner, 1976). The labor and the knowledge claims of experts need to be legitimized. Experts derive their legitimacy from the relationships into which they enter and particularly from the recognition which comes from their clientele with its demand for the expertise of knowledge-based occupations. Bauman's (1987:19-20) important suggestion to treat the notion of "intellectuals" as a structural element within a social configuration, rather than as a category which has certain and possibly lasting intrinsic qualities, is therefore of theoretical interest, at least in an analogous sense, and deserves to be considered in some detail. His treatment of the role of the intellectual and of intellectual strategies in many ways is quite close to our terminology of advisers, experts and counsellors. Bauman does not require that intellectuals are the producers of the knowledge they command. He suggests that social figurations which do have the intellectual category as their structural element are certain to possess at least four major characteristics. First, "a major dependency among those which weave together into a major figuration in question is grounded in the socially produced incapacity of individuals (singly or in the groups they form) to conduct their life business on their own. Some stages of their life activity, material or spiritual, in their practical or ideational aspects, must be beyond their control, and hence they need advice, assistance or active interference of someone else. Secondly, this influence makes for a genuine dependency, as it casts the 'helpers' close to the sources of uncertainty, and thus into a position of domination. ... Thirdly, what the dominated are lacking ... is knowledge or the resources to apply knowledge to their acts. By the same token, the dominating possess the missing knowledge, or mediate and control its distribution, or have at their

132

Nico Stehr

disposal the resources needed to apply the knowledge they possess and to share the products of such application. The dominating are therefore sages, teachers, or experts. Fourthly, the intensity and the scope of their domination depends on how acute is the sense of uncertainty or deprivation caused by the absence of knowledge in an area serviced by a given group of sages, teachers or experts. More importantly, it depends on the latter's ability to create or intensify such a sense of uncertainty or deprivation; to produce, in other words, the social indispensability of the kind of knowledge they control". In addition to Bauman's proposal to treat and examine intellectuals as part of a larger social figuration, it is important to emphasize further relational structures within which experts find themselves: (1) The relation of knowledge-based occupations to (socially constructed) forms and stocks of knowledge itself. (2) Their location in specific discourse communities of experts, advisers and counsellors. That is, experts are not isolated individuals but derive and defend their claims to expertise by virtue of their membership and standing in communities of experts. Although the stratum of experts consists of various and increasingly larger communities of knowledge-based occupations, as a whole they do not form and cannot be analyzed as a "social class". Even if one concedes that "classes are never united" (Gouldner, 1979:31) knowledge-based occupations do not form a class. The social and political organization and consciousness of experts as experts simply does not exist in contemporary society. The variety of occupations which are knowledge-based is very large and diverse indeed. Experts are found in all sectors of the economy and represent all levels of inequality. One cannot even treat experts as part of some social movement. It is simply an open question and will remain open, whether the kind of tasks and for whom one performs these skills, is still a crucial let alone sufficient, source of political solidarity in modern society. I assume that the knowledge these occupations employ is not, under most circumstances, directly of their creation. That is, these occupations serve as mediator between the knowledge producers and the knowledge users; between those who create a capacity for action and those whose job it is to take action. There are of course instances in which the function of knowledge producer and knowledge transmitter is, by and large, carried out by the same individual. But the peculiar relationship that experts create or are expected to maintain does not imply, as emphasized already, that their function is somehow limited to that of mediation in the narrow and perhaps even neutral sense of a simple flow of information from a source to a receiver. Their function is, in other words, by no means passive; they are not merely convenient and efficient vehicles transmitting knowledge. On the contrary, it can be assumed that their influence, as well as their esteem, derives, last but not least from the transformative activity they perform. That is, knowledge based occupations should not be seen as passive media obtaining, collating, systematizing or in some other way neutrally "operat-

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

133

ing" on knowledge and then transmitting that knowledge to various publics. Of course they engage in all those activities. But the outcome is that their work on knowledge changes it. Knowledge is never an unproblematic "currency" which can be easily exchanged. The exchange controls and restrictions are often formidable and enforced. Experts selectively invoke their interpretation of knowledge. Therefore, the definition of the priorities of action and the definition of the situation by clients is often mandated by experts consulted for advice. The knowledge which is passed on, in some way, undergoes changes as it is transmitted. Experts transmit and apply knowledge but they do so in an active fashion. It is this activity which needs to be examined quite closely for the transformative activity is one of the keys to any comprehensive and systematic understanding of the function and the conditions for the demand for experts and their knowledge in advanced societies.

IV. Institutions and Expertise Not only is the process by which, and the knowledge in which, experts deal often taken-for-granted, but equally unexplored are the institutional contexts within which knowledge is employed, and how these contexts may, in turn, affect the very mediation between knowledge, social action and the kind of authority knowledge may have. And, from a socio-historical and comparative point of view, we have but limited insights into the changing roles and cognitive strategies employed by experts, counsellors and advisers in response to changing social and intellectual conditions. Germane observations may be found in Bauman's (1987) study of changing intellectual practices. He distinguishes between modern and post-modern experiences which correspond to distinct views of the (social) world, one in which order is thought to be possible and the other, the post-modern view of the world, in which an almost unlimited number of models of order are seen as a lasting attribute of the world. The corresponding intellectual practices are, according to Bauman, best described with the help of the metaphor of the "legislator", in the case of the modern world, and that of the role of the "interpreter" in the post-modern world. More precisely, the most characteristic strategy of the modern intellectual practice "consists of making authoritative statements which arbitrate in controversies of opinions and which select those opinions which, having been selected, become correct and binding". While the "typically post-modern strategy of intellectual work ... consists of translating statements, made within one community based tradition, so that they can be understood within the system of knowledge based on another tradition. Instead of being

134

Nico Stehr

oriented towards selecting the best social order, this strategy is aimed at facilitating communication between autonomous (sovereign) participants" (Bauman, 1987:5). Whether the primary intellectual strategy in a world characterized by multiple and incompatible but legitimate world-views is, in fact, mediation, and translation generally or only that of a small "elite" of interpreters remains an empirical question, as is the possibility that one of the characteristic features of post-modernity is a decline in the authority of experts or a legitimation crisis which may go hand in hand with the appearance of uncertainty. Nonetheless, the distinction between modern and post-modern experiences which Bauman advances is useful because it alerts us to the possibility that the role of experts has changed, perhaps even considerably, depending, for example, on the nature of the knowledge-based resources they are able to call on and the nature of the social context they are expected to serve. At the same time, different strategies may co-exist within the same period of time and result in distinct modes of conflict among experts, as well as between clients and experts. Bauman's observations suggest also that it might be important to attempt to re-construct, from available records, how the advisory process may have functioned in the past. Historically, the function and authority of knowledge as well as the type of knowledge varies from institution to institution. Max Weber ([1922] 1968:29), as indicated already, has described modern political power and the type of social organization which supports and sustains political power as a type of "authority based on knowledge". At the same time, Weber ([1922] 1968:994) recognizes certain limits to political authority which is based on knowledge, in particular, "the expert knowledge of private economic interest groups in the field of 'business' is superior to expert knowledge of the bureaucracy. This is so because the exact knowledge of facts in their field is of direct significance for economic survival". Private enterprise, Weber argues, is relatively immune against intervention of bureaucratic authority. Effective intervention by the state in the capitalist epoch into the spheres of business and commerce is restricted and often takes on unanticipated consequences. Private enterprise is able to guard "secrets", as a means of power, much more closely while the consequences of "errors" in judgement are immediate and severe, paid for by losses or, in the extreme, the very existence of the business. The resource of knowledge generates conflicts between experts and their clients. Whether the conflict between counsellors, advisers and experts, on the one hand, and practical politicians, on the other hand, for example, will "be over and over again represented by the latter as a conflict between those who think they 'know better' and hence would have no scruples in forcing their ideals down the throats of those whom they rule, and the politicians, pragmatists by nature, who beware of moving forward too fast for the 'people' to follow them, and who put the 'art of the possible' above any stiff doctrine" (Bauman, 1987:105), is, indeed, the best description of the nature of the conflict between these groups, remains to be examined empirically. Bauman's description of the conflict

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

135

between experts and politicians, however, does point to the need to carefully analyze the contingent (situational) features faced by each of the two groups as a source of potential conflict between them.

V. Conditions for the Growth of Experts As I have indicated, the discussion among social scientists about the need for and the place of expertise in modern society generally is an established theme of theoretical analysis. It is linked, moreover, to the analysis of the rise of science and industrialization and the consequences both are seen to have for the social structure, culture and politics of society, specifically, and the very fabric of social relations, generally. The analysis over the years is affected by salient historical events and trends discerned by social scientists, for example, the rise and the defeat of fascism, and the emergence of state socialism and its economic failure. The views of social scientists oscillate between hope for and fear of experts, professionals, intellectuals and knowledge workers in these changing historical situations, and as crucial forces for society. In the inter-war years, the British sociologists Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933:485-486), in a discussion of the role of the professions, animated by an almost undiluted faith in the disinterestedness of the professional, emphasize the special, societal significance of expert knowledge for the very survival of modern democracy: "[t]he association between scientific inquiry and the art of government has become a prime necessity. Knowledge is power. Authority without knowledge is powerless. Power dissociated from knowledge is a revolutionary force. Unless the modern world works out a satisfactory relationship between expert knowledge and popular control the days of democracy are numbered". The state has to establish proper relations with the professions as their main source of knowledge and "a right relationship between knowledge and power is the central problem of modern democracy". But despite the vigorous call for the knowledgeable professions to serve the state and for the state to establish good relations with the professions, it remains ambiguous why the state (increasingly) needs the knowledge controlled by professionals, what knowledge the state might find useful in the first place, and why the professions are capable of controlling the knowledge the state requires to survive. However, the corrective the professions are seen to offer at the time, not only to Carr-Saunders and Wilson, but also to reformers such as Emile Durkheim (1957), R.H. Tawney (1920), and C.S. Peirce, is one which resonates with the unrelenting change brought about by capitalism. That is, concerned, even stunned, by the tempo of social change generated by the economy in the first part of this century, advocates of the

136

Nico Stehr

professions "depicted the backdrop of commerce and industry as a scene of such unrelieved selfishness that once the professional was thrust into the foreground he could hardly fail to look selfless in comparison. ... Since the market released individuals from what were perceived as healthy and proper social obligations, the reformers identified capitalism with individualism, and morality with the restoration of communal bonds. On all counts, the professions seemed to offer solutions to the problem of self-interest, and for that reason professionalization could seem a cultural reform of vital importance" (Haskell, 1984b: 186). Similarly, the work of Karl Mannheim ([1929] 1936, [1935] 1940), in its different phases (cf. Kettler et al., 1984), echoes, despite its ambivalences, the hope that intellectuals or planners may come to the rescue of the political sphere which is under siege and attack from different and destructive forces. In the sixties, social scientists once again turned to the analysis of "experts", or more to the point, the representatives of "technical rationality" and its pervasive and apparently irreversible dominance of all spheres of society, including a scientification of politics and, therefore, the end of politics because technical necessities transplant political decisions (cf. Habermas, 1971). Both Helmut Schelsky (1961) and Herbert Marcuse (1964), on the right and the left of the political spectrum respectively, painted the picture of the dawn of a "technical state" as the outcome of the dominance and authority of science and technology, and, therefore, the power of experts silencing all other voices and purposes, other than those given by technical rationality itself. But what all these divergent "expert" conceptions about the hopeful or dangerous role of "experts" share, despite their many differences, is a largely uncritical and unexamined conception of the nature and the source of the expertise. Moreover, all these theoretical visions also agree, as is evident in the ensuing "technocracy debate" (cf. Koch and Senghaas, 1970) in Germany in the early 1960s for example, that the power of expertise in modern society is, in the end, an overwhelming force to be reckoned with. Depending on how the holders of expertise are conceptualized, the likelihood that they will, even against the will of other groups, assume the center position in the core institutions in which decisions ought to be or will be made in modern society, is widely taken-forgranted. In addition to sharing a largely scientistic conception of knowledge, these varied, sometimes hopeful, at others times skeptical examinations of the virtue and function of expertise, have in common also an "elitist" conception of experts; that is to say, there are usually assumed to be but a few experts, at least those who really count are rather small in number, and those few typically migrate to the top of the relations of power and authority in society. For the most part, even the more recent literature which addresses the unprecedented growth of knowledge, takes the demand for such knowledge for granted, or simply postulates, but leaves unanalyzed, the growth in the use of knowledge and, therefore, the increase in knowledge-based services. Much of the literature reiterates confidently a linear relation between the extent to which the "amount"

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

137

of knowledge increases, often seen as a cumulative process with the corresponding growth of ignorance, at least among most segments of the population of modern society (e.g., Merton, 1975). Other examples of broad and confident assertions which fail to raise, let alone analyze, the issue of the reasons and the conditions for the growth of expert knowledge, are the bold and ultimately uninformative assertion by Stich and Nisbett (1984:236) that it is the hallmark "of an educated and reflective person that he recognizes, consults, and defers to authority on a wide range of topics". It is, therefore, in an even more general sense, simply an essential and quite straightforward feature of the evolution of civilization, as represented by an incessant increase in the complexity and volume of knowledge, that individuals are increasingly forced or constrained to defer, on more and more issues, to the judgement of experts. Boulding (1967:691-692), in analogy to the economic assertion that "specialization without trade is useless", holds that the same principle applies to knowledge. Specialization in the production of knowledge permits greater productivity but if such growth is not accompanied by intellectual exchange relations, "the bits of specialized knowledge do not add up to a total knowledge structure for mankind". The conclusion becomes experts "distribute" knowledge. Georg Simmel ([1919] 1968:44) considered the immense growth in the quantity and impact of knowledge on the life of individuals to be a most salient feature of modernity. More important, the infinitely growing supply of "objectified spirit places demands before the subject, creates desires in him, hits him with feelings of individual inadequacy and helplessness, throws him into total relationships from whose impact he cannot withdraw, although he cannot master their particular contents. Thus, the typically problematic situation of modern man comes into being: his sense of being surrounded by an innumerable number of cultural elements which are neither meaningless to him nor, in the final analysis, meaningful. In their mass they depress him, since he is not capable of assimilating them all, nor can he simply reject them, since after all, they belong potentially within the sphere of his cultural development". Thus, under contemporary conditions, so much information is available that "mere accessibility is not better than invisibility" (Dennet, 1986:145). But even a vague awareness of the potential availability of more and more knowledge affects individuals. The separation between the knower and the known is seen to accelerate. At the same time, the gap between the two also takes on different qualities and has novel social consequences. Moreover public policy is, Simmel ([1909] 1984:92-93) notes pessimistically, for the most part quite impotent or incapable of lessening the gap between the ability of the individual to absorb the rapidly growing complexity of modern culture. The discrepancy between "subjective" and "objective" culture could perhaps be lessened by measures of the state which may be designed to enable individuals to convert "the contents of the objective culture we experience in a

138

Nico Stehr

more effective and rapid manner into subjective cultural material which, in the final analysis, alone assures the real value of the former". One may infer, therefore, that experts, counsellors and advisors perform urgently needed tasks in modern society and that the persistent growth in their ranks and functional importance corresponds or signals a continuation of the trend in the gap between cultures Simmel noted at the turn of this century. However, as suggestive as Simmel's assertions may in fact be, his observations about the place of expert advice in society and its apparent growing importance to most individuals, does not satisfactorily address the question of the reasons and conditions for the apparently increasing social utility of experts and of the various social consequences this may in fact have. On the most general plane, possible answers to a search for the conditions for the possibility of a rapid demand for expert advice in many social institutions and situations, including many contexts in everyday life, might be linked to the nature and the tempo of the development of technical-scientific knowledge, especially as it is rapidly translated into practice and therefore becomes quickly relevant to social practices and increasingly even transforms and dominates such practices. Taken to the extreme perhaps, the demand for expertise is a function of the production of expertise, and, presumably, the success in generating or transforming social conditions in the image of such "expertise". The demand for experts in a society which is becoming increasingly a society molded by science, could be seen, in this sense at least, to be self-generating; that is, more and more decisions call for the rhetoric of rationality and efficiency which science and technology promise (cf. Nowotny, 1979:119). An analogous and relevant thesis is advanced by Peter Drucker who argues that the crucial reason for the observed increase in the demand for knowledgeable employees, and perhaps, therefore, for the shift to a knowledge society, has nothing to do with more exacting and complex job skills and subsequent adjustments in the demand for such qualifications by employers. Rather, Drucker considers such a hypothesis merely a widely held myth. The effective reason for the considerable growth in job skills and knowledge is linked, according to Drucker, to the immense increase in the working lifespan of individuals. Thus, it is not so much the demand for labor and particular skills, but the supply of highly skilled labor that underlies the transformation of society into a knowledge society. In other words, the thesis Drucker (1969:84) expounds is, that "the arrival of the knowledge worker changed the nature of jobs. Because modern society has to employ people who expect and demand knowledge work, knowledge jobs have to be created. As a result, the character of work is being transformed". Drucker proposes therefore a kind of "supply side explanation" of the transformation of industrial society into knowledge society. Higher educated entrants into the labor force expect upgraded jobs, 20 but the extension of education is itself a reflection of a drastic lengthening of work life expectancy. The dramatic growth in the average number of years spent in schools, apprenticeships, and various other

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

139

learning institutions such as colleges and universities after World War Two and more recently, has altered irreversibly the "supply of labor". 2l By the same token, the growth of the social utility of experts may be a response to profound changes in the social organization of society, in particular, its escalating rationalization, social differentiation, segmentation and compartmentalization. Increasing rationalization implies an escalation in societal complexity and, at least according to many observers, that decisions about normative solutions to everyday problems or the technical availability of relevant objects have to take a "detour" via science and technology since they cannot be extracted directly from the repertoire of solutions and resources of everyday life (e.g., Habermas, [1968] 1971). Greater differentiation goes hand in hand with a much more complex distribution of social knowledge. It reduces the accessibility to many parts of social knowledge because they become, at best, only relevant under special conditions. In situations which do not recur frequently, access to knowledge or the need to know is mediated by relevant advisors and counsellors who deal in those context related stocks of knowledge suddenly of urgent relevance to an actor or group of actors. Or, as others have suggested (e.g., Weingart, 1979), the expansion of the functions of the state increasingly usurps experts, even produces needs for experts and advisers to serve the state, for example, within new areas of regulation or, within traditional fields of governmental practice. But even before the recent attention, among political scientists, of possibilities of ungovernability, of an overload of governmental capacities or of a de-legitimation of the state (cf. Birch, 1984) as a result of the increasing demand for and growing responsibilities of the state, have social theorists assigned a special role in society to the professions or similar groups. They were seen, under certain conditions, on the one hand, as an effective answer to the crises of liberal democratic societies and as a much needed barrier against moral disorganization in the form of excessive individualism in modern society. T.H. Marshall (1939), in the inter-war years, saw the professions as "exemplars and bulwarks of social stability" while Parsons (e.g., 1968) assigned to them, in the post-war years, the functions previously fulfilled by religion and its social organization. The inability or ineffectiveness of the modern state, in the face of growing demands to intervene, leads Halliday (1987:28), on the other hand, to expect that the state may volunteer, or be forced to delegate, responsibilities to the professions. But these and kindred observations tend to be restricted by their very focus, the role of professionals. Theoretical ideas pertaining to questions about the conditions for the growth of knowledge-bearing occupations in modern society not infrequently designate knowledge itself as the motor of an accelerating demand for special intellectual skills. Such a link is both dubious and attractive. It is dubious because it may well amount to a circular proposition. As well, the same thesis resonates closely with the now discredited "internalist" account of the dynamics of science. Yet it is, despite its simplicity, attractive because it raises the possibility that the growth of

140

Nico Stehr

knowledge is self-sustained, at least at the juncture where the knowledge producing institutions have reached a certain critical mass in society. Nonetheless, linking the growth of knowledge disseminating labor merely to the growth in the quantity as well as a more and more differentiated stock of knowledge, fails to inquire, as I have stressed repeatedly, into the nature of the knowledge in demand. In addition, the sources of the demand itself have to be examined. In the latter case, many useful suggestions in fact already exist, though the focus of sociological inquiry on the transformation of the economy increasingly driven by symbolic rather than material input is, at best, in its first stage and still quite tenuous.

VI. The Functions of Expertise At least two general approaches are imaginable in response to the question of the social function of advice in society. One approach might examine the function of advice for the individual recipients of counsel while the second would attempt to gain insights into the function of advice by employing a more macro-sociological analysis. These points of departure in fact may not lead to incompatible accounts because the two levels of analysis refer to interrelated phenomena. However, the conception individuals subjectively may have about their reasons for seeking advice may well differ considerably from those which one could theoretically assign to expertise on a macro-sociological plane. Similarly, the self-conception of the knowledge-bearing occupations may differ from those one may be able to assign to this segment of the labor force on the basis of a particular theory of society. In the latter tradition, some observers have spoken of modern society as a society which has rapidly transformed from a "performance" to a "learning" society. In a performance society individuals will practice in adulthood skills which were acquired in youth. In a learning society, abilities and skills are practiced in adulthood which were not acquired in youth. Instead, one might expect to have several distinct careers within the course of one lifetime (Anderson and Moore, 1969). Given the assumption about the rapid obsolescence of (occupational) skills in modern society, one function of the various occupations offering counsel and advice could be to provide direction in precisely these circumstances, including the training of further experts. In many circumstances it is, given this perspective, the accelerating tempo with which knowledge, perhaps more importantly, knowledge in need of interpretation, develops which forms the motor for the rising demand for advice and guidance by individuals whose ability to adapt to what are novel circumstances is challenged repeatedly.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

141

Everett C. Hughes (1958:141) describes the person who seeks out advice in the following straightforward manner: "The client comes to the professional because he has met a problem which he cannot himself handle". The apparently simple equation to which Hughes observation alerts us is the distinct possibility, easily discounted in the context of a discussion which continually stresses the growth in the volume of knowledge and its relevance to most affairs of everyday life, that learning in advanced societies often does not result in the acquisition of even elementary cognitive skills, let alone additional mental abilities, enabling us to independently cope with the intellectual requirements of many situations. A discussion of the number of individuals in advanced societies who are functionally illiterate serves as a useful reminder that the growth in the stratum of experts, advisers and counsellors may, paradoxically, be partly the outcome of the practical inefficiency of those charged with imparting these skills. The failure at the level of learning potentially represents a gain of a larger clientele at the other end. If the conditions for the growth of experts are indeed the outcome of the ineffectiveness of "experts", or the failure of teachers and others to transmit the knowledge and cognitive skills necessary for acquiring a measure of intellectual independence, any empirical analysis ought to be able to shed some light on this possibility by examining the composition of the experts' clientele. If experts do not create, in the sense just discussed, their own clientele, one has to consider, perhaps, the possibility that experts themselves produce a demand for the knowledge or the services they offer. In either case, the omnipresent notion of a diffusion of knowledge to the population at large, which is such a large part of democratic utopias, would require a fundamental correction. The attempt by Offe (1984) to provide a functional definition of the service sector of the economy may prove to be helpful for a definition of the function of advice in society. Offe distinguishes between two major functions which have to be fulfilled in society: (1) The need to physically reproduce and assure the survival of society. This function is accomplished in the producing sector of the economy. (2) The need to culturally reproduce the forms and conditions under which efforts directed at the physical reproduction of society are accomplished; these activities secure the "infrastructure" and the "cultural resources" of a society which provide the societal frame within which physical reproduction takes place. This function is performed by service occupations of all kinds, ranging from physicians and security men/women and sales personnel to artists and teachers. The common denominator of service occupations, according to Offe (1984:233), is, therefore, the social construction and maintenance of the specific institutional and cultural preconditions (for example, the nature of the exchange relations). 22 Studies which have shown and pointed critically to the fact that experts and expertise may at times merely serve to underscore the legitimacy of goals or decisions previously taken by officials who ask for advice (e.g., Wilensky, 1956, 1971), perhaps can be subsumed under the function of providing "cultural

142

Nico Stehr

resources". The possibility of such a categorization indicates also how ambivalent as well as suggestive the notion of "cultural resources" happens to be. The functions advisers, experts and counsellors perform in advanced society are best conceptualized as most diverse. They may include evident tasks such as resolving conflicts among contending parties, for example, in the case of serious disputes about the development of nuclear energy in which expert knowledge is employed as a symbolic medium for the resolution of fundamental social conflicts (cf. Nowotny, 1979:25-28). In addition, knowledge-bearing occupations serve many other significant functions, for example, the formation and transformation of individual identities and, more mundane needs, for example dispensing advice on activities ranging from taxes, travel arrangements, investment opportunities, housing alternatives, clothing choices, preventive health measures, or marriage contracts. Holzner and Marx propose an institutional approach to the analysis of the centrality of knowledge to modern society. Although the application of knowledge to human problems is by no means a novel phenomenon, what is unique in contemporary society is "the emergence of role statuses and processes self-consciously and intentionally designed to link the production-discovery of new knowledge with its application-use in a coherent, integrated, purposive, and pervasive knowledge system" (Holzner and Marx, 1979:17). While this image of how knowledge travels in modern society may well be too suggestive of largely planned, well controlled and easily traceable routes of influence, it does indicate that the perception of knowledge is affected by the perception of the knowledge bearing and disseminating, and not only knowledge producing, occupations. But whether the developments sketched by Holzner and Marx (1979:18) "go hand in hand with heightened public ambivalence about experts, scientists, professionals, and academics" remains, to a large extent, an empirical issue. As the authors further indicate, "their authority in relation to practical affairs, programs, and problems is particularly under challenge. Nearly everyone has had a few frustrating encounters with the representatives of specialized, technical expertise...". Since a questioning of experts is indeed an increasingly common experience, examining the conditions for and the function of expertise in contemporary society becomes an even more pressing matter.

VILConclusion I have tried to outline the general significance and the practical importance of what appears to be the fastest growing segment of the labor force in modern society, the stratum of experts, counsellors and advisors, and peel off some useful

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

143

ideas from the literature which is sensitive to this topic. Labor pertaining to the dissemination of k n o w l e d g e - and not only in the service sector o f the e c o n o m y or at the apex of societal influence - transforms modern social relations. At the same time, the growth of knowledge-bearing occupations should not be seen as largely self-induced, but a response to a dramatic change in the e c o n o m i c structure of modern society. The change from industrial society to a k n o w l e d g e society is made possible by the increasing dominance o f k n o w l e d g e itself as a source of e c o n o m i c growth. Empirical analysis o f experts, advisors and counsellors, which is still in its infancy, has to be placed in this general context. In addition, it is urgent to analyze empirically the nature of the k n o w l e d g e in which experts deal.

Notes 1 2

3 4

5

6

7

I am grateful for critical comments on a previous version of the essay by Zygmunt Bauman, David Bloor, Gemot Böhme, Richard V. Ericson and Eliot Freidson. As Rueschemeyer (1986:139-140) for example underlines and cautions, "taken together, the power sharing of the different knowledge-bearing occupations has probably diluted the concentrations of power based on property, coercion and popular appeal; but that is a far cry from saying that the power of partial interests and the conflicts between them have become irrelevant or even muted". Cf. Luhmann (1981:116). Haskell (1984a:xii) relates that the term "expert", which signifies a distinctive social role, did not come into use until the middle decades of the last century, for it was only then that "ascending levels of population density and per capita income made it possible for substantial numbers of people to make a living by selling advice and specialized services, rather than by producing food or other tangible goods". From a purely economic point of view it may indeed be sufficient to say that "a piece (!) of knowledge does not need to be produced more than once" which means that the same "piece" of information can be used repeatedly by as many individuals as desire (Dasgupta and Stoneman, 1987:3). However, such a conception of knowledge implies a most restrictive conception of knowledge production, its distribution and use free of controversy and contention. The answer one economist provides is that technology must be considered, in contrast to the convictions concerning scientific knowledge in the scientific community, a "private capital good". In the case of technology, disclosure is not the rule and rents which can be privately appropriated for its use can be earned by its producers (cf. Dasgupta, 1987:10). As Georg Simmel ([1907] 1978:437) indicates the intellect (or, knowledge) stands in rather close relation and proximity to individualism, as does money. Reason has an individualizing property because it is the essence of its content that the "intellect is universally communicable and that, if we presuppose its correctness, every sufficiently trained mind must be open to persuasion by it. There is absolutely no analogy to this in the realms of the will and the emotions". In addition, the contents of the

144

Nico Stehr (objective) mind "do not possess the jealous exclusiveness that is common in the practical contents of life".

8

Compare for example the conflicting views of Harold Innis (1951) and Marshall McLuhan on this matter.

9

The essays by Peter Drucker and Richard Lipsey in this volume describe the profound transformation of the modern economy in much greater detail.

10

But in many instances, the discussion of the role of knowledge in social action is surprisingly limited to this observation. Without wanting to engage in extensive or even excessive terminological discussions, the notion of "knowledgeability" of human agents, as proposed by Giddens (1984: 21-22) for example, characterizes first and foremost, practical consciousness and therefore knowledge as an "ordinary", often widely shared and tacit component of social action. As such, knowledge is a condition for the possibility of social action. The point Giddens' cares to stress is the extent to which knowledgeability is constitutive of, or common to, social action. Giddens, therefore, does not intend to refer, in his usage, to the problems at issue here: namely, how and why knowledge expands, how it may be subject to stratification, how it is mediated by knowledge-based occupations, and how it represents the basis for authority or is the source for economic expansion. Giddens emphasizes the mutuality of knowledge while the concern here centers on the very absence of mutuality, even if this absence is only temporary. Giddens wants to advance, although not exclusively, of course, an ontological argument. Fundamentally, the issue at hand here is that actors not only know but want to know more than fellow actors and that knowledge is a stratified phenomenon of social action.

11

The thesis that knowledge invariably is pushed to its limit, that is, is realized and implemented almost without regard for the consequences (as argued, for instance, by C.P. Snow [cf. Sibley, 1973]), constitutes of course a view which is quite common among observers, for example of the nature of technological development. However, the notion that science and technology inherently and inevitably forces its own realization in practice fails to give proper recognition to the context of implementation by assuming that the realization of technical and scientific knowledge is automatic.

12

If knowledge indeed would "travel" almost without impediments and could be reproduced largely at will, the idea that the creators of what typically constitutes "new" knowledge in modern society, namely scientists and engineers, would have to be located at the apex of power in such societies, certainly would make considerable sense.

13

Bell (1979:169) suggests that the notion of the emergence of a new class in modern society mixes two trends, which may not be related at all, the emergence of a new social stratum and the stridency of a cultural sentiment. And, if there is reason to speak about the idea of a new class, it refers at best to an emergent consciousness or cultural attitude but not to the development of a coherent socio-structural basis (Bell, 1979:186).

14

The "belief in the 'legality' of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands" constitutes the foundation of legal authority (Weber, [1922] 1964:328).

15

Parsons (1968:545) for example argues that the most advanced segment in the course of social evolution of Western society is found in the "professional complex ... the

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

16

17

18 19

20 21

22

145

most important single component in the structure of modern society" and the members of this stratum are bound to emerge as the leaders in advanced society. The virtues of the modern scientist as depicted in the deeply rooted image of science in the late nineteenth century, at least in North America and Britain, corresponds quite closely to the virtues of professionals. In Victorian times, the modern scientist was widely portrayed as a "humble and honest man with steady habits, laboring patiently, diligently, selflessly, and without prejudice in the interests of truth" (Hollinger, 1984:142). Some of the early discussions about the division of the industrialized economy into three sectors may be found in Fisher (1939) or Clark (1940); more recent and somewhat critical, though ultimately affirmative, discussion of the notion of the importance of the service sector and of the reasons for its growth may be found in Gershuny and Miles (1983) as well as Offe (1984:227-320). However, it is telling that the subtitle of the Gershuny and Miles study reads "The transformation of employment in industrial societies". Their discussion of the changes in the labor force of service industries is, for all intents and purposes, animated by and dependent on the theory of industrial society and the dynamics of its economic structure and sectors rather than a conception of an economy which has, or is about to, transcend that of an industrial society. Note also that Daniel Bell's image of post-industrial society is one dominated by the "service economy" (cf. Bell, 1973:127-128). For a critique of what amounts to widely held and defended "instrumental" model of dissemination and application of knowledge produced in science cf. Stehr, 1992. The degree of control exercised over the work process depends, one might suggest with Larson (1977:26-27), on the lack of separation between work process and output (cf. also Whitley, 1988:401-404). "Long years of schooling make a person unfit for anything but knowledge work" (Drucker, 1969:284). Drucker first must have developed the supply-side account of the growth of knowledge-based labor in 1969 since only a year or two earlier he still advocates the more conventional account of the relation between education and the labor market in an essay which deals with the nature of technology and society in the 20th Century. In this context Drucker (1967:27) argues that the "stress on education is creating a changed society; access to education is best given to everyone, if only because society needs all the educated people it can get" (my emphasis). As is the case for any functional definition, this attempt too has its difficulties with the dynamic dimension of its object, although Offe (1984:233) suggests that his definition can somehow accommodate aspects other than the static features of the service sector of the economy.

References Anderson, Allen R. and Omar K. Moore 1969 "Some Principles of the Design of Clarifying Educational Environments", pp. 571-613 in David A. Goslin (ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

146

Nico Stehr

Barnes, Barry 1985 About Science. Oxford: Blackwell. Bauman, Zygmunt 1987 Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bell, Daniel 1979 "The New Class: a Muddled Concept", pp. 169-190 in Barry Bruce-Briggs (ed.), The New Class? New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. Bell, Daniel 1973 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Bell, Daniel 1971 "Technocracy and Politics". Survey 16:1-24. Bennis, Warren G. and Philip E. Slater 1969 The Temporary Society. New York: Harper and Row. Benveniste, Guy 1972 The Policy of Expertise. Berkeley: Glendessary Press. Birch, Anthony H. 1984 "Overload, Ungovernability and Deligitimation: The Theories and the British Case". British Journal of Political Science 14:135-160. Birnbaum, Norman 197 la "Is there a Post-industrial Revolution?" pp. 393-415 in Norman Birnbaum, Toward a Critical Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Birnbaum, Norman 1971b "Is there a Knowledge Elite?" pp. 416-441 in Norman Birnbaum, Toward a Critical Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Block, Fred 1985 "Postindustrial Development and the Obsolescence of Economic Categories". Politics and Society 14:416-441. Boulding, Kenneth 1967 "The 'Two Cultures'", pp. 686-695 in Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr. (eds.), Technology in Western Civilization. Volume II. New York: Oxford University Press. Braverman, Harry 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth New York: Monthly Review Press.

Century.

147

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers Bruce-Briggs, Barry 1979 The New Class? New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Brzezinski, Zbigniew 1958 "America in the Technotronic Age". Encounter 30:16-26. Carr-Saunders, A M. and P. A. Wilson 1933 The Professions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, Colin 1940 The Conditions of Economic Progress. London: Macmillan. Collins, H.M.

1982 "The Replication of Experiments in Physics", pp. 94-116 in Barry Barnes and David Edge (eds.), Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press. Coser, Lewis A. 1970 Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's

View. New York: Free Press.

Dahrendorf, Ralf 1969 "The Intellectual and Society: The Social Function of the 'Fool' in the Twentieth Century", pp. 53-56 in Phillip Riefif (ed.), On Intellectuals. New York: Anchor Books. Dasgupta, Partha 1987 "The Economic Theory of Technology Policy", pp. 7-23 in Partha Dasgupta and Paul Stoneman (eds.), Economic Policy and Technological Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dasgupta, Partha and Paul Stoneman 1987 "Introduction", pp. 1-6 in Partha Dasgupta and Paul Stoneman (eds.), Economic Policy and Technological Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dennet, Daniel C. 1986 "Information, Technology, and the Virtues of Ignorance". Daedalus 115: 135-153. Derber, Charles 1982 "Toward a New Theory of Professionals as Workers: Advanced Capitalism and Postindustrial Labour", pp. 193-208 in Charles Derber (ed.), Professionals as Workers: Mental Labour in Advanced Capitalism. Boston: Hall. Drucker, Peter F. 1986 "The Changed World Economy". Foreign Affairs 64:768-791. Drucker, Peter F. 1969 The Age of Discontinuity: Row.

Guidelines to our Changing Society. New York: Harper &

148

Nico Stehr

Drucker, Peter 1967 "Technological Trends in the Twentieth Century", pp. 10-33 in Mel vin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr. (eds.), Technology in Western Civilization. Volume II. New York: Oxford University Press. Durkheim, Emile [1893] 1964 The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, Emile 1957 Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Eulau, Heinz 1973 "Skill Revolution and Consultive Commonwealth". American Political Review 62:169-191. Feuer, Lewis S. 1976 "What is an Intellectual?" pp. 47-58 in A. Gella (ed.), The Intelligentsia Intellectuals. Beverly Hills: Sage. Fisher, A.

Science

and the

1939 "Production - Primary, Secondary and Tertiary". The Economic Record 15:24-38. Foucault, Michel 1970 L'ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard. Freidson, Eliot 1986 Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Friedmann, John 1987 Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Galbraith, John K. 1967 The New Industrial State. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Gershuny, J. I. and I. D. Miles 1983 The New Service Economy: The Transformation of Employment in Industrial Societies. London: Frances Pinter. Giddens, Anthony 1984 The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, Anthony [1973] 1980 The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. London: Hutchinson.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

149

Gipsen, C.W.R. 1988 "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization". Comparative Studies in Society and History 30:550-574. Goldhamer, Herbert 1978 The Adviser. New York: Elsevier. Goldthorpe, John H. 1982 "On the Service Class, its Formation and Future", pp. 162-185 in Anthony Giddens and G. Mackenzie (eds.), Social Class and the Division of Labor: Essays in Honour ofllja Neustadt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goode, William J. 1969 "The Theoretical Limits of Professionalization", pp. 266-313 in Amitai Etzioni (ed.), The Semi-Professions and Their Organization: Teachers, Nurses, Social Workers. New York: The Free Press. Goode, William J., 1957 "Community Within a Community: the Professions". American Sociological 22:194-200.

Review

Gouldner, Alvin W. 1979 The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury Press. Gross, Bertram M. 1971 "Planning in an Era of Social Revolution". Public Admistration Review 31:259-296. Habermas, Jürgen [1968] 1971 Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, Jürgen 1971 Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Halliday, Terence C. 1987 Beyond Monopoly: Lawyers, State Crises and Professional Empowerment. University of Chicago Press. Haskell, Thomas L. (ed.)

Chicago:

1984a The Authority of Experts. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Haskell, Thomas L. (ed.) 1984b "Professionalism versus Capitalism: R.H. Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C.S. Pierce on the disinterestedness of professional communities", pp. 180-225 in Thomas L. Haskell (ed.), The Authorityin American of Experts. Life. Bloomington, Hofstadter, Richard 1962 Anti-intellectualism New York:Indiana: Knopf. Indiana University Press.

150

Nico Stehr

Hollinger, David A. 1984 "Inquiry and Uplift: Late Nineteenth-century American Academics and the Moral Efficacy of Scientific Practice", pp. 142-156 in Thomas L. Haskell (ed.), The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Holzner, Burkart and John H. Marx 1979 Knowledge Application: The Knowledge System in Society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Hughes, Everett C. 1958 Men and Their Work. New York: The Free Press. Hunter, Alfred A. 1988 "Formal Education and Initial Employment". American 53:753-765. Innis, Harold A. 1951 The Bias of Communication.

Sociological

Review

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Jacoby, Russell 1987 The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basis Books. Kettler, David, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr 1984 Karl Mannheim. London: Routledge. Keynes, John M. 1936 The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. London: Macmillan. King, Lauriston R. and Philip H. Melanson 1972 "Knowledge and Politics". Public Policy 20:82-101. Klaw, Spencer 1969 The Brahmans: Scientific Life in America. New York: William Morrow & Co. Koch, Claus and Dieter Senghaas (eds.) 1970 Texte zur Technokratiediskussion.

Stuttgart: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

Konrád, Goergy and Ivan Szelényi 1970 The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ladd, Everett C. Jr. 1970 American Political Parties: Social Change and Political Response. New York: Norton. Lapp, Ralph E. 1965 The New Priesthood: The Scientific Elite and the Uses of Power. New York: Haper & Row.

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

151

Larson, Magali Sarfatti 1984 "The Production of Expertise and the Constitution of Expert Authority", pp. 28-80 in Thomas L. Haskell (ed.). The Authority of Experts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Larson, Magali Sarfatti 1977 The Rise of Professionalism.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lash, Scott and John Urry 1987 The End of Organized Capitalism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Lerner, Allan W. 1976 The Politics of Decision-Making: Strategy, Cooperation, and Conflict. Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage. Lieberman, Jethro K. 1970 The Tyranny of Experts: How Professionals are Closing the Open Society. New York: Walker. Lübbe, Hermann 1987 "Der kulturelle Geltungschwund der Wissenschaften", pp. 89-108 in Helmut de Rudder and Heinz Sahner (eds.), Wissenschaft und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung. Berlin: Arno Pitz. Luhmann, Niklas 1981 "Gesellschaftsstrukturelle Bedingungen und Folgerungen des naturwissenschaftlichtechnischen Fortschritts", pp. 113-134 in Reinhard Low et al. (eds.), Fortschritt ohne Maß? München: Piper. Machlup, Fritz 1962 The Production and Distribution Princeton University Press.

of Knowledge

in the United States. Princeton:

Machlup, Fritz and Trude Kronwinkler 1975 "Workers Who Produce Knowledge: A Steady Increase, 1900-1970". Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 3:752-759. Mannheim, Karl [1935] 1940 Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction: Structure. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Studies in Modern

Social

Mannheim, Karl [1929] 1936 Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Kegan Paul. Marcuse, Herbert 1964 One-Dimensional Boston: Beacon Press.

Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced

Industrial

Society.

152

Nico Stehr

Marshall, Thomas H. 1965 Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Books.

Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor

Marshall, Thomas H. 1939 "The Recent History of Professionalization in Relation to Social Structure and Social Policy". Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 5:128-155. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels [1957-58] 1971 Grundrisse. New York: Harper and Row. Merton, Robert K. 1975 "The Uses of Institutionalized Altruism", pp. 105-113 in Seminar Reports. Program of General and Continuing Education in the Humanities. New York: Columbia University. Merton, Robert K. [1942] 1973 "The Normative Structure of Science", pp. 267-278 in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merton, Robert K. [1945] 1957 "Role of the Intellectual in Public Bureaucracy", pp. 207-224 in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. Revised and Enlarged Edition. New York: Free Press. Mills, C. Wright [1955] 1967 "On Knowledge and Power", pp. 599-613 in Irving L. Horowitz (ed.), Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Monk, P. 1989 Technological Change in the Information Economy. London: Pinter. Montgomery, David 1979 Worker's Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology and Labour Struggles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nowotny, Helga 1979 Kernenergie: Gefahr oder Notwendigkeit? Anatomie eines Konflikts. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Offe, Claus 1984 "Arbeitsgesellschaft": Main: Campus Verlag

Strukturprobleme

und Zukunftsperspektiven.

Pacey, Arnold 1983 The Culture of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Frankfurt am

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers

153

Parsons, Talcott 1969a Politics and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Parsons, Talcott 1969b "The Intellectual", pp. 3-26 in Phillip Rieff (ed.), On Intellectuals. New York: Anchor Books. Parsons, Talcott 1968 "Professions", pp. 536-547 in David Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Volume 12. New York: Macmillan. Parsons, Talcott 1939 "The Professions and Social Structure". Social Forces 17:457-467. Perl, Martin L. 1971 "The Scientific Advisory System: Some Observations". Science 173:1211-1215. Portwood, Derek and Alan Fielding 1981 "Privilege and the Professions". Sociological Review 29:749-773. Richta, Radovan 1969 Civilization at the Crossroads: Social and Human Implications of the Scientific and Technological Revolution. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press. Rouse, Joseph 1987 Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rubin, Michael R. and Mary T. Huber 1986 The Knowledge Industry in the United States, 1960-1980. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 1986 Power and the Division of Labor. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Schelsky, Helmut 1961 Der Mensch in der wissenschaftlichen

Zivilisation.

Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Shils, Edward 1968 "Intellectuals", pp. 399-415 in Edward Shils (ed)., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Volume 7. New York: Macmillan. Sibley, Mulford Q. 1973 "Utopian thought and technology". American Journal of Political Science 17:255-281.

154

Nico Stehr

Simmel, Georg [1907] 1978 The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Simmel, Georg [1919] 1968 The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays. Translated, with an Introduction by Κ. Peter Etzkorn. New York: Teachers College Press. Simmel, Georg [1909] 1984 "Die Zukunft unserer Kultur", pp. 92-93 in Georg Simmel, Das Individuum und die Freiheit. Essais. Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach. Stark, David 1980 "Class struggle and the transformation of the labout process". Theory and 9:89-130.

Society

Stehr, Nico 1992 Practical Knowledge. London: Sage. Stehr, Nico and Volker Meja 1990 "Relativism and the Sociology of Knowledge", pp. 285-306 in Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (eds.), Knowledge and Politics: The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute. London and New York: Routledge. Stich, Stephen P. and Richard E. Nisbett 1984 "Expertise, Justification, and the Psychology of Inductive Reasoning", pp. 226-241 in Thomas L. Haskell (ed.), The Authority of Experts. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Tawney, Richard H. 1920 The Acquisitive

Society. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Touraine, Alain 1971 Post-Industrial

Society: Tomorrow's Social History. New York: Random House.

Weber, Max [1922] 1976 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.Fünfte (Paul Weber,Siebeck). Max

revidierte Auflage. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr

[1922] 1968 Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster Press. Weber, Max [1922] 1964 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited with an Introduction by Talcott Parsons. New York: Free Press. Weingart, Peter 1979 "Das 'Harrisburg-Syndrom oder die De-Professionalisierung der Experten", pp. 9-17

155

Experts, Counsellors and Advisers in Helga Nowotny, Kernenergie: Suhrkamp. Whitehead, Alfred North 1926 Science and the Modern University Press.

Gefahr

oder Notwendigkeit?

Frankfurt am Main:

World. Lowell Lectures, 1925. Cambridge: Cambridge

Whitley, Richard 1988 "The Transformation of Expertise by New Knowledge: Contingencies and Limits to Skill Scientification". Social Science Information 27:391-420. Wilensky, Harold L. 1971 Organizational

Intelligence.

New York: Basic Books.

Wilensky, Harold L. 1964 "The Professionalization of Everyone". American Journal of Sociology 70:137-158. Wilensky, Harold L. 1956 Intellectuals in Labor Glencoe, 111: Free Press.

Unions: Organizational

Pressures

on Professional

Roles.

Knowledge as Product and Property1 Steve Fuller

Why are economists and lawyers relevant to knowledge policy in a way that philosophers have not been? I argue that, unlike philosophers, economists and lawyers take seriously the "ontological status" of knowledge. In other words, they routinely treat knowledge as a sort of thing, more specifically, a system of social relations that is fixed by a common physical object. This enables the isolation and manipulation of knowledge as "product" (in economics) or "property" (in law). I develop this argument, first, by contrasting the immaterial conception of knowledge typically found in metaphysics with the multimaterial one that follows from seeing knowledge as having the capacity to empower its possessor. This leads to a discussion of disciplines and professions as vehicles for embodying knowledge in people. Afterward, I turn to consider the conversion of knowledge products into intellectual property, which raises the normative implications of embodying knowledge in specific people. Next, I analyze how issues of epistemic validity and economic value are affected by interpreting goods as more or less "knowledge-like". Finally, I show how this materialist conception of knowledge can be used to raise a pressing epistemological question of the Knowledge Society, namely, whether we know too little or too much for our own good. Philosophers generally think about knowledge as being about things, but rarely is knowledge itself conceptualized as a thing. To make a 2500 year-old story short, the main reason why philosophers have shied away from thinking about knowledge as a thing turns on conceptual difficulties that are supposedly involved in treating knowledge as something both in the world and about the world. More metaphysical ways of making this point have included: How can the whole (i.e. the world) be represented by one of its parts (i.e. knowledge)? How can "the view from nowhere" (i.e. the objective standpoint associated with knowledge) be located somewhere (e.g., in particular beliefs and theories)? It would seem that if knowledge is roughly defined as a faithful representation of reality, then it is essential that reality not be contaminated by the fact that it is being represented. Thus, philosophers since Plato have imagined knowledge as immaterial propositions that "transcend", or have no causal interaction with, the material reality they represent. This is still the most natural way for philosophers to think about

158

Steve Fuller

knowledge. It explains why such surrogates for knowledge in the different branches of the discipline - most notably "beliefs" (in epistemology) and "theories" (in philosophy of science) - are just as difficult to pin down to bits of worldly matter as were Platonic propositions. Are beliefs to be found in my brain as well as in my mind? In what sense do the physics textbook and Newton's Principia Mathematica express the same theory of classical mechanics? Even assuming that philosophers could agree on the best method for getting the right sort of beliefs or theories, where should the policymaker then look to see whether that method and those beliefs or theories are being promoted? In short, what are the empirical indicators of knowledge? If the policymaker arrives at an answer to these questions, it is unlikely to be because she has continued reading philosophy. Before considering the relevance of economics and law to both the metaphysical and policy questions of knowledge, a proviso is in order. In keeping with naive intuition, economists tend to think of knowledge as a commodity, one of the things that money can buy and sell, a list of which would also include machinery, services, and food. Economists often speak of the things that embody knowledge as "ethereal" or "informational" goods to distinguish them from the more familiar sorts of goods (Thompson 1982). Yet, as has just been suggested, there is also a peculiar, and metaphysically interesting, feature of knowledge, to wit, that it can be embodied in rather disparate ways. Knowledge is said to be contained in (at least) books, brains, and databanks - three sorts of things that are produced in quite different ways, yet for roughly the same reason (if not to the same effect), namely, to provide knowledge. A common philosophical strategy for dealing with something as multiply embodied as knowledge is to say that while there may be no material constraints per se on what can count as a piece of knowledge, there are constraints on how the thing in question can be interpreted so as to count as a piece of knowledge. 2 I will be adopting this strategy in what follows. What difference does it make to the evaluation of knowledge? In effect, I am claiming that only an interpretive convention - albeit one with decisive implications for how values are ascribed to things and how responsibility is assigned to people determines, say, that physics books count as knowledge goods but that cars do not, or that engineers get held accountable for mechanical failures, while physicists do not. Thus, I will be talking more about, so to speak, the chemistry than the physics of knowledge production. That is, I will not be interested in finding an underlying unity that distinguishes knowledge from other things, but rather principles for converting anything into a piece of knowledge.

Knowledge as Product and Property

159

I. The Interchangeability of Knowledge and Power By bracketing the niceties of epistemology, economists have defined knowledge (or "information": I will not distinguish the two here; cf. Schiller, 1988) as whatever an agent needs to determine her market strategy. 3 This definition brushes aside several issues: Must the agent be able to articulate the knowledge in question as a theory? Indeed, is it even necessary that the agent embody the knowledge in her proper person, as opposed to, say, in some other agent or some machine at the agent's disposal? After all, economists have no trouble including computer forecasts of the market among the agent's epistemic resources. But more distressing to the epistemologist is the economist's unabashedly idealized relativism. For, knowledge appears to be whatever the economist takes to have enabled the agent to choose between various ways of investing her efforts - with the economist presuming the optimal use of resources on the part of the agent. Thus, the thoroughness of the agent's search and the reliability of her findings are hardly ever raised - and when they are, the economist's intuitions tend to go against those of the epistemologist's. Whereas the epistemologist would advise the agent to hold off from any decision until "all the evidence is in", the economist would steer the agent away from regarding the search process as an end in itself, recalling that the agent is motivated to search for knowledge only in order to eliminate undesirable options for action. For, the search itself involves consumption of the same resources that the agent will subsequently deploy in production. Once the agent learns enough to eliminate all but one option, the economist declares the search complete (cf. Stigler, 1961). And so, its epistemologica! crudities notwithstanding, the economist's definition of knowledge highlights an intimate relation between knowledge and power: knowledge is what enables you to get what you want at a price. Nevertheless, economists have been no less reluctant than epistemologists to embrace the knowledge-power equation. To understand why, we need to recall the typical definitions of power proposed by political theorists, according to which power is, as they say, divisible (Head, 1962; Monk, 1989:49ff). Imagine a pie: even if it is divided into pieces of equal size, the piece I get is withheld from you. On the present point, I exert power over you only if I can get you to do something that you would not have done in my absence. In other words, when I have power over you, it is not your resistance - but only my self-restraint - that prevents you from doing what I want. This runs counter to the definition of knowledge at least nominally shared by economists and epistemologists, both of whom regard knowledge as indivisible: neither officially regards knowledge as a scarce resource that remains asymmetrically allocated among relevant parties, unless a theory of distributive justice is drawn up. Rather, any knowledge that I have must be accessible to you, if it is to count as knowledge. 4 The most striking

160

Steve Fuller

consequence of this commitment to knowledge's indivisibility is that epistemologists have ignored the diverse material containers (or vehicles; cf. Campbell, 1988:part 6) in which knowledge comes, since the same knowledge can supposedly be contained in, say, a book, a brain, a databank, or a communication network, in spite of the different costs involved in getting access to these different containers. In fact, rather than making this point a matter for empirical disputation, epistemologists usually presume that only that which can be conserved as it is conveyed through diverse containers - that is, "content" - can have genuine epistemic import. Given these conceptual distinctions, it becomes very difficult to envisage knowledge as part of the world that it attempts to represent. After all, the main reason for not taking Plato literally when he writes of a transcendent realm of formal knowledge is that the material containers in which knowledge normally comes - the books, brains, and databanks - bear the marks of contact with other material things. They are most definitely not transcendent. To paraphrase Ian Hacking (1983), "no representation without intervention!". Yet, the question that the epistemologist insists on asking is whether the conveyance of a given piece of knowledge, or content, is tied to only some material containers and not others. For, if the answer is yes, then the epistemologist suspects that the containers in question have contaminated the knowledge conveyed by effectively restricting access to those who possess the containers. And here "contamination" means, at once, falsifying the knowledge conveyed and converting it into an instrument of power. Notice that this suspicion would extend not only to, say, ancient and medieval hermeticists whose epistemic authority rested on the mastery of texts written in an untranslatable language, but also to those who, in a more modern vein, claim that the expensive technologies involved in laboratory experiments can resolve scientific disputes with a finality that could never be achieved by verbal reasoning alone (cf. Shapin & Schaffer, 1985, for the origins of this claim). In this respect, the followers of Karl Popper, especially Paul Feyerabend, are most archetypally epistemological among contemporary epistemologists. Instead of privileging a particular way of embodying knowledge, they have insisted that all genuine claims to knowledge must be rendered in a form that makes them criticizable in the largest public forum possible. In short, the epistemological strategy for making knowledge less power-like is to introduce what may called a criterion of material interchangeability. The more ways there are to embody the same piece of knowledge, the less opportunity there is for someone to use that knowledge as an instrument of power. Does this mean that, contrary to the pronouncements of Bacon and Comte, knowledge is ¿/«empowering? Not really, for each knowledgeable agent is indirectly empowered by being immunized against certain power relationships that are based on corresponding forms of ignorance (or lack of access). And so, if I learn something about my situation that only you previously knew, then I can control your ability to exercise power over me. The criticizability principle mentioned above caters to

Knowledge as Product and Property

161

this intuition. 5 Materialistically speaking, the principle amounts to the ability to "reverse engineer" something that contains knowledge (Davidson 1989). In other words, knowledge is empowering not merely when one possesses a particular container, but rather when one can open the container and alter its contents. When an agent receives a product in an economic system, she is reproduced either as a copy of the producer or as the producer's complement (i.e., a consumer). The former is empowering, the latter not. From the economist's standpoint, material interchangeability arises from consumers discovering new ways of satisfying a need that was previously in the hands of a single producer. In conditions of monopoly, consumers are likely to think that they need the monopolist's product per se, not something that is functionally equivalent. However, the introduction of rival producers into the market reveals the extent to which the monopolist's product may be replaced by these new goods. This awareness fosters the production of less expensive and, hence, more generally available goods all around. From the economist's standpoint, the knowledge embodied in this process is as a network of interchangeable goods, or, more simply, an exchange rate, which the epistemologist would, in turn, gloss as a translation manual (cf. Quine, 1960). Both notions raise questions of whether the rate of exchange (or rules of correspondence) is fixed and who fixes it.6 In many respects, the epistemologist's ideal of knowledge as universally translatable content is captured much better in the economy by the maintenance of foreign exchange rates than in real knowledge transactions, which more closely resemble bartering, with its lack of globally monitored standards for exchanging one sort of good with another. For example, when a psychologist and a neuroscienti st pool their resources, the result is not a reduction of their two jargons to a common epistemic currency, but rather a pidgin that is forged purely for local purposes, without any concern for whether both sides place the same, or even commensurable, value on the transaction. 7 From what has just been said, it should come as no surprise that a common strategy for casting aspersions on the epistemic status of a claim is to argue that the claim's validity is tied to a particular embodiment, one which empowers some agents at the expense of others. The epistemologist's animus toward relativism is easily understood in this light, as relativism privileges local expression over universal translatability. Traditionally, rhetoric has been the chief source of power in this epistemically objectionable sense. The power of a rhetorically effective speech is said to lie in the speaker's projection of ethos that enables her to move her audience in a way that it would not be moved, had someone else made most of the same points in a somewhat different manner. But the classical character of this observation does not warrant the conclusion that the opposition of knowledge and power is a thing of the past. For, legal theorists are increasingly faced with the problem of whether a certain class of theorems is patentable, namely, ones that are computable only by certain machines - but not by humans or readily available computers. The tendency here, too, has been to use the supposed

162

Steve Fuller

indivisibility of knowledge as a backhanded argument for classifying those theorems, not as pieces of knowledge, but as the sort of technical inventions for which patents are routinely sought and given (cf. Weil & Snapper, 1989:141-192; Andrews, 1989).

II. Embodying Knowledge as Professional Power If the original epistemological myth is to think that one can represent the world without intervening in its causal processes, the original economic myth is to think that knowledge has use value but no exchange value. In other words, for their part, economists have tended to regard the value of knowledge in the way that Adam Smith regarded the value of air: its value lay entirely in its utility to the consumer, not in its exchangeability with other goods, largely because air and knowledge did not seem to be scarce resources. Yet, no less than air in our polluted times, knowledge is now increasingly seen by economists as a good that some have only at the expense of others. As we just saw, however, both epistemologists and economists try to salvage the original, uncontaminated view of knowledge by shifting the emphasis from the immaterial to the multimaterial character of knowledge. In particular, economists have minimized the extent to which knowledge's material container contributes to its value by distinguishing the "high fixed cost" that a piece of knowledge has for its initial production (i.e. the original formulation - be it discovery or invention) and its "low variable cost" for each additional unit of production (i.e. its reproduction). Indeed, this is what makes knowledge an "ethereal good". For example, it may have taken Darwin twenty years of toil to construct the theory of evolution, but since its publication and subsequent refinement by biology researchers and teachers, if a student nowadays takes even a third of the original time to master a more advanced version of Darwin's theory, it is regarded as a sign, not of the theory's profundity but of the student's incompetence. This last example suggests an epistemological analogue to the economic strategy of lowering the variable cost of mass production. It may be seen in the disproportionate epistemic value credited to the products of research on the "cutting edge", which are accessible only to a few knowledge consumers, over products whose chief source of value is their role in education and other forms of knowledge diffusion. (See note 8 for an interpretation of the history of this distinction in terms of "genius" and "copyright".) Consider, for instance, the minimal epistemic value added to evolutionary theory by each new biology student who learns it. Indeed, learnability is already built into the value of an accepted scientific theory to such an extent that it would be more to the point to

Knowledge as Product and Property

163

say that evolutionary theory would lose epistemic value if it proved too difficult to teach and learn. At least, this is true of disciplined bodies of knowledge. However, following Andrew Abbott's (1988) usage, the situation must be contrasted with that of professional bodies of knowledge, in which the greater the knowledge producer's interest in "colonizing" everyday life, the more she opens herself to heterogeneous standards for the evaluation of her knowledge products, namely, by their effects on the people outside her discipline who expect to be served by these products. Thus, each time a patient relapses after following a doctor's orders counts more against the medical profession's epistemic status than does each patient's recovery counts in its favor. Let us now look at this difference between disciplinarity and professionalism in a little more detail. First, on the disciplinary side, eligibility or ability to produce knowledge on the cutting edge is restricted to those who have learned to embody knowledge in some canonical way. This may involve mastering the exact verbal or mathematical formulation of some theory or the cycle of routines that constitute a laboratory practice. By submitting herself to such training, the knowledge producer has agreed to have her subsequent actions judged in terms of their appropriateness as an extension of the canon. Moreover, the agencies that initially administer the canon - the personnel of university departments - are the same agencies that subsequently evaluate actions against the canon. This commitment to a canonical embodiment of knowledge has the psychological consequence of making the knowledge producer's attempts to extend the knowledge base more circumspect than had she been taught to take seriously the fact that the same knowledge content can be embodied in any number of ways (cf. Wicklund, 1989). For example, she is less likely to claim originality (at least over a large domain) for her own efforts, given that her credentials need to be examined and reaffirmed on a regular basis - be it in terms of career promotion or ordinary peer review - by keepers of the canon. This point is perhaps most evident in the narrow stylistic range within which scientific findings are reported in research journals. On the professional side, knowledge that is not on the cutting edge of a given discipline may nevertheless become cutting edge once transferred to some other discipline or the public sphere. Science studies is an emerging discipline that has been on the receiving end of many standard social science methodologies (e.g., ethnography, actor network theory, discourse analysis). The case is even stronger in the public sphere, which incorporates standard, or even passé, disciplinary judgments and practices. This epistemic lag is most evident in the fields most often identified as "professions", especially law, medicine, and business, but philosophers of science (e.g., Feyerabend, 1975) have also commented on how defunct science retains a hold on everyday conceptions of biology and physics. Even though the public is typically unqualified to challenge science on its own grounds, it nevertheless presumes that public benefits accrue from subordinating folk judgments to scientific pronouncements. Such acquiescence to science operates as a public trust, one that is judged solely on the maintenance of benefits

164

Steve Fuller

at a relatively low cost to the public. Thus, the professional knowledge producer may be distinguished from the disciplined one by the extent to which she derives power by presenting herself as an intermediary through whom others outside her profession must pass in order to achieve their ends. By contrast, the strictly disciplined knowledge producer sustains her power base by presenting her work as sufficiently distinct from that of others that it can be judged only by her own discipline's criteria. The professional will err on the side of popular overextension, whereas the disciplinarian will err on the side academic involution. Thus, while disciplines are typically not declared dead but rather fade away as their research domains becomes exhausted, professions have lost their jurisdictions to competitors who persuaded the public of their superior effectiveness in delivering the same goods and services. Abbott's (1988:ch.l0) chief example is the clergy's loss of authority in the realm of personal problems over the past century.

III. From Knowledge Product to Intellectual Property We have been seeing that economists are influenced by epistemological conceptions of knowledge, even though this influence goes against their disciplinary tendency to see all resources as scarce, or at least divisible. In this section, we shall see this tension come to a head in attempts to define "intellectual property". Epistemologists portray knowledge as unbiased by nature, with no interest of its own, and hence potentially in the service of any interest. With the help of legal theorists, economists translate this lofty notion into the idea of a public good (Samuelson, 1954; Monk, 1989:48-52). And the idea of knowledge as a public good filters through the legal system by the characteristic way in which the burden of proof is distributed over ownership claims to intellectual property. Here lawyers typically distinguish between copyrights and patents. The quick and dirty way of distinguishing these two forms of legal protection is by noting that copyrights typically cover written works, while patents cover inventions. However, the epistemologically salient feature of this distinction lies in the sort of credit that legal theorists have deemed appropriate for producers of copyrightable vis-à-vis patentable materials. Copyrights essentially offer backward-looking protection to a knowledge producer by acknowledging her as the independent originator of a particular product. But the protection offered is minimal, as it implies no judgment about the genuine novelty of the product in question. Anything short of plagiarism is copyrightable. Not surprisingly, copyright law arose from publishers' concerns with maintaining a monopoly over the products of their presses. It was only later that authors separated their own interests in copyright from those of their publishers (Woodmansee, 1984). By

Knowledge as Product and Property

165

contrast, applications for patents typically require substantial investigations into the novelty of the product in question. In order for the outcome of such an investigation to favor the patent applicant, she must demonstrate the uniqueness of her invention, while at the same time establishing its relevance to whatever subsequent research is done in the area served by the invention.8 As we shall now see, this is quite subtle process that involves negotiating, by means of counterfactual historical reasoning, the degree of dispensability of the inventor to her invention. Consider the case of invention. In order to stake a strong claim to ownership, an inventor will focus on the most intuitively apparent features of her invention, which also happen to be its most divisible ones, namely, the features that point to the invention's material uniqueness. At the same time, the inventor will downplay the invention's less tangible and indivisible features, namely, the combination of generally available procedures and principles that explain how and why it works. The claim to ownership would be weakest if a putative invention came to be regarded as nothing more than an occasion for universal physical principles to play themselves out. However, the law typically burdens any claim to ownership with a "fair use" requirement, which forces the inventor to say why her invention should not be made generally available at a nominal cost to other interested parties. At first, this may seem to be a case in which the law acts in the public interest at the expense of individual creativity. But on closer inspection, the law serves the creative individual as well, for if the inventor deserved all the profits that accrued from those who use her invention to their benefit, then, by parity of reasoning, she would also deserve to suffer all the liabilities incurred by those who use her invention to their detriment. What the law supposes here is a symmetry principle for the efficacy of personal agency. In other words, my power to do good can only be as great as my power to do harm. And so, in order to make bearable my responsibility for the consequences of introducing a new knowledge product into the world, the law must portray me as interchangeable with some other people who could have just as easily introduced the same product. From the foregoing considerations, we can see that even if economists are ambivalent about treating knowledge as something that is fully embodied in the world, such ambivalence is routinely resolved in the context of issuing judgments and prescriptions about the sorts of social relations into which things can enter, which is the business of the law. A judge or legislator does not have the epistemologist's (or even the economist's) luxury of suspending the products and processes of knowledge in ontological limbo. However, from this it hardly follows that the issues raised by intellectual property law are less subtle than those raised by epistemology. For, as we have just seen, the more we take seriously the idea that knowledge products have determinate consequences in the world - as decisive contributors to or inhibitors of public welfare - the more we will need to regard the knowledge producer as having a less determinate identity, that is, as one of a number of people who could have caused the same effects. Thus, the

166

Steve Fuller

more efficacious the telephone became in a variety of disparate settings, the more accidental it seemed (at least from a legal standpoint) that Alexander Graham Bell was its inventor. By ceding most of her claim to cognitive uniqueness, the individual producer becomes a morally tolerable member of her community. The crucial presupposition for this argument is that social life is facilitated by agents presuming that they are not in complete control of their fates (e.g., the telephone would have been invented around the time it actually was, even if Bell had not existed), and hence can only be held responsible for a limited range of consequences from their actions. 9

IV. Conferring Validity and Value on Intellectual Property We have seen that, ontologically speaking, intellectual property is founded on the idea that when knowledge is brought down to the level of concreteness in which human interaction is normally conducted and described, the seemingly indivisible character of knowledge is rendered divisible and its apparently discovered nature is rendered created. We can examine the implications of this point in more detail by considering how a conception of intellectual property can be generated from a standard taxonomy of goods. First, consider some archetypal cases of goods (adapted from Croskery, 1989): (a) divisible and discovered: natural resources (coal, fish); (b) divisible and invented: ordinary goods (match, car); (c) indivisible and discovered: costless goods (law of nature, mathematical truth); (d) indivisible and invented: copyable goods (rules of a game, business procedure). My argument so far has suggested ways in which the idea of intellectual property might challenge the neatness of this scheme. Let us now look at the dual nature of this challenge a little more closely, both to attributions of validity in epistemology and to attributions of value in economics.

Knowledge as Product and Property

167

A. The Challenges Posed by the Indivisible Being Rendered Divisible:

1. The Challenge to Attributions of Validity: Epistemologists have traditionally neglected what economists would regard as the process costs of producing knowledge, which is to say, the effects that an agent's pursuit of a particular line of inquiry now are likely to have on her (and her colleagues') ability or desire to pursue other lines of inquiry later (cf. Sowell, 1987:ch. 4). To appreciate the difference that process costs can make to an epistemologist's sense of the value of knowledge, consider what separates Popper's and Feyerabend's vision of criticism in the growth of knowledge. Both place a premium on criticism, but only Feyerabend realizes the long-term difference that criticism would make to our attitudes toward science. Popper exemplifies the philosopher's usual insensitivity to process costs when he calls for a "permanent revolution" in science through the relentless enforcement of falsificationism. He fails to see that the social status of science is tied not only to a valorization of falsifiability but also to that value being selectively enforced. By contrast, Feyerabend's notorious lack of reverence for the methods and products of science is best seen as the result of calculating the process costs of engaging in Popper's strategy with the relentlessness Popper himself suggests. For if the scientist believes that any hypothesis ought to, and probably will, be shown false, then it is reasonable to expect that the scientist will develop a generally skeptical attitude toward the value of scientific inquiry itself. Feyerabend's viewpoint is instructive because his sensitivity to process costs is divorced from an interest in minimizing these costs, as he believes that the activity of open and mutual criticism is worth pursuing for its own sake to the fullest extent, however institutionally destabilizing or personally discomforting the consequences may be. This reminds us that an "economistic" approach to knowledge production need not have conservative consequences, since, as a methodological doctrine, economism is committed only to calculating costs, not to minimizing them. 10 2. The Challenge to Attributions of Value: When discussing knowledge as an "ethereal good", I suggested that economists still harbor residues of the classical conception of knowledge as indivisible. These residues are most apparent in their blindness to a particular species of process costs, namely, the costs incurred by agents trying to gain access to the knowledge production system (cf. Fuller, 1988:ch. 12). We have so far portrayed process costs as borne by the entire knowledge system. Thus, Feyerabend's relentlessly critical attitude has the long term consequence of devaluing the scientific enterprise as a whole. However, process costs also affect the relative ability of agents to contribute to the system. For, an agent cannot productively contribute to the knowledge system - say, by

168

Steve Fuller

writing a book that moves its target audience - without first being in a position to consume the products that already circulate in the system. Each new text in circulation redistributes the balance of power, or burden of proof, among subsequent contributors. And so, even before setting pen to paper, an author has intuitions about the sorts of claims that will be easier or harder to defend, from which she will then decide on the burden of textual proof that she is ready to bear (cf. Fuller, 1988:chs. 2, 4). In other words, the author's paradigmatic moment of soul-searching is really a request to calculate access costs: How much more reading should I do before I start to write? By contrast, when economists speak of the initial production of an ethereal good (e.g., writing a book) incurring a much higher fixed cost than its subsequent reproduction (e.g., reading the book), they are catering to the classical epistemologica! intuition that, once revealed, knowledge is subject to free (or at least relatively inexpensive) access on the part of potential consumers. Yet, writing incurs such a significantly greater cost than reading, only if it is presumed that the readers bring to the text the relevant background knowledge - which, as a matter of fact, often does not come cheap (e.g., advanced university degrees) or even well-marked in the text (e.g., obscure allusions and jargon). The situation of the text in this case may be likened to that of a mass produced toy, which costs little to buy, but which then requires additional costs (or luck!) to be put together. In large measure, the economic mystique of knowledge rests on keeping such access costs hidden, at least from the production side of the economic equation. Thus, mass produced books appear incredibly efficient in empowering people to do things that they would otherwise not do, only because the cost of making these books usable to people ("user-friendly") is left to the distribution side of the equation. The considerations in the last two paragraphs urge the conclusion that degree of the "ethereality", or knowledge-likeness, of a particular good is a function of the sharpness of line that is rhetorically drawn between the production and distribution of that good. In short: the sharper the line, and the more occluded the distribution side of the line, the more ethereal the good. The metaphysical model for this kind of thinking is the Platonic form, such as the essence of table (assuming, for the sake of argument, that tables have essences), of which particular tables are mere copies or reproductions that contain no more information (and hence no more value) than the prototype, and in fact may contain less, if the particular table turns out not to be very good. In a more psychological vein, we are prone to think that the "hard work" of invention or discovery comes with the original development of an idea, and that the subsequent work of transmitting the idea to others is negligible by comparison. Again, all the information is seen as packed into the initial conception, with transmission regarded as mere reproduction, whereby the initial conception is either preserved or lost, depending on the receptiveness of the targeted consumers. Of course, neither philosopher nor economist officially denies that a complete story of knowledge reproduction would involve specifying distribution costs

Knowledge as Product and Property

169

which have no obvious analogues in the original instance of knowledge production. In particular, access costs accrue both to the knowledge producer who must have the means of bringing the good into contact with the relevant consumers (into this category would fall the ability to write to a specific audience), and to the consumer who must have the means (including specialized training) by which to make the most use of the good. However, economists tend to neglect the costs of distribution in these contexts because they talk about knowledge production in terms of the material good embodying the knowledge (e.g., a book), whereas they talk about knowledge consumption in terms of the knowledge "contained" in the material good (e.g., the ideas). Given this asymmetrical treatment, it is not surprising that knowledge has often struck economists as an enigma, since it would seem to incur costs only to its producers but not to its consumers (Bates, 1988). This puzzle merely reveals the extent to which economists have uncritically borrowed their analysis of knowledge from Plato-inspired philosophers. But the puzzle can be dissolved, and knowledge can start to look more like other goods, once the distribution of a knowledge good is included as part of the good's overall production costs. In that case, all knowledge is knowledge for someone. Finally, for didactic purposes, let us reverse the course of our argument and consider what it would mean for cars to be treated as knowledge-like goods. The original prototype of the car would incur most of the total production costs, with each successive vehicle of this type incurring only distribution costs. The overall costs and benefits of cars to the economy would remain the same, of course, but they would be divided somewhat differently. To fully appreciate the shift in thinking involved here, imagine car production as a matter of transmitting the essence of a given make of vehicle to several places rather than as reproducing the vehicle several times. In the first case, the bulk of the consumer's cost would lie in getting access to a vehicle by being at one of the distribution points. Thus, obtaining a driver's license would absorb the expense that in the second case would be reserved for purchasing a car itself. The car would simply provide the opportunity for the consumer to manifest her driving skills, and thus would become a much less costly item. This situation would then start to resemble that of the physics book, in which the book itself is relatively inexpensive, but the cost of being able to make full use of its contents (i.e. the cost of a university education in physics) is much higher.

170

Steve Fuller

Β. The Challenges Posed by the Discovered Being Rendered Created

1. The Challenge to Attributions of Validity: Here epistemologists typically ignore the opportunity costs that arise from the fact that my pursuing a line of inquiry now prevents me from deploying resources to pursue another line of inquiry at the same time. The occlusion of these costs is essential to robust discovery claims, which are made rhetorically possible by the closing off of certain paths of inquiry - or the systematic discounting of alternative constructions of the world - that had been opened up to that point. In that case, the discovery is made to appear as an inevitable consequence of nature revealing itself to the inquirer. However, opportunity costs can be recovered by engaging in counterfactual historical reasoning. Elster (1979) takes a question of this form to be the relevant one to ask: What would have happened, had another course of inquiry been followed, at the latest opportunity that it was still available? Once again, to his credit, Feyerabend addresses exactly this sort of question when he speculates on what was lost by relinquishing Aristotelian standards of cosmological integration for the predictive success and mathematical precision of Newtonian science (cf. Fuller, 1988:221-232). Moreover, social constructivists routinely court opportunity costs by framing their studies of science in terms of how hermeneutical closure was reached on how to make sense of what had been an open-ended research situation (Brannigan, 1981; cf. Fuller, 1989:124-131)." 2. The Challenge to Attributions of Value: Even economists underestimate the susceptibility of consumer demand to producer control. Part of this underdetermination stems from the ambiguous implications of Say's Law, that is, "Supply dictates its own demand" (Sowell, 1972). Does this mean that producers have a special talent for spotting what people will buy? On this interpretation, production is cast as an art of discovery. However, the more usual way of reading Say's Law is as suggesting that any good placed on the open market will attract some customers, though, at first, ones who did not originally intend to buy the good. On this construal, demand for a good is created by its very availability. Now, shift the scene from the marketplace to the laboratory. There are similarly two ways of thinking about the demonstration of an experimental result. Like the prescient producer, the scientist may be seen as having revealed part of the reality that all inquirers seek in common. Or, she may have simply created an effect that, once made readily available through standardized replications, opens up lines of inquiry that fellow scientists had previously not considered, perhaps because they were perceived as not being cost-effective or simply because such novel research trajectories had not crossed their minds. Yet however manufactured these mnemonic consequences may seem to be, it is important for the credibility of the experimental result that the scientific community take them to be a revelation of

Knowledge as Product and Property

171

reality. In the remainder of this section, I take an economistic look at the ways in which the manufactured character of this revelation can be itself revealed and occluded. Consider the neoclassical economic assumption that the value of a good is determined not by its intrinsic worth (which it would presumably have prior to its circulation in the economy), but rather by the range of its possible uses in the hands of consumers. Typically, this determination depends on the demand for the good in question. However, speculators in a given market may try to improve their position by anticipating the goods that are likely to be in highest demand, which, in turn, confers value on those goods even before they have been put to extensive consumer use. At this point, the economist wants to know the extent to which a speculator in this market can meaningfully distinguish between the task of anticipating the goods that will be in highest demand from the task of anticipating the collective opinion of her fellow speculators about the goods that will be in highest demand? This question is motivated by empirical analyses of market behavior, which show that, in a significant number of cases, anticipations actually constitute the demand for a good. In other words, had collective speculative opinion not pre-judged that a good would satisfy enough consumer wants to put it in high demand, the good probably would have turned out not to be in such high demand (cf. Keynes, 1936:ch. 12). In those cases, the speculator would be advised not to make the sort of distinction implied in the economist's question and, instead, simply try to anticipate the speculation patterns of her fellows. In these situations, goods are most likely to be regarded as knowledgelike. Of course, the distinction implied in the economist's question applies in most cases, which explains why even the convergent opinion of stock market speculators may end up losing money for everyone concerned, since the goods in which these people invested may turn out not to be able to satisfy consumer wants. An advanced promotional campaign for a new line of cars may convince many investors to pour money into the car company's stock, but, once on the market, the cars may disappoint consumers in a variety of ways, causing the investors to lose at least part of the value of their initial investment. Notice that this loss in investment was made possible by the independent check on the value of the cars that consumer demand provides. To the economist this is an obvious point, but it has interesting implications when we contrast the situation of knowledge-like goods. Does one need to know physics - even aerodynamics - to design a spacecraft? An economist might rephrase this somewhat contentious question as follows: Is there a demand for knowledge of physics among spacecraft designers? The answer is presumably "yes", but for exactly what reason? Is it because we know for a fact that knowledge of physics plays a crucial role in the design of spacecrafts? Or rather, is it because we know that a study of physics is necessary for earning the credentials that enables one to design spacecraft? Clearly, it is for

172

Steve Fuller

the latter reason - which is not necessarily to deny that knowledge of physics contributes to an ability to design spacecraft. Yet, it is curious that students of spacecraft design are not ordinarily allowed to decide for themselves whether (how much, which sort of) physics is crucial for their work. In other words, there is no check for consumer demand that is independent of the convergent opinion of those who have invested in the production of the good. In philosophical terms, this is what is meant by engineering being an "application o f ' or "conceptually dependent on" physical principles. When the spacecraft works, the designer's (perhaps implicit) knowledge of physical principles is held responsible. And were we later to learn that the designer in fact knew very little physics, then she is declared lucky to have done something that corresponded well enough to physical principles. Now imagine what it would be like for the car market to become knowledgelike, and thereby to start resembling the physics market. Suppose a cartel of investors was convinced of the value of a new line of cars, and potential consumers immediately took that as sufficient reason to buy the cars, without engaging in the usual comparative pricing and quality checks, which, in turn, served to discourage investment in more marginal makes of cars that might have gained support if consumers had a chance to make such independent checks. If the cartel were to have such monopolistic control over the car market, then cars would start taking on knowledge-like qualities. For example, the chosen line of cars would set the standard for appropriate car usage, regardless of the different reasons that consumers have had for wanting to use a car. A prerequisite to driving anywhere would be mastery of the car's technique. Since the chosen line would clearly excel in some features more than others, in a world without rival vehicles, certain traditional functions for cars (drag racing perhaps) would become deviant - if not prohibited - because the chosen line cannot perform those functions well. Consumer misuse or incompetence - and not the limitations of the vehicle - would account for the deviant cases. Moreover, cases in which consumers manage to perform the canonical car functions without using the chosen line (e.g., driving to work in an older make of car) would be increasingly seen as a matter of happy coincidence, reflecting the extent to which the non-authorized cars share the same features that have been more deliberately constructed into the chosen line. In short, the chosen line of car would assume a normative character by becoming a necessary waystation through which consumers must pass to accomplish a wide variety of driving aims and against which their competence is evaluated in ways only indirectly related to those aims. From the standpoint of this economic strategy, the interesting question to ask about the physics market is when did physics investors start to dictate the consumption patterns of engineers. After all, physicists and engineers engage in quite different lines of work in quite different settings. Most strikingly, physicists perform controlled experiments in highly artificial environments, while engineers construct buildings and machines of a more broadly public nature. Indeed, this is

Knowledge as Product and Property

173

a crucial part of the authority that physicists exercise over engineers - what Bruno Latour (e.g., 1988) has called "action at a distance". Engineering is said to be "conceptually dependent" on physics, which, in turn, "implicitly governs" successful engineering practice. Both highlighted expressions suggest at the very least that the relation between physics and engineering is a subtle one which cannot be easily read off the behavioral patterns of either discipline: that is, the alleged dependence and governance is barely visible to the naked eye. One needs to observe the resemblances in the ways physicists and engineers justify the success of their practices. But ultimately, one needs to move beyond the workplaces of physicists and engineers to study the forging of the physics market. Such a move sets into motion the following series of inquiries: When did people start talking about the alleged dependence and governance, and did that happen before or after physics was required in the engineering curriculum? In what other ways have engineers been made to pass waystations monitored by physics gatekeepers (e.g., the modes of argumentation used to justify knowledge claims)? But perhaps the most interesting inquiry would be into what prevents the physics market from losing its knowledge-like qualities and becoming more like the car market. To illustrate this last inquiry, consider now what it would be like for the physics market to become more like the car market. Engineers would start to take an interest - much as the social constructivists in science studies have - in examining their actual reliance on physics in the workplace. Which bits of physics turn out to be most useful to engineers? Which bits turn out to be useless and maybe even misleading? Are there certain aspects of engineering that get along perfectly well without any knowledge of physics? Are there aspects that would benefit from branches of physics that are normally opaque or unknown to engineers? If social constructivist findings are any indication, there are bound to be some surprising answers to these questions. For example, it may turn out that physics is most useful when engineers write up their research for the archives, which would reveal the status of physics as a lingua franca, but as not much more. Once so revealed, the physics market may become destabilized, as engineers are encouraged to distinguish their own interests from those who invest in the future of physics ("physics futures", as the economist would say). At first, this may involve the emergence of new curricular suppliers aimed more specifically at engineering needs. However, if the possibility for alternative curricular suppliers that are radically different from physics seems far-fetched, that is only a reflection of the extent to which engineering demand has been molded by what physicists have been willing to supply. But in the long term, physics investors may come to realize that the authority of physics depends, in large measure, on engineers consuming their goods, and consequently they may alter their investment patterns so as to promote a physics that is more "engineering-friendly".

174

Steve Fuller

V. Is the Market for Knowledge Saturated or Depressed? If the idea of treating knowledge as a thing, specifically a type of good, is indeed fruitful, then it should illuminate a modern problem of knowledge that would normally elude epistemologists. With this in mind, let us consider a final question: why don't epistemologists ever seriously entertain the possibility that we know too much? Admittedly, theorists of the Knowledge Society routinely argue that not only the average citizen, but even the average member of the scientific community, increasingly faces an unmanageable glut of information (cf. Böhme and Stehr, 1986). However, this state of affairs is not without its skeptics, and, even when admitted, it is itself typically treated as symptomatic of a lack of knowledge - specifically, at the meta-level of how one's limited cognitive resources may be used most effectively as a selection mechanism. In more economistic terms, Knowledge Society theorists presume that the available supply of knowledge creates its own demand: no knowledge is useless or unassimilable, though determining its use may require the generation of still more knowledge. If correct, this diagnosis would imply that a version of Say's Law applies just as much to knowledge as to other goods (at least as theorized in neoclassical economics). So, again, economics opens up new vistas for conceptualizing knowledge, especially since as Thomas Sowell (1972) documents and we shall now see, Say's Law has had its share of detractors, whose alternative vision of the economy provides an analogical basis for imagining a world with "too much" knowledge. If the capitalist spirit is moved by a categorical imperative, it is to expand markets indefinitely. Not only does this imperative capture the capitalist belief in the basic insatiability of human wants, but also her belief that the best way to increase everyone's wealth is by everyone trying to increase their own wealth. Thus, the idea that a market could have too many goods - a "glut" - would seem to be a conceptual impossibility. For this reason, Say's Law has always had intuitive appeal for economists. However, the fact remains that capitalism undergoes periodic depressions, the most obvious explanation for which is that too many goods are chasing too few buyers. Whereas defenders of Say's Law (e.g., Ricardo and Marx) have been forced to reinterpret the market contractions that appear to characterize depressed economies, opponents (e.g., Malthus and Keynes) have taken the prima facie occurrence of depressions as refuting Say's Law. Yet, in either case, something needs to be done to repair the economy. How do these policy recommendations bear on the possibility of an analogous "knowledge glut"? In one of the original defenses of Say's Law, David Ricardo argued that what economists call "depressions" are really depressed production levels, that is, the presence of too few goods. On Ricardo's diagnosis, large segments of the

Knowledge as Product and Property

175

population are not producing the amount or kind of goods that can be exchanged in fair trade with goods currently on the market. Ricardo's answer, then, was to increase the production levels of the poor, which immediately led critics to charge that his thinking was more that of a "chrematist" (i.e. someone concerned only with increasing wealth, regardless of its other consequences) than that of an economist. The critics, most notably Thomas Malthus, argued that, given the periodic nature of depressions, Ricardo was only setting up the economy for a still bigger fall in the future. Instead, efforts should be taken to stabilize markets by containing their size. Malthus accepted the commonsensical view of depressions as resulting from an oversupply of goods, which suggested to him that the surplus ought to be sold off at reduced prices and production subsequently scaled down to reflect a more "human" level of consumer demand. Sowell (1972) notes the rival interests behind these two views in early nineteenth century Britain. Ricardo drew support from expansionist factory owners and proponents of Adam Smith's new "abstract" (i.e. universal) science of economics, whereas Malthus found support in aristocrats concerned with the depletion of agricultural resources and defenders of the traditional Aristotelian conception of economics as household management. Now let us analogically extend the debate over Say's Law to knowledge production. The epistemic analogue to an economic depression is incommensurability, whereby a plethora of specialized discourses is met with a paucity of channels for communicating across them (Fuller, 1988:chs. 5-6). Consequently, bodies of knowledge accumulate in a form that is, for the most part, unbeknownst and unavailable to potential consumers. The Ricardian knowledge analyst traces incommensurability to a lack of higher-order languages into which these jargons may be translated for the mutual benefit of all concerned. Thus, she recommends the positivist solution of employing philosophers (who, bereft of subject matter, would otherwise be contributing nothing to the knowledge system) to produce schemes for effecting such translations. By contrast, according to the Malthusian knowledge analyst, this strategy is exactly the wrong one, since it fails to come to grips with the obvious point that incommensurability results from the unmonitored proliferation of discourses, which can only be alleviated by lowering the epistemic advantage gained by engaging in such self-driven language games. In turn, will follow the collapse of inconsequential distinctions and the reformulation of esoteric discourses in plainer terms. And so, just as the Malthusian economist takes it a face value that a depression results from the presence of too many unmarketable goods, her epistemological counterpart diagnoses incommensurability as proceeding from too much unusable knowledge. Rather than employ philosophers to generate still more knowledge of this sort, the Malthusian knowledge analyst would focus several currently incommensurable discourses on articulating a common problem-space of general public concern, which would thereby inhibit the further production of esoteric knowledge. In short, this analyst

176

Steve Fuller

w o u l d b e s y m p a t h e t i c with the "finalization" o f mature s c i e n c e s for pressing social n e e d s (cf. Schaefer, 1 9 8 4 ) . T h e argument o f this paper s h o u l d b e understood as attempting to r e s o l v e the profound a m b i v a l e n c e that Western intellectuals, e s p e c i a l l y philosophers, h a v e felt toward the equation o f k n o w l e d g e and power. This a m b i v a l e n c e m a y be s e e n in terms o f the traditional e m p h a s i s o n the production o f k n o w l e d g e but the distribution o f power. T h e s e a s y m m e t r i c a l interests h a v e led, o n the o n e hand, to an overriding c o n c e r n for producing m o r e k n o w l e d g e at the e x p e n s e o f consideri n g its distribution across the various sectors o f society; o n the other hand, to an e x c l u s i v e f o c u s o n putting p o w e r in the hands o f t h o s e w h o merit it, without e x p l a i n i n g the i m p l e m e n t a t i o n o f such a distribution s c h e m e . T h e a u t o n o m i z a t i o n o f e p i s t e m o l o g y and ethics as p h i l o s o p h i c a l specialties in the twentieth century has o n l y served to o c c l u d e the k n o w l e d g e - p o w e r equation. I h a v e argued here that the t i m e has c o m e for K n o w l e d g e S o c i e t y theorists to critically incorporate the ideas o f k n o w l e d g e as product and property that underlie e c o n o m i c and legal theorizing.

Notes 1 2

My thanks to Nico Stehr for critical comments and editorial advice. This strategy arises most frequently when ascribing a property that is principally defined in relation to other properties in a system. In that case, the interpreter can identify one property in an individual only insofar as she can identify the individual's other systemic properties. The ascription of mental properties - intentions, beliefs, desires - is the clear case in point, in that a claim about what someone is trying to do implies knowledge of her beliefs, etc. Analytic philosophers of mind, following Donald Davidson, call this the "holism of the mental". Daniel Dennett (1987) has coined the expression "intentional stance" to capture the idea that an interpreter needs to structure the way she perceives, say, computer behavior (e.g., as pursuing a goal inspite of environmental resistance) in order to interpret machine as genuinely intending, as opposed to merely behaving. Likewise, to ascribe knowledge to something is to implicate a system of concepts - such as subjects, objects, and systems of representation - which must also be somehow instantiated in related things or properties of things.

3

This definition can be understood in terms of what an agent needs either to consume or to produce before deciding on a course of action. As an act of consumption, the search for knowledge takes resources that are then no longer available for pursuing the chosen course of action. This is Herbert Simon's problem of bounded rationality, and it is perhaps here that the difference between the epistemologist and the economist is most apparent. Although the argument that follows in the text is served by stereotyping these differences - especially the subtleties of the epistemologist vs. the crudities of the economist - there are deep issues concerning the rationality of searching for knowledge that separate the two, and not necessarily to the detriment of the economist. To wit, perhaps the main reason

Knowledge as Product and Property

177

why the epistemologist stresses quality control in the search process is that she presumes that a more methodical search will lead to knowledge that will enable the agent to perform better. By contrast, the economist presumes no such neat link between the quality of knowledge and the quality of action - and hence she does not make the quality of the agent's search her overriding concern. For more on this point, see Fuller (1989:151 ff.). As an act of production, the search for knowledge involves the construction of mediating instruments that enable not only the current agent to achieve the current goal, but also other agents to achieve related goals. The idea here is that, short of perfect information about each other's moves, if agents try to pursue their goals directly, they will probably interfere with each other's efforts, which render them less efficient than had they first pursued a common goal - a reliable medium for the exchange of information - and then pursue their own respective personal goals. On this view, the search for knowledge emerges much in the same way as the institution of money, a point first explored in detail by Georg Simmel (1978:ch. 6). 4

Although in the text I presume that a neat distinction can be drawn between the indivisible, symmetrically available qualities of knowledge and the divisible, asymmetrically available qualities of power, it is possible to show, with the help of recent work in personal identity theory by the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit (1984), that the differences between the indivisible and the divisible, and hence between knowledge and power, are more apparent than real. In particular, a change in my state of knowledge enables me to exert power over my present self by narrowing down the range of possible future selves that it can become. Consider these two claims, one pertaining to a change in my state of knowledge (especially as an economist or an information scientist would see it) and the other to a change in my state of power (especially as a political theorist would see it): K: I can do what I want because I have reduced my options to one. P: He can do what I want because I have reduced his options to one. If we accept the epistemic superiority of the present over the past in determining the future, then the self-control "I" exert in Κ is an exact analogue of the asymmetrical power relation "I" exert over "him" in P. Parfit holds that little more than a narrative convention leads us to treat Κ as involving one person and Ρ as involving two. Perhaps the most intuitive way of getting at the "mere" conventionality of my being the same person across time in Κ is by considering the phenomenon of regret, which is based on the fact that my frame of mind at the time a decision takes effect will be different from my frame of mind at the time I originally made the decision: what seemed good then may, even if brought about as planned, seem not so good later. Parfit argues that there is no principled difference between the regret I feel here and the regret I would feel if I did something on someone else's behalf that turned out to be against their best interest. Yet, this conventional difference carries implications for ascriptions of freedom and responsibility. In particular, when I eliminate uncertainty from my course of action, I become empowered, but when I eliminate it from someone else's course of action, she becomes constrained. If Parfit is correct, the most otiose, yet trenchant, positions in

Steve Fuller philosophy - egoism, skepticism, and solipsism - arise because we presume that a hard boundary can be drawn between ourselves and the world outside ourselves (an instance of which is the hard distinction between knowledge and power illustrated above). This, in turn, generates our proprietarial and self-privileging tendencies, which leads us to irrationally suppose that our ability to act on behalf of what we define as "ourselves" is more informed and efficacious than our ability to act on behalf of what we define as "others". (Indeed, one interesting criterion for defining the self - inspired by German idealism - is that it is the portion of reality in which our intentions are almost always realized.) Consequently, social policy tends to be shortsighted about issues concerning current generations and indifferent about issues concerning future ones, though, given the prevalence of unintended and unanticipated consequences in both cases, the policymaker would be more rational to treat the two sorts of issues with an equal amount of care. It would be hard to exaggerate the extent to which Parfit's deconstruction of the self reverses many of the intuitions that have dominated Western moral philosophy. For example, utilitarianism has been traditionally criticized for not having a genuine moral vision of people because it treats them, not as autonomous individuals, but as mere loci for pleasure and pain. However, if Parfit is correct, the ontology that underwrites the Kantian image of autonomy is the very same one that underwrites egoism (which explains why the autonomous agent is typically portrayed as having to overcome the sway of self-centered passions). In both cases, the individual can count as moral and/or rational without ever having to understand or anticipate other individuals whose interests are quite different from her own. Note that this point is especially pertinent to the asocial ability of the Kantian agent to universalize from her own case without consulting anyone, or even imagining what would result from consulting others (cf. Habermas, 1990). But perhaps the most interesting implication of this line of thinking is to relativize the distinction between the "individual" and the "social". For, on Parfit's Neo-Humean view of the self, an individual is nothing more than a collection of agents whose stories (as told by oneself and others) overlap sufficiently to have a common fate. It is only by convention that we identify our "selves" with our bodies, no doubt reflecting a bias to regard as "individuals" objects that appear freely mobile to the naked eye for an extended period of time. In principle, "the social" consists of not only the super-individual world, but the infra-individual world of overlapping stories as well (Elster 1986). Once the definition of the individual is relativized in this way, we are only a small conceptual step away from challenging the sancticity of the autonomous agent as the necessary unit for humane social interaction (cf. Habermas 1984, see note 9 below). If science is regarded as one of humanity's most refined forms of self-expression, then we may justly question the extent to which circumscribing the limits of scientific inquiry around the maintenance of humanity's autonomous self-image is more edifying than reconceptualizing agency in a Parfitian manner and thereby addressing scientifically ascertained deficiencies (e.g., low mathematical aptitude scores, myopia) with prosthetic enhancements and other forms of environmental compensation (e.g., omnipresent calculators, eyeglasses), all of which contribute just as much to the constructed nature of the self as the narratives we normally tell connecting our past with our future. The correlative question to ask at this point is whether my newfound "meta-power"

Knowledge as Product and Property

179

divests you of the privileged epistemic access that originally enabled you to control me. The answer is yes, but this rescinded privilege is sublimated into a form of knowledge that jointly enlightens both of us. In classical philosophy of science, the best form of knowledge is an explanatory and predictive scheme that captures or reveals natural phenomena in a way that no other competitor can. However, as Popper has perhaps most clearly realized, the idea behind such a standard is not to peremptorily silence all potential rivals, but to permit one's rivals the opportunity to reveal the limits of one's own scheme. 6

Hayek (e.g., 1948) has been the most consistent and exhaustive proponent of the marketplace as an epistemic clearinghouse. However, defenders of the market have tended to underplay the extent to which they agree with their opponents. For example, Hayek usually valorizes the market for its ability to generate without coercion, or even explicit legislation, the "design" features of a stable social order. In other words, Hayek portrays the market as a more efficient source of order than the laws that are normally taken to be the hallmark of such order. Notice that, in so following Adam Smith's "invisible hand" account of the market, Hayek takes for granted that societies do indeed feature the sort of stable order that has traditionally called for contractbased (i.e. legalistic) social theories. Yet, such stability may itself be called into question, whether it be as a feature of the economic marketplace or of the knowledge transactions that are modeled as market processes. While many things can be gained by conceptualizing knowledge transactions (translations) as market processes (exchanges), a sense of stable order is not one of them. (Some limitations of the exchange-translation analogy are explored in Fuller [1988:139-162]; also Fuller [1989:141-145]) Here are two reasons why: (i) the fact that two parties exchange equivalent goods does not imply that they agree on how to conceptualize the transaction (i.e. they do not necessarily agree on the other transactions to which this one is equivalent: e.g., one party may place a greater value on the exchange than the other); (ii) as Marx fully realized, market processes do not only reap long term benefits (as in the invisible hand account) but also incur long-term costs (e.g., boom and bust cycles) that are unintended by any two parties to a transaction. Part of why the real instability of market (and knowledge) processes is obscured is that market theorists often implicitly rely on the following faulty inference: (PI) Whatever order is generated by the market is entirely the result of the transactions conducted by economic (or epistemic) agents. (P2) Because of the number and complexity of these transactions, no single agent can reliably predict the order that will emerge from them. (C) Therefore, there is no fact of the matter as to the state of the market at any given time. This argument suggests that there is nothing more to market stability than the continued survival of the agents who participate in it. One can imagine the argument figuring in a criticism of efforts to justify state intervention on the grounds that the economy is lagging on certain key macro- indicators. Yet, (C) does not follow from

180

Steve Fuller (PI) and (P2) because no hard conclusions about what is the case can be drawn from premises that refer only to one's knowledge of the case. The inference ignores the possibility that while markets may indeed be subject to a level of global instability that makes it impossible for any of the participants to make reliable predictions, that does not (in principle, at least) preclude the economist from making such predictions on the basis of macro-indicators to which the economic agents would unlikely have access. (After all, how does someone like Hayek know that economic agents are faulty predictors unless he has some alternative and more global access to how the market works? [cf. Hirschmann, 1989]) Moreover, even if these indicators turn out to be merely probabilistic (as is likely the case), that only points to the elusiveness of our knowledge and not to the illusoriness of what we are trying to know. From the prospect that markets do not tend toward steady states that can be explained by deterministic laws, it does not follow that they are completely chaotic or indeterminate. Along these lines, on the one hand, parallel distributive processing models of the brain have only recently inspired a spate of market-like models of group memory processes in social psychology (cf. Middleton and Edwards, 1990), whereas, on the other hand, a fifty-year tradition of studying "organizational learning" in industrial administration has appropriated cognitive psychology principles to model a firm's decision-making under market conditions (cf. Argote and Epple 1990, for most recent findings). A philosophical attempt to regard linguistic communities as subject to such instability is Davidson (1986), which acknowledges the importance of language to the maintenance of social identity but denies that languages are sufficiently well-bounded to contain distinct theories of meaning. A similar point is made in Fuller (1988:73-98). In light of the above analysis, it might seem that the market continues to be seen as a fruitful economic model only because market participants underestimate the epistemic precariousness of their situation. However, as Brenner (1987) has persuasively argued, a heightened, sense of this precariousness may actually spur the market mentality, indeed, toward greater entrepreneurship. Upon examining many cases of rivalry in business, science, and politics, Brenner concludes that the market is the most efficient source of innovation and growth because it is relatively easy for a participant to feel that she is falling behind her competitors, which then inclines her toward taking risks, especially on new ideas. This, in turn, often ends up changing the character of the market itself, including the nature of the need (or demand) that the market rivals perceive themselves as competing to serve (or supply). Contrary to the received economic wisdom, the major supplier in a given market is usually overturned not by a competitor who supplies the same good more efficiently, but by one who supplies a rather different good that radically reconfigures consumer interest. Brenner places so much importance on perceived risk in explaining the success of the market that, given his analysis, attempts to stabilize market performance (e.g., by competitors having reliable information about each other's activities) would cut off capitalism's lifeblood - a point that largely follows Schumpeter (1942). This only goes to underscore the subtle way in which the epistemic states of agents affect market outcomes, for the market succeeds not because agents have a false sense of their knowledge but because they have a true sense of their ignorance.

7

There has been continual resistance in the history of economic thought to the idea of money having a value independent of its purchasing power, which has been reflected in antipathy to the regulation of foreign currency exchange. The history of this

Knowledge as Product and Property

181

opposition, and how it was finally overcome with the institution of a gold standard and then paper currency market, would be interesting to examine, in light of analogously opposed motives that philosophers have pursued under the program of reductionism, in their attempts to organize the sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Analogous to conferring on a particular currency a value independent of what its users can purchase, philosophers have tried to confer on the language of a particular science an epistemic value independent of what its users normally communicate about the domain defined by the language. Thus, the reductionist is typically not satisfied with the fact that psychological discourse works just as well for psychologists as physical discourse works for physicists. In addition, she yearns for an "epistemic gold standard" with which the two can be compared, evaluated, and ultimately integrated into one world- system. Lacking such a standard, the epistemic value of interdisciplinary exchange can suffer. For example, just as there has been a tendency in free foreign exchange for "weak" currencies to hoard as much money in "strong" currencies as possible without reckoning the long term economic prospects of the strong currency countries, there has been an equal tendency for "softer" social sciences (sociology, political science, anthropology) to convert their claims into ones made by the "harder" social sciences (psychology, economics) without assessing the long-term epistemic prospects for those claims in the harder science (cf. Dogan and Pahre, 1990:ch. 18). Thus, rational choice theory has become a full blown paradigm in sociology and political science (e.g., Coleman, 1990) just at the time that its empirical foundations are being challenged by psychologists and even economists themselves (e.g., Lea et al., 1987). A good place to start on this project would be to return to Marx's (1970:110) classic discussion of the universalization of the commodity form (cf. Giddens, 1984:186 ff). In early capitalism, agents sell in order to buy, and money is simply the means by which the use value of goods is represented in exchange (symbolized: C-M-C). However, as this process takes on its own momentum, agents become unable to stay in the market, unless they buy in order to sell. In that case, goods become mere means for the accumulation of money, which, in turn, obtains a value independent of the utility of the goods it can buy (symbolized: M-C-M). In a similar vein, reductionist philosophers have wanted to reverse the focus on scientific language from a mere vehicle for the transaction of information among members of a disciplinary community to something whose ultimate value lies in revealing the direction of epistemic progress. 8

The distinction between "backward-looking" (copyrights) and "forward-looking" (patents) legal protection of intellectual property parallels Rawls' (1955) distinction in the types of justice, in which a backward-looking sense of justice is retributive and underwritten by a Kantian ethic of strict rule following, whereas a forward-looking sense of justice follows the utilitarian ethic of aiming for the overall best consequences for society. Analogously, copyrights are designed to assign credit for past achievements, whereas patents are designed to stimulate future ones.

9

In light of my claims about material interchangeability as a criterion of knowledge, the reader might wonder when (and why) the need to own intellectual property first arose. Martha Woodmansee (1984) has traced the emergence of this need to mid-eighteenth century Prussia. Prior to 1750, it was common to regard the author as someone who derived her "authority" from a craft-like ability to recombine timeless

Steve Fuller ideas into a timely text. Hence, when this process was personified, the author was said to be a "vehicle" of the Muses. From an economic standpoint, the author was taken to provide just one part of the labor necessary for the production of a book. And just as the particular person who set the type for the book could be replaced by someone else, so too could the author, since essentially the same ideas could be embodied in a variety of ways by a variety of people. Nevertheless, a couple of developments determined the modern concern with owning intellectual property. The first was the increase in the number of people earning a living from the sales of their writings. Yet, it is not clear that this alone would have encouraged an author to think of herself as, in effect, creating high quality, highly desirable, yet also highly unique products. After all, rather than staking out her own niche in the market, authors might have argued that they can serve the same market as a host of other authors, but less expensively by offering clearer prose, shorter texts, and the like. One can imagine that had the history of intellectual property taken this alternative route, the greatest epistemic value (as well as financial profit) would accrue, not to difficult works that represent "first passes" at new areas of research, but to widely accessible works that can displace the more arcane works on the cutting edge. What prevented the alternative route from being taken, however, was the pirating of popular books, which were, in turn, sold at the lowest possible price. Given that situation, both authors and publishers were best served by arguing that every book, perhaps especially the most esoteric ones, conveyed a unique form of knowledge that merited their high price. Of course, this marriage of convenience between publishers and authors did not prevent the two parties from contesting ownership rights among themselves. In particular, publishers strategically held on to the Platonic view that ideas can neither be created nor destroyed, only their embodiments can, which implied that the lion's share of the profits ought to go to the producer of the physical object, the book. Fichte reversed this opinion, and thereby laid the philosophical foundations for copyright, by countering that the author deserves credit for making apparent to an audience ideas that had previously enjoyed only a transcendent existence. When we talk about the instantiation of ideas in the material world, we automatically shift ontological gears from timeless forms to timely texts. In that case, priority of expression, or "originality", becomes a legitimate ground for ownership claims. Interestingly, little philosophical or legal theorizing has been devoted to the other side of the Platonic equation, namely, the possibility/legitimacy of destroying ideas or their embodiments. At the Platonic level, a false idea would seem to self-destruct upon identification, which explains why, in classical epistemology, an intellectually successful critique of a knowledge claim is thought to be sufficient for the claim's elimination from the epistemic canon. At the material level, of course, there is a big gap between the identification and elimination of books and habits informed by such false claims. A history of the legal status of censorship would no doubt prove instructive on this point. Also see Fuller (1989:77-82). Calculating costs for the purpose of maximizing them is common enough in the Marxist literature. It often arises when Marxists distance their political agenda from that of social democrats by arguing that capitalism's fall - and, by implication, the revolutionary transformation of society - will be hastened by strategically refusing to enact legislation designed to buffer a volatile economy's impact on the work force. When all is said and done, philosophers may resist this economistic way of putting

Knowledge as Product and Property

183

things, in which case, let us replace "process costs" with a more humanistic, but functionally equivalent, turn of phrase, reflexivity (Woolgar, 1988). Frederick Will (1988) offers an especially illuminating discussion of the difference that introducing the reflexive dimension has made to philosophical reasoning about norms. Will calls "deductivism" the received philosophical view that applying a concept (read: norm) to a case only changes the case (by giving it a determinate identity) but not the concept itself. This irreflexive view of reasoning can be seen in both the assumption that the same logical form can structure many substantively different arguments and the classical epistemologist's image of the mind's noninteractive representation of the world. Will follows Charles Sanders Peirce in contrasting this view with that of "ampliativism", which he claims underlies the opposition to abstract laws of thought voiced by both Hegelians and inductivists since the nineteenth century. The ampliativist holds that the application of a concept to a case transforms subsequent applications of the concept, so that it is impossible to determine the identity of any given concept without knowing the history of its applications. This reflexive stance toward concepts and norms implies that there may be process benefits as well as costs, which makes reflexivity not as self-debilitating as both its supporters and opponents have maintained. (However, to admit process benefits is not to imply that "normative ampliation" is a self-correcting process, for that would be to smuggle in a standard to which normative development aspires and a reliable mechanism for measuring cases against the standard.) Three examples will suffice. (1) A wide array of analytic philosophers have gravitated toward some version of the "principle of charity", which instructs interpreters to attribute mostly true beliefs to people, even though induction from the history of science would suggest that most of our own beliefs - let alone those of our predecessors - are probably false. The received wisdom is that one can accept this induction only on pain of inconsistency, as if it were obvious that this belief about our beliefs is subject to the same epistemic liabilities as the beliefs deemed false. Indeed, the threat of inconsistency is sufficiently daunting that some philosophers have used it to cast aspersions on the scientific realist's policy of treating commonsense as an implicit (and probably false) theory. What this debate lacks is an awareness that the failure of our predecessors to recognize the falsity of their own beliefs is a major reason why most of our own beliefs continue to be false. But once the historical induction is recognized, then past errors can be diagnoses and future errors perhaps prevented. (2) Ever since Karl Mannheim first proposed the sociology of knowledge as a separate discipline, philosophers have been reluctant to acknowledge its legitimacy, since it seemed to rest on incoherent foundations. On the one hand, the discipline aims to show that all forms of social knowledge are valid only for the cultural milieux that sustain them; on the other hand, the discipline claims a validity for itself that transcends the cultural milieux sustaining it. Hence we have a version of the paradox that relativism could be objectively true. However, there is a two-step way of circumventing the paradox. For the first step, argue that every cultural milieu sustains its own version of the sociology of knowledge, usually in something as self-mystified

184

Steve Fuller as classical epistemology. Each version may even falsely claim transcendental status for itself. Yet, our sociology of knowledge is distinguished by the extent to which it recognizes its own true identity, which, in turn, enables it to correct its own epistemic shortcomings. In that case, we move to the second step, in which the sociology of knowledge proceeds as a form of natural knowledge. This would involve arriving at principles of knowledge production that are fundamentally indifferent to the maintenance of knowledge production in particular societies. In other words, a consequence of modeling the sociology of knowledge on natural science would be that it could be used - as natural sciences generally are - equally to justify, to transform, or to undermine an existing body of knowledge. Two of the methodological tenets of the Edinburgh School's "Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge", causation and symmetry, address this point explicitly (cf. Bloor 1976:ch. 1). (3) In recent years, social constructivists in science studies have most often argued about reflexivity in the context of Harry Collins' (1985) finding that scientists do not replicate their findings. By parity of reasoning, argue the more radical constructivists (e.g., Woolgar, 1988), ought this finding not also be extended to the social scientists who study science? If so, then it would seem that the sociology of science can arrive at no regularities about science, which would serve to undermine its own credibility as part of a blanket subversion of the scientific method. Collins' response has been to reinforce the boundary between sociologists of natural science, such as himself, and sociologists of social science, such as the radical constructivists. Since these are two separate fields, argues Collins, findings from one field do not "logically" carry over to the other, but must be established on independent grounds. Here we reach a stalemate on the acceptability of process costs. However, another way of reading Collins' work is as shifting the burden of proof with regard to replication, so that in stead of presuming that replication naturally happens in the normal course of doing science, it is now something that can be presumed not to happen unless explicitly demonstrated. Clearly, this is not to say that it cannot be demonstrated. But if we are satisfied with the results of science as is, then Collins' finding may go to show either that replication as such is less essential to science than traditionally thought or that the function supposedly served by replication is in fact served by some other practice. Even an apparent liability, such as faulty communication among researchers, may unwittingly function as replication by enabling so many reinventions of the wheel (cf. Brannigan and Wanner 1983). The general lesson of these examples is that the process costs of the epistemic enterprise can be more freely manipulated than is usually assumed, especially once we realize that knowledge production is, in large measure, constituted by the degree of knowledge (or ignorance, as the case may be) that the producers have of those costs. If the point to make about process costs is that they need not have conservative consequences, the point to make about reflexivity is that it need not have radical consequences. For a sample of the range of reflexive critiques available, consider the opposition generated by Jürgen Habermas' (e.g., 1984) theory of communicative competence, as embodied in the "ideal speech situation". In essence, Habermas argues that communication would not be possible, if the audience did not presume of the speaker that she was trying to convey sincerely held truths, to which the audience,

Knowledge as Product and Property

185

could, at least in principle, be persuaded. Among other things, this presumption implies that all members of the speech community enjoy free and equal access to the means of communication - which is to say, a symmetrical power structure. Now, of course, even if we normally presume these conditions, it is also true that some, perhaps all, people will try to turn these ideal conditions to their own personal or class advantage. Should we not then try to lay down some procedural rules to govern discourse so as to prevent these abuses, thereby making the ideal speech situation real? This question should be of interest to philosophers of science preoccupied with issues of autonomy in science, especially with whether means can be taken to maintain or increase the imperviousness of scientific research to social pressure. However, Habermas' proposal for instituting procedural rules has not been met with overriding approval by his fellow social theorists, largely on reflexive grounds. But note the different political interests that are served by the following list of reflexive critiques (culled, in part, from Ingram, 1982): (a) Gadamer. Trying to institute an ideal speech situation would highlight the extent to which ordinary presumptions often turn out to be empirically ungrounded, which would indirectly serve to undermine the basic trust that members of a community normally have for one another, in virtue of sharing these presumptions, which constitute a common tradition. (b) Luhmann: Any attempt to enforce procedural rules for all spheres of discourse would reverse the natural tendency of societies to manage their increasing complexity by self-dividing into relatively autonomous spheres of activity, each with its own rules of discourse. Rather than freeing up the means of communication, Habermas' proposal would simply restrict what can be communicated to whatever fits his universally rules. (c) Lyotard: Although Habermas purports to be providing a blueprint for free communication, only a global authoritarian effort could ever bring it about - one that had no qualms about silencing various elites and special interest groups which refused to open up their hermetic discourses. In effect, this would amount to eliminating the elements of civil society that normally mediate state power and individual freedom.

11

(d) Bourdieu: If Habermas takes seriously the idea that, under current conditions, all discourse has an ideological character, then it follows that even Habermas' own present-day advocacy of a global critique of ideology, stands to benefit a special interest group - namely, those for whom sustained discourse at a deliberate (and hence leisurely) pace is the most significant form of self-expression. For, these are the people who will take the time to scrutinize Habermas' claims and respond to them in kind. Just as the process costs of pursuing a certain line of inquiry can be occluded - or "justified" - by appeal to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, or wherever reason may lead (cf. Elster [1980] on "precommitment"), opportunity costs can be occluded by appeal to "sour grapes" (Elster 1983), whereby alternative research

186

Steve Fuller trajectories are downgraded for the stipulated unlikelihood that they would have advanced knowledge by as much as by the trajectory actually taken (cf. Lynch, 1989).

References Abbott, Andrew 1988 The System of Professions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Andrews, Edmund 1989 "Equations Patented; Some See Danger". New York Times, February 15:29-30. Argote, Linda and Dennis Epple 1990 "Learning Curves in Manufacturing". Science 247:920-924. Bates, Benjamin 1988 "Information as an Economic Good", pp. 76-94 in Mosco, Vincent and Jane Wasko (eds.), The Political Economy of Information. University of Wisconsin Bloor, David 1976 Knowledge as SocialPress. Imagery. London: Routledge.

Madison:

Böhme, Gemot and Nico Stehr (eds.) 1986 The Knowledge Society. Dordrecht: Reidel. Brannigan, Augustine 1981 The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries. Press.

Cambridge UK: Cambridge University

Brannigan, Augustine and Wanner, Richard 1983 "Historical Distributions of Multiple Discoveries and Theories of Scientific Change". Social Studies of Science 13:417-435. Brenner, Reuven 1987 Rivalry: In Business, Science, Among Nations. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, Donald 1988 Methodology and Epistemology for Social Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coleman, James 1990 The Foundations

of Social Theory. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

187

Knowledge as Product and Property Collins, Harry 1985 Changing Order. London: Sage. Collins, Randall 1979 The Credential Society. New York: Academic Press. Croskery, Peter

1989 "The Intellectual Property Literature", pp. 268-281 in Weil, Vivian and John Snapper (eds.), Owning Scientific and Technical Information. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Davidson, Donald 1986 "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs", pp. 430-447 in Ernest Le Pore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell. Davidson, Duncan 1989 "Reverse Engineering Software Under Copyright Law", pp. 147-168 in Vivian Weil and John Snapper (eds.), Owning Scientific and Technical Information. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Dennett, Daniel 1987 Intentional Stance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Dogan, Mattei and Robert Pahre 1990 Creative Marginality: Westview. Elster, Jon

Innovation at the Intersections

of Social Sciences. Boulder:

1979 Logic and Society. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Elster, Jon 1980 Ulysses and the Sirens. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Elster, Jon 1983 Sour Grapes. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Elster, Jon, ed. 1986 The Multiple Self. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Feyerabend, Paul 1975 Against Method. London: New Left Books. Fuller, Steve 1988 Social Epistemology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fuller, Steve 1989 Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents. Boulder: Westview Press.

Steve Fuller

188 Giddens, Anthony 1984 The Constitution of Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Habermas, Jürgen 1984 The Theory of Communicative

Action. Boston: Beacon Press.

Habermas, Jürgen 1990 "Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning Stage Six", pp. 224-254 in T. Wren (ed.), Hacking, IanThe Moral Domain. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. 1983 Representing

and Intervening. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hayek, Friedrich von 1948 Individualism

and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Head, J.G. 1962 "Public Goods & Public Policy". Public Finance 3:197-219. Hirschmann, Albert 1989 "Reactionary Rhetoric". Harper's,

May:63-70.

Ingram, David 1982 "The Possibility of a Communication Ethic Reconsidered: Habermas, Gadamer, and Bourdieu on Discourse". Keynes, John Maynard Man and World 15:149-161. 1936 The General Theory of Employment,

Interest, and Money. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Latour, Bruno 1988 "The Politics of Explanation", pp. 155-176 in Steve Woolgar (ed.), Knowledge and Reflexivity. London: Sage. Lea, Stephen, Roger Tarpy, and Paul Webley 1987 The Individual in the Economy: A Survey of Economic Psychology. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, William 1989 "Arguments for a Non-whiggish Hindsight: Counterfactuals and the Sociology of Knowledge". Social Epistemology 3:361-366. Marx, Karl 1970 Capital. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Middleton, David and Derek Edwards (eds.) 1990 Collective Remembering. London: Sage.

Knowledge as Product and Property

189

Monk, Peter 1989 Technological Change in the Information Economy. London: Pinter. Mosco, Vincent and Jane Wasko (eds.) 1988 The Political Economy of Information.

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Parfit, Derek 1984 Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paulus, Paul (ed.) 1989 Psychology of Groups Influence. 2nd ed. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Quine, Willard 1960 Word and Object. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Rawls, John 1955 "Two Concepts of Rules". Philosophical

Review.

Samuelson, Paul 1954 "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". Review 36:387-389. Schaefer, Wolf (ed.) 1984 Finalization

of Economics

and

Statistics

in Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Schiller, Dan 1988 "How to Think About Information", pp. 27-43 in Mosco, Vincent and Jane Wasko (eds.), The Political Schumpeter, Joseph Economy of Information. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1942 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row. Shapin, Stephen and Simon Schaffer 1985 Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Simmel, Georg 1978 The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge. Sowell, Thomas 1972 Say's Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sowell, Thomas 1987 A Conflict of Visions. New York: Morrow. Stigler, George 1961 "The Economics of Information". Journal of Political Economy 69:213-235.

190

Steve Fuller

Thompson, G.B. 1982 "Ethereal Goods: The Economic Atom of the Information Society", pp. 86-90 in L. Bannon et al. (eds.), Information Technology: Impact on the Way of Life. Dublin: Tycooly. Weil, Vivian and John Snapper (eds.) 1989 Owning Scientific and Technical Information. Press.

New Brunswick: Rutgers University

Wicklund, Richard 1989 "The Appropriation of Ideas", pp. 394-418 in Paul Paulus, (ed.), Psychology Groups Influence. 2nd ed. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Will, Frederick 1988 Beyond Deduction: ledge.

Ampliative

Aspects of Philosophical

Reflection. London: Rout-

Woodmansee, Martha 1984 "The Genius and the Copyright". Eighteenth Century Studies 17:425-448. Woolgar, Steve (ed.) 1988 Knowledge and Reflexivity. London: Sage.

of

Part IV Science and Technology as Social Risks

Introduction Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The essays in this section are based on the idea of a risk society. In contemporary society there are growing risks and dangers to humans and their environment, and society increasingly organizes in terms of security devices to reduce, manage and compensate for the risks and dangers it produces. The risk society is a knowledge society because scientific knowledge and technologies are both a source of major risks and the primary basis of security efforts aimed at controlling them. Ulrich Beck dismisses the notion of "postmodern society", referring instead to the "advanced modern period" in which the social production of wealth is entwined with the social production of risks. A shift is occurring from the logic of production of wealth to the logic of production of risks. This shift is a result of the process of modernization itself, with its exponential growth in productive forces that bear risks, threats and dangers; and of attendant efforts to control needs through a blend of human and productive forces, and legal and social welfare protections and regulations. In social analysis, this shift entails a move from asking how inequalities in wealth can be legitimated to asking how risks and dangers can be legitimately circumscribed and distributed so as not to disrupt modernization. Adequate answers to these questions require new ideas and analytical categories with respect to both the distribution of wealth and the distribution of risk. Beck identifies five features of the risks of modernization. Modernization risks determine knowledge. Dangers are largely invisible in everyday life, and are usually only made visible by experts, especially scientists. As such dangers are open to social processes of definition, and the media as well as scientific experts become prominent in the definitional process. The result is social dependencies on knowledge which entail subjection to the norms, interests and mistakes inherent in the knowledge. However, this does not mean that scientists become the new knowledge priests, with power to pull the strings by which others dance. Rather, by playing such a key role in, for example, establishing standards of pollution control, scientists are narrowed and even muzzled by political interests and rhetoric. The values of their own knowledge production - free questioning,

194

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

criticism and admission of error - are being compromised as their political responsibilities increase. Modernization refigures the class structure. Risks are equalizing because they affect everyone. As Beck observes in a nice turn of phrase, "necessity is hierarchical, smog is not". The rich and powerful, whose enterprises have created many of the dangers of the risk society, experience the same dangers themselves. They are subject to a "boomerang effect" not only on their own health but also on their financial well-being. This view does not deny that extreme risks are concentrated where there is extreme poverty, vide Bhopal. However, there is a countertendency of a levelling effect because many environmental dangers are global in scope and are therefore dangers to everyone. There is also a "boomerang effect" back to "first-world" nation-states who have exploited other worlds. Modernization risks create new businesses and markets. The industrial system of modernization profits from the misery it creates. In the risk society economic growth potential is limitless because of the characteristics of knowledge of risks: the definitions of risk are infinitely changeable and productive of new needs and new markets. Risks are self-productive, perpetually increasing because they are presented as always being under control but never eliminated. Modernization risk consciousness determines being and alters political configurations. Far from there being a monopoly on knowledge of risks, such knowledge is debated and distributed in ways which de-differentiate traditional theoretical categories and institutional boundaries. Here Beck is close to postmodernist arguments about deconstruction and fragmentation. He points to a narrowing if not collapsing of traditional distinctions between, for example, theory and praxis, value and fact, public and private, and high and low culture. Science itself takes on many of the less rational aspects of risk perception common in the public media, and participates in proselytizing. In the process science bears political responsibilities. For example, science becomes responsible for standards of acceptable risk, and hence accountable for dangers that are attributable to the normative standards it has set and threshold values it has fostered. Science becomes responsible for ignoring combined and system effects, for making erroneous extrapolations from animal experiments to human well-being, and for ignoring actual human reactions to new technologies and technological systems. Science becomes responsible for making people address risk in terms of its rationality, for, as Beck puts it, converting values into chemistry rather than ethics. Science becomes responsible for the production of human dependency on science, and for the attendant consequence of people imagining demons and fingering scapegoats because they do not know better. Modernization risk consciousness is behind the contemporary "politics of emergency". With so many serious threats and dangers, emergency powers are easy to legitimate and normalize. Thus totalitarianism lurks as another side effect of the side effects of modernization. The politics of danger spells danger for politics.

Introduction

195

Uwe Schimank focuses on the social conditions of the creation, diffusion and use of science-based technologies which may cause an increase in societal risks. He initially examines broad, intersystemic aspects of scientific risk production. Science and technology have an over-arching influence on all institutional arenas because of their association with the idea of progress, and because of constellations of competition within and between institutional arenas. Schimank visualizes an inter-systemic "auto-dynamic" of scientification; in his words we are in a "perpetual race without a finish line". Risks result from this complex intersystem "auto dynamic" and the causal interdependencies it creates. Actors fail to address these system dynamics because of limited cognitive capacities or because they ignore them deliberately in order to sustain their enterprises. Furthering the last point, Schimank observes that scientific truths produced under laboratory conditions are almost always extreme simplifications of the conditions under which truths are implemented in technologies. Each new technology, including technology designed to correct other risks, complicates the causal texture of the world, multiplying causal relations among all elements. However, this process is not modelled in scientific theories except in an extremely limited way, so that analytical models are discrepant with the real complexities of the world. The discrepancy is the source of risk, and even though both scientists and users of their knowledge are aware of this fact they typically ignore it because of the peculiar rationalities within which they operate. The above considerations lead Schimank to an examination of selected institutional determinants of the societal risk potential of scientific research. He enumerates sources of pressure on scientists to engage possible technological applications of their work, factors which advance scientification of technologies and hence scientific risk production. These factors include a utilitarian self-image of the scientist's discipline; financial resource dependency on outsiders whose primary interest is technological utility; and, an institutionalized formal obligation to do technologically relevant work. Schimank focuses in particular on the institutional determinants of cognitive selectivity which fosters risks. He considers scientific specialization as one key determinant. Specialization makes complex problems manageable, but it also effects enclosure on inquiry. Schimank notes that closure may be favored in any case for instrumental reasons: it can protect the interests of research establishments by reducing competition. Closure resulting from scientific specialization reduces the visibility of causal interdependencies of a technology in its operational field, increasing the probability that risks are overlooked. Interdisciplinary research programs designed to overcome the problems of specialization have not been very successful because of analytical difficulties in conceptual integration, the strain of having to tolerate ambiguity, the effort required to learn other disciplines, and the fact that this effort is "high risk" in scientific career terms. Another institutional determinant of cognitive selectivity which fosters risks is the self-image of a discipline as basic or applied. When technological uses are

196

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

found for their knowledge, basic researchers often lag in adapting their causal models to the new context-relevant considerations, and this is a source of risk. In general basic researchers suppress reflection about the technological applications of the knowledge they produce and the potential societal risks involved, as exemplified in the case of nuclear physics in the 1930s. Even applied researchers defer to the prestige of basic research and stress those aspects of their work that come closest to it, thereby sometimes also blinding themselves and others to technological application risks. Another institutional determinant of cognitive selectivity that bears implications for risks is the structure of interdisciplinary rewards and competition. Relevant considerations here are, for example, the basis for establishing scientific reputations, including the availability of distinguished posts. Scientists who become too instrumental with respect to these internal criteria are likely to ignore potential societal risks of the technological uses of the knowledge they produce. Schimank concludes with the observation that because of myriad institutional determinants of risk potential in research, political control is difficult. Prior to specific political controls we require specific research on the mechanisms of scientific risk production in different disciplines and contexts. Christoph Lau advances several of the themes and issues introduced by Beck and Schimank. Security concerns about "economic danger" characteristic of the welfare state are being overlaid with security concerns about "collective danger" caused by scientific and technological risks. While science and technology are seen as the leading source of risk, they are also viewed as the primary resource for controlling risk. Science and technology have therefore become central to politics, to conflict and its resolution, and it is this centrality that allows us to characterize risk societies as knowledge societies. Lau describes different sensibilities about dangers and risks in the development of societies. In premodern societies people thought of general dangers and plagues, but not in terms of risk. In modernizing societies there arose a sense of risk-taking for personal enhancement, professional or business advancement, and social progress. In modernized (industrialized) societies people focused on the rationalization of risk, especially through the institution of insurance. The costs of harm were socialized: risks were subject to economic calculation, and thereby separated from their moral and normative moorings and their traditional loci of causal responsibility. A social security society was created in which values endangered by risks were compensated by ascription of effects to individuals and the measuring of damages. The modernized rationalization of risk is now being challenged and transformed in the face of collective dangers fostered by modernization itself. Risk societies find it increasingly difficult to rationalize risks in the terms noted above. In risk societies new technologically-generated dangers have a number of effects on science and the population. They motivate people to form new political alliances that blur and even subvert existing boundaries. They throw into doubt

Introduction

197

the ability of science to provide rational calculation, resulting in the perpetuation of insecurity. They create a differentiation, and sometimes a disjuncture, in rationality, responsibility, perceived danger, and interests among the various parties involved in risk production and risk tolerance. They displace the idea of progress as a civil virtue in aid of the cause of modernization. They break down traditional means of collective response, whether in the form of political will from a local community or single nation-state, or financial compensation through insurance. They are rather vague and unspecified - creating uncertainty about the potential damages and how long they will linger - which makes it difficult to cope and to separate them from everyday time. All of the above combine to create a sense that they are a result of "natural causes" beyond cultural norms and rational calculations, a sensibility that encourages individualism and spirals the perception of risk. These sensibilities generate conflicts, new social movements, and a new politics. The basis of conflict is the definition of risks, an acute matter because definitions have real consequences for the distribution of scarce resources, profits, power and legitimacy. New social movements form to shape definitions as these will influence risk distribution and control. The resultant politics of risk definition constitutes the risk society through constructing classifications and categories of persons at risk; risk producers; costs of risks; the distribution of costs with respect to compensation, prevention and technological investments; the symbolization of danger; how individuals are to respond; and whose expertise is salient and to be rewarded. Lau sees these conflict dimensions of exposure, power, costs and knowledge as varying independently, so that there is no particular, definite structure of conflict that becomes institutionalized and therefore strategic political action is increasingly difficult. Scientific knowledge joins, and even displaces, labor and property as a primary resource of conflict. It is a power tool that both enables and restricts action. As it moves into the center stage of politics, science becomes characterized less as technical, objective, and definite, and more as rhetorical, strategic and equivocal. Science becomes less an arbiter of cognitive conflicts and more a supplier of rhetorical resources to particular political interests. Scientific discourse acquires elements of public political discourse and popular discourse, an intertextuality that transforms and fragments scientific discourse, and makes it more difficult to strategically select scientific results and to monopolize particular sources of knowledge. Science is doubted and a source of uncertainty even while dependence on the hoped-for certainty of scientific results increases. At the same time everyday knowledge is also doubted, and even devalued, because arguments must be related to the causal constructions of science. Lau concludes by considering some strategies used in risk definition. Each strategy refers back to earlier conceptions of risk in an effort to cool out conflicts and enable more risk taking. One approach is to redefine technologically produced risks as natural dangers, converting them to an almost premodern

198

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

sensibility of unavoidable plagues. This approach tries to appease and normalize through relativization. To the degree it is successful it serves to diminish or even extinguish responsibility and accountability for risks. A second approach is the normative réévaluation of risks, invoking the modernizing sensibility that risks are necessary for (usually economic) security and stability, if not progress. A third approach entails a renewed individualization of risk, invoking the modernized sensibility that risk can be tamed by being seen as a low probability and subject to monetary compensation. The fact that the above approaches provide only limited cognitive security is evidenced by the fact that science not only remains at the forefront of efforts to define risks, but also of conflicts over the failure to rationalize risks.

Modem Society as a Risk Society1 Ulrich Beck

I. The Paradigm of the Risk Society The word which describes our present situation most accurately in social and sociological terms is the word "post". Everything is "post". We are now used to the condition of post-industrialism, and the term still has some meaning. But in the meantime we have come to speak of "post-materialism", "post-feminism" and "post-modernism", not to mention "post-late-capitalism". "Post" is the expression of sociological helplessness. It is, as it were, the blind man's stick of the social sciences. Its message - as excited and exciting as it is empty - is that there is something "afterwards", but what it is, and what it looks like, we do not know. "Post" is also the expression of mental laziness in sociology. Our social-theoretical and social-historical line of thought has been broken. We have adopted the theories of advanced industrial society and of late capitalism, and have talked ourselves into the end of history - "posthistoire". Consequently, amid our innovations, we expect nothing really new any more. Everything has already occurred so we will carry on as before. Sociology has never sat so firmly in its institutional saddle. Never was it so unimaginative, so unexciting in its conception of the historical flow of social reality as today. There are systematic reasons for this, which I do not wish to explore here. I would rather try to do something which has not been considered possible, namely to take up the social-theoretical thread again and to give meaning to the word "post". My main thesis is as follows. In the advanced modem period the social production of wealth goes hand in hand with the social production of risks. Correspondingly, the problems and conflicts of distribution in the "shortage society" ("Mangelgesellschaft") will be overlaid by the problems and conflicts which arise from the production, definition and distribution of scientifically and technically produced risks. This change from the logic of distribution of wealth to the logic of distribution of risks is tied historically to at least two conditions. Firstly it occurs - as we can

200

Ulrich Beck

see today - to the degree that real material need can be objectively reduced or socially isolated through the achievement of a level of human and technological productive forces and legal and social welfare protections and regulations. Secondly and simultaneously, this categorial change depends upon the release of risks and potential threats to ourselves (harmful and poisonous substances in foodstuffs, air and water, atomic weapons and energy, genetic engineering). Risks and threats will be generated to a hitherto unknown degree by the exponentially growing productive forces in the process of modernization. To the degree that these conditions predominate one historical type of thinking and acting will be relativized or overlaid by another. The concept of the "industrial" or "class society" (in the broadest sense of Marx and Weber) revolves around the question of how socially produced wealth can be distributed unequally but nevertheless "legitimately" in society. This coincides with the new paradigm of the risk-society, which depends for its basis on the solution of a similar and yet quite different problem. How can the risks and dangers, which are systematically produced in the process of advanced modernization, be prevented, made harmless, dramatized and directed, channelled away? Now that they have seen the light of day in the form of latent side effects, how can these risks be delimited and distributed in such a way that they neither hinder the process of modernization nor overstep the bounds of the (ecologically, medically, psychologically and socially) acceptable? We are living in the period of transition in which the problems of distribution of wealth and of risks overlap. The dynamics of conflict and the types of problems of the advanced modern period can no longer be understood through the categories of distribution of wealth, nor can they yet be understood through the categories of distribution of risk. The logic of the definition and distribution of risks can be explicated in terms of ideal types in the following areas: - the labour market and system of production (microelectronics, flexibility of working times, forms of under-utilization of labour, and decentralized salaried employment); - the freeing up of traditional and institutional forms of control of fear and insecurity in the family, marriage, sexual roles, class consciousness; - the démystification of scientific rationality (disenchantment with the disenchanter), technological risks, criticism of progress; - and finally, my main theme, the risks and consequences of modernization, which are realized in the irreversible endangering of human, plant and animal life. Unlike operational and professional risks in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, these risks of modernization cannot be limited locally or in terms of their group specificities. Rather they represent a globalizing tendency, which encroaches on the spheres of production and reproduction while also crossing

Modem Society as a Risk Society

201

national boundaries. These risks and dangers pose a potential global threat which is supra-national and not class-specific.

II. Risks of Modernization - Five Theses In the following I shall deal with the final point only, illuminating in five theses the social architecture and political dynamics inherent in the potential threat to civilized existence. 1. The risks of modernization, as released in the most advanced stage of the development of productive forces, are fundamentally different to wealth and resources. By modernization risks, I mean first and foremost radioactivity, which evades immediate human perception, as well as harmful and noxious substances in the air, water, and food, and the short and long term effects of these in plants, animals and humans. They cause systematically determined, often irreversible damage, remain for the most part invisible, and are based on causal interpretations. They are thus established only as (scientific or anti-scientific) information, and as such information can be altered, minimized or augmented, "dramatized" or made harmless, they are particularly open to social processes of definition. The media and positions of risk definition thereby take up key socio-political positions. 2. With the growth and distribution of risks, social danger situations are created. These situations reflect in various dimensions of risk the given inequalities of strata and classes, and at the same time introduce an essentially different logic of distribution. Modernization risks catch up sooner or later with those who produce them or who profit from them. They have a boomerang effect, which breaks up the class structure. Even the rich and powerful are not safe from them. They threaten legitimation, property and profits as well as health. Ecological devaluations and expropriations are linked to the social recognition of the risks of modernization, and systematically contradict the profit and property interests which drive on the process of industrialization. At the same time risks produce new international inequalities, not only between third world and industrialized states but also among the industrialized states themselves. They undermine the competency of the nation states. Given the universality and supra-nationality of the trade in dangerous substances, the existence of a blade of grass in the Bavarian Forest is ultimately dependent on the conclusion and observance of international treaties. 3.EAnd yet the spread and marketing of risks does not break completely with the logic of capitalist development but rather raises it to a new level. Modernization

202

Ulrich Beck

risks are big business. They are the boundless needs sought by the economists. Where hunger can be stilled and needs satisfied, the risks of civilization are a bottomless barrel of needs. They are infinite and self-generating. Drawing on Luhmann, one could say that with the risks the economy becomes self-referential and independent of the context of the satisfaction of human needs. This means, however, that industrial society in generating and exploiting risks also generates danger situations and the particular political potential of the risk-society. 4. One can possess riches, one is affected by risks, and yet both are allocated by civilization. To put it pointedly, being determines consciousness in class and strata-situations, whereas in situations of danger consciousness determines being. Knowledge gains a new political significance. Hence the political potential of the risk-society must be explicated and analyzed in a sociological theory of the origin and distribution of risks and their significance. 5. Socially recognized risks have explosive political implications, as became obvious for example in the debate about the dying forests. What had been considered unpolitical became political: the elimination of the causes in the process of modernization and industrialization itself. Suddenly public opinion and politics govern the most intimate areas of operational management - product planning, technical equipment etc. This makes it perfectly clear what the debate on the definition of risks is really about. It is not only about the consequences for the health of man and nature but also the social, economic and political results: collapse of markets, devaluation of capital, bureaucratic control of operational decisions, opening up of new markets, enormous expenses, legal processes, loss of face. In the risk-society the political potential for catastrophes comes about in bursts of varying degrees, in smog alarms, accidental discharge of poisons, in threats to food supplies etc. Power and responsibility may well be reorganized in the process of gaining protection from and control of these dangers. The risk-society is, therefore, a catastrophe-society, in which exceptional circumstances threaten to become normality.

III. First Thesis: Knowledge is Dependent on Modernization Risks Risks, like wealth, are the object of processes of distribution, which constitute "situations" - of danger or of class. In each situation we are dealing with quite different types of goods and problems of distribution. In the case of social wealth we are dealing with the question of consumer goods, income, education opportunities, possessions etc. as desirable scarcities. In the case of dangers we

Modem Society as a Risk Society

203

are dealing with the by-product of modernization, the prevention of which is of value. These residues must be either eliminated or denied, re-interpreted. Against the positive logic of appropriation stands a negative logic of dispersal, avoidance, denial and re-interpretation. While income, education etc. are goods that the individual can consume and experience, the existence of dangers is largely invisible and is mediated principally through argument. What endangers health and destroys nature often cannot be recognized by the individual's vision or perception. Even where it is apparently out in the open it demands social construction according to the "objective" assessment of the expert, sent in to hand down a judgement. Many of the new risks (nuclear or chemical contaminations, noxious substances in foodstuffs, sicknesses of civilization) evade the human perceptive apparatus. Dangers which are not immediately visible or perceptible to those affected are becoming more and more the center of attention. In some cases these dangers do not even show up during the lifespan of those affected, but are passed on to the offspring. In any cases, these dangers need the perceptive organs of science theories, experiments, instruments of measurement - in order to become visible and comprehensible at all. Radioactivity is paradigmatic of such dangers. It results in mutated genes and acts imperceptibly on those affected, delivering them up totally, under immense nervous strain, to the judgement, the mistakes and the controversies of the experts - as was demonstrated by the nuclear accident at Harrisburg. The potential for threat, which lies in the determinants of the class situation for example in the loss of the jobs - is clear to everyone affected. For that needs no special means of knowledge, no measurements, no statistical compilation, no consideration of validity, no examination in terms of thresholds of tolerance. The effect is clear, and in this sense, independent of knowledge. The discovery that your daily cup of tea contains DDT and your freshly bought food contains formaldehyde creates a totally different situation. You cannot make a decision on the basis of your own knowledge and possibilities of experience as to the extent to which you are affected. You cannot know whether DDT is in your tea or formaldehyde in your food or how much of these substances are present. Nor can you know whether and in what concentrations they are or are not damaging in the short or long term, in relation to kidneys, heart, chromosomes etc. Only through external knowledge can you come to a decision as to what sort of threat you face (headaches, stomach ulcers, cancer), when it will occur, and to whom, what likelihood there is, and so forth. In other words, all questions concerning the level to which one is affected are decided by others. In this way threat situations create social dependencies of information and knowledge, which do not recognize class relations. On the one hand, those who are affected are neither responsible for nor competent to handle what has happened to them. They lose a significant proportion of control over knowledge and information. What threatens them

204

Ulrich Beck

makes them at the same time dependent on the knowledge of others, and thereby on the norms, interests and mistakes inherent in that knowledge. Consequently, in danger situations the things of everyday life turn, metaphorically speaking, into Trojan horses, out of which the risk experts jump, quarrelling with each other, and announce what one has to fear and what not. For danger situations can be inferred in all objects of daily life. They sit there - invisible and yet all too present - and call out at the top of their voices to the experts to answer their questions. Danger situations are like oil-wells gushing with questions, to which those who are affected have no answers. On the other hand, this means that all decisions, which fall within the sphere of information produced about the risks and dangers of civilization, are never simply decisions about information-content (questions, hypotheses, measuring procedures, methods, acceptable values etc.). They are at the same time decisions about the extent to which people will be affected - about the degree and type of danger, the nature and extent of the threat, the people involved, long term results measures to be taken, those responsible, and claims for compensation. If it were today confirmed that formaldehyde or DDT, in the concentrations in which they are present in food and the objects of everyday use, were harmful to health, this would be a major catastrophe, for by now these concentrations are present everywhere. That this relationship between decisions about scientific knowledge and decisions about real effects occurs, however, shows that the space for scientific research is getting narrower and narrower because of the threatening potential of the forces of production. To admit today that one has erred in ascertaining the limits of tolerance for pesticides - a normal occurrence in the natural sciences - would be like setting off a catastrophe, and would have to be hushed up for that very reason. Here it becomes clear that the destructive forces, which scientists in many fields deal with, impose on them the inhumane law of infallibility, the breaking of which is not only characteristically human, but stands in clear contradiction to the scientific ideals of progress, questioning and criticism.

IV. Second Tesis: Modernization Risks Exploding the Class-structure In a nutshell: necessity is hierarchical, smog is democratic. With the spread of modernization risks - the danger to nature, health, food supplies etc. - social differences and barriers diminish in importance. It may have been possible to escape into privileged living conditions before there was air pollution and traffic noise. But the water soon became polluted everywhere and it becomes clear that it

Modem Society as a Risk Society

205

is not only the threat of atomic war which has made everyone equal. Very different consequences can be drawn from this. Objectively, within their range and effects, risks have an equalizing effect. Their new political implications lie precisely here. In this sense risk-societies are not class societies. The danger situations of risk societies cannot be comprehended as class situations, nor can their conflicts be comprehended as class conflicts.

A. Boomerang Effect: An Ecological Devaluation This global tendency reveals itself firstly in the boomerang effect: even the rich and powerful are not safe from the results of modernization. The boomerang effect does not have to directly threaten life. It can also occur in the spheres of money, property, market crashes, loss of confidence. The dying of the forest does not merely bring about the irretrievable loss of whole species of birds but also shrinks the economic value of forest and land ownership. Here, as in many other cases, the principle is the same. Property is economically devalued at the same time as it is ecologically expropriated. Reports about poisonous deposits in foods and consumer goods, potential, and even more, actual accidents with chemical poisons and nuclear reactors, devalue property rights whether slowly or at a galloping pace. The politics of an increasingly uninhabitable earth is generated in leaps and bounds, in more and more critical catastrophes, through the unrestrained production of modernization risks. The highly industrialized system produces in the "no man's land" a horror story of biological socialism. Whatever or whoever is contaminated or is considered contaminated - as far as social and economic devaluation is concerned, this distinction is almost insignificant - can belong to whoever wants it or to whoever already owns it. While retaining its legal status as property it becomes useless and worthless. The ecological expropriation which is systematically produced in the form of modernization risks represents a case of social and economic expropriation occurring within the legal framework of continuity of possession. This applies as much to foodstuffs and objects of daily use as to air, earth and water. In this way a real and systematically intensifying contradiction is generated between the profit and property interests which fuel the industrialization process and the many threatening consequences, which endanger and expropriate property and profits.

206

Ulrich Beck

Β. New Social Inequalities on the World Scale

The proletariat of the world risk-society lives among the smokestacks and next to the refineries and chemical factories in the industrial centers of the third world. The poison spill in Bhopal, India has raised this issue in the consciousness of world public opinion: risk industries are set up in countries where wages are cheap. This is not by chance. A systematic attractive force exists between extreme poverty and extreme risks. The poisonous and harmful substances blow, drip and spill wherever they will. To the universality of industrial production corresponds a supra-nationality in the traffic in harmful substances. The industrial countries must be differentiated in terms of their national balance of emissions and immissions of harmful substances. International inequalities arise among industrial states with active, equal or passive balances of harmful substances, or, to put it more clearly, between those lands which throw out their filth and those which take on the filth of others, paying for this balance in trade through the death of their plants, animals and humans. To the extent that modernization dangers intensify and encroach on remaining unaffected zones, the risk society (in contradiction to earlier industrial society) shows a tendency toward the objective unification of those affected into global danger situations. In any case, friend and foe, east and west, above and below, city and countryside, black and white, south and north are exposed to the levelling pressure of intensifying civilization risks. Risk-societies are not class societies: they are much more. They contain in themselves an explosive dynamic of development, through which humanity will be driven together, unified in the self-threatening situation of civilization. This self-destructive potential of civilization which is unfolded in the process of modernization, however, also makes the utopia of a world society more real or at least more urgent. The people of the 19th century had to learn, under pain of economic decline, to submit to the conditions of industrial society and wage labour. So too, people now and in the future must learn from the threat of a civilization in apocalypse to find solutions to their self-incurred dangers and to implement these solutions, regardless of the difficulties involved. Attempts to win political meaning from this incomprehensible fear cannot hide the fact that these newly arisen objective communalities of danger float in a political and administrative vacuum. They collide with the egotism of the nation states and the prevailing party and interest groups of the industrialized societies. In the jungle of corporate society there is no place for global risk situations which cut across, overlap and interfere with established group interests. Here every organization has its clientele and its social context, consisting of adversaries and confederates, who must be activated and played off against each other.

Modem Society as a Risk Society

207

To the proletariat, the clearly defined political subject of class society, there corresponds in the risk-society only the vague general sense of being affected, the sense that all are affected by immense, more or less tangible dangers. A statement such as this can easily be shrugged off. Responsibility lies with everyone and no one. Each of us is partially responsible for this mess, and at the same time each must fight to retain his or her job (income, family, house, car and holidays).

C. Solidarity out of Fear? In the transition from class to risk-society, the quality of communality begins to change. Schematically speaking, two completely different value systems predominate in these two types of modern society. The dynamic of development of industrial societies is predicated on the counterideal of equality (in its various formulations, from the equality of opportunity to the different socialist models of society). In the risk-society, the normative counterplan, which provides its basis and driving force, is safety. In place of the value system of the unequal society stands the value system of the unsafe society. Hence the basic social situation, in which people find themselves, mix, come together, are moved around and separated, is different. The motive force of class society can be expressed in the phrase: "I am hungry!". That of the risk-society on the other hand in the phrase "I am scared". In place of the communality of need is the communality of fear. The ideal type of the risk-society is the social epoch, in which solidarity arises out of fear and develops into a political force. However, it is still completely unclear how the binding force will function. How much of a load can fear bear? How will the new solidarity of the frightened work? Up until now, fear has not been the basis for rational action. Is this no longer true?

V. Third Thesis: On the Market Form of Modernization Risks There are systematic reasons for the intensification of the risk consciousness of civilization over the past years. Risks are now more accurately calibrated in scientific terms, and - the one determines the other - the business in risks is growing. It would be a mistake to believe that the criticism and publication of the dangers of civilizatory development throw a spanner in the works of the system.

208

Ulrich Beck

On the contrary these - in their role as devil's advocate - constitute a factor of economic regeneration of the first order. This becomes clear for example in the way related areas of the economy develop, in the rise in public expenditure on conservation, and in the fight against the problems of civilization. The industrial system profits from the deplorable state of affairs which it produces, and not badly at that. Risks are the driving force for economic booms because they are the limitless needs sought by economists. Through the production of risks needs are finally and forever released from their old natural moorings. They are no longer finite and satiable. Changing definitions of risk introduce new needs - and new markets - which are open to interpretation, and can be causally constituted and infinitely enlarged. Production and consumption are raised to a new level with the establishment of the risk-society. The self-producing risk takes the place of pre-existent, manipulable needs as the point of reference of production. To use a rather daring comparison, one can say that in the production of risks developed capitalism has absorbed, generalized and normalized the destructive power of war. Like wars, civilization risks, in becoming conscious, can destroy areas of over-production and whole hitherto valid modes of production (e.g., cars which are high in exhaust fumes). They can, that is, overcome crises in turnover and create new markets. Risk production and the branches of knowledge which it generates (critiques of civilization, technology, ecology, the risk performances of the mass media, and risk research) represent a system-immanent normative form of the revolutionizing of needs, of the transformation of saturated markets into new, open and expanding markets. Essential to this, however, is a symptomatic and symbolic "control" of risks. The risk must so to speak increase as it is "controlled". It must not actually be eliminated. Everything must be carried out cosmetically, while the sources of filth are retained: in packaging, symptomatic reduction of noxious substances, inclusion of purification filters. Industrial policy must not, that is, aim at a preventative but rather at a symbolic elimination of the increasing risks.

VI. Fourth Thesis: Conciousness Determines Being, Knowledge of Risks and Levels of Effect of Risks People often have the idea that there is a monopoly of knowledge in those areas of research dealing with risks. I believe that this misses the real problem. It is precisely the natural sciences which have begun to do penance as a result of their association with technical risks. Risks cut across traditional institutional boundaries and established theoretical categories. They cut across the boundaries of

Modem Society as a Risk Society

209

differentiation between theory and praxis, across disciplines and areas of specialized competence, institutional responsibility, the differentiation between value and fact (and hence of ethics, the human and natural sciences) and the apparently institutionally separated areas of politics, the public sphere, knowledge and economy. In coming to terms with the risks of civilization, modernity comes under increasing pressure to "de-differentiate". A conceptual mistake underlies the usual differentiation between (objective) risks which are ascertained and established by science, and the more or less irrational risk perception of the public media. The role of the technological sciences is misunderstood. Scientific risk research everywhere limps along behind the social, environmental, developmental and cultural criticism of the industrial system. In this sense a good deal of unacknowledged, critical proselytism accompanies the scientific and technical occupation with civilization risks these days. The natural and technological sciences have converted to another religion, but with the central difference that many of them want to retain the symbols of their right to define and classify even in the other camp. The claim of the technical sciences to a monopoly on rationality in the perception of risks amounts to the same as the claim of a pope, who has converted to Protestantism, to infallibility. The coming to consciousness of risks can therefore be reconstructed only as the conflict of competing, partly contradictory, partly overlapping claims to rationality. Using the example of risk perception, one must ask how rationality originates in society, that is, how it is believed, questioned, defined, redefined, acquired and elaborated. In this sense I will now sketch out the (un)logic as well as the oppositions and entanglements of the scientific perception and assessment of the risk of civilization.

A. Critique of Scientific Research The gateway to the social recognition of modernization risks is always blocked by a scientifically corroborated false diagnosis. At the beginning stands the collective professional error in believing that the sufferings determined by the process of modernization are self-caused. The place of appearance of sickness or destruction is taken as the horizon of reference of its possible causation. The consequence of this is that the results of modernization are systematically and diligently falsified into individual and local problems and shifted onto those affected. The relationship of cause and effect is disrupted and the effect is turned into its own causation. This does not occur once, by chance, but always and systematically. This blindness to risk which has appeared and established its own

210

Ulrich Beck

structure has names such as "over-specialization in the division of labour" and "productivity-orientation". In the production of wealth, which in turn increases productivity, no notice has ever been taken of the risks which are also produced. Scientists insist on the value of their work, out of professional ethics and for career reasons. This, however, brings about something rather strange in the field of risk research. The raising of scientific standards minimizes the circle of recognized risks and leads implicitly to a situation where the intensification and increase in risks can easily occur. In other words, the insistence on the purity of scientific analysis leads directly to pollution and contamination of air, foodstuffs, water, earth, plants, animals and humans. A secret coalition comes about between strict scientific standards and the situations of threat to life that these standards allow or even promote. Scientific risk management operates according to a peculiar principle: in case of doubt the endangered poison must be protected from the hand of man. This relationship can be demonstrated using the manipulable "validity lever" of proof of causality: the higher the criteria of validity for the proof of causality, the smaller is the circle of recognized - and the greater the accumulation of unrecognized - risks. And in the case of modernization risks a strict cause-effect relationship can never be established. This insistence on validity is like a dam, designed to block off and control the flood of modernization risks. It is both highly effective and is "legitimate". Germany stands in lonely isolation in this regard. In Japan, for example, the demand for strict causal proof has been replaced by the acceptance of correlational evidence, in view of the systematic, supra-national modernization risks in that country, admittedly after long social conflicts. To all those affected by modernization risks in Germany, the refusal to accept the truth of their suffering and injuries due to lack of acceptable causal evidence must seem like the most annihilating cynicism. They exhaust themselves running from pillar to post in their attempts to achieve the impossible, namely to establish causal proofs. They are fobbed off by the authorities, but this does nothing to eliminate the smog which leaves their children coughing through the night.

B. Threshold Values - (Dis)order The relationship of acceptable levels of noxious and harmful substances in air, water and food to risk distribution can be compared with the relationship of the performance principle to the unequal distribution of wealth. Acceptable limits allow the discharge of poisons and simultaneously legitimize this within the confined limits. Whoever limits pollution also acquiesces to pollution.

Modem Society as a Risk Society

211

Values, including acceptable limits, were upon a time not a matter of chemistry but of ethics. In the case of the "regulation of maximum amounts of insecticides and other substances to combat noxious pests in or on food or tobacco products" (to cite the clumsy official language) we are dealing with the left-over biological ethics of developed industrial civilization. This is, however, peculiarly negative. It is a statement of the previously self-evident principle that we should not completely poison each other. Ironically, this formulation makes possible the famous and controversial "small amount". This regulation is not about prevention but rather acceptable levels of poisoning. That poisoning is acceptable is no longer a question. Threshold values are the lines of retreat of a civilization which is in the process of covering itself with excesses of noxious and harmful substances. The concept of acceptable limits implicitly rejects as Utopian the demand that poisoning should not occur at all. Three false conclusions, which I would merely like to mention here, underlie the "acceptable level of trick" of the modern chemical magicians. 1. Acceptable limits are attached to individual substances, although humans and nature are becoming a reservoir for all manner of harmful and noxious substances in the air, water, soil, food etc. precisely as a result of regulations on acceptable limits. One can argue analogously about the combined effects of individual poisons, about which virtually no information exists. The civilizatory danger situations threatening people are brought about not by individual harmful substances but rather by the sum total of residue poisons. To answer questions which people are forced to ask regarding the overall threat with statistics and tables of acceptable levels of individual poisons is a form of collective mockery with deadly - no longer latent - results. In times when there was a general belief in progress it can be understood how this mistake was committed. To keep clinging to this belief today - legitimized through the scientific justification of acceptable levels - in the light of the general outcry and the statistics of death and sickness represents much more than a mere crisis of faith. 2. The fallacy of the difference in experimental results between animals and humans. Small animals react very differently to Seveso poison, for example. Guinea pigs are ten to twenty times stronger than mice and three thousand times more sensitive than hamsters. The key question is: how does one get from such radical variations in results for small animals to estimate on reactions in humans? The answer is, only by using the "third eye", and no experiments are needed for that, nor would animals have to be sacrificed. 3. The actual human reactions are not registered. Those who have become sick must themselves demonstrate both that they are sick and what has made them sick. We are living under the conditions of a long-term experiment. The involuntary human experimental subjects are exposed to compulsory registration of their symptoms of poisoning and, in an inversion of the normal legal process, are obliged to provide proof of poisoning themselves. And because there are

212

Ulrich Beck

acceptable levels of poisoning which have been observed, the jugglers of "acceptable levels" need not take the arguments of those affected seriously. The acceptable levels, which were in fact first established through the measurement of human responses, are held up in answer to the fears and sickness of the human guinea pigs! And all of this in the name of scientific rationality.

C. Public Risk Consciousness: "Non-experience at Second Hand" For the civilizatory consciousness critical of science the opposite is true: ultimately one must rely on what one is arguing against. From this one discovers one's own justification: scientific rationality. One comes across the hard law earlier rather than later, that as long as risks are not scientifically recognized they do not exist, at least not legally, medically, technologically or socially. They are therefore not eliminated, treated or compensated. Against this no amount of collective coughing, scratching or sighing helps. Only science does. The scientific monopoly on truth compels those affected to use all the means and methods of scientific analysis in order to press their claims for compensation. The crisis of scientific authority thus can favour the ongoing general obscuration of risks. Criticism of science is in fact counter-productive for the recognition of risks. What evades perception - "non-experience at second hand" - becomes an integral component of everyday thinking, experience and action in the civilizatory consciousness of crisis. This theoretical principle of risk consciousness has anthropological significance. The threats of civilization allow a new type of underworld to arise, comparable to the gods and demons of early times, hiding behind the visible world and endangering human life in this world. One no longer corresponds with the spirits which live in things, but rather feels oneself exposed to rays and toxic substances and is haunted even in dreams by the fears of an atomic holocaust. In place of an anthropomorphic interpretation of nature and the environment we have the modern civilizatory risk consciousness with its imperceptible and yet ubiquitous latent causality. Dangerous and hostile agents lurk behind the harmless facades. Everything must be seen in double, and can only be comprehended or judged in its duality. Noxious and poisonous substances snigger and chuckle everywhere, causing harm like the demons of the middle ages. Human beings are exposed to them with few means of escape. Breathing, eating, living, dressing - everything is permeated with them. One can no more escape by travelling than by eating muesli. They will be waiting at the destination just as they are hiding in the grains of cereal. Like the hedgehog in the race with the hare, they are always already there. Their invisibility is no proof of their

Modem Society as a Risk Society

213

non-existence - since their existence in any case makes its effects felt in the sphere of the invisible - but rather provides them with the presumption of an almost limitless space to cause harm. With risks, it is easier to interpret and redirect insecurities and fears once they are aroused than it is with hunger and need. What is determined at a given point need not necessarily be coped with at that point, but can be redirected to other points and symbolic places; objects and persons can be sought and found for the process of coping with fear. In the consciousness of risk, displacement of social conflicts and of thinking and acting occurs particularly easily. Risk-society indeed has an immanent tendency to seek scapegoats since the increase in dangers occurs alongside political inactivity. Suddenly it is not the dangers, but those who point them out who provoke general unease and hostility. Isn't there always visible wealth to hold against invisible risks? Isn't the whole thing an intellectual chimera, the product of the intellectual scaremongers, the stage manager of risk? It is the spies, the communists, the Jews, the Arabs, the women, the men, the Turks, the refugees, who are behind it all. The very sense of intangibility of the threat and helplessness to counter it favours the development of radical and fanatical reactions and political currents.

VII. Fifth Thesis: The Rrisk-society Engenders the Political Potential for a Dirigiste Politics of the State of Emergency The dying of the forests has made it visible in its first stages: wherever modernization risks are recognized the world order changes, even when to begin with little or nothing is actively undertaken. The barriers of specialized responsibilities fall. The public sphere responds right down to the level of technical details. Businesses, which have long been pampered for the sake of their markets and their philanthropic payment of taxes and creation of jobs, suddenly see themselves accused, pilloried, and interrogated in a way that once only redhanded murderers were. If only that were all! In addition, markets collapse, in-house costs arise, prohibitions and judicial procedures threaten, pressure to renew the technological system of production is felt, and voters run away, no one knows exactly where. Earlier there was general agreement on technical, economic and legal details. Now suddenly everyone has his say, using completely different frames of reference. Economic and technological details are exposed in the light of a new ecological morality. Under this threat all the old urgencies fuse together, and

214

Ulrich Beck

parallel to this a politics of the state of emergency is engendered, which draws its competencies and widened possibilities of interference from the threatening situation. Wherever danger becomes normality it takes on a lasting, institutionalized form. Modernization risks thus prepare the way for a redistribution of power, partly by retaining the formal responsibilities, partly by explicitly changing them. The more pressing the growth of dangers in the process of modernization, the more openly the core values of the generality are threatened, and the more clearly this enters into the consciousness of all, the more profoundly will the well-coordinated division of labour in the network of power and competence in the relationship between economy, politics, the public and the private spheres be shaken. The more likely it will be too that under the driving force of the threat, responsibilities will be redefined, competence to act will be centralized, and all details of the process of modernization will be overlaid with bureaucratic controls and plans. In other words, the other side of the danger is the legitimization and normalization of emergency actions which make what was otherwise considered unthinkable or impossible appear self-evident. It is thus clear that with the growth of dangers in the risk-society completely new challenges to democracy arise. The risk-society contains the tendency toward legitimizing a totalitarianism of the defence against dangers, whose claim to prevent the worst creates another all too familiar form of the worst. The political side effects of the side effects of civilization threaten the survival of the political-democratic system. It is caught on the horns of the dilemma of either capitulating in the face of the systematically produced dangers or of abrogating basic democratic principles through authoritarian reinforcement of the state order. The overcoming of this alternative and its apparent self-evidence will be one of the essential tasks of democratic thought and action in the foreseeable future of the risk-society.

Note 1

Translated by Peter Morgan and edited by the editors. The essay is based on ideas first presented in Risikogesellschaft - Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986); English edition Risk Society - Towards a New Modernty (Sage 1992). The themes summarized here have been shortened, and are not intended to stand in place of the complete argument as elaborated fully in book-form.

Science as a Societal Risk Producer: A General Model of Intersystemic Dynamics, and some Specific Institutional Determinants of Research Behavior Uwe Schimank

Risks are a universal feature of the conditio humana. One might paraphrase Donald Schon's dictum about innovative decisions, substituting this special type of action by actions in general: Every action converts the uncertainty about what to do into the risk of having done the wrong (Schon, 1967:25). So, whether we are conscious of it or - most often, fortunately - not, we live in a world overcrowded with risks. But, despite the omnipresence of risks, the probability, magnitude, and variety of certain types of risks varies historically. This is very clear for risks originating from the scientification of technologies. Of course, traditional technologies, as routinizations of everyday experience or results of craftsmen's tinkering, had like any other kind of action - a certain risk potential as well. Think about the ecological catastrophes caused during the Middle Ages by cutting down the woods in the Apennines for ship-building, or the sometimes dangerous side effects of traditional medicines. 1 But the social mechanisms of societal risk production became radically different as soon as technologies acquired a scientific character. In addition, the scope and complexity of societal risks have grown considerably with the scientification of technologies, as is shown, for instance, by the dangers of a radioactive contamination of large regions or even the whole world by nuclear disasters or an atomic war, the threatening global warming resulting from the deforestation of tropical rain forests and the widespread use of aerosol propellants such as halogenated hydrocarbons, or the possible dangerous effects of a release of genetically manipulated plants. Apparently, the capability of man to deprive himself of the natural preconditions of his own survival has increased dramatically with the scientification of technologies. My general question in this essay is: What are the conditions which may cause

216

U w e Schimank

an increase of the societal risks of science-based technologies? In principle, two kinds of conditions may be distinguished: conditions inherent to the technologies, and social conditions of the invention, diffusion, and use of technologies. On the one hand, some technologies have by their very technical nature a higher risk potential than others, e.g., nuclear energy production compared to solar energy production. Charles Perrow, for example, has recently developed very interesting ways to identify the inherent determinants of a technology's risk potential (Perrow, 1984). On the other hand, this potential is also determined by social factors. Social determinants of the scientific production of technologically relevant knowledge and the implementation of this knowledge in economic, political, military, or medical technologies are at least as important as the inherent determinants of a technology's risk potential. Without denying the impact of inherent technological factors, I want to focus in this presentation upon the social factors. I am certainly not the first one to do this. Some social scientists have investigated these factors more or less systematically, especially Ulrich Beck (Beck, 1986). I will draw upon the ideas of Beck and others and try to push them a bit further in the direction of heuristically fruitful questions and hypotheses. To do this I want to distinguish between two kinds of factors: on the one hand, those factors which constitute the general intersystemic dynamics of the scientific production of societal risks, and on the other hand, those factors which are specific institutional conditions for the actualization of these dynamics. The first group of social factors makes up a latent opportunity structure for scientific risk production, while the second group consists of the causes of an actual manifestation of these risks. Accordingly, I have chosen a two-step theoretical approach. In the first part of my presentation, taking up concepts from theories of societal differentiation, I will sketch a general model of the dynamics of risk production caused by the interplay between the production of scientific knowledge and technological applications of this knowledge in economic, political, or military contexts. Building upon this model, I will then, in the second part of my presentation, delineate a couple of institutional factors which are relevant for activating or inhibiting these general intersystemic dynamics. Doing this, I will leave aside all those factors which influence the decisions of societal users of science-based technologies, without denying the importance of these determinants. Indeed, they might very well be the most relevant determinants of scientific risk production. Nevertheless I want to concentrate upon a different group of institutional factors: those which have an impact on the actions and decisions taken within the research system. These factors, it seems to me, have been quite neglected until now in the discussions about science as a societal risk producer. I want to correct this one-sidedness of current debates by asking the following: Under what social conditions will researchers do the kind of research which leads to a higher-thanusual probability of societal risks when applied in technologies? To avoid disappointments, I should say at the beginning that I will refrain from

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

217

any suggestions about possibilities of political control of this scientific risk production. At the present state of theoretical and empirical knowledge, this would amount to taking the second step before the first. As long as we do not know well enough how these risks are produced, premature cures might even be worse than the sickness.

I The general intersystemic dynamics of scientific risk production In modern societies, scientific research occurs within a relatively autonomous societal subsystem. This is one of the undeniable achievements of modernity. For scientists, this autonomy means that no extrascientific actors such as political or religious authorities are allowed to interfere with the production of truths. For other realms of society, the differentiation of science means that they are relatively protected from possible negative effects of scientific truth production. So, the boundary between science and the rest of society works as a buffer in both directions (van den Daele, 1977; Luhmann, 1981). But, of course, this boundary has never been and was never meant to be impenetrable. Despite their claims to autonomy, many scientists are not satisfied with being isolated within an ivory tower, but want to produce knowledge which could be applied to societal problems. Not only can scientists get an inner satisfaction from not just enjoying their curiosity but, in addition, working for the welfare of society; scientists can also exert considerable societal power and gain status and prestige through their possession of sought-after knowledge. But even if this were no intrinsic motivation of scientists, they would nevertheless be forced to pay attention to the potential extrascientific uses of their research results by their dependence upon financial resources from political or economic actors. In general, the more expensive a research program becomes, the more likely the promoter will expect at least a medium-term "return on investment". Thus, intrinsic as well as extrinsic forces connect scientific research with its societal environment. Today, even the most extreme adherents to the principles of scientific autonomy would understand this autonomy only as the noninterference of extrascientific actors into decisions about the truth or untruth of specific elements of scientific knowledge. Even among scientists almost nobody, it seems, would deny that society has a right to benefit from possible technological applications of scientific knowledge. These connections between science and its societal environment are the germ of the scientification of modern society. That the "wissenschaftliche Zivilisation" (Schelsky, 1961), "Wissenschaftsgesellschaft" (Kreibich, 1986) or "knowledge

218

U w e Schimank

society" (Böhme and Stehr, 1986) is nevertheless a comparatively recent and even more recently observed phenomenon is simply due to the fact that modern science needed a long time to produce a significant amount of the kinds of truths which allow an ever increasing range of technological applications. For centuries, the critical mass of scientific knowledge needed to maintain a regular transfer into the production of technologies was not reached in most disciplines. Presupposing that internal cognitive and social dynamics of scientific research produce a cumulatively growing stock of more knowledge which is more detailed, precise, concrete, and, for these reasons, technologically applicable, there are two major forces which together bring about an irresistible and escalating process of societal scientification: the society-wide idea of progress and, just as universal, constellations of competition between societal actors. On the cultural level, the modern idea of progress substituted the medieval faith in God's predetermined plan of the world's fate (Blumenberg, 1973; Krohn, 1977:34-61). Science and technology have come to be seen as two of the major forces of societal progress. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the scientist and the engineer have jointly written the gospel of a secularized society, a gospel pointing not to a doomsday soon to come, but to unlimited and unimaginable future possibilities of societal perfection. This cultural leitmotif of modernity becomes a guiding force of action especially in constellations of competition. Competition is certainly not only a feature of economic but of political and military action as well. Firms compete with other firms on capitalist markets, political parties and public administrations compete with other parties and administrations in democratic welfare states, and nations compete with other nations in a world system ruled by military power. In all these constellations of competition the use of scientific knowledge for the invention of superior technologies is - given the cultural association of progress with science and technology - a natural strategy. In addition, firms, politicians, administrators, and the military have always been encouraged to compete by scientists who offered their services for one or the other of the reasons mentioned above. This recourse to science as a weapon in constellations of competition leads to an auto-dynamic of increasing societal scientification. As soon as just one actor in a certain set of actors competing with each other bases his technologies on scientific knowledge, the others will most likely be forced to follow suit sooner or later if they do not want to fall hopelessly behind. In this way, in more and more realms of society, a "scientification race" began in the last century, a race in which the participants have compelled each other to run faster and faster although no finish line ever comes into sight. This compulsive race for short-term competitive advantages going on in the economic, political, and military subsystems of society has made science into a producer of societal risks. A growing number of increasingly far-reaching risks are the unwanted, though not always unforeseen, by-products of the comprehensive scientification of the technologies governed by actors from these societal

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

219

subsystems. Familiar examples are countless. Basically, these risks originate from the activation of complex causal inter dependencies, which either cannot be comprehended cognitively by societal actors because of limited cognitive capacities or have to be ignored deliberately because of systemic zones of indifference. Scientific truths are, at least in the natural and engineering sciences, almost always produced under laboratory conditions which constitute extreme simplifications of the conditions under which these truths are implemented in technologies (Böhme and van den Daele, 1977:188). This simplification is necessary to detect isolated causal relationships which would otherwise be hidden within the dense texture of "real-life" causalities. The "tight coupling" of the world has to be substituted by the "loose coupling" of the experiment. Thus, scientific truths are, strictly speaking, very artificial propositions which can only cover reality outside the laboratory rather inaccurately. Technologies based upon such truths have left the confinement of the simplified laboratory world, where many causal interdependencies are eliminated or standardized by the experimental design. Confronted with the concrete complexity of their respective operational fields, technologies may work in unexpected ways. Often, the explanatory or predictive power of scientific propositions is more or less limited if they are applied to "real-life" events, much to the disappointment of many engineers. Again and again, technological artifacts behave contrary to the underlying scientific models, sometimes with negligible, but sometimes with fatal results. Moreover, even if a technological artifact functions like the scientists expected it to, this may produce unforeseen and unwanted side effects. Such side effects sometimes seriously reduce the effectiveness of the technology with regard to the problem to be worked on; sometimes this problem is dealt with adequately but not without occasionally causing other, rather distant problems. Of course, most unnoticed causal relationships do not bring about unwanted results. However, taking into account the multitude of causal relationships which have to be neglected by scientific truths found out in the laboratory, even a very small percentage of causal relationships which lead to unwanted effects is enough to have a high probability that at least one of them will be activated in a given situation. That the causal interdependencies in which technological processes are embedded in their operational fields cannot be comprehended totally by the respective societal actors is, first of all, nothing more than a manifestation of the general discrepancy between the complexity of the world and human capacity to cope with this complexity. This is a fact of life we have to accept if we want to base technologies on scientific truths at all. The real problem of cognitive selectivity consists in the rapid increase of possible risks brought about by the scientification of technologies. Each new technological artifact is an additional element in the causal texture of the world, and with each element the number of possible causal relations between all elements grows exponentially.

220

Uwe Schimank

Most often only a tiny fraction of the causal relationships in which technological processes are embedded is modelled in the relevant scientific theories. The greater the discrepancy between the analytical complexity of the theoretical model and the concrete complexity of the real world, the higher the probability that unforeseen and unwanted side effects may happen. But even if societal actors are aware of certain side effects as potential risks, they may nevertheless be indifferent to them. Capitalist firms are a frequently cited example (Kapp, 1950): They often perceive the ecological risks of their production - but they ignore them deliberately as external costs which they do not have to pay as long as they can use, for instance, the air as a free common good. A firm would act contrary to economic rationality if it bothered about potential risks of its production as long as nobody sanctions this risk production. To put it more generally: Each societal actor is affected only by a more or less limited fraction of the total effects of his own actions; all other effects are for him externalities which he ignores accordingly. The effects an actor takes into account, and those which he ignores, are determined by the specific rationality of the societal subsystem in which he operates. Thus, an actor's indifference about externalities is not so much his own choice but to a high degree constrained by societal differentiation. As particularly Ulrich Beck (1986:254-299) has pointed out, the scientification of technologies has been "reflexive" for some time. More and more science-based technologies deal with risks which other science-based technologies have produced: for instance, technologies to purify water by removing chemical waste products which have resulted from certain technological processes. Many observers of scientific risk-production maintain that only science can save us from the evils of science. But, in agreement with Beck, I would like to emphasize that these corrective technologies are themselves risk-producers. All my considerations apply to them as well. The general model of science as a societal risk-producer which I have outlined so far (and which is summarized in the diagram on the next page) is obviously much too simple to explain concrete processes of scientific risk production. I will use it merely as a heuristic device to search now for some more specific institutional determinants of the scientific production of societal risks. As stated at the beginning, I want to focus upon factors determining the societal risk potential of research behavior.

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

A General Model of the Scientific Production of Societal Risks

221

222

U w e Schimank

II Some institutional determinants of the societal risk potential of research behavior One starting point in a search for such institutional determinants can be the question: Under what conditions do researchers voluntarily offer their scientific knowledge for technological applications? Certainly such behavior which pushes forward the scientification of technologies and, thereby, increases the societal risk potential may be the result of idiosyncratic individual motives. But such motives can also emerge from institutionalized utilitarian standards governing the self-image of scientific disciplines. There are disciplines which identify strongly with the Baconian conception of scientific knowledge as power in the sense of a potency to dominate nature. All the engineering sciences clearly belong to this group, but chemistry does as well. It is interesting to compare chemistry and physics in this respect. While nineteenth-century physicists in Germany enjoyed the shelter offered by the Humboldtian university with its strong resistance against extrascientific demands, university chemists actively sought contacts with the emerging industrial laboratories in the chemical firms (Borscheid, 1976). This difference between these two disciplines, which can be explained by several historical factors, still exists today, as, for instance, the manifold connections between university chemists and the big chemical firms or the activities of scientific associations like the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker testify (Rilling, 1986). It would be wrong to assume that a scientific discipline does not change over time with respect to the strength of utilitarian elements in its institutionalized self-image. Biology is perhaps the most prominent case which has, especially since the recent emergence of biotechnology, gradually acquired a utilitarian self-image. Darwin's paradigmatic unification of biology was still a continuation of the traditional approach of a natural history without any practical implications (Gillispie, 1960:303-352), but its evolutionary design already contained the germ of the current biotechnological approach. Another illustration of short-term oscillations between utilitarian and nonutilitarian self-images is sociology. During the sixties and early seventies most sociologists understood themselves as practical reformers whose mission was to guide politicians in ambitious transformations of several spheres of society, like the educational system or public administration. After these projects failed for several reasons, not all related to sociologists' incompetence, they nonetheless began to interpret themselves as basic scientists again and turned away from their former utilitarian self-image. The perverse effect of an institutionalized utilitarian self-image of a scientific discipline is that for the most noble motives researchers may cause serious damage to society. The most dangerous scientist may be the one with the most

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

223

virtuous aims, a prospect which does not seem to be too far-fetched if one imagines the possible future of biotechnology. Nuclear physicists could fit into this picture as well if one compares the hopes some of them held during the fifties and sixties with later disasters like Harrisburg or Chernobyl. At least this could be learnt from such experiences: Purely well-meaning utilitarian optimism, reflecting only the potential gains from the technological application of some piece of scientific knowledge and neglecting potential risks, has, with an increasing scientification of technologies, become more and more dysfunctional for society. The institutionalized utilitarian self-image of scientists has to be enriched by risk consciousness, but how that could happen, either by intentional design or as an unintended outcome, nobody knows. An institutionalized utilitarian self-image of a discipline is only one possible motivating force towards an instrumentalization of research for the scientification of technologies. Another one with an even stronger and more widespread impact is the financial resource dependency of researchers upon extrascientific actors who are interested in the technological utility of scientific knowledge. The degree to which an "epistemic drift" (Elzinga, 1985) toward technologically relevant research programs is caused by researchers' financial resource dependency varies between disciplines and over time. In many disciplines financial incentives are ineffective simply because no or almost no knowledge exists which could be technologically relevant, for instance, in history or astrophysics. Especially if research in a specific area has become increasingly expensive, researchers almost always have to legitimize their financial demands by citing potential technological applications of their knowledge. Nuclear physicists after the Second World War are a good example (Radkau, 1983). Their interests were not primarily related to the production of nuclear energy; they wanted to continue their studies into the structure· of matter. But these research programs were very expensive, and reactors were needed for experiments. Thus, the German fast breeder development and some other reactor developments were a kind of compromise for nuclear physicists, who could do some scientifically interesting work in return for satisfying the state, which financed these research programs as a representative of future users of this technology. Thus at least one of the causes for all the risks associated with nuclear energy today was, in itself, innocent scientific curiosity, which was able to satisfy its financial needs only by inventing new types of reactors. For state-financed research institutions like, among others, universities or big science centers in Germany, financial resource dependency becomes most pressing whenever the state suffers from a fiscal crisis and must invoke an austerity budget. Two strategies of coping, which are often combined, lead to the same end with respect to the societal risk potential of scientific research. Research institutions may compensate the reduced resources from the state by mobilizing money from firms, for instance, via contract research (Schimank, 1988a). A research institution may also try to outdo its competitors for scarce money from the state by

224

U w e Schimank

restructuring its research program to make it more attractive to policy makers in terms of technological relevance. Both reactions - adapting to the industrial or the political research agenda - imply doing research which accelerates the scientification of technologies. By providing financial incentives and removing legal restraints, a transfer-oriented research policy of the state can support such a priority shift from basic towards applied research. The disposition of researchers to participate in the scientification of technologies is especially strong if an institutionalized utilitarian self-image of a discipline coincides with a financial resource dependency upon extrascientific actors who have pronounced user-interests in the scientific improvement of certain technologies. Then what is forced upon the researchers by external pressures is what they want according to their intrinsic preferences, so that there are no possibly demotivating feelings of guilt about "commercialization". When university researchers in the F.R.G. had to mobilize money from industry at the end of the seventies because of the universities' austerity budgets, it was interesting that this posed no moral problems for some disciplines, such as the engineering sciences, while in others, like linguistics, there were hot debates about the suspected "sell-out" of pure science to commercial interests. This strong reaction can be explained by the fact that linguistics had always been a discipline with a predominantly nonutilitarian self-image and then became rather abruptly technologically interesting in the context of computer sciences and artificial intelligence. The same is true for biotechnology, which appeared as a research area with a tremendous potential for technological applications not earlier than about the mid-seventies, after having long been just another traditional discipline of basic science named molecular biology (Kenney, 1986:90/91). Research policy, by creating a favorable public climate for activities of technology transfer, can encourage an intradisciplinary réévaluation of its nonutilitarian self-image. A discipline may find it hard to maintain a nonutilitarian self-image against public demands that science should contribute to the "technological modernization of society". There is a third major motivating force towards an openness of researchers with respect to potential technological implications of their work. Researchers may work under an institutionalized formal obligation to do technologically relevant work. The most obvious case are industrial scientists. Although many studies have shown an often considerable degree of tension associated with the economic pressures upon industrial researchers, they nevertheless adopt the priority of technological criteria as the guiding orientation of their work (Kornhauser, 1962; Hack/Hack, 1984). In addition to industrial laboratories there are also state-financed research institutions where scientific improvements of technologies are formally prescribed missions, for instance, research institutions of the government subjected to directives from specific ministries. In Germany the big science centers are an interesting case (Schimank, 1988b). Their research program is the result of a formal bargaining between themselves and the federal ministry of

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

225

research, in which both sides have a veto power. A big science center can refuse to accept certain research programs proposed by the ministry, and vice versa. But this legal coercion towards a mutually accepted consensus is eroded by the financial dependency of the big science centers upon the ministry. Ultimately, they are forced to accede to the ministry's wishes because otherwise it would not be willing to fulfill their financial wishes. In this case the legal obligations are reinforced by financial incentives. I have pointed out three institutional determinants of a researcher's tendency to give technological criteria the top priority in his research work and thereby to contribute to the scientification of technologies: a utilitarian self-image of the discipline, the researcher's financial resource dependency, and formal obligations. By pushing forward the scientification of technologies, these institutional factors contribute per se, according to the outlined general model of intersystemic dynamics, to scientific risk production. In addition, there are other institutional determinants of research behavior which increase both its cognitive selectivity and its indifference about externalities and thereby increase the societal risk potential of scientific research. The cognitive selectivity of scientific research, which is, as mentioned before, to a certain degree unavoidable, can nevertheless be augmented by the high degree of scientific specialization into separated areas of research. On the one hand, specialization is often seen as the best way to decompose complex problems into segments which can be cognitively handled. This is certainly true, but on the other hand each process of specialization is at the same time a device of social closure as well. Social closure, in turn, is a mechanism to reduce competition which is in the interest of the established researchers in a certain research area. To a certain degree - which, however, is hard to determine - the narrowness of many scientific specialties is not due to restricted cognitive capacities but to defensive interests of the respective research establishments. Because of this additional selectivity, even fewer causal interdependencies of a technology in its operational field are visible, and this increases the probability that societal risks are ignored by the researchers. A chemist whose scientific knowledge is restricted to the effects of certain substances on the growth of certain plants, and whose research area institutionally excludes effects of these substances on the human organism, for instance, will not bother in his research about possible harmful consequences of these substances' application in agriculture. For some time the institutionalization of interdisciplinary research programs has been advocated as a compensation of this selectivity of the scientific perception of "real-life" problems. Experiences with interdisciplinary research, however, have not been very promising. One typical example might be "environmental research" in Germany (Küppers et al., 1978). Instead of a conceptually integrated, more holistic approach to concrete ecological problems, a fragmented juxtaposition of analytical perspectives predominated, so that each discipline or

226

U w e Schimank

subdiscipline remained isolated and the plurality of the produced pieces of knowledge led not to a better understanding of the problems but rather to a bewilderment. Interdisciplinary research often fails not only because of the analytical difficulties of conceptual integration. Researchers remain locked in their respective disciplinary perspectives partly because of the effort involved in getting acquainted with other disciplines and the implied demand on one's tolerance for ambiguity. But a more important reason is presumably a social one: Interdisciplinary research is a highly insecure no-man's-land where individual chances to gain reputation and career opportunities are probably too scarce, and surely very hard to anticipate. This means a high risk for a researcher investing his or her abilities into interdisciplinary research. Significantly, successful interdisciplinary research areas have been institutionalized almost only where the intradisciplinary lines of research of two or more research areas pointed into the same direction at some stage of development. This is the way biochemistry was institutionalized, for example. A second institutional determinant of the cognitive selectivity of research behavior is the self-image of a discipline as applied or basic research. The more researchers understand themselves as basic scientists, the more they cut themselves off from a perception of the complex "real-life" interdependencies in which the technological applications of their scientific knowledge are embedded. As stated in the general model, even applied research remains in the containment of the laboratory. But the degree of abstraction is lower than in basic research. Basic research tries to isolate a specific causal relationship as much as possible from all disturbing influences of other factors. In contrast to this ideal of context-free causalities, applied research aims at the formulation of causal propositions which include at least the most relevant context factors. On this continuum between applied and basic research, the more a researcher orients his work towards the latter pole, the more he will legitimately ignore the causal context of the causal relationship he examines. This is no problem with regard to scientific risk production as long as the institutionalized self-image of a discipline corresponds to its factual role in technology development. But this may not always be the case. A scientific discipline may overestimate the distance between the knowledge it produces and technological applications. Especially if a discipline has been traditionally rooted in basic research but then goes, because of some cognitive breakthrough which suggested immediate technological applications, into applied research, considerable time may pass until the researchers give up the self-image of basic research. During this period of time the technological applications can do much harm due to the self-deception of researchers who still model the respective causal relationships as if they were dealing with laboratory conditions, even though this knowledge is to be implemented in technologies which are used outside the laboratory. Turning now to the indifference of researchers about externalities of the technologies based on the knowledge they produce, again the institutionalized

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

227

self-image of a discipline as basic or applied research is relevant. The more a researcher understands himself as doing basic research, the more he suppresses reflections about the technological applications of the knowledge he produces and the potential societal risks involved. Nuclear physicists during the thirties are a well-known example (Rhodes, 1986). Every now and then one of them hinted at the possible use which might be made of their knowledge about the structure of matter in the construction of bombs, but until it was too late these reflections were always blocked, and attention was rigorously redirected to scientific matters of interest. Within science, basic research tends to have higher prestige than applied research (Stichweh, 1979:90-92). This has much to do with the aesthetic elegance, simplicity, generality, and precision of their propositions, in contrast to the often complicated, narrowly circumscribed, imprecise nature of propositions in applied research. To draw an extreme contrast, being a particle physicist searching for the ultimate elements of the physical world is something much more dignified than being an engineer working on the marginal improvement of a detail of some machine, and this is not only the point of view of the physicist but of the engineer as well. The engineer compensates for this degradation within science by an institutionalized utilitarian self-image which allows him to get his reputation from the users of his technologies. Nevertheless, there is a tendency within all scientific disciplines towards a self-estimation which goes in the direction of basic research. Even disciplines which, on the continuum from basic to applied research, are very near to the latter pole, stress those aspects of their work which come nearest to basic research. This tendency caused by the desire for an intrascientific reputation reinforces the outlined drift of disciplines towards cognitive selectivity and indifference about externalities. A second institutional determinant of the indifference of researchers about externalities of their work is the degree and regulation of intradisciplinary competition. This competition can be for reputation; then the ratio of cognitive problems regarded as important to researchers is the crucial variable. The competition can also be for scarce positions, such as professorships; then the ratio of positions which in the near future will be open to researchers looking for such a position - especially the newcomers at a given point of time - is decisive. Both kinds of competition, which often coincide, affect researchers' indifference about externalities. Firstly, the pressure to be successful may increase a researcher's tendency to suppress reflections about the potential societal risks the technological use of the knowledge he produces could bring about. Secondly, under highly competitive pressures a researcher may be all the more willing to take money from a firm, for instance, via research contracts; and this financial resource dependency may imply that the researcher has to accept the firm's economic rationality with its specific indifference about externalities. Thirdly, a researcher may, as happens presently especially in biotechnology with the founders of small research firms,

228

U w e Schimank

substitute scientific reputation with commercial success, again with a commitment to economic rationality's indifference about externalities. At this point I will stop my preliminary reflections on specific institutional determinants of the scientific production of societal risks. Such considerations, even if they focus just on one group of relevant actors, lead in diverse directions. I am sure that I have sketched only a small part of the relevant institutional determinants of research behavior; and I am not at all sure that I have chosen the most important determinants. Much work remains to be done on the empirical as well as on the theoretical level. My presentation has achieved its purpose if I can stimulate discussions about two points: - firstly, the heuristic value of the proposed general model of the intersystemic dynamics of scientific risk production, - and, secondly, the validity of the proposed specific determinants of the societal risk potential of research behavior. Let me finally return to the question I have deliberately put aside, how the scientific production of societal risks might be controlled politically. I want to turn your attention to the fact that the great variance of the institutional determinants of the risk potential of research behavior is perhaps the biggest obstacle to the design of effective instruments of political control, at least as long as such instruments are designed and implemented without adequate knowledge about the specific institutional constitution of the research area which is the object of control. For example, in a discipline with an institutionalized utilitarian self-image, different measures of political control will seem to be feasible than in a discipline which understands itself as basic science. Hence my analysis corroborates my introductory claim that one should abstain from discussions about the proper instruments of political control in favour of a thorough investigation of the mechanisms of scientific risk-production.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5

Cf. Bowlus (1980) or Mensching (1986) for descriptions of pre-modern ecological disasters caused by traditional technologies. This part of the essay summarizes ideas I have elaborated more extensively in Schimank (1990). See, for instance, the discussions about the role of so-called "intellectuals" within modern society (Bell, 1977; Bauman, 1989). See Luhmann's (1986:150-166) distinction between the self-referential scientific code which guarantees science's autonomy, on the one hand, and the programming of science by extrascientific actors which ties scientific research to society's demands. Important elements of these dynamics are the normatively backed attitude of generalized skepticism towards truths (Merton, [1942] 1972) and the competition

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

6 7 8 9 10

11 12

13

14 15 16 17

229

between scientists for reputation and status, especially as permanent "generation conflicts" among established scientists and newcomers (Mulkay, 1972). Böhme et al. (1978) put their emphasis on intrascientific prerequisites of this process - which I take for granted here - and neglect these extrascientific pressures. See Radder's (1986) very useful suggestions about the differences between experiments and technologies. See Krohn (1987) for an analysis of Bacon's ideas and historical role. See the empirical study by Kluge and Oehler (1986) about the transfer orientations of engineers. Actually, the degree to which its scientific associations perform transfer functions could be a good indicator of the utilitarian self-image of a discipline. See Schimank (1988c) for empirical data about scientific associations in Germany. It is certainly not accidental that this happened since biology is increasingly based on chemistry. Of course these researchers could reply that everybody who does not just contemplate the works of nature but tries to make use of them for the improvement of society has to take risks. This is undeniably true. But the analytical statement - which is not meant as an accusation - remains that the application of scientific knowledge, however effective and beneficial it is, still implies an irreducible risk potential. As Daele (1989:207) has pointed out, researchers usually attribute positive effects of science-based technologies, on the one hand, and risks, on the other, differently: Positive effects are interpreted as successes of science while risks are blamed on the users. Something like Hans Jonas' (1979) Prinzip Verantwortung (principle of responsibility). In contemporary science, only particle physics and some areas of astrophysics seem to be exceptions to this rule. On the general level of theories of social differentiation, this has been shown especially for the modern profession (Rueschemeyer, 1986). See Remington (1988) about the 'binding of inquiry" to industrial and military technological needs in contemporary U.S.A.

References Bauman, Zygmunt 1989 "Legislators and Interpreters: Culture as the Ideology of Intellectuals," pp. 313-332 in Hans Haferkamp (ed.), Social Structure and Culture. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Beck, Ulrich 1986 Risikogesellschaft:

Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

Bell, Daniel 1977 "The 'Intelligentsia'in American Society," pp. 119-137 in Daniel Bell, The Winding Passage. New York: Basic Books.

230

Uwe Schimank

Blumenberg, Hans 1973 Der Prozeß der theoretischen Neugierde. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Böhme, Gernot and Wolfgang van den Daele 1977 "Erfahrung als Programm - Über Strukturen vorparadigmatischer Wissenschaft," pp. 183-236 in Gernot Böhme et al.(eds.), Experimentelle Philosophie: Ursprünge autonomer Wissenschaftsentwicklung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Böhme, Gernot, Wolfgang van den Daele, and Wolfgang Krohn 1978. "Die Verwissenschaftlichung von Technologie," pp. 339-376 in Gernot Böhme et al. (eds.), Starnberger Studien 1: Die gesellschaftliche Orientierung des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Böhme, Gernot and Nico Stehr (eds.) 1986 The Knowledge Society: The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge Relations. Dordrecht: Reidel.

on Social

Borscheid, Peter 1976. Naturwissenschaft,

Staat und Industrie in Baden (1848-1914). Stuttgart: Klett.

Bowlus, Charles R. 1980 "Ecological Crisis in Fourteenth Century Europe," pp. 86-99 in Lester J. Bilsky (ed.), Historical Ecology. New York: Kenniket Press. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1977 "Die soziale Konstruktion der Wissenschaft - Institutionalisierung und Definition der positiven Wissenschaft in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts," pp. 129-182 in Gernot Böhme et al. (eds.), Experimentelle Philosophie: Ursprünge autonomer Wissenschaftsentwicklung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1989 "Kulturelle Bedingungen der Technikkontrolle durch regulative Politik," pp. 197-230 in Peter Weingart (ed.), Technik als sozialer Prozeß. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Elzinga, Aant 1985 "Research Bureaucracy and the Drift of Epistemic Criteria," pp. 191-220 in Björn Wittrock and Aant Elzinga (eds.), The University Research System. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell. Etzioni, Amitai 1961 A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations. New York: Free Press. Gillispie, Charles C. 1960 The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Hack, Lother and Irmgard Hack

231

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

1984 Die Wirklichkeit, die Wissen schafft: Zum wechselseitigen Begründungsverhältnis von "Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie" und "Industrialisierung der Wissenschaft". Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Jonas, Hans 1979 Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kapp, Karl W. 1950 Soziale Kosten der Marktwirtschaft.

Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Kenney, Martin 1986 Biotechnology: The Industrial-University Complex. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kluge, Norbert and Christoph Oehler 1986 Hochschulen und Forschungstransfer. Wissenschaftliches Zentrum für Berufs- und Hochschulforschung der Gesamthochschule Kassel. Werkstattbericht 17. Kassel: Gesamthochschule. Kornhauser, William 1962 Scientists in Industry: Conflict and Accommodation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kreibich, Rolf 1986. Die Wissenschaftsgesellschaft.

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Krohn, Wolfgang 1977. "Die 'Neue Wissenschaft' der Renaissance," pp. 13-128 in Gemot Böhme et al. (eds.), Experimentelle Philosophie: Ursprünge autonomer Wissenschaftsentwicklung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Krohn, Wolfgang 1987 Francis Bacon. München: Beck. Küppers, Günther, Lundgreen, Peter and Peter Weingart 1978 Umweltforschung - die gesteuerte Wissenschaft? Eine empirische Studie zum Verhältnis von Wissenschaftsentwicklung und Wissenschaftspolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, Niklas 1981 "Die Ausdifferenzierung von Erkenntnisgewinn: Zur Genese von Wissenschaft," pp. 101-139 in Nico Stehr and Volker Meja (eds.), Wissenssoziologie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Luhmann, Niklas 1986 Ökologische Kommunikation: Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf Gefährdungen einstellen? Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

ökologische

232

Uwe Schimank

Mensching, Horst G. 1986 "Ökosystem-Zerstörung in vorindustrieller Zeit," pp. 15-27 in Hermann Lübbe and Elisabeth Ströker (eds.), Ökologische Probleme im kulturellen Wandel. München: Fink. Merton, Robert K. [1942] 1972 "The Institutional Imperatives of Science," pp. 65-79 in Barry Barnes (ed.), Sociology of Science. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Mulkay, Michael J. 1972 The Social Process of Innovation. London/Basingstoke: Macmillan. Perrow, Charles 1984 Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. New York: Basic Books. Radder, Hans 1986. "Experiment, Technology, and the Intrinsic Connection between Knowledge and Power". Social Studies of Science 16:663-683 Radkau, Joachim 1983 Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft

¡945-1975. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Remington, John A. 1988 "Beyond Big Science in America: The Binding of Inquiry." Social Studies of Science 18:45-72. Rhodes, Richard 1986 The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rilling, Rainer 1986 "The Structure of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (Society of German Chemists)." Social Studies of Science 16:235-260. Rüschemeyer, Dietrich 1986 Power and the Division of Labour. Cambridge: Polity Press. Schelsky, Helmut 1961 "Der Mensch in der wissenschaftlichen Zivilisation," pp. 465-480 in Helmut Schelsky, Auf der Suche nach Wirklichkeit. Düsseldorf/Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schimank, Uwe 1988a Institutionelle Differenzierung und Verselbständigung der deutschen Großorschungseinrichtungen. MPIFG Discussion Paper 88/7. Köln: Max Planck Institute. Schimank, Uwe 1988b "The Contribution of University Research to the Technological Innovation of the German Economy: Societal Auto-dynamic and Political Guidance." Research Policy 17:329-340

Science as a Societal Risk Producer

233

Schimank, Uwe 1988c "Scientific Associations in the German Research System - Results of an Empirical Study". Knowledge in Society 1: 69-85 Schimank, Uwe 1990 "Dynamiken wissenschaftlich-technischer Innovation und Risikoproduktion," pp. 61-88 in Jost Halfmann and Klaus-Peter Japp (eds.), Riskante Entscheidungen und Katastrophenpotentiale: Elemente einer soziologischen Risikoforschung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schon, Donald A. 1967 Technology and Change. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Stichweh, Rudolf 1979 "Differenzierung der Wissenschaft." Zeitschrift für Soziologie 8: 82-101

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science Christoph Lau

There seems to have been a fundamental change in the public agenda of western societies in the last decade. Hazards and safety, risk management and risk acceptance are dominant topics of a public rhetoric which begins to displace traditional political issues (Beck, 1986; Offe, 1986; Luhmann, 1986). This generalized awareness of dangers and hazards turns especially against technological developments and the dynamics of scientific innovation. Security has, indeed, always been one of the central values of the welfare state (Kaufmann 1973). The criticism of technological risks, however, does not mean individual security against economic dangers. It aims instead at collective dangers which are caused by the scientific and technical civilization. Even if these dangers are not very probable, because of their collective character and their relevance to common welfare, they develop a social dynamic which treats as central the question of who decides on risks that threaten potentially everyone. The discussion about technological risks has been dominated by the perspective of natural sciences and technology. These debates concentrate on the evidence of the technical causation of damages and on the forecast of destructive developments. However, in the course of the different risk debates - for example, the controversies about nuclear energy and the pollution of air and water - it became clear that scientific and technical definitions of risks are based on premises, values and assumptions which are not scientific findings but cultural constructions. Questions about what has to be regarded as a risk, which aspects of a risk are perceived and investigated, and how the possible dangers are to be valued, can only be answered by reference to cultural norms of acceptability. The limits on causal analysis also become evident when it is impossible to connect risks and dangers with one or several defined causes. This is typically true for many environmental problems. If risks are only vaguely defined, neither the responsible organizations nor the group of persons potentially damaged can be exactly determined by means of causal analysis. Frequently, where to begin or to stop a causal explanation can be decided only by pragmatic methods. Statements

236

Christoph Lau

of causal connection, however, can be used for the distribution of social responsibility. They are results of decisions which are determined as much by social and cultural, as by scientific arguments. The social aspects of risk definition do not even concern predominantly the controversies between experts. The dissent of scientific experts only reveals that the question of whether a technological risk should be accepted cannot be determined by scientific knowledge alone. As the calculation of potential damages and their statistical probability is more and more opposed by public consciousness, the consensus on risks and on the foundations of their definition is becoming a scarce resource or even a factor of production. Public debates about risks can be regarded as a new type of social conflict, because the mere definition of a risk has important consequences for the management as well as for the population. These conflicts do not surface as direct confrontations but as efforts to influence the public definition of dangers by scientific findings and arguments. Before trying to characterize the role of science in conflicts about technological risks in more detail, I shall summarize the specific attributes of these new dangers. For reasons of differentiation I will contrast the new risks with two other types of cultural risk definition (Cf. Evers/Nowotny, 1987; Beck, 1986; Ewald, 1986; DouglasAVildavsky, 1982).

I. Traditional Risks Traditional risks are voluntarily taken by individuals or groups. The capitalist entrepreneur, the investigator or the physician are taking a professional risk just like the officer or the pilot of an airplane. Bearing a risk of this kind belongs to the ethos of a particular professional group or a social rank. This positively valued consciousness of risk-taking still exists as a part of the normative culture of professionals or of occupational groups. In a trivialized form it can be found as a symbol of a particular life-style or subcultural groups. Traditional risks can be attributed to individuals and are temporally limited. They are socially normed and stabilize the social boundaries of groups. At the same time, the management and handling of these traditonal risks has always been based on differentiated common-sense knowledge of probabilities, on professional traditions and on personal experience and competence. Risks of this kind are taken to realize particular appreciated values, as, for example, the honour of a class or rank, scientific progress or the supply of economic goods. They are closely connected to the process of group socialization. In premodern societies all sorts of threats, losses and catastrophes which could not be related to the ethos or the duty of a group were not regarded as risks, but as

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science

237

general plagues and dangers (Luhmann, 1989). General dangers, according to their anonymous and involuntary character, tend to individualize the persons threatened by them.

II. Industrial Risks The second type of risk definition shall be called industrial risk. By the process of modernization and the rationalization of economic and professional action the management of risks has been rationalized, too. By means of statistical calculation different risks can be rationally assessed and compared. This first step in the scientification of risk assessment corresponds to the rise of the institution of insurance. The costs of damages and losses now can be socialized, although the risks are decided on individually. The redistribution of the monetary consequences among the community of insurants changes the character of risk perception and risk behaviour fundamentally (Ewald, 1986; Evers/Nowotny, 1987). In the course of modernization risks are separated from their normative context and become factors of economic calculation. As economic factors risks are issues of the collective bargaining between economic interest groups. By this collectivization of individual risks the causal responsibility is disconnected from the monetary compensation guaranteed by the community of insurants. There are several significant and complex consequences of the emergence of a security society. The traditional interpretations of heroic risk taking become more and more obsolete or are limited to professional or sports activities. Moreover, the values which are endangered by risks, such as life, property and work place, are equalized by compensation. Risks which are calculated statistically cannot stabilize group identities. The transfer of costs from the injured person to the community of insurants means, at the same time, the levelling of cultural differences of risks by the logic of quantitative comparison. The individual responsibility for the consequences of risks is transformed into the economic and rational obligation to be insured against claims for damages and personal losses. In other words, moral risk definitions are replaced by economic utility calculations. The preconditions of this process of rationalization are the ascription of effects to individuals and the possibility of measuring the damages. However, these conditions do not exist in the case of ecological catastrophes.

238

Christoph Lau

III. New Technological Risks The new technological risks are more or less a combination of industrial risks and general dangers to life, which are not conceived as risks. This becomes obvious when we take a look at the main characteristics of the new risks. Just as they are mostly not accepted voluntarily, new technological risks can motivate mutual support and solidarity beyond existing group boundaries. The new social movements are examples of the diffuse character of such associations which allow only temporary alliances (Raschke, 1987). Most of the new technological risks can only be calculated with great difficulties. There is legitimate doubt whether statistical risk assessment is an adequate method for evaluating singular catastrophes. Nuclear and biotechnological risks may not be very probable. The scope and complexity of their effects, however, lead to a degree of uncertainty that makes a rational calculation very problematic. In spite of the fact that the technological risks are not taken voluntarily by society, they are, nevertheless, caused by decisions and actions of individuals. These paradoxical circumstances may be explained by the unintended collective effects of many individual decisions, as in the case of air pollution. Decisive for the perception of dangerous consequences of collective effects is the discovery of these causal relations by science. Aggregate effects, having existed in all periods of history, become societal risks by scientific causal evidence. Only scientific knowledge discovers individual responsibility for global dangers and turns them from fate to option. The falling apart of risk-taking and exposure to risks is also responsible for the paradox noted above. The owner of a nuclear power station surely runs a certain risk of loosing his investment in the case of an accident. But this risk is out of proportion to the dangers to which the population is exposed. The separation of risk decision and exposure to dangers corresponds to the principle of functional differentiation. Functional differentiation in this sense means that the specific rationality of a subsystem tends to neglect the precarious consequences of a decision for other subsystems. Above all, the differentiation of responsibility and danger results from the widened range of effects caused by interventions in natural balances which have been so far unknown. Scientific methods which allow operating on natural microprocesses (biotechnology, chemistry, nuclear technology) are producing consequent effects which cannot be traced back to its causal sources without difficulty. In this perspective science and technology produce objective risks which have a new quality compared to industrial risks. The acceptance of technological risks cannot be justified by the professional ethos or the ideology of a group. This is true at least since the erosion of the

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science

239

different utopias of social progress. For a long time the idea of a continous scientific and technical progress provided reasons for the acceptance of risks as the "costs of modernization". In the meantime the ethos of modernization and progress has lost much of its suggestive power. The acceptance of risk is no longer recognized as a civil virtue according to which risks are the price for a better social future. I presume that this development can be directly explained by the characteristics of technological dangers. Since they tend to be potentially universal, the confrontation with these dangers cannot be rewarded any more according to the values of a community or a nation. Likewise, the financial compensation by insurances makes no sense because of the inpredictability of effects. The problems of social attribution give them the status of natural disasters which injure human life under the laws of statistics or fate. As they are, on the other hand, a product of social action they fundamentally threaten the legitimacy of industrial societies. If it is true that the continously modernizing society is the cause of fatal catastrophes, the process of modernization must be regarded as a quasi-natural process which is beyond cultural norms and economic calculations. Risk production and risk acceptance drift apart not only as a result of processes of cultural learning but because of the specific logic of risk definition. To the extent that the new risks cannot be attributed to particular groups they have an individualizing effect. When dangers to life and health are ascribed to the anonymity of accident, the belonging to social groups in terms of class, occupation, neighbourhood, sex and generation, loses some of its importance. In view of the new technological risks all men are equal, even if this does not actually prove true. The individual tends to feel released from social obligations and value relations. It can be assumed that this process will increase individualizing tendencies, which can be observed in western societies at the present (Beck, 1983). On the other hand, increasing individualism and its economic consequences will probably influence the perception of risk and intensify a generalized consciousness of dangers. The more the endangering of social identity is experienced by individuals, the more the readiness to identify oneself with objects whose integrity is threatened will rise. It is comparatively unimportant whether these objects of projection are perishing whales or the "sick German forest" (Lau, 1985). It is not an accident that this compassion for nature emerged in a historical period of increased individualization comparatively independent of objective developments. Whereas traditional risks are well defined and circumscribed, whether by professional knowledge or social conventions, the new risks are in many ways unspecified. For a traditional merchant who plans a precarious trade operation, a physician who is testing an unknown substance, or a general who prepares a battle, profit and loss are definitely circumscribed quantities which are more or less evident. The same is true for the period of time during which they expose

240

Christoph Lau

themselves or their group to a risk. Only the outcome of the experiment to which they subject themselves is doubtful. In comparison, the new risks are remarkably undefined. This does not only refer to the nature and extent of potential damages which often remain uncertain. The temporal duration of negative effects, too, seems to be almost unlimited. In most cases traditional risk takers could outline the period of risk. Times of danger could be differentiated from times of relative safety. This temporal limitation does not only facilitate psychic coping strategies, but also allows the social accentuation of risk periods and their separation from everyday time. The vanishing of this differentiation, which is reinforced by the new technological risks, has far-reaching consequences. It puts the individuals in a situation where they have to act normally under the threat of omnipresent and unlimited dangers. It can be expected that this contradictory demand may lead to a cynical or naive habituation to technological dangers.

IV. New Risks and Societal Conflicts The deficient and uncertain definition of technological risks in temporal, spatial, social and causal repects gives rise to conflicts which are, in first range, argumentative debates about the social definition and classification of hazards. These struggles for knowledge are motivated by the emotional load connected with global risks. More relevant for a sociological perspective is the fact that there is always a multitude of political, economic and social interests affected by the concrete definition of a risk. The theme of these disputes only outwardly seems to be the radical avoidance of risks. Behind this manifest content of debates there are hidden conflicts about the distribution of risks and their consequences which cannot be directly set on the public agenda. There is an analogy between the history of the labour movement and the new social movements. The confrontation between the opponents and the supporters of risk taking has concealed a development which has been going on for some time. As freedom from technological dangers becomes a new utopia, which cannot be realized today, the problem of a just distribution of risks shifts to the centre of discourse. The development of the security state which we are experiencing now shows some parallels to the development of the European welfare state (Evers/Nowotny, 1987). The new social movements turn out to be the major promoters of a successful change in the public agenda from economic inequality to risk distribution and control. At least the realistic part of the environmental movement considers the risk debate as a meliorative effort to

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science

241

limitate and decrease the risk potential. This reformist strategy more or less leads to the replacement of a logic of prevention by a logic of distribution. Normally conflicts about risk definitions take place on the level of public discourse. In these debates arguments and scientific information serve as resources in a game played by collective actors. The sphere of public discourse becomes the symbolic battle field of interest groups, even if it is often concealed by the factual, scientific character of the arguments. An important part of the reality of modern societies is influenced by risk definitions. This concerns a number of elements. 1. The size of the group of threatened persons. According to the definition of a risk, individuals can be differently exposed to danger depending on, for instance, their age, sex or class. 2. The characteristics of the group of risk producers. National interventions can be deduced from scientific results about causal relations. They can also serve for the moral or legal attribution of guilt and fault. Depending on scientific evidence the group of responsibles can consist of many small enterprises or consumers or of one big company. 3. The probability of dangers and catastrophes. The statistical assessment of probabilities influences the profit and loss account of the management and the strategies of policy intervention and of opposing groups. On the one hand, statistical risk assessment may increase the feeling of safety. On the other hand, statistical calculations produce a feeling of uncertainty, as they cannot supply information for the individual case. In this function they may promote a sort of "statistically produced solidarity". 4. The costs of risks. The distribution of the costs of compensation and of prevention is one of the most controversial issues of risk debates. In a more general meaning risk definitions also influence the costs of risk management, of political participation and protest and of scientific research on risks. 5. The chances and benefits resulting from risk taking. The profitability of a technological investment is directly connected with its long-term acceptance and therefore with the scientific definition of its risks. 6. The visibility of damages. The new risks can hardly be perceived by individuals. One can experience them only by knowing. Certain risk definitions, however, allow the physical symbolization of a danger. They determine if these vicarious symbols, such as a nuclear reactor, can serve as meaningful memorials for protest actions. If this is not the case, the symbolic representation of dangers remains in the exclusive sphere of scientific competence. 7. The possibility of individual reactions to a risk. By specific risk definitions possible alternatives of individual reaction are given. The opportunities of removal, of changing everyday behaviour or of protest and political influence depend not only on material conditions, but also very directly on the prevailing cognitive mapping of the problem.

242

Christoph Lau

8. The distribution of expertise and competence. Risk definitions decide to a large extent which scientific or technical discipline is regarded as legitimately competent for the assessment of effects, for observation and reporting. Public debates on risks have an influence on the spheres of competence, on the financial support and the power of scientific communities. Scientists can have their own interest in a special version of a risk and that may affect their judgement. For that reason the development of scientific disciplines or communities is influenced at least indirectly by public controversies about dangers. It is possible that these dimensions of the new conflicts - exposure, power, costs and knowledge - coincide, but in principle they vary independently. It is for this reason that they cannot be represented by a definite structure of conflict, similar to that of capital and labour, and that it is difficult to institutionalize them. The situation gets even more complicated as the new conflict patterns react on the traditional economic conflicts (Heine/Mautz, 1988). For this reason strategic political action becomes more difficult than before for all collective actors. Strategic success in traditional economic conflicts can be measured by the medium of money. Such a symbolic medium which can indicate definite gains or losses of risk conflicts is not in sight with respect to the new risks. All efforts to establish undisputed standards of risk assessment have been frustrated by the incompatability of the subjective and the statistical assessment of dangers. This makes clear why scientific knowledge and not strikes, votes or political influence is the primary resource of conflict.

V. Science and Public Conflicts About Risks Scientific knowledge can be used in these conflicts as an instrument of power, because it influences the radius of action of the different collective actors. Such a cognitive power can be understood as a function of the zone of uncertainty which is controlled by scientific information (Crozier/Friedberg, 1979). Uncertainty about the conditions of future action can be increased or reduced by scientific arguments. When a group of activists succeeds in establishing a credible relation between the pollution of sea-water and dying fish, the strategic possibilities of the respective chemical enterprises will be reduced. On the other hand low measured values of radiation can signify more safety for consumers and therefore more alternatives of consumption. When the individual estimate of dangers is no longer based on personal experience and traditional common sense is losing its value, everyday activities

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science

243

become dependent on information supplied by science and public media. The reliability and validity of this knowledge can only vaguely be estimated by individual knowledge users. It is for this reason, too, that producers of knowledge about risks get in a situation of competition. It seems to be obvious that conflicts about risks are changing the relation between scientific knowledge production and the public use of this knowledge in a fundamental way. The conventional model of science utilization is based on the deductive transfer of results to social practice. It is clear that the premises of this concept get problematic under the conditions of public disputes. The more scientific findings and arguments are used as strategic resources the more the idea of a technical and instrumental use of objective and definite scientific results becomes obsolete or even proves to be a social fiction (Lau/Beck, 1989). Instead, science utilization in public debates follows the logic of collective argumentation and legitimation. Scientific arguments are detached from the interests of their users and develop their own dynamics. Once expressed, scientific arguments will more or less bind political actors to a specific point of view. The more different political groups are involved in the conflict, and the more different stocks of knowledge are made accessible, the more difficult it becomes to strategically select scientific results and to monopolize particular sources of knowledge. A double conclusion can be drawn from this relative autonomy of public disputes about risks. On the one hand, it is clear that the production of scientific knowledge is losing, to a certain degree, its nimbus of objectivity, of social neutrality and of reliability, which has been decisive for the external reputation of science until now. By the institutionalization of counter-expertise not only is the scientific dissent about facts made public, but it also becomes visible that the methodological basis of scientific research can hardly guarantee the certainty which is expected by the public. Scientific knowledge itself becomes a source of uncertainty. The publicity of criticism of science and the wide-spread awareness of a relativistic and opportunistic use of scientific results are characteristic of a period in which science is partially losing its credibility. Paradoxically, at the same time, the dependence on scientific results is increasing. On the other hand, the participants of collective disputes about risks are becoming co-producers of scientific definitions. By the special logic of argumentation the complex but highly specialized supply of scientific knowledge is selected and transformed according to argumentative necessities and constraints. Scientific information is reformulated and synthesized by the participants with reference to their different interests. Paradoxically the autonomy of the argumentative use of scientific findings grows in the same way as public debates become dependent on science. It is doubtful if scientific research can be characterized any longer as being free from social interests. By the emerging power of definition of scientific knowledge about risks the anticipated conditions of science utilization are introduced into the process of research as criteria of selection and control. Generally an increased

244

Christoph Lau

influence of public policy on science as well as an increased influence of science on society can be observed (Weingart, 1983). This process of interpénétration can only be effective because the division of labour between both spheres has not yet been officially suspended. The mentioned problems of control, ascription and validity are typical for cognitive confrontations of this kind. These communicative enterprises, however, are producing a reality of danger on which all participants (including science) are finally dependent in different ways. The predominant role of science in conflicts about risks means, first of all, a devaluation of everyday knowledge. If arguments are to be accepted, they have to refer to relevant scientific knowledge, even if this reference is critical of science. Value-orientated and traditionalistic arguments are more effective if they are related to the causal constructions of science. It is very difficult to condemn, for instance, biotechnology as deviltry without reference to the nature of its fateful consequences (van den Daele, 1988). In this way risk debates are promoting the process of formal rationalization by which arguments get more systematic, more consistent and more differentiated. But the very dependence on the formal procedures of science offers numerous possibilities of concealing one-sided interests. This may be surprising only if one assumes an objectivistic concept of science (Bonß/Hartmann, 1985). The dismissal of this ideal suggests that applied research of the modern type is mainly oriented by experimental or practical success and not by the aim of gaining theoretical knowledge. The relativistic criticism of science may have important consequences. It offers a basis for legitimating the opportunistic, strategic use of scientific results which we can observe in the case of risk controversies. The more the institutional boundaries between practical utilization of knowledge and scientific research are abolished and the principles of methodological criticism win recognition in the public the more the field of scientific risk assessment is becoming a playground of actors who try to succeed with their version of risk interpretation. Science is possibly losing its role as an arbitrator of cognitive conflicts and is becoming a supplier of argumentative resources or may even join the game.

VI. Some Typical Strategies of Risk Definition In the following I shall illustrate the changed role of science by three typical strategies of risk definition. 1) The redefinition of technologically produced risks as natural dangers. If it is possible to present a technological risk as a natural threat, the conflict potential is

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science

245

being neutralized. The risk is virtually excluded from the context of societal responsibility and control and integrated within the sphere of general dangers to life. As its existence is no longer regarded as a result of human decision, the risk cannot produce social conflicts, but only individual or collective efforts of coping. For example, the endangering of a biological species can be explained by the epidemic diffusion of a "natural" virus. Similarly the genetic manipulation of organisms can be interpreted as something "that nature has been doing all the time". The comparison of technically produced radiation with natural radiation dosages has a relativating and appeasing effect. As the acceptance of natural dangers is regarded as normal, the renaturalization of risks gives rise to a feeling of normality and releases the people responsible from legitimation pressure. Typical arguments in this context are evidences of natural causes of a danger and the comparison of a new technological risk with similar facts which can be traced back to natural sources. As the example of natural radiation dosage shows, those strategies may sometimes be successful. Confronted, however, with a universal suspicion of risk these strategies frequently fail. The ecological paradigm, based on complex causal networks, works against the separation of single causal relations and relates even the most natural event to human interventions. The increased reproduction of a destructive parasite, for instance, can be explained by the extinction of a specific species of birds. The concept of ecological interdependence exposes technological innovations to a principally unlimited suspicion of risk and negative effects which questions the simple contrast of nature and society. 2) The normative réévaluation of risks. Another strategy aims at the presentation of a danger as a risk voluntarily taken by a particular group or community. The definition of nuclear war which had been accepted for a long time may be regarded as an example of this strategy. According to the then prevailing doctrine, the risk of a nuclear war was defined as the price which the NATO states had to pay for the defense of western values. The conflict about nuclear energy may show a similar reference to the ethos of a community. West Germany, for instance, is characterized as an economic community which is poor in natural resources and has to stand up against international competition. According to this argument, it therefore has to take the risk of nuclear energy. The propagation of a normative risk acceptance does not work, however, if the responsibility for a risk and the exposure to a risk are separated. The example of the more traditional hazard of getting AIDS shows which conditions enable the standards of a group to regulate risky behaviour. In the case of AIDS there was a change in behaviour after science had attributed the risk to homosexuals, to the emergence of informal group norms and to an integration of the risk definition into the orientation pattern of the group. In the case of technological dangers group processes like this can be effective only if the risk can be at least partially reduced by individual behaviour.

246

Christoph Lau

3) The individualization of risk. A third general strategy, the individualization of risk, can be effective in two forms. Firstly, it can be assumed, by the statistical assessment of a low probability and by the calculation of monetary compensation, that the risk can be rationally managed by individuals, even if the preconditions for these calculations do not exist. The cognitive certainty produced by this rationalization is founded on the more or less credible illusion that catastrophic risks can be calculated in terms of individual costs and benefits. The scientific character of risk assessment suggests in these cases that statistical knowledge can be used for the individual orientation of behaviour. Even if a factual catastrophe would go beyond any possibility of compensation, the nimbus of quantitative calculation seems to correspond to a need of cognitive security. Secondly, risks can be individualized by stressing the individual causation of risks and the responsibility for their consequences. An example for this is the controversy about the "dying of forests" in West Germany (Roqueplo, 1986). Though it can be proved that damages to the forest are due to a highly complex chain of causation, individual motor traffic was singled out as the main cause and the most important field of policy intervention. When risks are defined as caused by individual behaviour, the dangers seem to be preventable by individual decision, even if this is not the case. Sometimes it may be more promising to delegate risk management to individual responsibility than to chose coercive measures. The behaviour to willingly volunteer and the appeal to moral standards will normalize the consciousness of danger and increase its acceptance. The individualization of collective risks corresponds to personal needs of coping. Even if dangers are anonymous and have world-wide consequences, individual strategies of risk reduction can serve as antidotes against the feeling of helplessness. These strategies of risk definition can only illustrate some aspects of risk conflicts. Until now, the new field of cognitive politics has been scarcely investigated by the social sciences. If it is true that the horizon of technological hazards and dangers becomes an essential part of the reality of modern societies, the role of science is getting precarious. On the one hand, scientific research contributes directly to the increase in objective risks. On the other hand, it is only because of science that we can become aware of these dangers. I think that it is this double role of science as a producer of objective risks and as a medium of public conflict which transforms modern societies into knowledge societies.

References Beck, Ulrich 1983 "Jenseits von Klasse und Stand", pp. 35-74 in: R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale heiten. Göttingen: O. Schwartz.

Ungleich-

247

Social Conflicts about the Definition of Risks: The Role of Science Beck, Ulrich 1986 Risikogesellschaft.

Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Bonß, Wolfgang and Heinz Hartmann (eds.) 1985 Entzauberte Wissenschaft. Göttingen: O. Schwartz. Crozier, Michael and Erhard Friedberg 1979 Macht und Organisation. Königstein: Athenäum. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1988 Gutachten zur Problematik der Risikokommunikation Bundesrepublik. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld.

Bereich Gentechnologie

in der

Douglas, Mary and Aaron Wildavsky 1982 Risk and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Evers, A. and Helga Nowotny 1987 Über den Umgang mit Unsicherheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Ewald, François 1987 L'État providence. Paris: Gallimard. Heine, Helmut and Renate Mautz 1988 "Haben Industriefacharbeiter besondere Probleme mit dem Umweltbewußtsein?". Soziale Welt,Felix 39:123-143. Kaufmann, X. 1973 Sicherheit als soziologisches und sozialpolitisches

Problem. Stuttgart: Enke.

Lau, Christoph 1985, "Zum Doppelcharakter der neuen sozialen Bewegungen". Merkur, 39:115-120. Lau, Christoph and Ulrich Beck 1989 Definitionsmacht scher Verlag. Luhmann, Niklas

und Grenzen angewandter

1986 Ökologische Kommunikation.

Sozialforschung.

Opladen: Westdeut-

Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag.

Luhmann, Niklas 1989 "Die Moral des Risikos und das Risiko der Moral", pp. 22-38 in Günther Bechmann (ed.), Risiko und Gesellschaft. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Raschke, Joachim 1987 "Zum Begriff der sozialen Bewegung", pp. 19-29 in Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht (ed.), Neue soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Frankfurt: Campus.

248

Christoph Lau

Roqueplo, Philippe 1986 "Acid Rain. An Accident in Slow Motion". Soziale Welt 37:402-426. Weingart, Peter 1983 "Verwissenschaftlichung der Gesellschaft - Politisierung der Wissenschaft". Zeitschriftfür Soziologie 12:225-241.b

Part V The Economic Structure of Knowledge Societies

Introduction Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The essays in Part Five address economics and the economy. Each author argues that economists and those they advise often get it wrong because they operate with models that are no longer salient to the world economy. Peter Drucker points to two fundamental problems in prevailing economic models. First, they focus too much on the macroeconomics of a given nation-state rather than on the world economy. Second, they treat the world economy as if it is in the process of change, rather than accepting the fact that it has already changed permanently and irreversibly in three fundamental respects. The first change in the world economy identified by Drucker is that the primary products economy has become uncoupled from the industrial economy. Drucker observes that while the raw materials economy (e.g., foods, forests, metals, minerals, but excluding oil) has been in crisis, the industrial world remains somewhat resilient, acting as if there is no raw materials crisis. Drucker explains this situation in terms of the rapid decline in the raw material needed for a given unit of economic development as industries become increasingly knowledge-intensive. For example, in the agricultural sector technologies have greatly reduced waste and helped make previously barren land fertile. Industrial production in general is marked by more "high-tech" processes and products which require fewer raw materials as part of the total production costs. The latter point applies to the energy sector as well, especially petroleum. Drucker concludes that theories and trade policies based on open markets for raw materials are therefore in need of revision, because raw material prices are unlikely to rise substantially in comparison to, for example, manufactured goods and knowledge services. The second change in the world economy identified by Drucker is that, in the industrial economy, production is uncoupled from employment. Drucker makes the poignant observation that in developed countries it is the labor force rather than the economy that is being deindustrialized. Manufacturing production has remained unchanged as a percentage of the total economy. However, in the contemporary economy of developed countries, the greater the level of manufacturing production the less the level of manufacturing (blue-collar) employment. Therefore, at least in peacetime, an increase in manufacturing production is not

252

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

the route to increased employment. Employment (non-manufacturing, non-blue collar) is increasingly derived through the substitution of manual labor with capital, knowledge and machines as the products of knowledge; in other words, through a shift from labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive industries. Therefore a nation-state that clings to the maintenance of blue-collar manufacturing employment will not remain competitive internationally and, in the longer term, will face even greater blue-collar employment crises, vide Britain. An important component of the uncoupling of industrial economy production from employment is a new dynamics of size of firms. Smaller and mid-size firms are proving better than the traditional "economy of scale" large firms with respect to productivity and employment, because they are better placed to foster entrepreneurship, improve communications, and remain close to markets and customers. Drucker also observes that employment in knowledge-based industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, analytical instruments, computers and other information-processing) differs from employment in material-based industries because of economic characteristics (such as those noted above) as well as their position in the international economy. With respect to the latter he points out that knowledge-based industries not only trade products but also services, although the export in knowledge services may not be captured accurately in the overall trade balance. Indeed, exporting knowledge may produce more employment than exporting goods. The uncoupling of industrial economy production from unemployment entails new directions for economic policy. Drucker urges greater emphasis on "invisible trade" and abolishing barriers to trade in services, less stress on the significance of labor costs, and more stress on the significance of capital costs with priority to lower interest rates and reducing deficits. Furthering the last point, Drucker observes that the third change in the world economy is that capital movements (the symbolic economy) have become the driving force, rather than the trade in goods and services (the real economy). Moreover, the link between the symbolic economy and the real economy has been loosened and is unpredictable. Capital movements, unconnected to and even independent of trade, greatly exceed trade finance. Drucker attributes this development to floating exchange rates; liquid funds flowing to petroleum producers; government deficits; and, the politicization of the international economy as exemplified by high interest rates in the United States to attract foreign capital and thereby avoid confronting the domestic deficit. Drucker observes that the more political factors dominate, the more the symbolic economy is uncoupled from the real economy in the international sphere. Another feature of the contemporary symbolic economy is that comparative advantage factors of the real economy (e.g., labor costs) not only determine, but are determined by, exchange rates. Since the latter are beyond business control, a

Introduction

253

firm operating internationally, or facing international competition in its domestic market, must be in two businesses at once: the business of making goods and supplying services; and, the financial business of protecting oneself from foreign exchange exposures. Drucker sketches various "soft-landing" and hard-landing" implications of the rise of the symbolic world economy. He urges governments to harmonize the needs of the two economies rather than exploit the disharmony between them for short-term political benefit. Drucker concludes by drawing some of the implications of his analysis for economic policy. Rapidly industrializing countries need to shift their development away from, for example, raw material exports, and low labor costs in producing finished goods for export, and toward cooperative involvement in production with developed countries. Drucker recommends an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the international monetary system, and tighter coordination of the international money system among major trading countries. He urges economists and those they advise to think globally, rather than in terms of the nation-state as the unit. Domestic economic policies must be established in terms of whether they enhance a country's international competitive position by providing the opportunity to exploit the changed world economy. Changes in the world economy are also the focus of Richard Lipsey's essay, although he is inclined to see economic order as changing in still unsettled directions rather than already changed. Lipsey reflects on the contemporary world and economic policies appropriate to it through a contract with economic order in 1950. The economic order of 1950 was dominated by the United States. Goods predominated, as a result of efficient production through large-scale output and worker productivity, almost to the point of realizing the ideal of Adam Smith. Living standards were high for virtually all employed workers. There was apparent stability in the structure of the goods producing economy. Governments focused on the GNP, regulating the distribution of national income to prevent large firms from exploiting their market power to earn more than was deemed reasonable. In the United States, domestic trade and capital formation were paramount, so that international ramifications of policies were largely ignored in favor of a focus on national living standards. Comparative advantage was based largely on natural resources, power sources, climate, and the "inherent" characteristics of the labor force. The cold war had heightened, creating a frigid and rigid binary opposition between one party/planned economies led by the U.S.S.R. and multi-party/market economies led by the U.S.. Lipsey witnesses two dramatic changes in recent years. First, there is the victory of the free-market system. Lipsey reads this victory as showing the superiority of decentralized markets over centrally planned ones as coordinating and signalling devices, and as indicating that government intervention should be reactive to market signals rather than proactive in setting the market's parameters

254

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

by decree. Second, and ironically, there has been some loss of faith in the free-market system. For example, the United States is pursuing more managed international trade, often on a bilateral basis. Many states are pursuing a new symbiotic relation with the private sector, including collective management of domestic innovation and of international competitiveness in the interest of free market efficiency. Lipsey characterizes "the world of 1990" mainly in terms of the revolution in communications and its attendant impact upon globalization. In the context of much cheaper and more reliable communications, national economies become less distinct, and increasingly integrate financial and production sectors. Transnational corporations expand in size and significance as vehicles of economic growth, lower prices and employment, and contribute to globalization by breaking down the ability of single national governments to control their economic affairs. Production is increasingly knowledge-based and knowledge-intensive. This has the effect of shortening the production cycle and shifts more costs to product development. These two factors combine to make innovation more risky. There is a proliferation of products, with particular industries pursuing product diversity internally. The trick of the trade is now "economies of scope" ("spreading production over a large number of different but related products") more than "economies of scales" ("producing a large volume of a single homogeneous product"). The knowledge-based economy is a service economy, typified by the white-collar office worker using a computer. Lipsey believes the service economy provides a better quality of working life than in 1950, although it may be fostering some increase in inequality of the distribution of family incomes. In contrast to 1950, comparative advantage now depends much more on acquired knowledge and skills rather than on "natural-given endowments". In this context, Canada and the United States have become comparatively disadvantaged, and have responded in a somewhat defensive, protectionist manner which may compound rather than correct their less advantaged position. The U.S. and Canada are not the only nation-states that must adjust to these new realities. For example, in a similar vein to Drucker, Lipsey argues that developing countries should forget the 1950 template and the order it visualized as the key to economic growth and employment. Lipsey is also in accord with Drucker in stating that national governments should forget about continuing to prop up the industrial giants. In making this point he notes that new technologies can undercut natural monopolies and foster intense competition. Hence governments that nationalized to prevent exploitation of a position of natural monopoly in the interest of consumer protection need to address alternatives to the nationalization strategy. Nationalized postal service is a case in point. Turning to other sectors, Lipsey observes a blurring of the boundaries of operation among

Introduction

255

banking, insurance, trust and underwriting (securities). Failure to be sensitive to this blurring, and to take advantage of it, is costly, as exemplified by the current state of banks in the United States. There is also a need to reconsider the place of banks in industrial production. Lipsey concludes with counsel that is consistent with that offered by Drucker. The regulation of competition can no longer be limited to internal, domestic matters of the nation-state. Domestic deregulation to enhance competition can have severe ramifications, including loss of comparative advantage and greater risk and uncertainty, as Americans discovered in several arenas during the 1980s. A given firm's competitive position must be seen in the global context: instead of shielding its firms from full competition, a national government must help them to become more competitive globally. Judith Marquand continues a central theme in the work of Drucker and Lipsey, namely the inadequacy of prevailing economic models for understanding the present conjuncture and developing sound policies to deal with it. However, Marquand offers a different focus and level of analysis. She develops a social psychology of how people use knowledge to take action in order to indicate how individual competence in general skills of knowledge application is the key to innovations, economic growth and employment. Marquand initially considers the relation between knowledge and "human capital". She conceives human capital as like any other type of capital good in that it is a produced commodity required for production. People's skills and productive knowledge are produced, becoming a component of goods production and enhancing it in both quantity and quality. Economic models which are static make it very difficult to measure the value of human capital, except to a limited degree regarding the distribution of skills and the consequences of that distribution. Other disciplines must be turned to in order to address adequately such questions as what skills are required; how and why employers, individuals and educators perceive those skills as they relate to tasks at hand; what processes influence skill formation; and, the means by which the use of particular skills influences economic change. Marquand focuses on the need to acquire general skills, which she defines broadly as "competence" in knowledge application across various practical contexts. There are several dimensions or components of competence. Facility in language aids recognition of contextually-appropriate concepts, classifications, patterns and distinctions. Problem solving entails the appropriate reading of present circumstances, what seems feasible, and what are the likely consequences of action. Decision making is a matter of what Herbert Simon termed "satisficing": what will do for practical purposes, as opposed to being fully worked out according to the super-rationalistic optimisation models of economists. Communication of decisions requires reflexivity, a self-monitoring of previous decisions and decision-processes in order to make use of them in the future.

256

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

Experts are people with competence in these terms. They have the general skills to understand, analyze, take decisions and communicate across various contexts of practical action. Marquand's vision is to have all workers in society become experts as defined here. This can be achieved by education, or in her terms, "training", especially with respect to transferring knowledge from context to context through reasoning by analogy. Of course people must be motivated to learn. Marquand urges the creation of occupational cultures that will foster motivation, backed in particular by a format of standards and qualifications that will provide a frame of reference and ultimately routine deference to expectations regarding competence. Marquand stresses that an appreciation of competence and innovation at the level of the individual is important for economics. Every application of knowledge - each everyday, individual transfer of knowledge to new contexts - is innovative. An understanding of the process of innovation so conceived will move economics beyond the status concept of human capital, which does not portray process except as a black box, talks only of inputs and outputs, and places too much emphasis on special skills. An understanding of competence and its relation to innovation will open the black box and show a process in which general skill is of greatest significance: the skill to use acquired knowledge across myriad contexts. Marquand also stresses the importance for the economy of an appreciation of competence and innovation at the level of the individual. The economic order, and world order more generally, are in flux. Training in competence (general skills) will provide the innovation and adaptability necessary to respond in the unpredictable, developing marketplace. At the same time much will remain uncertain, including any ability to know in advance whether a particular training will be of value. The only solution is to institutionalize the process of learning as an integral component of the changing economy, fostering competence and further innovation in the very process of going on.

The Changed World Economy1 Peter F. Drucker

I.

The talk today is of the changing world economy. I wish to argue that the world economy is not "changing"; it has already changed - in its foundations and in its structure - and in all probability the change is irreversible. Within the last decade or so, three fundamental changes have occurred in the very fabric of the world economy: - the primary-products economy has come "uncoupled" from the industrial economy; - in the industrial economy itself, production has come "uncoupled" from employment; - capital movements rather than trade (in both goods and services) have become the driving force of the world economy. The two have not quite come uncoupled, but the link has become loose, and worse, unpredictable. These changes are permanent rather than cyclical. We may never understand what caused them - the causes of economic change are rarely simple. It may be a long time before economic theorists accept that there have been fundamental changes, and longer still before they adapt their theories to account for them. Above all, they will surely be most reluctant to accept that it is the world economy in control, rather than the macroeconomics of the nation-state on which most economic theory still exclusively focuses. Yet this is the clear lesson of the success stories of the last 20 years - of Japan and South Korea; of West Germany (actually a more impressive though far less flamboyant example than Japan); and of the one great success within the United States, the turnaround and rapid rise of an industrial New England, which only 20 years ago was widely considered moribund. Practitioners, whether in government or in business, cannot wait until there is a

258

Peter F. Drucker

new theory. They have to act. And their actions will be more likely to succeed the more they are based on the new realities of a changed world economy.

II. First, consider the primary-products economy. The collapse of non-oil commodity prices began in 1977 and has continued, interrupted only once (right after the 1979 petroleum panic), by a speculative burst that lasted less than six months; it was followed by the fastest drop in commodity prices ever registered. By early 1986 raw material prices were at their lowest levels in recorded history in relation to the prices of manufactured goods and services - in general as low as at the depths of the Great Depression, and in some cases (e.g., lead and copper) lower than their 1932 levels. 2 This collapse of prices and the slowdown of demand stand in startling contrast to what had been confidently predicted. Ten years ago the Club of Rome declared that desperate shortages for all raw materials were an absolute certainty by the year 1985. In 1980 the Carter Administration's Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century concluded that world demand for food would increase steadily for at least 20 years; that worldwide food production would fall except in developed countries; and that real food prices would double. This forecast helps to explain why American farmers bought up all available farmland, thus loading on themselves the debt burden that now so threatens them. Contrary to all these expectations, global agricultural output actually rose almost one-third between 1972 and 1985 to reach an all-time high. It rose the fastest in less-developed countries. Similarly, production of practically all forest products, metals and minerals has gone up between 20 and 35 percent in the last ten years - again with the greatest increases in less-developed countries. There is not the slightest reason to believe that the growth rates will slacken, despite the collapse of commodity prices. Indeed, as far as farm products are concerned, the biggest increase - at an almost exponential rate of growth - may still be ahead. 3 Perhaps even more amazing than the contrast between such predictions and what has happened is that the collapse in the raw materials economy seems to have had almost no impact on the world industrial economy. If there was one thing considered "proven" beyond doubt in business cycle theory, it is that a sharp and prolonged drop in raw material prices inevitably, and within 18 to 30 months, brings on a worldwide depression in the industrial economy. 4 While the industrial economy of the world today is not "normal" by any definition of the term, it is surely not in a depression. Indeed, industrial production in the developed

The Changed World Economy

259

non-communist countries has continued to grow steadily, albeit at a somewhat slower rate in Western Europe. Of course, a depression in the industrial economy may only have been postponed and may still be triggered by a banking crisis caused by massive defaults on the part of commodity-producing debtors, whether in the Third World or in Iowa. But for almost ten years the industrial world has run along as though there were no raw material crisis at all. The only explanation is that for the developed countries - excepting only the Soviet Union - the primary-products sector has become marginal where before it has always been central. In the late 1920s, before the Great Depression, farmers still constituted nearly one-third of the U.S. population and farm income accounted for almost a quarter of the gross national product. Today they account for less than five percent of population and even less of GNP. Even adding the contribution that foreign raw material and farm producers make to the American economy through their purchases of American industrial goods, the total contribution of the raw material and food producing economies of the world to the American G N P is, at most, one-eighth. In most other developed countries, the share of the raw materials sector is even lower. Only in the Soviet Union is the farm still a major employer, with almost a quarter of the labor force working on the land. The raw material economy has thus come uncoupled from the industrial economy. This is a major structural change in the world economy, with tremendous implications for economic and social policy as well as economic theory, in developed and developing countries alike. For example, if the ratio between the prices of manufactured goods and the prices of non-oil primary products (that is, foods, forest products, metals and minerals) had been the same in 1985 as it had been in 1973, the 1985 U.S. trade deficit might have been a full one-third less - $100 billion as against an actual $150 billion. Even the U.S. trade deficit with Japan might have been almost one-third lower, some $35 billion as against $50 billion. American farm exports would have bought almost twice as much. And industrial exports to a major U.S. customer, Latin America, would have held; their near-collapse alone accounts for a full one-sixth of the deterioration in U.S. foreign trade over the past five years. If primary-product prices had not collapsed, America's balance of payments might even have shown a substantial surplus. Conversely, Japan's trade surplus with the world might have been a full 20 percent lower. And Brazil in the last few years would have had an export surplus almost 50 percent higher than its current level. Brazil would then have had little difficulty meeting the interest on its foreign debt and would not have had to endanger its economic growth by drastically curtailing imports as it did. Altogether, if raw material prices in relationship to manufactured goods prices had remained at the 1973 or even the 1979 level, there would be no crisis for most debtor countries, especially in Latin America. 5

260

Peter F. Drucker

III. What accounts for this change? Demand for food has actually grown almost as fast as the Club of Rome and the Global 2000 Report anticipated. But the supply has grown much faster; it not only has kept pace with population growth, it has steadily outrun it. One cause of this, paradoxically, is surely the fear of worldwide food shortages, if not world famine, which resulted in tremendous efforts to increase food output. The United States led the parade with a farm policy of subsidizing increased food production. The European Economic Community followed suit, and even more successfully. The greatest increases, both in absolute and in relative terms, however, have been in developing countries: in India, in post-Mao China and in the rice-growing countries of Southeast Asia. And there is also the tremendous cut in waste. In the 1950s, up to 80 percent of the grain harvest of India fed rats and insects rather than human beings. Today in most parts of India the wastage is down to 20 percent. This is largely the result of unspectacular but effective "infrastructure innovations" such as small concrete storage bins, insecticides and three-wheeled motorized carts that take the harvest straight to a processing plant instead of letting it sit in the open for weeks. It is not fanciful to expect that the true "revolution" on the farm is still ahead. Vast tracts of land that hitherto were practically barren are being made fertile, either through new methods of cultivation or through adding trace minerals to the soil. The sour clays of the Brazilian highlands or the aluminum-contaminated soils of neighboring Peru, for example, which never produced anything before, now produce substantial quantities of high-quality rice. Even greater advances have been registered in biotechnology, both in preventing diseases of plants and animals and in increasing yields. In other words, just as the population growth of the world is slowing down quite dramatically in many regions, food production is likely to increase sharply. Import markets for food have all but disappeared. As a result of its agricultural drive, Western Europe has become a substantial food exporter plagued increasingly by unsalable surpluses of all kinds of foods, from dairy products to wine, from wheat to beef. China, some observers predict, will have become a food exporter by the year 2000. India is about at that stage, especially with wheat and coarse grains. Of all major non-communist countries, only Japan is still a substantial food importer, buying abroad about one-third of its food needs. Today most of this comes from the United States. Within five or ten years, however, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia - low-cost producers that are fast increasing food output - are likely to try to become Japan's major suppliers. The only remaining major food buyer on the world market may then be the Soviet Union - and its food needs are likely to grow.6 However, the food

The Changed World Economy

261

surpluses in the world are so large - maybe five to eight times what the Soviet Union would ever need to buy - that its food needs are not by themselves enough to put upward pressure on world prices. On the contrary, the competition for access to the Soviet market among the surplus producers - the United States, Europe, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand (and probably India within a few years) - is already so intense as to depress world food prices. For practically all non-farm commodities, whether forest products, minerals or metals, world demand is shrinking - in sharp contrast to what the Club of Rome so confidently predicted. Indeed, the amount of raw material needed for a given unit of economic output has been dropping for the entire century, except in wartime. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund calculates the decline as one and one-quarter percent a year (compounded) since 1900.7 This would mean that the amount of industrial raw materials needed for one unit of industrial production is now no more than two-fifths of what it was in 1900. And the decline is accelerating. The Japanese experience is particularly striking. In 1984, for every unit of industrial production, Japan consumed only 60 percent of the raw materials consumed for the same volume of industrial production in 1973, 11 years earlier. Why this decline in demand? It is not that industrial production is fading in importance as the service sector grows - a common myth for which there is not the slightest evidence. What is happening is much more significant. Industrial production is steadily switching away from heavily material-intensive products and processes. One of the reasons for this is the new high-technology industries. The raw materials in a semi-conductor microchip account for one to three percent of total production cost; in an automobile their share is 40 percent, and in pots and pans 60 percent. But also in older industries the same scaling down of raw material needs goes on, and with respect to old products as well as new ones. Fifty to 100 pounds of fiberglass cable transmit as many telephone messages as does one ton of copper wire. This steady drop in the raw material intensity of manufacturing processes and manufacturing products extends to energy as well, and especially to petroleum. To produce 100 pounds of fiberglass cable requires no more than five percent of the energy needed to produce one ton of copper wire. Similarly, plastics, which are increasingly replacing steel in automobile bodies, represent a raw material cost, including energy, of less than half that of steel. Thus it is quite unlikely that raw material prices will ever rise substantially as compared to the prices of manufactured goods (or high-knowledge services such as information, education or health care) except in the event of a major prolonged war. One implication of this sharp shift in the terms of trade of primary products concerns the developed countries, both major raw material exporters like the United States and major raw material importing countries such as Japan. For two centuries the United States has made maintenance of open markets for its farm

262

Peter F. Drucker

products and raw materials central to its international trade policy. This is what it has always meant by an "open world economy" and by "free trade". Does this still make sense, or does the United States instead have to accept that foreign markets for its foodstuffs and raw materials are in a long-term and irreversible decline? Conversely, does it still make sense for Japan to base its international economic policy on the need to earn enough foreign exchange to pay for imports of raw materials and foodstuffs? Since Japan opened to the outside world 120 years ago, preoccupation - amounting almost to a national obsession - with its dependence on raw material and food imports has been the driving force of Japan's policy, and not in economics alone. Now Japan might well start out with the assumption - a far more realistic one in today's world - that foodstuffs and raw materials are in permanent oversupply. Taken to their logical conclusion, these developments might mean that some variant of the traditional Japanese policy - highly mercantilist with a strong de-emphasis of domestic consumption in favor of an equally strong emphasis on capital formation, and protection of infant industries - might suit the United States better than its own tradition. The Japanese might be better served by some variant of America's traditional policies, especially a shifting from favoring savings and capital formation to favoring consumption. Is such a radical break with more than a century of political convictions and commitments likely? From now on the fundamentals of economic policy are certain to come under increasing criticism in these two countries - and in all other developed countries as well. These fundamentals will, moreover, come under the increasingly intense scrutiny of major Third World nations. For if primary products are becoming of marginal importance to the economies of the developed world, traditional development theories and policies are losing their foundations. 8 They are based on the assumption - historically a perfectly valid one - that developing countries pay for imports of capital goods by exporting primary materials - farm and forest products, minerals, metals. All development theories, however much they differ otherwise, further assume that raw material purchases by the industrially developed countries must rise at least as fast as industrial production in these countries. This in turn implies that, over any extended period of time, any raw material producer becomes a better credit risk and shows a more favorable balance of trade. These premises have become highly doubtful. On what foundation, then, can economic development be based, especially in countries that do not have a large enough population to develop an industrial economy based on the home market? As we shall presently see, these countries can no longer base their economic development on low labor costs.

The Changed World Economy

263

IV. The second major change in the world economy is the uncoupling of manufacturing production from manufacturing employment. Increased manufacturing production in developed countries has actually come to mean decreasing blue-collar employment. As a consequence, labor costs are becoming less and less important as a "comparative cost" and as a factor in competition. There is a great deal of talk these days about the "de-industrialization" of America. In fact, manufacturing production has risen steadily in absolute volume and has remained unchanged as a percentage of the total economy. Since the end of the Korean War, that is, for more than 30 years, it has held steady at 23-24 percent of America's total GNP. It has similarly remained at its traditional level in all of the other major industrial countries. It is not even true that American industry is doing poorly as an exporter. To be sure, the United States is importing from both Japan and Germany many more manufactured goods than ever before. But it is also exporting more, despite the heavy disadvantages of an expensive dollar, increasing labor costs and the near-collapse of a major industrial market, Latin America. In 1984 - the year the dollar soared - exports of American manufactured goods rose by 8.3 percent; and they went up again in 1985. The share of U.S.-manufactured exports in world exports was 17 percent in 1978. By 1985 it had risen to 20 percent - while West Germany accounted for 18 percent and Japan 16. The three countries together thus account for more than half of the total. Thus it is not the American economy that is being "de-industrialized". It is the American labor force. Between 1973 and 1985, manufacturing production (measured in constant dollars) in the United States rose by almost 40 percent. Yet manufacturing employment during that period went down steadily. There are now five million fewer people employed in blue-collar work in American manufacturing industry than there were in 1975. Yet in the last 12 years total employment in the United States grew faster than at any time in the peacetime history of any country - from 82 to 110 million between 1973 and 1985 - that is, by a full one-third. The entire growth, however, was in non-manufacturing, and especially in non-blue-collar jobs. The trend itself is not new. In the 1920s one out of every three Americans in the labor force was a blue-collar worker in manufacturing. In the 1950s the figure was one in four. It now is down to one in every six - and dropping. While the trend has been running for a long time, it has lately accelerated to the point where - in peacetime at least - no increase in manufacturing production, no matter how large, is likely to reverse the long-term decline in the number of blue-collar jobs in manufacturing or in their proportion of the labor force.

264

Peter F. Drucker

This trend is the same in all developed countries, and is, indeed, even more pronounced in Japan. It is therefore highly probable that in 25 years developed countries such as the United States and Japan will employ no larger a proportion of the labor force in manufacturing than developed countries now employ in farming - at most, ten percent. Today the United States employs around 18 million people in blue-collar jobs in manufacturing industries. B y 2010, the number is likely to be no more than 12 million. In some major industries the drop will be even sharper. It is quite unrealistic, for instance, to expect that the American automobile industry will employ more than one-third o f its present blue-collar force 25 years hence, even though production might be 50 percent higher. If a company, an industry or a country does not in the next quarter century sharply increase manufacturing production and at the same time sharply reduce the blue-collar work force, it cannot hope to remain competitive - or even to remain "developed". It would decline fairly fast. Britain has been in industrial decline for the last 25 years, largely because the number o f blue-collar workers per unit of manufacturing production went down far more slowly than in all other non-communist developed countries. Even so, Britain has the highest unemployment rate among non-communist developed countries - more than 13 percent.

V. The British example indicates a new and critical economic equation: a country, an industry or a company that puts the preservation of blue-collar manufacturing jobs ahead of international competitiveness (which implies a steady shrinkage of such j o b s ) will soon have neither production nor jobs. The attempt to preserve such blue-collar jobs is actually a prescription for unemployment. So far, this concept has achieved broad national acceptance only in Japan.9 Indeed, Japanese planners, whether in government or private business, start out with the assumption of a doubling of production within 15 or 20 years based on a cut in blue-collar employment of 25 to 40 percent. A g o o d many large American companies such as I B M , General Electric and the big automobile companies have similar forecasts. Implicit in this is the conclusion that a country will have less overall unemployment the faster it shrinks blue-collar employment in manufacturing. This is not a conclusion that American politicians, labor leaders or indeed the general public can easily understand or accept. What confuses the issue even more is that the United States is experiencing several separate and different shifts in the manufacturing economy. One is the acceleration o f the substitution o f

The Changed World Economy

265

knowledge and capital for manual labor. Where we spoke of mechanization a few decades ago, we now speak of "robotization" or "automation". This is actually more a change in terminology than a change in reality. When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in 1909, he cut the number of man-hours required to produce a motor car by some 80 percent in two or three years - far more than anyone expects to result from even the most complete robotization. But there is no doubt that we are facing a new, sharp acceleration in the replacement of manual workers by machines - that is, by the products of knowledge. A second development - and in the long run this may be even more important - is the shift from industries that were primarily labor-intensive to industries that, from the beginning, are knowledge-intensive. The manufacturing costs of the semi-conductor microchip are about 70 percent knowledge - that is, research, development and testing - and no more than 12 percent labor. Similarly with prescription drugs, labor represents no more than 15 percent, with knowledge representing almost 50 percent. By contrast, in the most fully robotized automobile plant labor would still account for 20 or 25 percent. Another perplexing development in manufacturing is the reversal of the dynamics of size. Since the early years of this century, the trend in all developed countries has been toward ever larger manufacturing plants. The economies of scale greatly favored them. Perhaps equally important, what one might call the "economies of management" favored them. Until recently, modern management techniques seemed applicable only to fairly large units. This has been reversed with a vengeance over the last 15 to 20 years. The entire shrinkage in manufacturing jobs in the United States has occurred in large companies, beginning with the giants in steel and automobiles. Small and especially medium-sized manufacturers have either held their own or actually added employees. In respect to market standing, exports and profitability too, smaller and middle-sized businesses have done remarkably better than big ones. The reversal of the dynamics of size is occurring in the other developed countries as well, even in Japan where bigger was always better and biggest meant best. The trend has reversed itself even in old industries. The most profitable automobile company these last years has not been one of the giants, but a medium-sized manufacturer in Germany - BMW. The only profitable steel companies, whether in the United States, Sweden or Japan, have been mediumsized makers of specialty products such as oil drilling pipe. In part, especially in the United States, this is a result of a resurgence of entrepreneurship. 10 But perhaps equally important, we have learned in the last 30 years how to manage the small and medium-sized enterprise to the point where the advantages of smaller size, e.g., ease of communications and nearness to market and customer, increasingly outweigh what had been forbidding management limitations. Thus in the United States, but increasingly in the other leading manufacturing nations such as Japan and West Germany as well, the dynamism in the economy has shifted from the very big companies that dominated the world's

266

Peter F. Drucker

industrial economy for 30 years after World War II to companies that, while much smaller, are professionally managed and largely publicly financed.

VI. Two distinct kinds of "manufacturing industry" are emerging. One is materialbased, represented by the industries that provided economic growth in the first three-quarters of this century. The other is information- and knowledge-based: pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, analytical instruments and information processing such as computers. It is largely the information-based manufacturing industries that are growing. These two groups differ not only in their economic characteristics but especially in their position in the international economy. The products of material-based industries have to be exported or imported as "products". They appear in the balance of trade. The products of information-based industries can be exported or imported both as "products" and as "services", which may not appear accurately in the overall trade balance. An old example is the printed book. For one major scientific publishing company, "foreign earnings" account for two-thirds of total revenues. Yet the company exports few, if any, actual books - books are heavy. It sells "rights", and the "product" is produced abroad. Similarly, the most profitable computer "export sales" may actually show up in trade statistics as an "import". This is the fee some of the world's leading banks, multinationals and Japanese trading companies get for processing in their home office data arriving electronically from their branches and customers around the world. In all developed countries, "knowledge" workers have already become the center of gravity of the labor force. Even in manufacturing they will outnumber blue-collar workers within ten years. Exporting knowledge so that it produces license income, service fees and royalties may actually create substantially more jobs than exporting goods. This in turn requires - as official Washington seems to have realized - far greater emphasis in trade policy on "invisible trade" and on abolishing the barriers to the trade in services. Traditionally, economists have treated invisible trade as a step-child, if they noted it at all. Increasingly, it will become central. Within 20 years major developed countries may find that their income from invisible trade is larger than their income from exports. Another implication of the "uncoupling" of manufacturing production from manufacturing employment is, however, that the choice between an industrial policy that favors industrial production and one that favors industrial employment

The Changed World Economy

267

is going to be a singularly contentious political issue for the rest of this century. Historically these have always been considered two sides of the same coin. From now on the two will increasingly pull in different directions; they are indeed already becoming alternatives, if not incompatible. Benign neglect - the policy of the Reagan Administration these last few years - may be the best policy one can hope for, and the only one with a chance of success. It is probably not an accident that the United States has, after Japan, by far the lowest unemployment rate of any industrially developed country. Still, there is surely need also for systematic efforts to retrain and to place redundant blue-collar workers - something no one as yet knows how to do successfully. Finally, low labor costs are likely to become less of an advantage in international trade simply because in the developed countries they are going to account for less of total costs. Moreover, the total costs of automated processes are lower than even those of traditional plants with low labor costs; this is mainly because automation eliminates the hidden but high costs of "not working", such as the expense of poor quality and rejects, and the costs of shutting down the machinery to change from one model of a product to another. Consider two automated American producers of televisions, Motorola and RCA. Both were almost driven out of the market by imports from countries with much lower labor costs. Both subsequently automated, with the result that these American-made products now successfully compete with foreign imports. Similarly, some highly automated textile mills in the Carolinas can underbid imports from countries with very low labor costs such as Thailand. On the other hand, although some American semiconductor companies have lower labor costs because they do the labor-intensive work offshore, e.g., in West Africa, they are still the high-cost producers and easily underbid by the heavily automated Japanese. The cost of capital will thus become increasingly important in international competition. And this is where, in the last ten years, the United States has become the highest-cost country - and Japan the lowest. A reversal of the U.S. policy of high interest rates and costly equity capital should thus be a priority for American decision-makers. This demands that reduction of the government deficit, rather than high interest rates, becomes the first defense against inflation. For developed countries, especially the United States, the steady downgrading of labor costs as a major competitive factor could be a positive development. For the Third World, especially rapidly industrializing countries such as Brazil, South Korea or Mexico, it is, however, bad news. In the rapid industrialization of the nineteenth century, one country, Japan, developed by exporting raw materials, mainly silk and tea, at steadily rising prices. Another, Germany, developed by leap-frogging into the "high-tech" industries of its time, mainly electricity, chemicals and optics. A third, the United States, did both. Both routes are blocked for today's rapidly industrializing countries - the first because of the deterioration of the terms of trade for primary products, the second because it requires an infrastructure of knowledge and

268

Peter F. Drucker

education far beyond the reach of a poor country (although South Korea is reaching for it). Competition based on lower labor costs seemed to be the only alternative; is this also going to be blocked?

VII. The third major change that has occurred in the world economy is the emergence of the "symbol" economy - capital movements, exchange rates and credit flows - as the flywheel of the world economy, in place of the "real" economy the flow of goods and services. The two economies seem to be operating increasingly independently. This is both the most visible and the least understood of the changes. World trade in goods is larger, much larger, than it has ever been before. And so is the "invisible trade", the trade in services. Together, the two amount to around $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion a year. But the London Eurodollar market, in which the world's financial institutions borrow from and lend to each other, turns over $300 billion each working day, or $75 trillion a year, a volume at least 25 times that of world trade."In addition, there are the foreign exchange transactions in the world's main money centers, in which one currency is traded against another. These run around $150 billion a day, or about $35 trillion a year - 12 times the worldwide trade in goods and services. Of course, many of these Eurodollars, yen and Swiss francs are just being moved from one pocket to another and may be counted more than once. A massive discrepancy still exists, and there is only one conclusion: capital movements unconnected to trade - and indeed largely independent of it greatly exceed trade finance. There is no one explanation for this explosion of international - or more accurately, transnational - money flows. The shift from fixed to floating exchange rates in 1971 may have given an initial impetus (though, ironically, it was meant to do the exact opposite) by inviting currency speculation. The surge in liquid funds flowing to petroleum producers after the two oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 was surely a major factor. But there can be little doubt that the U.S. government deficit also plays a big role. The American budget has become a financial "black hole", sucking in liquid funds from all over the world, making the United States the world's major debtor country. 12 Indeed, it can be argued that it is the budget deficit that underlies the American trade and payments deficit. A trade and payments deficit is, in effect, a loan from the seller of goods and services to the buyer, that is, to the United

The Changed World Economy

269

States. Without it Washington could not finance its budget deficit, at least not without the risk of explosive inflation. The way major countries have learned to use the international economy to avoid tackling disagreeable domestic problems is unprecedented: the United States has used high interest rates to attract foreign capital and avoid confronting its domestic deficit; the Japanese have pushed exports to maintain employment despite a sluggish domestic economy. This politicization of the international economy is surely also a factor in the extreme volatility and instability of capital flows and exchange rates. Whichever of these causes is judged the most important, together they have produced a basic change: in the world economy of today, the "real" economy of goods and services and the "symbol" economy of money, credit and capital are no longer bound tightly to each other; they are, indeed, moving further and further apart. Traditional international economic theory is still neoclassical, holding that trade in goods and services determines international capital flows and foreign exchange rates. Capital flows and foreign exchange rates since the first half of the 1970s have, however, moved quite independently of foreign trade, and indeed (e.g., in the rise of the dollar in 1984-85) have run counter to it. But the world economy also does not fit the Keynesian model in which the "symbol" economy determines the "real" economy. The relationship between the turbulences in the world economy and the various domestic economies has become quite obscure. Despite its unprecedented trade deficit, the United States has had no deflation and has barely been able to keep inflation in check; it also has the lowest unemployment rate of any major industrial country except Japan, lower than that of West Germany, whose exports of manufactured goods and trade surpluses have been growing as fast as those of Japan. Conversely, despite the exponential growth of Japanese exports and an unprecedented Japanese trade surplus, the Japanese domestic economy is not booming but has remained remarkably sluggish and is not generating any new jobs. Economists assume that the "real" economy and the "symbol" economy will come together again. They do disagree, however - and quite sharply - as to whether they will do so in a "soft landing" or in a head-on collision. The "soft-landing" scenario - the Reagan Administration is committed to it, as are the governments of most of the other developed countries - expects the U.S. government deficit and the U.S. trade deficit to go down together until both attain surplus, or at least balance, sometime in the early 1990s. Presumably both capital flows and exchange rates will then stabilize, with production and employment high and inflation low in major developed countries. In sharp contrast to this are the "hard-landing" scenarios. 13 With every deficit year the indebtedness of the U.S. government goes up, and with it the interest charges on the U.S. budget, which in turn raises the deficit even further. Sooner or later, the argument goes, foreign confidence in America and the American

270

Peter F. Drucker

dollar will be undermined - some observers consider this practically imminent. Foreigners would stop lending money to the United States and, indeed, try to convert their dollars into other currencies. The resulting "flight from the dollar" would bring the dollar's exchange rates crashing down, and also create an extreme credit crunch, if not a "liquidity crisis" in the United States. The only question is whether the result for the United States would be a deflationary depression, a renewed outbreak of severe inflation or, the most dreaded affliction, "stagflation" - a deflationary, stagnant economy combined with an inflationary currency. There is, however, a totally different "hard-landing" scenario, one in which Japan, not the United States, faces an economic crisis. For the first time in peacetime history the major debtor, the United States, owes its foreign debt in its own currency. To get out of this debt it does not need to repudiate it, declare a moratorium, or negotiate a "roll-over". All it has to do is devalue its currency and the foreign creditor has effectively been expropriated. For "foreign creditor", read Japan. The Japanese by now hold about half of the dollars the United States owes to foreigners. In addition, practically all of their other claims on the outside world are in dollars, largely because the Japanese have resisted all attempts to make the yen an international trading currency lest the government lose control over it. Altogether, Japanese banks now hold more international assets than do the banks of any other country, including the United States. And practically all these assets are in U.S. dollars - $640 billion of them. A devaluation of the U.S. dollar thus would fall most heavily on the Japanese. The repercussions for Japan extend deep into its trade and domestic economy. By far the largest part of Japan's exports goes to the United States. If there is a "hard landing", the United States might well turn protectionist almost overnight; it is unlikely that Americans would let in large volumes of imported goods were the unemployment rate to soar. But this would immediately cause severe unemployment in Tokyo and Nagoya and Hiroshima, and might indeed set off a true depression in Japan. There is still another "hard-landing" scenario. In this version neither the United States, nor Japan, nor the industrial economies altogether, experience the "hard landing"; it would hit the already depressed producers of primary products. Practically all primary materials are traded in dollars, and their prices might not go up at all should the dollar be devalued (they actually went down when the dollar plunged by 30 percent between summer 1985 and February 1986). Thus Japan may be practically unaffected by a dollar devaluation; Japan needs dollar balances only to pay for primary-product imports, as it buys little else on the outside and has no foreign debt. The United States, too, may not suffer, and may even benefit as its industrial exports become more competitive. But while the primary producers sell mainly in dollars, they have to pay in other developed nations' currencies for a large part of their industrial imports. The United States, after all, although the world's leading exporter of industrial goods, still accounts

The Changed World Economy

271

for only one-fifth of the total. And the dollar prices of the industrial goods furnished by others - the Germans, the Japanese, the French, the British, and so on - are likely to go up. This might bring about a further drop in the terms of trade for the already depressed primary producers. Some estimates of the possible deterioration go as high as ten percent, which would entail considerable hardship not only for metal mines in South America and Zimbabwe, but also for farmers in Canada, Kansas and Brazil. One more possible scenario involves no "landings", either "soft" or "hard". What if the economists were wrong and both the American budget deficit and American trade deficit continue, albeit at lower levels than in recent years? This would happen if the outside world's willingness to put its money into the United States were based on other than purely economic considerations - on their own internal domestic politics, for example, or simply on the desire to escape risks at home that appear to be far worse than a U.S. devaluation. This is the only scenario that is so far supported by hard facts rather than by theory. Indeed, it is already playing. The U.S. government talked the dollar down by almost one-third (from a rate of 250 yen to 180 yen to the dollar) between summer 1985 and February 1986 one of the most massive devaluations ever of a major currency, though called a "re-adjustment". America's creditors unanimously supported this devaluation and indeed demanded it. More amazing still, they responded by increasing their loans to the United States, and substantially so. International bankers seem to agree that the United States is more creditworthy the more the lender stands to lose by lending to it! A major reason for this Alice-in-Wonderland attitude is that the biggest U.S. creditors, the Japanese, clearly prefer even very heavy losses on their dollar holdings to domestic unemployment. And without exports to the United States, Japan might have unemployment close to that of Western Europe, nine to eleven percent, and concentrated in the most politically sensitive smokestack industries in which Japan is becoming increasingly vulnerable to competition from newcomers such as South Korea. Similarly, economic conditions alone will not induce Hong Kong Chinese to withdraw the money they have transferred to American banks in anticipation of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. These deposits amount to billions. The even larger amounts - at least several hundred billion - of "flight capital" from Latin America that have found refuge in the U.S. dollar will also not be lured away by purely economic incentives such as higher interest rates. The sum needed from the outside to maintain both a huge U.S. budget deficit and a huge U.S. trade deficit would be far too big to make this the most probable scenario. But if political factors are in control, the "symbol" economy is indeed truly "uncoupled" from the "real" economy, at least in the international sphere. Whichever scenario proves right, none promises a return to any kind of "normalcy".

272

Peter F. Drucker

Vili.

From now on exchange rates between major currencies will have to be treated in economic theory and business policy alike as a "comparative-advantage" factor, and a major one. Economic theory teaches that the comparative-advantage factors of the "real" economy - comparative labor costs and labor productivity, raw material costs, energy costs, transportation costs and the like - determine exchange rates. Practically all businesses base their policies on this notion. Increasingly, however, it is exchange rates that decide how labor costs in country A compare to labor costs in country B. Exchange rates are thus a major "comparative cost" and one totally beyond business control. Any firm exposed to the international economy has to realize that it is in two businesses at the same time. It is both a maker of goods (or a supplier of services) and a "financial" business. It cannot disregard either. Specifically, the business that sells abroad - whether as an exporter or through a subsidiary - will have to protect itself against three foreign exchange exposures: proceeds from sales, working capital devoted to manufacturing for overseas markets, and investments abroad. This will have to be done whether the business expects the value of its own currency to go up or down. Businesses that buy abroad will have to do likewise. Indeed, even purely domestic businesses that face foreign competition in their home market will have to learn to hedge against the currency in which their main competitors produce. If American businesses had been run this way during the years of the overvalued dollar, from 1982 through 1985, most of the losses in market standing abroad and in foreign earnings might have been prevented. They were management failures, not acts of God. Surely stockholders, but also the public in general, have every right to expect management to do better the next time around. In respect to government policy there is one conclusion: don't be "clever". It is tempting to exploit the ambiguity, instability and uncertainty of the world economy to gain short-term advantages and to duck unpopular political decisions. But it does not work. Indeed, disaster is a more likely outcome than success, as all three of the attempts made so far amply indicate. In the first attempt, the Carter Administration pushed down the U.S. dollar to artificial lows to stimulate the American economy through the promotion of exports. American exports did indeed go up - spectacularly so. But far from stimulating the domestic economy, this depressed it, resulting in simultaneous record unemployment and accelerated inflation - the worst of all possible outcomes. President Reagan a few years later pushed up interest rates to stop inflation, and also pushed up the dollar. This did indeed stop inflation. It also triggered

The Changed World Economy

273

massive inflows of capital. But it so overvalued the dollar as to create a surge of foreign imports. As a result, the Reagan policy exposed the most vulnerable of the smokestack industries, such as steel and automobiles, to competition they could not possibly meet. It deprived them of the earnings they needed to modernize themselves. Also, the policy seriously damaged, perhaps irreversibly, the competitive position of American farm products in the world markets, and at the worst possible time. Worse still, his "cleverness" defeated Mr. Reagan's major purpose: the reduction of the U.S. government deficit. Because of the losses to foreign competition, domestic industry did not grow enough to produce higher tax revenues. Yet the easy and almost unlimited availability of foreign money enabled Congress (and the Administration) to postpone again and again action to cut the deficit. In the third case the Japanese, too, may have been too clever in their attempt to exploit the disjunction between the international "symbol" and "real" economies. Exploiting an undervalued yen, the Japanese have been pushing exports - a policy quite reminiscent of America under the Carter Administration. But the Japanese policy similarly has failed to stimulate the domestic economy; it has been barely growing these last few years despite the export boom. As a result, the Japanese have become dangerously overdependent on one customer, the United States. This has forced them to invest huge sums in American Dollars, even though every thoughtful Japanese (including, of course, individuals in the Japanese government and the Japanese central bank) has known all along that these investments would end up being severely devalued. Surely these three lessons should have taught us that government economic policies will succeed to the extent to which they try to harmonize the needs of the two economies, rather than to the extent to which they try to exploit the disharmony between them. Or to repeat very old wisdom, "in finance don't be clever; be simple and conscientious". I am afraid this is advice that governments are not likely to heed soon.

IX. It is much too early to guess what the world economy of tomorrow will look like. Will major countries, for instance, succumb to traditional fears and retreat into protectionism? Or will they see a changed world economy as an opportunity? Some parts of the main agenda, however, are fairly clear by now. Rapidly industrializing countries like Mexico or Brazil will need to formulate new development concepts and policies. They can no longer hope to finance their development by raw material exports, e.g., Mexican oil. It is also becoming

274

Peter F. Drucker

unrealistic for them to believe that their low labor costs will enable them to export large quantities of finished goods to developed countries - something the Brazilians, for instance, still expect. They would do much better to go into "production sharing", that is, to use their labor advantage to become subcontractors to developed-country manufacturers for highly labor-intensive work that cannot be automated - some assembly operations, for instance, or parts and components needed only in relatively small quantities. Developed countries no longer have the labor to do such work, which even with the most thorough automation will still account for 15 to 20 percent of manufacturing work. Such production sharing is, of course, how Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan bootstrapped their development. Yet in Latin America production sharing is still politically unacceptable, and indeed, anathema. Mexico, for instance, has been deeply committed since its beginnings as a modern nation in the early years of this century to making its economy less dependent on, and less integrated with, that of its big neighbor to the north. That this policy has been a total failure for 80 years has only strengthened its emotional and political appeal. Even if production sharing is implemented to the fullest, it would not by itself provide enough income to fuel development, especially of countries so much larger than the Chinese "city-states". We thus need a new model and new policies. Can we learn something from India? Everyone knows of India's problems and they are legion. Few people seem to realize, however, that since independence India has done a better development job than almost any other Third World country: it has enjoyed the fastest increase in farm production and farm yields; a growth rate in manufacturing production equal to that of Brazil, and perhaps even of South Korea (India now has a bigger industrial economy than any but a handful of developed countries); the emergence of a large and highly entrepreneurial middle class; and, arguably, the greatest achievement in providing schooling and health care in the villages. Yet the Indians followed none of the established models. They did not, like Stalin, Mao and so many leaders of newly independent African nations, despoil the peasants to produce capital for industrial development. They did not export raw materials. And they did not export the products of cheap labor. Instead, since Nehru's death in 1964, India has followed a policy of strengthening agriculture and encouraging consumer goods production. India and its achievement are bound to get far more attention in the future. The developed countries, too, need to think through their policies in respect to the Third World - and especially in respect to the "stars" of the Third World, the rapidly industrializing countries. There are some beginnings: the debt proposals recently put forward by Treasury Secretary James A. Baker, or the new lending criteria recently announced by the World Bank for loans to Third World countries, which will be made conditional on a country's overall development policies rather than on the soundness of individual projects. But these proposals are aimed more at correcting past mistakes than at developing new policies. The other major agenda item is - inevitably - the international monetary

The Changed World Economy

275

system. Since the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the world monetary system has been based on the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency. This clearly does not work any more. The reserve-currency country must be willing to subordinate its domestic policies to the needs of the international economy, e.g., risk domestic unemployment to keep currency rates stable. And when it came to the crunch, the United States refused to do so - as Keynes, by the way, predicted 40 years ago. The stability supposedly supplied by the reserve currency could be established today only if the major trading countries - at a minimum the United States, West Germany and Japan - agreed to coordinate their economic, fiscal and monetary policies, if not to subordinate them to joint (and this would mean supranational) decision-making. Is such a development even conceivable, except perhaps in the event of worldwide financial collapse? The European experience with the far more modest European Currency Unit is not encouraging; so far, no European government has been willing to yield an inch for the sake of the ECU. But what else can be done? Have we come to the end of the 300-year-old attempt to regulate and stabilize money on which, after all, both the modern nation-state and the international system are largely based? We are left with one conclusion: economic dynamics have decisively shifted from the national economy to the world economy. Prevailing economic theory - whether Keynesian, monetarist or supply-side considers the national economy, especially that of the large developed countries, to be autonomous and the unit of both economic analysis and economic policy. The international economy may be a restraint and a limitation, but it is not central, let alone determining. This "macroeconomic axiom" of the modern economist has become increasingly shaky. The two major subscribers to this axiom, Britain and the United States, have done least well economically in the last 30 years, and have also had the most economic instability. West Germany and Japan never accepted the "macroeconomic axiom". Their universities teach it, of course, but their policymakers, both in government and in business, reject it. Instead, both countries all along have based their economic policies on the world economy, have systematically tried to anticipate its trends and exploit its changes as opportunities. Above all, both make the country's competitive position in the world economy the first priority in their policies economic, fiscal, monetary, even social - to which domestic considerations are normally subordinated. And these two countries have done far better - economically and socially - than Britain and the United States these last 30 years. In fact, their focus on the world economy and the priority they give it may be the real "secret" of their success. Similarly the "secret" of successful businesses in the developed world - the Japanese, the German carmakers like Mercedes and BMW, Asea and Erickson in Sweden, IBM and Citibank in the United States, but equally of a host of medium-sized specialists in manufacturing and in all kinds of services - has been

276

Peter F. Drucker

that they base their plans and their policies on exploiting the world e c o n o m y ' s changes as opportunities. From now on any country - but also any business, especially a large one that wants to prosper will have to accept that it is the world economy that leads and that domestic economic policies will succeed only if they strengthen, or at least do not impair, the country's international competitive position. This may be the most important - it surely is the most striking - feature of the changed world economy.

Notes 1 2

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

Reprinted by permission of Peter F. Drucker from Foreign Affairs 64(1986):768-791. When the price of petroleum dropped to $15 a barrel in February 1986, it was actually below its 1933 price (adjusted for the change in the purchasing power of the dollar). It was still, however, substantially higher than its all-time low in 1972-73, which in 1986 dollars amounted to $7-$8 a barrel. On this see two quite different discussions by Dennis Avery, (1985) and Barbara Insel, (1985). The business cycle theory was developed just before World War I by the Russian mathematical economist, Nikolai Kondratieff, who made comprehensive studies of raw material price cycles and their impacts all the way back to 1797. These conclusions are based on static analysis, which presumes that which products are bought and sold is not affected by changes in price. This is of course unrealistic, but the flaw should not materially affect the conclusions. Although the African famine looms large in our consciousness, the total population of the affected areas is far too small to make any dent in world food surpluses. David Sapsford (1985). This was asserted as early as 1950 by the South American economist Raul Prebisch in The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems. The Japanese government, for example, sponsors a finance company that makes long-term, low interest loans to small manufacturers to enable them to automate rapidly. On this see my book (Drucker, 1985). A Eurodollar is a U.S. dollar held outside the United States. This is cogently argued by Stephen Marris (1985), for almost 30 years economic adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Stephen Marris (1985), cited above, gives the clearest and most persuasive presentation of the hard-landing scenarios.

References Avery, Dennis 1985 "U.S. Farm Dilemma: The Global Bad News Is Wrong". Science (Oct. 25):408-412.

The Changed World Economy Drucker, Peter F. 1985 Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Row.

277

Practice and Principles. New York: Harper &

Insel, Barbara 1985 "A World Awash in Grain". Foreign Affairs, Spring:892-911. Marris, Stephen 1985 Deficits and the Dollar: The World Economy at Risk. Washington: Institute of International Economics. Prebisch, Raul 1950 "The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems". United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (E/Cn, 12/89/REV.l). Sapsford, David 1985 "Real Primary Commodity Prices: An Analysis of Long-Run Movements". International Monetary Fund Internal Memorandum, May 17.

Global Change and Economic Policy1 Richard G. Lipsey

To gain some understanding of what is happening to today's world, let us return to the world of 1950. That world of a scant 40 years ago is well within living memory, and yet in many ways it would seem both alien and primitive to a young person who returned to it from the world of 1990. The world of 1950 that we shall look at had its roots lying back as far as the late 19th century. But the economic order that it embodied reached its full flowering during the decades immediately after World War II.

I. The World of 1950 A. The Dominance of the U.S. In 1950, the U.S. was unchallenged as the dominant actor in the world's economy. Canada was also an important economic force, as well as being a major voice in international conferences and bargaining tables. In 1950, Canada was, for example, the world's second largest market for automobiles after the U.S., while her diplomats had played important roles in the writing of the charter for both the ill-fated International Trade Organization and the highly successful General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT). Europe was just beginning to rebuild after the devastations of World War II. Britain still had rationing, and many central European cities were little more than piles of rubble. Japan was a defeated enemy, best known for its prewar production of cheap toys and Japanese oranges than for any postwar burst of industrial activity. Korea was torn by civil war and subject to a major United Nations "police action". Taiwan was an underdeveloped nation to which the nationalist army of defeated Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-check had just fled.

280

Richard G. Lipsey

Β. The Predominance of Goods

The economy of 1950 produced, in profusion, cars, radios, refrigerators and a host of other consumers goods. The industries producing these goods were backed up by heavy industries manufacturing such things as steel, aluminium, electricity and coal and by strong sectors providing financial services and transportation railways first and foremost and then trucks, followed by the still small, but rapidly growing, airlines. This economy was primarily a goods economy. It's image was provided by Charlie Chaplin in his classic movie "Modern Times". Its strength was the enormous productive power that it gave to workers employed on mass-production, assembly lines. This industrial power stemmed from industrial efficiency,and the key to efficiency was scale. The larger the factory, and the more standardized its output, the higher the output per worker. (Higher output per worker meant lower costs, higher total output, and, hence, higher average living standards.) The link between scale of output and worker productivity was explained by Adam Smith in his classic of 1776, The Wealth of Nations. In 1950, economists needed little that was not fully understood by Adam Smith to explain the productivity of the modern economy. Adam Smith would not have had difficulty with what the economists of 1950 taught their students about the source of the productive power of the modern economy - some of the products and processes would have been unfamiliar to him, but the principles of industrial efficiency would have offered little that he would find new.

C. High Living Standards

By 1950, it was quite clear to any observer who was not blinded by ideological precommitment, that free market economies were delivering a high and rising volume of per capita production, and hence a high and rising average living standard - just as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels eloquently, and correctly, predicted in the 19th century. Marx and Engels were wrong, however, in predicting that the distribution of national income would alter so that, in spite of the rising average living standards, workers would become worse off while capitalists would become better off. True, some isolated groups were left behind by the growth process; they did not benefit from the generally rising living standards produced by market economies. Their poverty was, however, the exception to the rule that the free market economy conferred on the majority of

Global Change and Economic Policy

281

ordinary citizens, including virtually all employed workers, unparalleled increases in their material living standards. The famous historian of western economic growth, Nathan Rosenberg, puts it this way. 2 Over a year, or even over a decade, the economic gains [of the late 18th and 19th centuries], after allowing for the growth of population, were so little noticeable that it was widely believed that the gains were experienced only by the rich, and not by the poor. Only as the West's compounded growth continued through the twentieth century did its breadth become clear. It became obvious that Western working classes were increasingly well off and that the Western middle classes were prospering, and growing as a proportion of the whole population. Not that poverty disappeared. The West's achievement was not the abolition of poverty but the reduction of its incidence from 90 percent of the population to 30 percent, 20 percent, or less, depending on the country and one's definition of poverty....

D. The Appearance of Stability The structure of the economy that one saw in 1950 seemed stable to most contemporary observers. The industries that the Soviets set out to build in the 1920s and 1930s - steel mills, auto plants, dams, power stations and the like were still the basis of U.S. economic power in 1950 (and remained so for another two decades). Granted, new products such as chemicals, plastics and airplanes, did supplant older products, but the structure of the goods-producing economy seemed basically stable. Less successful countries sought to foster similar industries in their own countries. In many industrial countries political parties debated whether to leave these industries in private hands or to nationalize them. But these were debates about who was to own and control industries that would "always be there". Few policy makers thought in terms of an evolving economy where the industrial giants of today would become the sick weaklings of tomorrow and then become either memories (if market forces were allowed to act) or white elephants (if they were sustained through public funds).

E. Economic Policy for Distribution In the market economies of 1950, economic policy was mainly concerned with distribution of the "national pie", the GNP. There was less concern about the effect of policy on the size of the GNP. For example, economic policy with respect to firms and industries was concerned with agglomerations of economic

282

Richard G. Lipsey

power that resulted when industries became dominated by one or a few large firms. That policy had three goals:(i) to prevent agglomerations of power from arising where they were unnecessary by preventing firms from growing larger than the economies of scale made necessary; (ii) where scale economies required that an industry be dominated by a few large firms, to keep these firms competing rather than cooperating to exploit a joint monopoly position; (iii) where there was room for only one firm to be large enough to exploit all of the available economies of scale, to prevent that firm from earning more than a fair rate of return - this could be done either by leaving the firm in private hands and regulating it, or by nationalizing it. In all of the above cases, the policies were designed to prevent the large firm(s) from exploiting their market power so as to earn more than a reasonable rate of return on their capital. 3 In other words, the policy was intended to influence the distribution of national income by preventing one small group of owners from getting too large a share by exploiting a position of market power - power that might be conferred by the efficiencies of large scale production.

F. The Significance of International Trade National production for national consumption was the most important American economic activity. Institutions had been set up - the GATT the IMF and the World Bank - that would preside over a major liberalization of, and an unparalleled increase in, world trade and world capital flows. But these developments were still in the future. By virtue of its preponderant size, however, the U.S. contributed a large proportion of the international flows of trade and capital that did exist. Although it accounted for a large proportion of total international trade and capital flows, these were small amounts in proportion to U.S. domestic trade and domestic capital formation. For this reason, when they were concerned with national living standards, U.S. policy makers could largely afford to ignore the international ramifications of their policies. Most American industrial and financial policy was made with domestic considerations paramount. When U.S. policy makers did worry about international implications of their policies, these were more often cast in terms of geopolitical effects rather than strictly economic ones. Even in 1950, however, international trade was important to many countries. After all, advanced manufacturing countries had to import raw material, and many food stuffs that they could not produce at home, and they were to some extent specialized in what they produced. For other smaller countries, such as Canada, international trade accounted for a significant proportion of national

Global Change and Economic Policy

283

income, and world trade issues were high on their policy agendas. In 1950, Canadian nationalists were welcoming the rising importance of Canadian trade with the U.S. as an indication that the old colonial dependence on the U.K. as Canada's major trading partner was passing into history.

G. Trading Advantages as Given The source of the benefits derived from international trade had been most fully analyzed by the great Classical economist David Ricardo. Writing in England early in the 19th century, Ricardo explained that the gains from trade were based on the exploitation of "comparative advantage". Prices set on the free market would ensure that each country specialized in what it could produce relatively best, and imported from other countries what these countries could produce relatively best. When this happened, world production, and hence world living standards, would be maximized. Importantly, a country's trading advantage, what Ricardo called its "comparative advantage", seemed to be based on forces that were mainly out of the reach of public policy: endowments of natural resources, power sources, climate, and the inherent characteristics of the labour force.

H. The Politico-economic Cold War In the world of 1950, the cold war dominated international politics. The two great politico-economic systems - one-party, planned economies on the one hand and multi-party, market economies on the other hand - seemed balanced in open, and even, competition, both pushing to prove themselves as the superior way of organizing economic and political decision making. The USSR had succeeded in industrializing in the 1920s and 1930s. Even more impressively, the Soviet armed forces had beaten the Weirmacht and the Luftwaffe in the 1940s. As an essential component of this victory, the country had produced a massive flood of military hardware, which included - to the surprise of many Western analysts - extremely well designed aircraft and highly efficient tanks. These successes suggested to many observers that centrally planned economies were powerful contenders in the competition to be the system that did most to satisfy the needs of ordinary citizens. When Nickita Khrushchev

284

Richard G. Lipsey

promised in 1960 to outproduce the U.S., and so surpass American-level living standards, his claim did not seem ridiculous to most contemporary observers. Less developed countries sought to follow one or the other of these competing paradigms; some tried Marxist-Leninist central planning, usually administered by one party dictatorships; others tried market economies, combined sometimes with dictatorships and other times with various forms of democracies. In making these choices, they tended to ally themselves either with the USSR or the U.S.. Whenever a country moved from a commitment to the free market to a commitment to central planning, voices in the U.S. proclaimed that country as "lost to our side" and initiated investigations to discover the foreign policy failure responsible for the "loss". (Probably the most misguided case of this type of activity, was the attempt to discover, in 1948-50, who it was in the U.S. who "lost" China to the socialist camp - as if it were any American's to lose in the first place!)

I. Summary In advanced, western, democratic nations, the apparently stable, U.S.-dominated, goods-producing, market economy lasted another 20 years - along with its economic and political cold war competition with the countries of the eastern block. The 1970s were a period of transition and, by the early 1980s, the world's economies were playing in a wholly new ball game.

II. The Shift to the New Order Two stunningly dramatic changes have signalled to the world the transition from the old order to the new one.

A. The Victory of the Free Market System Before the eyes of an amazed world, the century-old battle between the two major political-economic systems has ended conclusively. The system of single party government to manage political affairs, combined with central planning to

Global Change and Economic Policy

285

manage economic affairs, has lost out decisively to the system of multi-party democracies to manage political affairs, and free markets to manage economic affairs. There is now no doubt that decentralized decisions, coordinated by such market signals as prices, wages and profits, provide a more efficient way of managing economic affairs than a system which tries to coordinate them using a body of bureaucrats employing the apparatus of central planning. The Eastern Block countries are now racing to embrace a multi-party political system and market economies. The failure of the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat lies in its twin failures: first it could not deliver reasonable living standards to ordinary citizens, and, second, it could not falsify Lord Acton's famous dictum that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" 4 . Great social issues have a habit of being difficult to settle and they often just fade away to be replaced by other issues before they are resolved. Rarely in human history has such a decisive verdict been delivered on two competing systems. The verdict has been rendered by ordinary people voting with their feet for the democratic-capitalist system over the reality of the dictatorial Marxist system. Today, the supporters of highly planned systems are mainly to be found living in free market countries where they have never experienced the disastrous performance of the system that they advocate. Already, however, people are debating what lesson is to be learned from the failure of the planned economies of the Eastern Block. Their experience does not prove, as some have asserted, the superiority of laissez faire over a mixed economy. What it does show is the superiority of decentralized markets over centrally planned ones as coordinating and signalling devices. There is no guarantee, however, that free markets will handle on their own such problems as controlling pollution and producing sustainable growth. Indeed, much economic theory is devoted to explaining why free markets often fail to do these things. Mixed economies, with significant degrees of government intervention, are needed to do these jobs. Part of the lesson from the failure of planned economies is, however, to establish two presumptions: first, rely on the unaided market until a case against it is demonstrated and, second, design government intervention to work through market signals wherever possible rather than working against them by fiat.5 It follows from this that there is still plenty of room for disagreement about the place of the government in the free market system - room enough to accommodate such divergent views as could be expressed by the Conservative, Liberal and NDP parties in Canada. We can accept the free market as a way of organizing economic affairs and still disagree about many things such as (i) the optimal amount, and direction, of government regulation of, and assistance to, the functioning of the economy and (ii) the optimal amount, and design, of social services and policies designed to redistribute income.

286

Richard G. Lipsey

Β. Loss of Faith in the Free Market System The second striking phenomenon presents a supreme irony: just as this decisive victory of one paradigm over the other was declared, policy makers in market economies are beginning to doubt the efficacy of the old paradigm of completely free markets. One manifestation of this change is that the U.S. is in the vanguard of those pushing for managed international trade, often on a bilateral basis. 6 A second manifestation is that policy makers in many western market economies are seeking to establish a new symbiotic relation between the state and the private sector; they seek to preserve the efficacy of free markets while using government policy to assist in managing domestic innovation and international competitiveness. An unkind critic might say that, at the very moment of victory, the supporters of the free market system are losing their nerve. Another view might be that, just as the victory of the market over planned economies has been declared, the world has so changed that the lessons for future policies were in danger of being misassessed. Deciding on balance between these two competing views is a pressing social issue of the 1990s. The explanation of the victory of the market system over the centrally planned system is found in economic theory which explains why, relative to any centrally planned and imposed solution, markets are efficient coordinators of decentralized decisions; why markets can organize a more efficient use of a nation's resources at any moment of time and a more rapid rate of innovation and economic growth over time. But what is the explanation of the diminishing faith in the efficiency of free market systems - at least as they were known in 1950? To gain some insight into possible reasons for this dramatic change in attitude, we need to understand the new economy that we find around us, and it is to this task which I now turn.

III. The World of 1990 Everyone has their own candidate for the most important factor of the many that have helped to usher in the new economic order. Mine is the communications revolution.

Global Change and Economic Policy

287

A. The Revolution in Communications In 1950, making a long distance telephone call required a major effort in time and money, and to be caught away from home without sufficient cash was a serious matter. There were no credit cards, no cash withdrawal points and only a branch of one's own bank would make the telephone call needed to clear the cashing of an out-of-town cheque. Travel by propeller aircraft was slow, multi-stop and costly, and reservations difficult since ticket offices were linked only by cumbersome, operator-controlled telephone links. Today you can dial, with virtually instant connections, almost anywhere in the world; you can send a message, or an architect's doodle, through a fax machine. You can talk to each other, and pass manuscripts back and forth for instant editing and reediting, through computer-linked electronic-mail. You can sit at home and set up a manuscript in publishable format by using a desk top publishing program on your personal computer and then pass it through a modem directly to the printer's offices. You can access your bank account from anywhere in the country, and from many points in foreign countries. A seller can clear your credit card purchase worldwide, which means that your credit-card balance can be obtained, and updated, from anywhere in the world. Soon you will be in visual contact through telephone-TV links where the conference call will be a visual as well as an auditory contact. Many international meetings that were made easy by jet aircraft may now often become redundant, to be replaced by auditory/visual links among people who remain in their local offices.

B. Globalization As a result of the revolution that has increased the reliability of communication while drastically cutting its costs, national economies are becoming less and less distinct as they become increasingly a part of a globalized economy - an economy which increasingly integrates both the financial and the production sectors of the economies of many individual countries. One of the most dramatic developments, one which happened relatively early in financial globalization, is the regular movement of funds around the world on a daily basis. In 1950 a British firm that held its working balances in London would leave them idle over night. In 1990, that firm, or its financial representative, will move its funds from London to New York as soon as the London markets close for the day and lend them out for eight hours in New York. Then, when New York markets close, it will move the funds on to Tokyo and lend them out for 8

288

Richard G. Lipsey

hours - to be returned just in time for them to be transferred back to London ready for the next working day. Furthermore, a borrower in Athens can decide to use Sydney or Singapore rather than London as a source of funds should funds from either source be a fraction of a percent cheaper than in London. The banker bending over his computer terminal in London, moving funds from Hong Kong to New York in response to a small change that just occurred in the New York rate of interest, is a long way from the British general, Sir Edward Pakenham, who on 8 January 1815 lost the battle of New Orleans (and his own life) 15 days after the Treaty of Ghent ended the war, but several days before the fast frigate arrived at his headquarters carrying the news that further fighting was unnecessary. On the production side, firms place their production around the world, sourcing this component from this country and that component from that country. An IBM product, or an automobile, may be put together from parts made in 10-20 countries. It is easy enough to say where a product is assembled, but where is it "made"? This disintegration of the production process would have been impossible without today's easy, rapid and low-cost communications. As a result of the globalization of competition, transnational corporations (the TNCs, which used to be called multinationals) have grown in importance. A high proportion of foreign trade now takes place within individual TNCs, taking the form of the "sale" of a product by one branch of an TNC to another of its branches. There is no point attacking the TNCs as wicked institutions. They are here to stay and we must learn to live with them, and to see how they can be controlled, where control is necessary. Not only are they here to stay, they are the vehicles of much of our economic growth delivering a host of low cost consumers goods, from radios to automobiles, at prices affordable to the ordinary consumer. They are also a major source of gainful employment and the United Nations recently recognized their importance in a publication pointing out that no less developed country could hope to grow out of its relative poverty while remaining hostile to the establishment of TNCs within its borders. As Peter Hansen, Executive Director the U.N. Centre on Transnational corporations put it in his preface to that volume 7 : The 1980s have witnessed major changes in the world production system, with TNCs being the principal forces shaping the future of technological innovation. At the same time, a more pragmatic and businesslike relationship between host governments and TNCs has emerged within the past decade. Many developing countries, burdened by debt and economic stagnation, have liberalized their policies towards TNCs while these corporations have displayed greater sensitivity to the development and economic goals of host countries. The era of confrontation has receded and been replaced by a practical search for a meaningful and mutually beneficial accommodation of interests.

Global Change and Economic Policy

289

Valuable though they may be, TNCs do, however, pose serious problems. Not the least of these is that, since such firms stretch across many political boundaries, controlling them through traditional national policy tools is becoming increasingly difficult. In a very real sense then, the TNCs make the traditional national political unit obsolete - at least to the extent that national governments wish to control their economic affairs.

C. Knowledge-based Production

Knowledge-intensive, science-based products have become much more important than they were in 1950. Indeed, many would distinguish the new industrial revolution from the ones that preceded it by saying that this one is a knowledgebased industrial revolution. The industrial revolution, which occurred in the 18th century, was based on Classical Greek science - levers and pulleys. The industrial revolution, which occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was much more closely linked to new scientific discoveries, particulary in such products as chemicals and electronics. Most observers believe that, in the new, knowledge-based, industrial revolution of the late 20th century, the gap between the first scientific discovery in a laboratory, and the sale of a product based on that discovery, has narrowed considerably. Today, the gap is often measured in years rather than in decades or centuries. One result of these developments is that the product cycle - the time between the original introduction of a product and its ousting from the market by a superior product - has shortened dramatically. A second result is that more costs are "up front", occurring at the product development stage. Today, enormous expenditure is often needed before a single unit of the product is ever tested on consumers, and an increasing proportion of total costs goes on product development rather than on direct production. Whereas most of Henry Ford's costs were for assembly line work, most of the cost of producing digital compact discs were in product development. In some examples of the development of a new product, such as a new generation of commercial jet aircraft, the costs are so large that when a new product line is developed, the whole shop must be bet on a single roll of the competitive dice. The important implication of all this is that innovative activity has probably become more risky. Compared with 1950, more funds are needed before the market can give any indication of potential success and there has been a shortening of the time available to recoup one's development costs before a superior product comes along.

290

Richard G. Lipsey

D. Product Diversity

The consumers of 1990 have a more developed taste for diversity in the goods and services that they consume than did the consumers of 1950. The first real manifestation of this growth of diversity came in the European Community's first two decades of experience after the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1958. Working with the old economic model in which each industry sold a single homogeneous product, economists had expected that the removal of tariffs on inter-European trade would lead to national specialization of whole industries. The automobile industry might end up in Germany, the fashion goods industry in France, the aircraft industry in the U.K., the furniture industry in Italy, and so on. Such specialization would require major readjustments. Whole industries would disappear in many countries and become concentrated in the country where that industry's costs were lowest. But that was not how it worked out. Instead, industries specialized in subproduct niches and almost no industry disappeared in any country. As a result, today, boatloads of Swedish furniture heading for London pass boatloads of British furniture heading for Stockholm; French, German, Italian, British and Scandinavian cars are sold in France Germany, Italy the U.K. and Scandinavia. As it is with cars and furniture, so its is with virtually all consumers goods. Two important results have followed from this increase in product diversity within industries. First, consumers can chose from a dazzling array of types of any single generic product. Second, the adjustment to the elimination of European tariffs was much less painful that anyone had expected. Most of the adjustments were intraindustry as firms began to specialize in particular product niches within the broad industrial product grouping in which they were already located. It proved vastly easier to move labour from producing a full set of subproducts to producing in those particular subproduct niches in which one country specialized than to move labour from one industry to another. The Canadian experience in the tariff reductions under the Kennedy and Tokyo rounds of GATT parallelled the European experience. The Tariff reductions negotiated in the Kennedy round of GATT negotiations were phased in during the 1970s while those negotiated under the Tokyo round were phased in during the 1980s. Both sets of tariff reductions were roughly comparable to those agreed to under the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement. Both sets of reduction occurred with little noticeable disruption and no expressions of national concern. 8 The newly developed taste for diversity has been combined with computer technology to fuel the new systems of flexible manufacturing. Now the volume of output of some single homogeneous product, such as the Model T, is no longer the determinant of production economies. Now production runs of a specific product line can be short and each line can be tailored to specific markets,

Global Change and Economic Policy

291

sometimes to individual customers. To cover the costs of such systems, firms still need large total outputs but, the costs of switching from one subline to another being small, the length of the production run of each subline does not matter anything like as much as it once did. Furthermore, the costs of marketing and aftersales servicing can be shared among all the product lines. Now the secret of low unit costs, and hence of industrial efficiency, is economies of scope spreading production over a large number of different but related products rather than economies of scale - producing a large volume of a single homogeneous product.

E. A Service Economy The economies of the last decade have increasingly become service economies. If the economies of 1950 were personified by a blue collar, assembly line worker, the economies of 1990 are characterized by a white collar worker, operating out of an office, and using a computer. Surely, however we interpret it, this change is an improvement on balance. Compare, for example, the grimy, noisy, factory, and the pollution-creating steel mill with the modern, quiet, air conditioned, office. There can be little doubt that the quality of work environment of the modern office worker is vastly better than that of the factory worker of 1950. There is much debate about the significance of the shift to services. Some are related to a shift in consumers preferences towards such services as travel and restaurant meals. Much, however, is related to change in the production of consumers' goods with much increased emphasis on original design and alterations resulting from the feedback from users. These, and many other changes in our techniques of production, finance and marketing, cause values that are finally embodied in goods to show up as service production in the census of industry. There remains, however, the issue of the effects on the distribution of income. Has the service revolution made well-trained workers richer and the untrained workers poorer? Statistics for incomes earned by individuals certainly suggest that conclusion. There are more poverty level jobs than there were 20 years ago. But care must be taken in interpreting these data. First, recall the worries in the 1960s that the industrial developments of the time would destroy unskilled jobs leading to massive unemployment of unskilled workers. These contemporary observers correctly saw the industrial trends, but they totally missed the effects of the growth of the service sector which more than replaced the unskilled jobs that were destroyed in manufacturing. (Beware of the social pessimist who sees disaster in every social change. The same people who were saying in the early

292

Richard G. Lipsey

1960s that the market system had failed because it was destroying the jobs for the unskilled, today lament the profusion of unskilled jobs that the service sector has provided!) Second, notice that many of the new service-sector jobs, such as those provided by McDonald's, provide part-time work for teenagers that gives them their first work experience, while other service jobs provide part-time work for a family's second income earner who adds to family income and does not want to work full time. So if we consider incomes by income earner, we find a lot of subpoverty level jobs. If we consider family incomes, the picture much looks less gloomy. Nonetheless, as I understand it, current research is beginning to suggest that, even when all corrections have been made, the service revolution is being accompanied by some increase in the inequality of the distribution of family incomes. 9

F. Acquired Comparative Advantage In this new knowledge-based world of multinational enterprises, trading advantage - comparative advantage as Ricardo called it - seems to depend much more on acquired knowledge and skills than on nature-given endowments. This is easy to say in a single sentence but its effects in changing economists' views of the world, and on the place of economic policy, has been profound. If comparative advantage depends mainly on skills that are acquired by management and labour - and possibly also on human institutions - then trading advantage must be amenable to government policy. 10 No longer does comparative advantage seem a phenomenon that is mainly beyond policy control; it is now seen as something that may be "shaped" by government policy."

G. The Declining Importance of the U.S. and Canada The recovery of Europe from the devastation of World War II and the emergence of several of the underdeveloped nations into the ranks of rapidly developing nations inevitably meant that the relative importance of the U.S. and Canada would decline. This in itself was no cause for concern. The larger the number of developed nations, the larger are world markets, and the greater are the opportunities for mutually advantageous trade. It does mean, however, that Canada has become a very small part of today's international market. As the market place becomes globalized and the size of many of its industrial and

Global Change and Economic Policy

293

financial firms necessarily expands, Canadian firms often need major international linkages - which can mean take over by, or merger with, TNCs headquartered in other countries. (Canada has also developed some very successful TNCs headquartered at home.) Added to this natural evolution of market economies, however, was the startling rise of Japan as an industrial power, first in basic industries and latterly in industries at the cutting edge of hi-tech developments. Japan along with the Asian tigers - Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea - have challenged the U.S. for economic leadership. Competition from these countries, as well as from some of the older economies of Europe, in particular West Germany, have left many North American industries losers in the international market place. Whereas the world once beat a path to America's door to buy whatever excellent products her industries were currently producing, today the U.S. and to a lesser extent Canada, is all too often seeking to keep foreign products out of the North American market through a host of nontariff barriers to trade. The list includes voluntary export agreements, antidumping duties (where dumping is increasingly being defined as occurring wherever a foreign firm can undersell a competing domestically produced product) and countervailing duties that penalize foreign industries who receive government subsidies while paying no attention to equivalent subsidies received by domestic firms. (Designed to "level up the playing field", countervailing duties would only do so if there were no subsidies in the levying countries; in practice they tend to tilt the playing field in favour of U.S. firms whenever - as is so often the case - those firms receive domestic subsidies.) In short the U.S., and to a lesser extent Canada, has suffered a reduction of confidence in its own ability to succeed in the competitive international market place and is seeking controls that interfere with market forces in an attempt to shield many of its industries from the chill winds of foreign competition.

IV. Economic Policy in Transition Social observers are only just beginning to understand the changes that have overwhelmed the old politico-economic order. It is not surprising, therefore, that policy makers are uncertain about how to cope with them. Everywhere, existing government economic and social policies are being questioned. Everywhere political parties are rethinking traditional policies. It is not uncommon to see left-wing parties leading the way towards more market orientation - as has happened in such divergent countries as Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.

294

Richard G. Lipsey

Policy makers have responded to these enormous changes in different ways. But often their attempts to revise policies and institutions to react to the rapidly changing economic environment are clear cases of too little and too late. Some developing countries continued to try to set up the structure of the 1950s economy while it was already evolving itself out of existence. For example, in the 1970s the Irish government borrowed large sums on the Eurodollar Market to build steel mills and port facilities which never produced any marketable output while many Irish firms were emigrating to the U.S. because it was too difficult to do modern types of business with the country's antiquated telephone system. The net effect is now no steel, a debt to GNP ratio over twice as high as Canada's, and a telephone modernization that is only just being completed. New technologies meant that yesterday's natural monopolies often became today's highly competitive industries, and so no longer required public control to prevent them from exploiting a position of natural monopoly. Yet, where these industries had been nationalized in the interest of consumer protection, government regulations have often enforced monopoly positions that would otherwise have been eroded by market competition. A prime example is the post office. The host of new communication technologies meant that the post office no longer was a natural monopoly. Yet in many countries, a government controlled postal monopoly made illegal the very competition that would have increased the speed and reliability of message delivery, while greatly reducing its cost. Particularly the U.K. (and to some extent Canada as well) reacted to some of the changes in the 1960s and 1970s by trying to prop up declining industries. If one believed the economy's industrial structure to be stable, the decline of a local industrial giant was likely to be put down to some local failure within that industry. The cure was then believed to be an infusion of public money, or a revitalization of management, or some other local palliative. The result of such "cures" was to delay the inevitable decline, and make it all the more precipitous when it did occur. Not until policy makers came to regard the economy as subject to continual evolutionary change was the policy of propping formerly prosperous industrial giants revealed as the loser that it always was. Globalization of the financial sector has meant that the old "pillars" are crumbling. 12 Up to quite recently, a basic tenet of policy has been to enforce a division of financial institutions among the four pillars of banking, insurance, trusts, and underwriting (securities). This is now gone in Canada and in many other countries. But banks in the U.S. are still restricted in their abilities to straddle these four pillars, to say nothing of their restricted ability to branch across the fifty U.S. states - and this in a world of globalized financial institutions! As a result, U.S. banks, which once were among the largest in the world, have now been superseded by foreign banks, mainly in Japan but also in Europe. By the time the U.S. regulations are revised to allow banks to compete on an equal footing with foreign banks, the competitive game will be over with U.S. banks having lost out.

Global Change and Economic Policy

295

A second aspect of financial regulation is the strict separation between financial sector and the real production sector. North American financial institutions are prevented from having a significant involvement in the management of production firms. In Japan, however, banks and industry go hand in hand. Giant conglomerates unite producers of goods and providers of services financial and otherwise - in ways illegal in the U.S. and Canada. This conglomerate structure provides its parts with pools of capital and expertise that would be unavailable to each operating on its own. Many North American policy makers fear the consequences of breaking down this barrier between the financial and the production sectors. One can surely be permitted to wonder, however, if maintaining a barrier that does not exist in some of our principle competitor countries is another case of failing to adapt to inevitable change soon enough. Our views on the regulation of competition, formed in earlier decades, need major revision to be appropriate to the 1990s. In the global market place, domestic concentration ratios matter less than they did in the past. One country's single firm in some industry may no longer represent an exploitable monopoly; instead it may be in intense global competition with firms on the other side of the world. Furthermore, if massive agglomerations of power, such as is found in some of the Japanese conglomerates, are necessary for successful innovations and international competition, there may be a serious trade off between reducing agglomerations of economic power and increasing the rate of economic growth (of the sort that Schumpeter discussed). Policies designed to increase competition have sometimes had some unexpected results. 13 For example, in pursuit of 1950s ideals of breaking up large agglomerations of economic power wherever they are not made absolutely necessary by scale economies, the U.S. government broke up the mighty AT&T corporation. This move was debated with almost no consideration of the place of the Bell labs in producing the research that underlay U.S. competitiveness even though the Bell Labs had accounted for a major part of total innovation in telecommunications and electronics over the preceding hundred years. In the deregulation of the American telephone equipment industry, telephone operating companies were prohibited from manufacturing telephones or switching equipment. The result: U.S. exports have grown modestly while imports have exploded. From the world's leading innovator, the U.S. has become a major importer of the latest technologies in this field. The deregulation of the U.S. airlines in pursuit of more competition, had many beneficial effects. It also increased uncertainty and risk in the industry. In an attempt to reduce such risks, aircraft are now owned mainly by leasing companies who buy the aircraft from the producers and lease them to the users. This has had the effect of removing the close liaison between the manufacturers who make the aircraft and the airlines who use them. Close liaison of this type is a characteristic of Japanese industry, and it helps in keeping product innovations directed onto the most useful lines. Such liaison is lacking in many U.S. industries and it is

296

Richard G. Lipsey

worrying to see it lost in another industry through an act of policy that was intended to make the economy more efficient. In the evolution of economic policy, different governments have taken different paths. One of the most interesting contrasts can be seen by comparing the policies of the two central Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. 14 Ontario is following a social reform policy similar to policies followed in Europe in the 1960s: opposition to the Free Trade Agreement because of its short term adjustment costs, rent control, equal pay for work of equal value, Sunday closing laws, affirmative actions initiatives, and so on. Quebec is following an economic policy designed to make Quebec economically powerful in the 1990s. This accent led the province to support the Canadian-U.S. Free Trade Agreement because of its long-term economic benefits, as well as to fund business schools and take other measures designed to cultivate a climate of entrepreneurship. An important part of this policy is the new concept of "Quebec Ine". In early 1989 Quebec Financial Institutions Minister Pierre Fortier announced to the Canadian Club of Montreal that his goal was to foster the development of mammoth corporations where financial and commercial interests would work side by side and where one of the roles of these mammoths would be to keep ownership and head offices of commercial stars in Quebec. The U.S. government has all too often taken the path of shielding U.S. firms from foreign competition rather than helping them to compete more effectively. When American industries have lost out to foreign competitors, the temptation is to blame the foreigners. Much U.S. (and Canadian policy) - VERs. QRs, changes in laws making it easier to levy antidumping and countervailing duties on foreign products - is based on the assumption that our failure to sell to Japan is their fault not ours. For example, the Japanese are blamed for not being an open market. Yet when the Japanese have gone on a spending spree over the last 18 months, partly induced by changes in government policy, it is European rather than North American goods that they have mainly bought. This preference for European rather than North American manufactured goods is not due to some failure within Japan. If there is a failure, it is to be found in North America. Even if the assumption that the foreigners are at fault is partly correct, it is a dangerous assumption since it is much easier to correct our behaviour than theirs. Furthermore, the history of trade barriers attests that protecting a domestic industry from foreign competition usually reduces rather than increases its competitive edge. 15

Global Change and Economic Policy

297

V. Conclusion So the picture of the economy we must hold in our minds is one of change, change, and more change. The change is driven by technological innovations and stretches all the way back to the breakup of the Medieval world. Some changes, such as the use of steam power, have given advantages to large scale and have led to more industrial concentration. Other changes, such as the introduction of electricity, have made small scale operations economical, others have led to decreased industrialization. All the changes have been to increase per capita living standards. Some, such as those occurring between 1900 and 1970, have led to a less unequal distribution of national income; others, such as those of the last two decades, have made the distribution of income more unequal. Change is upsetting and many individuals and institutions seek to resist change. The net result of this change, however, has been higher living standards in advanced industrial nations that are the envy of the rest of the world. Citizens of the advanced nations rightly worry about, and seek to change, many economic aspects of their societies. The revealed preferences of the citizens of the world, however, is clear. The growing flow of emigration is all in one direction from the less to the more economically advanced nations - and these flows would be vastly greater were it not for restrictions on immigration.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5

6

7

This is a slightly revised version of a speech given before the Vancouver Institute, Vancouver, B.C. November 18, 1989. N. Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell( 1986:6). A reasonable rate was usually defined as the competitive rate: the rate that would be earned in an industry that contained a large number of competing firms. Of course the real decline lasted for decades. What has come with such sudden speed is the realization that the planned economies had been falling steadily behind the western economies in their per capita outputs. Only when the economies were in a state of near collapse could the movement for reform be put off no longer and once begun, reform became hard to control. Another lesson that seems increasingly likely to be learned is that it is very, very, difficult to transform a fully planned economy, with its typical types of infrastructure and with all the social, political and economic values that such an economy promotes, into a free market economy with different institutions, different infrastrusture and different values. This is a particularly strong irony since the U.S. has been the moral leader, through its support of the GATT, in the movement to liberalize international trade ever since the late 1940s. United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (1988:iii).

298

Richard G. Lipsey

8

The smooth intraindustry adjustments to the Kennedy round tariff reductions have been fully documented by the Economic Council of Canada in its important study The Bottom Line (1983). Unless history suddenly unfolds in some totally new way for some currently not understood reason, the adjustments to the Canada-U.S. FTA will involve as little pain as did these two previous sets of adjustments.

9

For further discussion see Litan, Lawrence and Schultze (1988); Economic Council of Canada ( 1991 ); Reich ( 1991 ).

10

See Lipsey and Dobson (1986).

11

One of the sillier statements that was current during the great Canadian Free Trade Debate was that "the law of comparative advantage is obsolete". Correctly understood, the law of comparative advantage is merely a statement of the results of any free price system: given that prices are related to costs, and given that the exchange rate is determined on a free market, the direction of trade will be determined by the comparative advantages that exist at any moment in time. What has changed is our views of what determines comparative advantage. We no longer believe that comparative advantage is given by nature, but no one who understands the workings of the market can doubt that, whatever comparative advantage may be at any point of time and whatever the reasons why it is what it is, existing comparative advantage does determine the direction of the flow of trade at any moment in time.

12

My whole discussion of the financial sector draws heavily on Thomas Courchene, "Crumbling Pillars: Creative Destruction or Cavalier Demolition?", Queen's University, mimeographed. Forthcoming Fraser Institute: Editor Professor Lemer (Lethbridge).

13

The following two paragraphs use examples discussed in detail in Dertonzos et al (1989).

14

This case has been examined in detail by Thomas Courchene (1989) in his recent Robarts lecture, "What Does Ontario Want".

15

The importance of domestic competition in creating and preserving international competitive advantage is documented in many books. See, for example, Porter (1990).

References Courchene, Thomas 1989 "What Does Ontario Want", 1988 Roberts lecture at Robarts Centre of Canadian Studies, Toronto. Toronto: York University. Dertonzos, Michael L. et al. 1989 Made in America. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Economic Council of Canada 1983 The Bottom Line: Technology, Trade and Income Growth. Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada.

Global Change and Economic Policy

299

Economic Council of Canada 1990 Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: Employment in the Service Economy. A Statement by the ECC. Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada. Lipsey, Richard G. and W. Dobson (eds.) 1986 Shaping Competitive Advantage. Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute. Litan, R., R. Lawrence and C. Schultze (eds.) 1988 American Living Institute. Porter, Michael E.

Standards:

Threats

and Challenges.

Washington: Brookings

1990 The Competitive Advantage of Nations. New York: Free Press. Reich, Robert B. 1991 The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism. New York: A.A. Knopp. Rosenberg, N. and L.E. Birdzell 1986 How the West Grew Rich. New York: Basic Books. United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations 1988 Transnational Corporations in World Development: York: United Nations.

Trends and Prospects.

New

Learning and the Economy Judith Marquand

I. Introduction Mainstream economics is a child of the Enlightenment. It depends heavily on Utilitarianism. With such a heritage, it embodies a view of the individual who moves inevitably, if "rational", to the point of equilibrium, to his or her point of highest attainable satisfaction. If there were no "market failures", this process would also lead to the highest attainable level of satisfaction of all the individuals in the system. "Market failure" is of course widespread. But the model of individual behaviour is held to be a useful tool in examining these failures. There is also the problem that people often behave in what does not appear to be a "rational" manner. But more worrying still, there appear to be some serious problems in developing any adequate operational definition of "rationality". What has been increasingly addressed is the role of learning, but "learning" has usually been treated in a simplistic behaviouristic way. We may "learn through doing" and the effects of that learning may be observable, but the corresponding happenings inside the individual's mind have usually been believed to be outside the concern of the economist. The problem of economic rationality began to be addressed about 40 years ago (Arrow, 1951). The black box of the mind of homo oeconomicus began to be opened by Simon (1957 and subsequent work), a psychologist turned economist. He started to look at the relationship between economists' "rationality" and the way in which people actually think and make decisions. Unlike the original black box, the economists' black box was not empty. Much worse, it contained a bundle of contradictions and tautologies, sufficient to establish beyond doubt that the concept of the individual which underpins mainstream economic thought bore no resemblance to reality. Economic rationality was literally unthinkable. The defensive response of traditional economists has been to shrug it away, to

302

Judith Marquand

claim that since all models, their own included, are reduced versions of reality, then so long as their model has predictive value it does not matter that some of its operational pillars are known to have no foundation. It is always risky to proceed unsupported. It is foolhardy to proceed when it is known that the apparent supports are illusory. The alternative is to seek more appropriate underpinnings, given the current state of epistemology and psychology. To what conclusions do these lead for the nature of economic activity and for the analysis of economic behaviour? In particular, once we start from the psychological foundations of economic behaviour, we enter a dynamic world, where the learning process becomes central to the way in which people conduct their affairs. Economic affairs are no exception. For if knowledge is to have economic consequences, it must by definition be used in some way which affects the generation and allocation of goods and services which people value. We acquire knowledge through learning. Thus, if we are to understand the relationships between learning and the economy, we need to range across the whole wide territory from the nature of knowledge and the nature of learning, through considering how we apply what we have learnt, to examining its effects on the economy and how they are described. Such an undertaking is far beyond the scope of a single paper! My first attempts at some of it have already been set out at greater length (Marquand, 1989); here all that is possible is a quick Cook's Tour, showing some of the bridges between psychology, the learning process, the development of training, learning and innovation, and hence learning and economic activity. But before starting the main tour, we need to see why it is that the economists' standard measuring rods may be misleading.

II. The Economists' View of Human Capital For the economist, all goods and services are produced by means of factors of production. How much value is added by the production of the good or service depends on the relationship between the costs of production and the value associated with the good or service which has been produced. Costs and values are extremely complex concepts, embodying as they do the consequences of a host of institutional variables, social and individual choices, differing time horizons and uncertainties about future capabilities or needs. Simplifying assumptions have to be made to produce testable hypotheses and predictions about replicable variables. For the economist, testability above all implies measurability. The favourite measuring rod is money. Knowledge enters into economics in two ways. The first is as a final product or

Learning and the Economy

303

as an important component of a final product which can be bought and sold. This commodification of knowledge will not concern us further here. The other dimension of knowledge is as an attribute of a factor of production. It enters into physical capital, since every artefact requires knowledge both in its production and in its use, and into human capital. The remainder of this paper concerns knowledge and its relationship with human capital. A standard economic definition of capital goods is that they are produced commodities which are required for production. Human capital fits this definition as well as any other kind of capital. It can be regarded as the stock of skills and productive knowledge embodied in people. These are used in production, which may or may not enter the market economy. Enhanced skills and knowledge can lead to enhanced production, whether in quantity or quality, because they enable more effective productive activities. Many of the difficulties for economists in using their capital theory arise because capital goods are heterogeneous. Hence they cannot be aggregated, but if they can in some way be valued, then their values can be manipulated by any of a wide range of quantitative techniques. Several assumptions are necessary before value can be assigned to a collection of capital goods. This is of critical importance in considering human capital. Economists often try to measure human capital by discounting the expected stream of life-time earnings. In a static labour market, where reasonably robust expectations can be formed concerning the future balance of monopoly power and concerning the development of demand for particular types of labour over time, then it may be reasonable to take relative life-time earnings to indicate relative values of human capital of various kinds, provided that non-pecuniary rewards do not vary greatly from one occupation to another. But in most markets, risk, uncertainty and imperfect information are important, especially when a time period of more than a few months or at most a few years is considered. In many markets there is an element of monopoly too, which may itself change over time. In all such cases there is no reliable way to predict the share of returns in the longer term between the worker, the firm, and indeed others who share in the benefits of enhanced production, such as the customer and the government. Yet this is what is needed if the returns to human capital are to be estimated and used as the basis for decision-making by the individual, the firm, the training provider or the government. In practice, many economists work instead with current perceptions of the rate of return, or with a mixture of current perceptions and recent history. They argue that it is current perceptions which guide what will happen and that the market will adjust in accordance with the consequences of current perceptions. This argument leaves unanswered the question of whether the particular adjustment which is implied is the adjustment which we should like to see happen. But even aside from this, if it is perceptions which influence action, then it is the factors which influence perceptions which should be the subject of policy. These factors

304

Judith Marquand

are not necessarily only or even mainly such observable, quantifiable current and historical market conditions as are used as the building blocks of routine economic work. They are not necessarily the same factors as those which may be used to describe the market outcomes. Consider, for example, monopoly power in the market for human capital. One well-known economic distinction is that made by Becker (1975) between specific skills, useful to only one firm, and general skills useful in a wider range of employment. The firm has monopoly power over the workers because they cannot obtain the return from their specific skills by working for another employer. Thus employers are held to be willing to pay for training in specific skills, because they can reap the returns themselves. They are less willing to pay for training in general skills, because the worker, once trained, can leave for employment elsewhere. Where such externalities exist, a long line of economists from Pigou (1911) onwards, has shown that some form of collective action is the only way to offset them. In the case of training, the collective action may be taken by employers themselves or by or through Government action. It is however the only means of offsetting the tendency for less training in general skills to be purchased by employers than these employers collectively would like to use in their productive activities. It is argued that individuals, on the other hand, should be willing themselves to pay to gain general skills, to the point where the life-time returns cease to outweigh the costs to them of the training. But individuals are beset by problems of lack of information about market opportunities, by uncertainty about what the future will hold, by short-term hardships and by longer term financial risks. One subset of relevant collective actions is the provision by Government of conditions which offset the effect of these factors in deterring the individual from acquiring general training. Thus economics can provide a relevant framework for considering some aspects of the distribution of "general skills" and "specific skills" and the consequences of that distribution, but it depends on other disciplines to tell it what such skills may be, how employers and individuals and trainers perceive them and what determines these perceptions, what processes affect the formation of skills, and by what means their use contributes to economic change. If we accept the economists' view of human capital as the stock of skills and productive knowledge embodied in people, we can then try to see briefly what psychology tells us about the nature of such skills and knowledge, their acquisition and their use.

Learning and the Economy

305

III. Knowledge, Competence and General Skills Let us start with the brain as a neural network, where concepts in the mind are represented by the transmission of electrical impulses by different patterns of neurons in the brain. The process of concept-formation is mirrored by the physical process of establishing links between different sets of neurons. (It seems that these links can follow many different paths.) The brain receives messages from its physical environment through the senses. The raw material for thought is built up from interpretations of these messages, together with concepts already in the mind. Learning entails the acquisition and effective use of new concepts. But because the mind can concentrate on only a few concepts at once from its enormous store, it needs to learn tricks for accessing and manipulating them efficiently - otherwise we would spend our whole day searching for the thoughts to enable even the simplest actions. What kind of tricks are these? The most important of all are languages of every kind - the means by which we communicate with others and indeed with ourselves. Language, whether verbal, numerical or physical, allows us to pick a path through the welter of impressions we receive, to recognise and to know that we recognise those that recur and to draw distinctions between phenomena of different kinds. Within these languages too there are tricks. There are concepts of higher order, which allow more complex situations to be understood readily and to be thought about. There are heuristics of various kinds - procedures which, once triggered, order a whole sequence of mental or physical responses. There is the ability to "overlearn" - to embed some procedures so firmly in memory that, once triggered, there is no need to pay attention to the rest of the sequence. Knowledge then entails the development of concepts and of the recognition of the circumstances where each may apply. It entails the accumulation of at least some instances. It entails the ability to discriminate when new instances arise - is this a table? is that a bird? - and to draw new distinctions where necessary - this canary is a bird, but that bat is a mammal with wings. The use of knowledge to underpin action requires further steps. It requires problem-solving and decision-making. The circumstances need to be understood, and there needs to be awareness of what actions may be feasible. People need to develop methods to judge what the effects of particular actions in particular circumstances will be, and so to choose between them. In the more complex cases, there may be a considerable degree of uncertainty about the outcomes. Decisions need to be made and actions taken. The usual process of decision-making cannot be the optimisation process assumed by much of economics. Because of the limited processing capacity of the brain, it is not possible to examine all relevant factors and possibilities. Selection

306

Judith Marquand

must be made - the processes by which relevant factors are selected are very important - and a choice is made which satisfies the criteria which the decision-maker regards as important, rather than one which would emerge as the best after an exhaustive search of all the possible outcomes. Simon's (1957 and e.g. 1983) process of satisficing is actually the rational way to behave in circumstances of uncertainty, where optimisation is not feasible except by imposing constraints which may be unwarranted. Lengthy decision-making processes in any case impose costs of their own, because the progress of time and the actions of others themselves change the set of options which is available. Time-constrained decision-making under circumstances of uncertainty, with preferences related to the particular case in point, is in fact the norm rather than the exception in all our daily business. Economists' optimisation models, provided their assumptions are explicit, may be helpful in guiding the decisions which are made. But it is a mistake to think that they can be models of the decision-making process itself. As people practise decision-making in a particular set of contexts, gradually they become more expert in deciding on suitable courses of action. The biggest difference between the expert and the novice is that the expert recognises a wider range of circumstances and can decide more rapidly on appropriate actions to deal with them. The expert is likely also to be more adept in following the course of action which is chosen. Again, following a course of action requires a wide range of general skills and a few specific ones. Developing the specific ones is only a minor part of learning to undertake effective action. If we can act effectively in given types of circumstances, we can say that we have competence of particular kinds. The acquisition of competence - of almost any kind - entails the development of a whole wide range of skills. What then should we classify as "general skills"? The whole ability to understand one's environment, to analyse the possibilities for action, to understand what is feasible and how to do it, to take decisions and carry them out, these are all generalisable, some more than others. Decisions are often taken and carried out in conjunction with other people, so that communication of various kinds is a general skill, needed not just to understand the situation and what to do, but to be able to co-operate with others in doing it. These are all general skills in the sense that they apply to a wide range of circumstances. These general skills are the most frequently used, in some sense the most fundamental, of all the skills which we learn. If we are well endowed with these, and also with one other general skill, the ability to learn how to learn, then most of the more specific skills can readily be added. How then do we learn? And how can we accelerate the process of learning?

Learning and the Economy

307

IV. The Learning Process and the Learning Cycle When we learn how to do something, we develop a series of concepts which allow us to respond efficiently to a range of environmental stimuli by carrying out actions which produce the end result which we seek. Consider, for example, a small child learning to post cylindrical and rectangular and hexagonal blocks through holes of the corresponding shapes and sizes. After a long period of experiment, in the end the child can recognise immediately, by sight and touch, which block corresponds to which hole. The child also acquires the dexterity to post the block easily. Both the intellectual recognition and the manual skill are needed if the task is to be easily accomplished. But the child may also learn to fit shapes to holes in some other context and transfer the learning from that context to the toy in question. Whatever the circumstances, the child however has to want to post the blocks through the holes. If the child never pays attention to the task, or if he or she tries and finds the task too hard and becomes frustrated, he or she will not learn easily. If in addition we set the child in a context where a whole group of children help each other, so that all of them join to post a collection of blocks through holes, we have in this simple example all the important elements of the learning process. Some are particularly important if learning is to take place in an efficient manner - so that on the next occasion, faced with a new selection of blocks and holes, the child not only remembers from the time before what blocks fit what holes, but also how to judge the shapes of the new blocks and holes and make some good decisions about their matching. Let us define training as deliberate intervention in the learning process in order to make it more effective. Learning may become more effective in a number of different ways. It may become quicker, or surer, or more wide-ranging in terms of the circumstances to which it can be applied. Those who write about training often emphasise the learning cycle (e.g., Kolb and Fry, 1975; Richardson and Bennett, 1984). They emphasise the importance of learning not only to size up a situation, make decisions about how to act, plan and carry out the action, but also to observe what happens, sit back and reflect upon the outcome, and draw lessons on how best to decide, plan and implement the next time round. When people do this, they are exploiting a particular human capacity, that of reflecting on concepts (in this case, drawn from observing our own behaviour and its consequences) in order to refine and develop them. They are exploiting our capacity to learn how to learn. We undoubtedly do learn to transfer knowledge from one set of circumstances to another. At a minimum, the fact that similar skills are used in a wide range of different circumstances has relevance for the design of teaching or training methods, in that the same type of skill, but with different contextual examples,

308

Judith Marquand

needs to be imparted on each occasion. But people always learn skills in one context to use in slightly different contexts. Thus there is some element of transfer in any use of a skill. If the ability to make this transfer can be enhanced through training, then we have a very powerful training tool. How far and in what way can you teach people to recognise the range of contexts to which a particular skill can apply? Do you teach this to people best by exposing them to a wide range of contexts and teaching them to apply the skill in each, or can you teach them how to analyse a context and consider what skill applies? Undoubtedly we can learn to transfer knowledge and skills acquired in one context to others where it is relevant. In essence, this is the application of reasoning by analogy. The salient similarities between the contexts are recognised, so that what is known about the one context can be applied in the others. Reasoning by analogy often takes place. Where the analogy is appropriately drawn, it can save the learner an immense amount of effort and time. Undoubtedly also we often find analogies hard to draw (Gick and Holyoak,1983) and often need help in drawing them. It is increased systématisation - the development and testing of more powerful hypotheses - which is the key to substantially improved performance, but Jeeves and Greer (1983) have shown that this is not easily taught. But transfer nonetheless can be successfully taught. Wolf and Silver (1990) have shown how practical training materials can be devised which enhance transfer and consequent training outcomes. An important area in the development of training is to build on this, to develop practical means of helping people to transfer their knowledge, to enable them to act competently in a wide range of situations. People will only succeed in learning if they are motivated to learn. Learning is sometimes sought for its own sake, but far more often it is sought as a means to some further goal: to be able to do something because this competence is the key to achieving something valued, whether a satisfactory job, a desirable product, or (rather often) the esteem of others. If people are to be motivated to learn, they need to believe not only that the learning allows something of value to them to be produced, but that they will have the capacity to master the learning and then the opportunity to use what they have learnt. Work performance (and learning can be regarded as "work" in this context) relates closely to "self-efficacy" - people's confidence in their ability to perform well - and to the extent to which they have specific, difficult goals, feed-back on their performance in reaching those goals (Locke and Henne, 1986), and acceptance ("ownership") of the goals which are set (Erez and Zidon, 1984; Erez, 1986). We can start to set this in its institutional context. Employers will take training seriously to the extent that they believe that it will help their firms to do better. Individuals will take training seriously to the extent that they believe that it will help them to improve their own lives in any of a range of ways. Often, this entails that the value of the training be recognised by their employer. The more that

Learning and the Economy

309

employers think explicitly about the standards to which jobs need to be performed and the competences required to do this, the more that these competences are expressed in qualifications to which the individual can aspire and which the employer can recognise, the more likely that a virtuous circle, in which training begets more training, can be set in place. There are many steps needed to embed such a culture in any modern industrialised society. Training methods, once designed, need to be diffused in various ways. Training systems need to be institutionalized, whether within the firm, the industrial sector, the training provider, or within a national (or even international) framework. Wherever training is intended to be wider than for one particular job, some concept of training to standards is implicit. If we are to be sure that the training is relevant to the jobs with which it is meant to be associated, the system of standards has to be made explicit. The competences associated with the jobs in question need to be spelt out, the training designed to help the individual to achieve them. A system of assessment needs to be designed. Assessment is a way of trying to predict competence in future actions; current capacity to perform is assessed in a controlled set of surrogate circumstances. Assessment and consequent qualifications serve several purposes. They serve to assure the trainers that the training achieves what is intended. They serve to assure both the individual and the employer that the individual possesses the competences indicated by the qualification. In the United Kingdom there is for the first time a systematic programme to develop an industry-based set of standards and to set up an associated system of qualifications and assessment. It will be important to evaluate over the next few years how far this whole process helps to make employers think in terms of what the job requires if it is to be done well and helps to make individuals aware of the connection between competence and attractive jobs. The importance of an accepted system of standards and qualifications is that people no longer have to work out all the connections every time for themselves. Instead there is an accepted frame of reference in which the most important recurring dimensions of competence are made explicit, codified, publicised and used in thinking about work design and the associated training.

V. Learning and Innovation For the individual who learns, all application of learning is then a form of innovative activity. All perception of the relevance of something which we already know to the analysis of a new set of circumstances and its application to their mastery is innovation. Such activities undoubtedly take place whenever the

310

Judith Marquand

economist considers that there has been innovation in a good or service or the way in which these are produced. But in terms of the differences in individual behaviours and the new competences which they indicate, the individual or the firm undertaking activities which are new to it (although they may be well-known to others) is as much an innovator as is the path-breaker at the frontiers of human endeavour. People can learn; it follows from the relationship between learning and innovative activity that people can learn to innovate. This fits neatly with the growing perception that little innovations are the commonplace of economic activity wherever people have scope to learn and to apply their learning. We now realise that most technological advance is incremental (Georghiou et al., 1986; McArthur, 1987). But behind these recorded advances are myriad tiny changes which represent the normal consequences of individuals learning to do their jobs better. In an environment which encourages such change, the bigger changes new products, new processes, new ways of all kinds of getting things done - are likely all to flow more easily, because embedding each and every one of them requires learning from all whose work is in any way affected. Of course there are often barriers to the exercise of competence already acquired. In such cases, improved performance is made possible simply by removing the barriers. Often, this is more easily said than done; entrenched interests in every organisation will struggle to maintain the status quo. But beyond removing the barriers, the only route to more productive activity lies through innovation, and the route to effective innovation lies through enhanced awareness and enquiry and knowhow to translate ideas into action. Education and training - conscious interventions to increase the rate at which and competence with which people learn - have a major part in developing these.

VI. Learning and Economics Let us return briefly to the concepts of orthodox economics, to see whether they can accommodate the view of learning and human capital which we have reached. The first and obvious point to make is that the stock of human capital is a static concept. Yet capacity - competence in productive activity - can only be demonstrated in use. The frozen frame of a static model can only observe inputs or outputs, whilst it is examination of the neglected processes in between which can clarify what is the nature of human capital. We act in a range of varying circumstances. Sometimes instances may differ only slightly - one widget after another on the assembly line - but more often there is a significant element of difference. In almost every job, as well as in the

Learning and the Economy

311

more directly observable components of the job's activities, there are elements of problem-solving, of planning action and of observing the outcomes of action. The importance of these factors is widely accepted and explicit in the professional work of a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. But they are also crucial in the work of a shop assistant serving a customer, or a motor mechanic servicing a vehicle, or a bricklayer or a nursery nurse. They are crucial especially in determining the quality of the work which is done. What is to be noted about these activities of problem-solving, of planning and of reflection is that, provided that competence in them can be transferred from one situation to another, they are general skills in the economists' sense, important in a wide range of productive activity. And at least some element of transfer must be present in them, since competence even in one job inheres in being able to apply them to more than one situation. They are not the only general skills: all the skills required to interpret the relevant environment (including messages from others) and to communicate messages about one's understandings and intentions are of very general application too. The highly specific skills of Becker's theory start to appear to play only a minor role in the range of what is needed for productive employment. It follows that the risk of market failure, in the economists' sense, is very widespread indeed in the training market. Remember that general skills are those for which, left to themselves, employers are unlikely to purchase, or undertake sufficient training, even to provide such skills as they already know that they could use, even in the short term. But the nature of competence implies something far more fundamental than this. If the individual's application of newly acquired knowledge is no different in kind from those applications of knowledge which we call innovation, it follows that de facto innovative activity is far more pervasive - and just as important as Schumpeter (1939) and his followers argue. The nature of learning and the role of innovation imply that they should be at the heart of any economist's account of how economies change and grow. Evolutionary economists, such as Nelson and Winter (1982); Perez (1983) and those included in Dosi et al. (1988) try to provide a framework which can place it there. Innovation implies uncertainty about the future. It implies uncertainty about future products, processes, costs and values. The more important the role of innovation, the more rapidly the economic framework is changing and the less useful the tools which neo-classical economists have honed. The more important the role of innovation, the more the emphasis on process and the more that economists need to take heed of contributions from other disciplines. Some may find this a bitter pill, but it should rather be a challenge, to help economic analysis to find its proper place alongside the rest of the social sciences.

312

Judith Marquand

VII. Learning and the Economy For the psychologist or training expert, competence is something broad-based, though demonstrated in specific contexts. It is complex. It underpins action. It is crucial to innovation of all kinds. It does not stand still; it cannot be regarded as a static stock, nor in the abstract and devoid of context. A view of the individual is implicit here. It is a view which gives centrality to learning, derived from social interaction, as the way in which we take control of our behaviour, to be able to decide what to do and to act effectively to achieve it. It is a view which belongs in a world where we understand that there is interaction between the observer and the observed, where we acknowledge that our concepts are socially mediated and where we know that we must always look out for the limitations of simple heuristics for choice. For indeed, the more competent someone is, the wider the range of circumstances which they can take effectively into account in deciding what to do and the wider the range of activities which they can undertake. Moreover, there is a substantial degree of commonality between the planning, decision-making and implementing skills over a wide variety of circumstances. In other words, high levels of competence in general skills and a high capacity to innovate are closely related. Some learning, developed through any of a range of methods of education and training, is essential if human capital is to make any economic contribution at all. Moreover, most of the contribution which human capital makes depends on a degree of innovation, at least from the viewpoint of the individuals involved. Effective innovators, in the broad sense of innovation used in this paper, can be developed through education and training. Since all economic growth entails adaptation and change at one level or another, effective training is essential if the capacity for economic growth is to be enhanced. The limits of any one human being, and still more of a collectivity of human beings, are unpredictable. The choices or decisions or inferences in complex contexts are unpredictable too. It follows that the values to be assigned to the consequences of those choices are unpredictable. Indeed, the essence of growth through change is its unpredictability - few innovations remain unmodified by the developing marketplace. Thus the contribution of training to the economy cannot be estimated in advance. Without it, growth is indubitably slow and difficult. With it, growth can be faster but forecasts will be wrong. The faster the rate of economic growth - or, to adopt a less Whiggish view of progress, economic change - then the less useful is any static or even comparative static economic theory. After the rather short-term, it is theories which can cope with dynamic processes under conditions of considerable uncertainty which are needed. Innovation is more pervasive even than Schumpeter argued.

313

Learning and the Economy

C o m p e t e n c e - the ability to apply k n o w l e d g e - is an integral part of any e c o n o m i c activity. Its application in many cases, and certainly in all cases where there is an element o f change, is a form o f innovation; innovation is a fundamental attribute of the human condition. The more an e c o n o m y is changing, the more the element of innovation and the more the consequent uncertainty. And the more the k n o w l e d g e to apply, the more important the role of training, of innovation, and the need to c o m e to terms with the unpredictability o f the future. For a changing e c o n o m y entails a learning society.

References Arrow, Kenneth 1951 Social Choice and Individual York: Wiley.

Values. Cowles Commission Monographs No. 12. New

Becker, Gary S. 1975 Human Capital. 2nd ed.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dosi, G., C. Freeman, R. Nelson, G. Silverberg and L. Soete 1988 Technical Change and Economic Theory. London and New York: Pinter Publishers. Erez, M. 1986 "The Congruence of Goal-setting Strategies with Socio-cultural Values and its Effect on Performance". Journal of Management 12:585-92. Erez, M. and I. Zidon 1984, "Effect of Goal Acceptance on the Relationship of Goal Difficulty to Performance". Journal of Applied Psychology 69:69-78. Georghiou, L., J.S. Metcalfe, M. Gibbons, T. Ray and J. Evans 1986 Post Innovation Performance: Technological Development and Competition. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. Gick, M.L. and K.J. Holyoak 1983, "Schema Introduction and Analogical Transfer". Cognitive Psychology

15:1-38.

Jeeves, M. and B. Greer 1983 Analysis of Structural Learning. London: Academic Press. Kolb, D.A. and R. Fry 1975, "Towards an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning", in C.L. Cooper, (ed.), TheoriesE.A. of Group London: John Wiley. Locke, and D.Processes. Henne

314

Judith Marquand

1986 "Work Motivation Theories", pp. 1-32 in C.L. Cooper and I. Robertson, (eds.) International Review of Industrial and Organisational Psychology London: John Wiley. McArthur, R. 1987 "Innovation, Diffusion and Technical Change: A Case Study", pp. 26-50 in K. Chapman and G. Humphrys, eds., Technical Change and Industrial Policy. Oxford: Blackwell. Marquand, Judith 1989 Autonomy and Change: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

the Sources

Nelson, R. and S. Winter 1982 An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Harvard University Press.

of Economic

Change.

Growth.

Hemel Hempstead:

Cambridge, Mass. and London:

Perez, C. 1983 "Structural Change and Assimilation of New Technologies in the Economic and Social Systems". Futures 15:357-75. Pigou, A.C. 1911 Economics of Welfare. London: MacMillan. Richardson, J. and B. Bennett 1984 "Applying Learning Techniques to On-the-job Development". Journal of Industrial Training 8:1, 3, 4. Schumpeter, Joseph

European

1939 Business Cycles. New York: McGraw-Hill. Simon, H.A. 1957 Models of Man,Social and Rational. New York: Wiley. Simon, H.A. 1983 Reason in Human Affairs. Oxford: Blackwell. Wolf, A. and R. Silver 1990 Learning in Context: Patterns of Skill Transfer and Their Training Training Agency R&D Series, Sheffield.

Implications.

Part VI Empirical Analysis of Knowledge Production and its Social Consequences

Introduction Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

The essays in Part Six analyze empirical materials on the production of knowledge and its social consequences. Each author is concerned with the role of experts in making and moving knowledge into the public political sphere. Hence each author addresses, through empirical materials, many of the themes and issues raised in Part Three as well as in other chapters. Each author also focuses on the social and political role of science and scientific experts in public controversies about risk regulation of new technologies, albeit with different emphases. Wolfgang van den Daele posits that risk management, and the role of scientific experts in it, is not reducible to the political sphere. Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman use their research to show that the science/politics distinction, as well as several other binary oppositions associated with it, are faulty: these spheres - their people, practices, processes and institutional settings - are entwined in a heterogeneous network of expertise. Arie Rip adds two empirical case studies of his own to support the contention that there is a fusion of scientific knowledge production and its myriad uses in political cultures, and that this should be recognized and embraced in policy development even if it is at the expense of the authority of scientific experts as untainted knowledge purists. Wolfgang van den Daele observes that a central role of the state is and always has been the control of risks, threats, dangers and harms. In the modern era the regulation of technical risks is as legitimate and compelling a state interest as, for example, the regulation of criminal behavior. Indeed, given the enormity of the potential harm and the large numbers affected by many technical risks, their regulation has perhaps become the most compelling area of state interest. The diffusion of technologies in society is thus inevitably accompanied by an infusion of state administrative laws, agency regulation and surveillance. The development and implementation of these controls are the preserve of experts who claim specialized knowledge about the technology's potential, implications, risks, and how to manage all of these elements. In the process experts inevitably shift between analytical and normative problems. They are drawn into the political arena, and indeed help to constitute it, via participation in political

318

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

movements, bargaining, engaging lay competence, and so on. Nevertheless, van den Daele argues, scientific expertise cannot be reduced to the political and remains independently indispensable to risk management. Van den Daele sustains his view by reviewing four considerations in scientific risk management. First, he addresses the assertion "we do not know enough". Political opposition to new technologies is increasingly framed in terms of safety and security, which authorities inevitably must address. Safety and security are cultural constructs that are open, selective, and elastic, to the point where it is not just "clear and present danger" but more often murky and possible risks that are at issue. Van den Daele says this is exemplified in the case of risk debates regarding genetic engineering in the former Federal Republic of Germany. The mandate for regulation magnified and multiplied. Broader categories of damage - spanning moral, political, social, ecological, and human values and rights aspects - were sustained. Remote or hypothetical possibilities of damage, controlling the unknown or vaguely visualized, were advanced, so that issues of uncertainty and ignorance became central for risk regulation. These features were also evident in F.R.G. laws pertaining to nuclear energy and clean air, which to van den Daele exemplify the extreme situation where the use of a technology is restricted on the argument that there is a risk because we do not know the risk. Van den Daele also points to limitations placed on safety tests of technologies, based on arguments that such tests themselves are unsafe, that relevant risks may escape them, and that laboratory tests are inadequate to the real world. The combined effect of the above elements is a shift in the regulation of risks away from experts and toward public political arenas and their forms of bargaining, media representation, lay competence and compromise. Van den Daele next addresses the assertion "you never know enough". He observes that there is always a gap, if not a gulf, between the advice experts give and the information from which they derive their advice, resulting in distortion and bias. All models, whether scientific or commonsensical, are partial and inadequate to the extent they are "bounded" and "local". However, van den Daele in effect furthers the argument of Marquand in Chapter 14. Practical actors using practical knowledge do not operate in terms of the economist's optimization model, but rather in terms of a satisficing model. It is necessary to reason and act in terms of objective facts, real things, and true statements to get the job done; and, unforeseen results are seen as inevitable, as they are when the decision is taken to do nothing. The question, faced by all experts, becomes, in van den Daele's words, "What mixture of knowledge and ignorance and what mixture of control and chance can we tolerate for responsible action?" Moreover, it is only experts who can determine when enough is known to go on, to engage in practical action. The more uncertainties matter, the more they will be determined through and by experts.

Introduction

319

Van den Daele proceeds by examining professional appropriation of risk controversies. He notes that regardless of the political constituencies they represent, opponents in risk controversies always criticize each other in the terms of science: they accuse each other of being unscientific, and they mobilize scientific evidence and scientific authority themselves. While knowledge is socially constructed, the final test is always administered by scientific experts, the institutionalized specialists of truth and reality. As van den Daele states pithily, "There is no expertise apart from the experts". The limits and relevance of the professional mandate in the regulation of risks is the final consideration of van den Daele. He believes that controversies serve the important function of articulating the relative differentiation between analytical and normative problems in risk assessment, and that this is always a somewhat open and negotiated matter. Scientific experts always have a domain in controversies with respect to both the knowledge terms of the controversy itself as well as any subsequent legal resolution and its enforcement. Indeed most things stay out of the realm of public controversy most of the time, remaining subject to routine administration by experts and their professional dominance rather than being subject to public politicization. Experts perpetually disagree among themselves, but their controversies remain their professional property and do not often percolate into public political culture. Van den Daele concludes by arguing there is space for democratic control of scientific expertise via ongoing dialogue about analytical and normative boundaries, and by using public controversies to influence professional boundaries and work orientations. Fundamentally, however, expertise can only be redefined, not replaced by non-expert political processes. Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman challenge van den Daele and other critics of the new sociology of science by showing the relevance of a social constructionist approach to the analysis of all stages in the process of producing, using and regulating scientific knowledge and technology. They begin by observing that while the term "expert" demarcates scientific activity from other human activity, the boundary is not fixed but is perpetually reconstructed in the work of experts and those they advise. Further, the boundary is not well articulated in most academic analyses, which persist in relying upon simplistic dichotomies to represent it. In constructing expertise actors move among different "layers" of people, practices, processes and institutional settings, literally shifting boundaries as they go. Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman contend that the reliance upon binary oppositions, for example as seen in the work of van den Daele, perpetuates the view that scientific and technical controversies are two-staged: risk assessment by scientific experts, followed by decisions by non-scientific political actors based on the results of scientific assessments. However, the scientific and political arenas are entwined as myriad actors (people and technologies) within them form

320

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

a heterogeneous network of expertise. If analysts recognize this fact, they can overcome problems inherent in binary oppositions, e.g., macro/micro, external/internal, pure science/regulatory science; problems in invoking "legitimacy" to account for the conditions by which a person can attain expert status; and, problems in seeing expert knowledge as a property of given individuals or groups, rather than as embedded in networks. In expertise as a network, the production of expert knowledge is coterminous with the construction of a more or less stable network. Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman point to the construction of standards, whether formal or informal, as a key ingredient of the construction process. Standards are the building blocks of expertise as a network, in that they provide "black boxes" which function as a point of reference and contact, to be linked up in a circuit with other, extended networks. The circuitry of the "black boxes" is itself an issue during a controversy. Overall, the regulatory tools play an important part in the heterogeneous network in all phases and stages, becoming part of the "cascade of translations" from point-to-point. Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman advance their perspective through an empirical study of the debate over the safety of recombinant DNA research, which is also a substantive focus of van den Daele. They note that in the first phase of research, concern arose that genetically engineered micro-organisms (GEMs) might escape from the laboratory. Existing practices, technical devices and institutional routines were successfully invoked to limit controversy and minimize experiments to assess risks. However, in the second phase of research, involving the environmental release of GEMs, there was no ready-made black box. Hence regulatory agencies participated in the establishment of research centers to develop relevant technical expertise, including the very definition of the technical elements or actors involved. Each center was established as, in effect, a center of built-in controversy because it was to have a different focus and/or to use tools differently than the other centers. Each center was a resource to define a domain of uncertainty and to constitute a field of intervention. These centers resulted in a kind of embarrassment of riches: there were too many potential candidates to establish risk assessment procedures and effect closure of controversy. In focusing on the environmental release of GEM phase, Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman are able to show how "non-technical" issues, such as regulatory schemes, are present in scientific research from the outset and not discrete from the construction of technical expertise. They also demonstrate that expertise is an ongoing accomplishment involving the mobilization of different knowledges and things to construct a network. Moreover, the meaning and status of the foregoing elements are negotiated. The authors consider how microcosms, produced as a standard technical object, also provide a format for a risk assessment tool. In the very process of production,

Introduction

321

microcosms embody myriad institutional settings, disciplines, models and definitions, thereby constituting the "black box" needed to stabilize the network and "translate" the human and technical actors into each other. Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman also study a laboratory's organizational flow chart, produced by members of the laboratory's research team. This analysis allows the authors to show that work within the team was constructed through regulatory categories, such as "exposure" and "hazard", defined by a regulatory agency. This was an explicit socio-political contribution to the construction of scientific facts. In turn regulatory categories themselves result from a hybrid construction process whereby scientific works are blended with the performative discourse of law. In sum, the work of the team, via heterogeneous elements, is geared toward the production of standards for regulation. The success of the team occurs when the standards function as a black box, making invisible the elements invoked in their production, and providing a building block for the construction of further, extended networks. Arie Rip opens with the observation that contemporary scientific experts face unique circumstances because of the public or semi-public character of much of their advice. They now face more universalistic criteria of scientific validity; criteria of validity beyond science; multiple audiences, each of whom want a different style, packaging and even substance for science; and, involvement in regulation right from the beginning of their scientific knowledge production. In combination these elements make it clear that science and politics are fused. Rip provides a case study of the ozone layer debate, with particular reference to the United States. Science, and the socio-political network of it - involving myriad organizations of industry, government, and environmentalists - are "inextricably interwoven". Different actors define the cognitive situation itself differently, leading to different emphases in research, causal attributions and reform solutions. In the process scientific causes and political causes are entwined. The various agendas and definitions of the problem interact to form "focal points" (similar to the "black boxes" identified by Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman), which then give emphasis to some parts of the problem at the expense of others. The state of knowledge is thus dependent on the evolution of the controversy and the focal points created. In Rip's words, "The state-of-the-art (i.e. our knowledge) in a domain derives from the state-of-the-debate". In this regard it is impossible to disentangle value and fact. The question is how facts become valued and how this in turn constitutes a procedure not to know. Scientists are inevitably a part of political decision-making, helping to construct a certain consensus in the midst of uncertainty while also recognizing that there is no linear causality from their expertise to political decisions. Rip next considers the setting of standards for dioxin in the Netherlands, another case of "hybrid fabrication of fact". Experts pursue what Ezrahi terms "pragmatic rationality", taking into account the effects of various possible

322

Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson

standards, as opposed to "Utopian rationality", in which expertise is deferred to as "hard" unequivocal science. Rip shows how the same scientists, working with the same scientific materials, wrote two reports in which they shifted pragmatically from classifying dioxin as a complete carcinogen compelling stringent regulation to classifying it as a "promoter" with less stringent implications for regulation. The shift resulted in a controversy which illustrated, among other things, that scientific quality control and boundary maintenance can reduce instead of enhance social confidence; and, that while scientists must inevitably incorporate the socio-political context in deciding what to consider "hard" (not suitable for deconstruction), they must also stress their expert role and make it unassailable by demarcating a division of labor between their work and public debate. Rip examines a further controversy, this time regarding unacceptable dioxin levels in milk. Through this example he illustrates that the expert as pragmatic rationalist must address and balance three heterogeneous considerations: what research will not be done; how to maintain long-term credibility; and, what is the likely societal effect of setting the standard and whether this effect is acceptable. Rip concludes with the advice that experts should concern themselves with providing robust advice, based on pragmatic rationality, as opposed to formally correct statements that have no purpose or the wrong purpose. Being prescriptive gives recognition to the fact that science and politics are entwined, is more honest, and can be more productive of reasonable and accountable outcomes. Rip cautions that he is not saying science becomes a slave to politics, only that internal, scientific validity is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of the societal robustness of scientific advice. For the expert, talent in account ability - the reasonable and concrete answers and the articulation of reasons for them - will yield accountability. Moreover, while scientists risk some undermining of their authority, they should not respond by mining under ground, burying themselves in the sand or closing themselves off in more black boxes. After all, more than anyone else, scientists know that the tacit rule of expert advice is pragmatic rationality. Rip believes that scientists would do everyone a favor, including themselves, if they worked harder to ensure that this rule no longer remains tacit.

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks: Twenty Years of Demythologizing the Experts Wolfgang van den Daele

During the last two decades a general understanding has been established that modern societies are becoming "information" or "knowledge" societies which rely on applied science as a strategic resource and place scientific experts in key roles in social and political decision-making (Bell, 1976, 1980; Gouldner, 1979). Equally during the last twenty years, however, criticism of the role of experts has been mounting. Technocratic arrogance, elitism and political bias have come under attack. The claim that science would provide impartial and objective advice in complex social and political matters was dismantled as an ideology. Disputes among experts have become a favorite topic of the social studies of science, and a mood of relativism and "social constructivism" has swept the field, suggesting that we might think of alternatives to scientific definitions of reality, at least on a methodological and philosophical level. Paul Feyerabend (1985:159), for instance, in discussing the Galileo affair, takes the side of Cardinal Bellarmin and insists that "the church was not only on the right track when measuring reality by human concerns, but it was considerably more rational than some modern scientists and philosophers who draw a sharp distinction between fact and values and take it for granted that the only way of arriving at facts and, therefore, reality, is to do science". How has the rising tide of criticism affected the social and political role of experts? Has it reinstalled the prevalence of political decision-making over professional analysis and of lay or common-sense reasoning over scientific argument? I shall discuss these issues using the example of risk regulation, and in particular genetic engineering in the Federal Republic of Germany.

324

Wolfgang van den Daele

I. Professional Analysis vs. Political Bargaining The regulation of technical risks is a legitimate and compelling state interest. The protection of human life and health - and today increasingly, of the environment - cannot be left to mechanisms of subsequent compensation for losses stemming from technical hazards and accidents. Prevention is needed. The actual practice of risk regulation reflects conflicting interests and inequality of power. There is ample evidence, e.g., in the history of occupational health and safety, and consumer protection, for the fact that technical risks are concealed, denied and not prevented, and deliberately shifted to workers and consumers instead. However, the normative principle that the state is responsible for the safety of the technologies applied in manufacturing, products, and professional practices has never been challenged, not even by the advocates of dogmatic liberalism. As a result, the diffusion of technologies in society has to pass through a filter of state controls. The administration of such controls is crucially dependent on knowledge about the potential of the technology, the implications of its uses, and possible options for coping with identified hazards. Such knowledge is virtually monopolized by a small group of experts, namely the scientists, engineers and practitioners who develop, analyse and administer the technology. Accordingly, the communities of these experts have come to play a key role in the management of risk regulation. This role was challenged and, in part, refuted during the last several decades. The risk debates over nuclear energy, chemical plants, waste management, and genetic engineering have demonstrated how closely technical expertise is related to social and political advocacy. Risk management is far from just fact finding and deriving rational strategies of problem solving from objective knowledge. It implies risk policies. Experts make judgements not only on the existence, but also on the acceptability of risks. They propagate energy futures for society, try to enhance economic growth, favor certain health strategies, and sometimes also support environmental movements. Moreover, major catastrophes (e.g., thalidomide, Seveso, Bhopal, Tschernobyl) have vanquished the expectation that handing over the regulation of technical risks to the expert communities would lead to safety. Controversies within these communities have increasingly revealed that experts actually proceed on a rather fragmentary and preliminary knowledge base. They simply lack the knowledge to predict the outcomes of implementing a new technology and to effectively control its possible hazards. Theoretically, the growing awareness of the bias and the cognitive limits of expertise could have resulted in a political "disestablishment" of experts. It could have referred risk management back to politics, rendering problem solving a matter of political bargaining rather than of professional analysis, and replacing scientific evidence with lay competence. Exactly this happened in many social

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

325

policy areas during the 1970s. Initially there was widespread belief that social reforms could be brought about by programmatic rationality which, as the political scientist Herbert Gans (1975:14) put it, "seeks to achieve substantive goals through instrumental action programs that can be proven logically or empirically to achieve these goals". This belief lost following. It became accepted that political planning would always imply a considerable amount of what Charles Lindblom (1979) called "disjointed incrementalism". One must muddle through "with limited foresight, relying as much on diffuse common sense as on scientific analysis. Rationalistic approaches overlook the fact that problems are very widely solved through social interaction without anybody being able to understand or analyse them completely" (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979:31). As a result social planning must be seen as a policy process not as an analytical task which, however, does not necessarily imply that the process is a democratic one (see Fischer, 1990). My argument in this paper is that in regulating the risks of new technology experts will, so to speak, survive better. Despite the politicization of risk management, scientific knowledge remains an indispensible resource, and the communities of experts continue to monoplize the control of this resource. This argument might seem counterintuitive given the fact that new technologies are surrounded by prolonged and apparently irreconcilable conflicts in present societies (Wildavsky, 1988; Evers and Nowotny, 1988; Beck, 1986). Within these conflicts ignorance, uncertainty and controversy among experts are strategic elements. Let us have a closer look at these elements.

II. "We Do Not Know Enough!" Limited understanding and limited ability to predict the impacts of a new technology may not represent a serious problem as long as confidence prevails in society that technological progress somehow converges with social progress, that the overall impact of a new technology will be beneficial, that the technology is basically safe, and that unforeseen problems will be manageable when they arise and can therefore be left to be coped with in the future. Under such conditions the regulation of technical risks has limited objectives. It will aim at the prevention of "clear and present dangers". Only obvious abuses of the technologies must be precluded and known hazards for human life and health and other values of comparable status avoided. That such conditions no longer exist needs no further elaboration. Accordingly, regulators are confronted with more and more demands for the prevention of a growing variety of risks. For a number of reasons, in liberal societies the appeal to

326

Wolfgang van den Daele

risks seems to be an appropriate political operationalization of opposition to new technologies: - Safety is recognized as a basic value (Zapf, 1987). It is impossible to deny the legitimacy of claims for better protection against the hazards of a new technology. - Individual rights to use and propagate new technologies are contingent upon the safety of the technologies. Nobody has a right to inflict harm on other individuals or on accepted public interests. - Prevention of and precautions against dangers are legitimate concerns of the state. Individuals may even be entitled constitutionally to such protection. This basic right may be violated by the failure to regulate a technology properly (Robbers, 1987). To enforce this right, the Supreme Court may even overrule majority votes in parliament. - "Risks" are cultural constructs. The meaning and definition of insecurity, danger, and harm depend on selective perceptions and sensitivities, and can be renegotiated in society (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982). Present conflicts over the regulation of technical risks have extended the realm of "risk" far beyond the traditional boundaries of "clear and present dangers". Risks are coming to resemble moving targets. The loss of confidence in the social benefits of new technology is leading to ever tighter demands for safety. Negative effects of past innovations are answered by extending the responsibility for new technologies to include unforeseen and unknown consequences. Fundamental objections to the structure of our society, which are normally difficult to get on the political agenda, can be operationalized in terms of safety issues. For instance, should we not stop or slow down the rate of innovation? Who should have the legitimate power to introduce new technology and thereby induce social changes which affect the lives of everyone? Is it proper that private business has such power? The desire to restore the naturalness of our environment and to return to modesty in our interventions into nature can be incorporated in the policies of risk regulation. Table 1 indicates the semantic field of risk discussions in genetic engineering in the Federal Republic of Germany (van den Daele, 1989, 1991). It shows the tendency to extend the mandate for regulation in two directions: towards broader categories of damage and towards possibilities of damage which are remote or hypothetical. (The classification of the examples given may be open to debate, but it will illustrate the point.) In the vertical dimension this table shows efforts to redefine concepts of "harm" or "damage". It is argued that we should not just take those dangers related to basic goods and absolute individual rights - such as human life and health, property, and personal freedom - into account. We should also consider that we may change the natural environment irreversibly and thus cause

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

327

Table 1 : Concepts of Risks in Genetic Engineering Concepts of Damage ^^

Known Risks

Suspected Risks

Hypothetical Risks

disease or death by work with pathogens or toxins

state programs of involuntary prenatal diagnosis

epidemic through unintended construction of pathogens by genetic recombination

Probability

Violation of basic values and rights

deliberate construction of pathogens (genetic terrorism) Ecological damage

pollution through manipulated organisms released into the environment

Social damage

industrialization of agriculture, rural exodus

Political damage

genetic screening in the workplace

Moral damage

reductionist image of man

collapse of the ecosystem through the spread of manipulated organisms genetic erosion of crops in agriculture

loss of solidarity with the handicapped selection of the sex of fetuses by parents

acceptance of the idea of breeding humans

ecological damage. By releasing manipulated organisms into the environment we run the risk of overthrowing the existing balance of life-forms in the ecosystem. We should also consider the possibility of social damage. For instance, the introduction of genetic breeding techniques could accelerate the decline of small family farming and aggravate the rural exodus. We should consider whether the technology is politically harmful. It might jeopardize the prospects for social development and reform. The introduction of prenatal genetic screening and elective abortion of handicapped fetuses may undermine solidarity with handicapped people in general. Finally, we should consider moral damage. Values dear to society today may be eroded by adaptation to new technologies. People may decide, for instance, to accept intervention into the human germ line for medical reasons. If, however, we live with such a practice over a longer period of time the idea of improving the genome of our children may also become more acceptable. What is more important for our present discussion is the fact that risk definitions are also shifted in the horizontal dimension from known risks or clear

328

Wolfgang van den Daele

and present dangers to suspected risks or remote possibilities of harm which are indicated by some factual evidence or by plausible theory, and to unknown or hypothetical risks which are assumed because they cannot be theoretically or logically excluded. Issues of uncertainty and ignorance become central for risk regulation. Such issues can be raised with respect to the possible impacts of the technology on core values of society, such as health and life (including ecological survival). They are hence much more persuasive than arguments of political or social undesirability or hazards of moral change, and they can lead to quite restrictive regulations in response. It is established policy in most industrialized countries that in order to provide safety one must respond to suspected risks. Past experience with technology has demonstrated that we must expect consequences and surprises which we cannot simply handle on a "wait-and-see" basis, since the changes that are induced may be irreversible. Therefore one cannot wait until the existence of risks is proven beyond doubt. The German Federal Administrative Court has ruled that, in the case of nuclear energy, risks must be taken into account even "if they cannot be excluded only because, according to the knowledge we have, one can neither confirm nor refute the possibility of certain causal relations" (Bundesverwaltungsgericht, Entscheidungen 72: 315). This principle - which also applies to clean air legislation - allows us to restrict the use of a technology on the basis of the risk that we do not exactly know the risk. (The court, of course, only ruled what the state can legitimately impose, not what is moral duty. The public tends, however, to consider the possible legal maximum of risk regulation as the moral minimum of safety which the citizen can claim.) Another example for dealing with hypothetical risks is provided by the guidelines which regulated recombinant DNA research in the late seventies. These guidelines imposed safety measures that, among other things, were designed to prevent possible damage from the unintended creation of new pathogens. There was uncertainty as to whether the recombination of genetic elements which themselves were considered harmless could not possibly result in new, dangerous organisms. The dominant view in the scientific community was that this hypothesis was supported neither by theory nor by factual evidence. The guidelines were nevertheless adopted as a response to the uncertainties of a revolutionary new technology, the consequences of which we could not evaluate on the basis of past experience. This indicates that modern societies have begun to accept that risks other than those clearly known and defined must also be controlled. We must somehow control the risk that we are not yet aware of all the risks. Risk arguments based on the limits of knowledge have also been advanced against the application of safety tests which are commonly used to establish, for instance, the non-toxicity and non-pathogenicity of technological agents. Such tests have a limited sensitivity and are therefore themselves inherently unsafe. Relevant risks may escape them. These tests and other safety designs such as

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

329

threshold standards for exposure to dangerous agents are based on theoretical assumptions and empirical generalizations which are by definition preliminary and open to falsification by future research. Furthermore, the safety of complex technical systems cannot be comprehensively tested in the laboratory in advance. The implementation of such systems therefore amounts to a real world experiment by which we generate the knowledge that would be needed to evaluate whether it is safe to implement them (Krohn and Weyer, 1989; Wynne, 1988). In general, we cannot predict the long-term effects of technical manipulations on the natural or social environment. Ecology (let alone social science) is widely ignorant of the causal mechanisms which mediate the impacts of such manipulation. To focus risk discussions not on what we know about the impacts of a new technology, but on what we do not know and, in fact, cannot know brings to naught the claims of experts that the regulation of risk should be their proper domain (see also Campbell, 1985). Why should scientists and engineers and their communities be particularly competent to determine how to proceed under conditions of lack of knowledge and irreducible uncertainty? On which side the burden of proof for the safety of a technology should be put is a genuinely political issue, which should be dealt with through procedures of bargaining, compromising and voting rather than by professional analysis. But in fact, the prominence of arguments about the limits of our knowledge and foresight have not put the experts out of business in risk regulation.

III. "You Never Know Enough" It would be mistaken to assume that, when irreducible uncertainties become a focus of argument, lay judgements win over professional expertise in risk discussions. Two arguments about uncertainty must first be distinguished: - The first argument claims that all knowledge - and hence all safety and control - is in principle only relative and conditional. This claim can be made by everyone, but it has little effect on the regulation of risks. - The second argument points to the critical gap that exists between the advice experts give for actions and the information from which they derive such advice. This argument is relevant. It implies that all expert judgements are susceptible to bias and distortion by virtue of their interest. The argument cannot, however, be made forcefully outside the professional context. Obviously one does not have to be an expert to argue that whatever is known

330

Wolfgang van den Daele

about a technology will never be enough to predict and control all the possible consequences of its application. Something unforeseen will surely happen. Whatever safety controls we imagine, they will probably fail at some point. All our plans are based on oversimplified models which cannot adequately represent the complexities of the real world. It would, however, be meaningless simply to equate the lack of absolute safety with unsafeness. One could just as well argue that since there is no absolute knowledge there is no knowledge at all. Knowledge, safety, control, and planning exist only as "bounded" knowledge, safety etc. (see Simon, 1983). They are essentially "local" phenomena. Knowledge is always embedded in ignorance, safety is surrounded by unsafety and rational planning inevitably frays out to incalculable evolution. The paradoxes of local knowledge, i.e. how we can know anything at all, when knowledge is derived from ignorance, must be left to philosophers. It would be a "category mistake" to draw consequences for human practice from them. Relativism and epistemological constructivism may be irrefutable philosophical tenets. Human practice, however, and for that matter, scientific practice remain largely naive: they refer to objective facts, to real things, to true statements. To argue that such reference is misplaced ontology or unclear thinking is beside the point. Equally irrelevant would be to assess whether a practice is based on true and objective grounds using philosophical criteria for what absolute truth or objectivity would be. The more radical the arguments of irreducible uncertainty, the less relevant they seem for the regulation of risk. In the extreme, they are gratuitous. Scenarios of hypothetical risks, which appeal to incalculable consequences in general and to the chance that something undesirable might occur easily provoke "so what" responses. Whatever we do will lead to some unforeseen results, and this is also true for what we decide not to do. Efforts to avoid unknown risks pose new unknown risks (cf. Wildavsky, 1988). To do nothing is not likely to be a solution. Not to implement a new technology does not restore an idyllic state of unspoiled nature but leaves us with an old technology which is not necessarily better understood or less risky. The substitution of coal burning for nuclear energy is one example. Absolute knowledge, complete control, or totally comprehensive planning cannot be the point in uncertainty arguments. The point is a quantitative one: What mixture of knowledge and ignorance and what mixture of control and chance can we tolerate for responsible action? One never knows enough to derive judgements of whether or not to act analytically from the available information about causal laws and initial conditions governing concrete situations. But such judgements can be more or less derived; they can be more or less well grounded in existing knowledge. By definition experts are confronted with this problem whenever they are called upon to give advice. It is quite normal that there is a gap between what is objectively known and what is needed to solve the problem at hand. This gap is

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

331

bridged through intuition, loose reasoning by analogy and "educated guesses". Experts are not simply applied scientists; expertise is mostly "transscience" (Weinberg, 1972). The gap may be more or less dramatic (see Grupp, 1979). The engineer who is asked to implement a technology may have an easier task than the ecologist who is asked to assess the environmental risks of that implementation. The engineer is looking for appropriate causes. He must answer the question, "what can we do to make X happen?" Such questions are restricted in scope, and they correspond to the standard explanatory strategies in experimental science which try to establish cause-effect (if-then) relationships. The engineer may therefore solve his problem by redesigning the real world conditions in which the technology must function as closely as possible to the laboratory setting in which the scientific results have been achieved. The ecologist by contrast is looking for consequences and functions. He must answer the question, "what will happen if we do X?" Such questions are unrestricted in scope, highly complex and less well elaborated in the existing body of scientific knowledge. The fact that experts extrapolate from what they know well and are able to predict to what they know less well and can only tell with some probablity does not in itself constitute an argument against the usefulness and trustworthiness of expertise. Many of the success stories of medicine and engineering were built on such extrapolations. However, expertise in risk assessment may be different, since it seems to be fraught with particular uncertainties. Is it not plausible to suppose that the knowledge gap which experts must bridge is just too large, that professional judgement is in fact arbitrary? Additional uncertainties may arise when completely new problems have to be assessed that can hardly be compared to those which are fairly well known. But who is able to determine that the gap is too large, or the problem incomparably new? It seems that only the experts themselves can do so. It is of little help for outsiders to know that experts make bold extrapolations and use vague analogies. Outsiders may suspect bias or manipulation. But they cannot themselves determine how far experts can rightly go. This is a question of professional rules and standards which can only be policed within the profession (see also Nelkin, 1977). The notion, for instance, that recombinant DNA was a revolutionary new technology that could not be compared to traditional biotechnology, and hence not handled on the basis of experience of that technology, had to be established by concerned insiders. Insiders provided the assessment of the state of knowledge which gave rise to the idea that, in this case, one should take hypothetical risks into account which cannot be identified nor even clearly described. Lawyers, politicians and social movements could exploit this assessment - which is what they did after Asilomar, when they forced the scientific community into the acceptance of rather restrictive precautionary safety regulations (see Krimsky, 1982). But they could hardly have proceeded without, so to speak, a professional license. Accordingly, the appeal to hypothetical risks loses power when the

332

Wolfgang van den Daele

insiders retreat from the assessment on which the idea was based. Historically this happened with respect to the recombinant DNA-technology when scientists claimed to understand the technology better and pointed to the fact that no qualitatively new risks had shown up during many years of experimentation. Opinions converged among the experts that genetic engineering was not in fact so "new" that it could not be compared to traditional biotechnology. It is difficult to challenge this position from outside. One can of course argue that induction from past experiments is a weak basis for prognosis. There is still a chance that future experiments will confirm the original fears that genetic engineering involves new unknown risks. One may also maintain that the analytical tools to trace the possible effects of engineered organisms are underdeveloped, and that small or long-term effects might already exist which are harmful but escape our detection so far. Such arguments, however, easily deteriorate to objections that can always be raised and hence become gratuitous. When experts close the issue, outsiders seem to be left with arguments by which they tend to become marginalized. The more radical the challenge to the meaning of knowledge and the feasibility of foresight and control, the less persuasive the uncertainty argument. Uncertainties which really matter must apparently be decided by the experts. Thus, not only do the experts monopolize the knowledge of the field, they also hold a monopoly on the lack of knowledge that counts.

IV. The Professional Appropriation of Risk Controversies Must we reverse our assessment of the role of experts given thus far, when we take into account the fact that experts seldom agree? Experts indeed often disagree as to the risks and safety of a technology. Such disagreement may reflect broader issues of social choice - whether a technology is really desirable or necessary for society, whether its costs are acceptable, and whether its burdens are justly distributed. Apparently, judgements of this kind do not belong to the domain of expert knowledge but rather to public debate and political decisionmaking. When experts raise such arguments they act as citizens and can hardly claim a special mandate to decide the issue. They tend, however, to reformulate the issue in such a way that it is "internalized" into the professional competence and they hence can make the claim to decide upon it. Controversies among experts usually deal with problems such as the availability and interpretation of data, the validity of extrapolations, the probability of events, or the soundness of conclusions. They argue, for instance, over whether low-dosage exposure to toxic substances has a measurable effect (Nowotny and

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

333

Hirsch, 1980), whether certain types of nuclear accidents can happen (Del Sesto, 1983), whether water fluoridation improves health (Martin, 1988), whether animal testing provides evidence for hazards for humans etc. Controversies among experts present risk regulation not as a matter of social and political choice, but as a matter of factual discovery and theoretical interpretation. To denounce this as a ritual (Wynne, 1982) is beside the point. The presentation is effective. It isolates those aspects of the problem which pertain to the repertoire of the profession and forces participants to focus on analytical arguments, fact finding, refinement of methods, discussion of theoretical modeling etc. It is, no doubt, a social strategy of professional dominance to concentrate on these aspects. But to the degree that it is done, the issue and the controversy in fact belong to the experts. The public is excluded. The matter must be handled according to professional standards. Purely political arguments are deviant. This is confirmed by the very fact that opponents in these controversies accuse each other of being politically biased, pursuing non-scientific interests, violating the rules of objectivity etc. Whether such reproaches are valid cannot be judged by outsiders. Observers may register how the participants in the controversy treat each other. They may, for instance, collect evidence of the arrogance of representatives of dominant views and of the manipulation of media presentations and of the agenda of public hearings. They may also find formal indicators that minority views are denied "due process" in the controversy. But they cannot themselves decide on the substance of the issue. Therefore, it does not seem particularly relevant when observers show how the "consensus" of the geneticists - that recombinant DNA is not that dangerous after all - has been socially engineered by excluding the dissidents from journals and meetings, by avoiding further debates and declaring additional safety experiments unilluminating (cf. Wright, 1986). Much of the recent sociology of science has shown that even the most reliable theories and discoveries are socially constructed, that scientists always have a diversity of personal interests, and that controversies in science, too, are solved by social "closure", not just by information and insight. Such work, for methodological and philosophical reasons, denies the relevance of all questions of fact, causality, objectivity and truth. This may be a fine, if somewhat esoteric, exercise in sociology, but in real life those questions still matter. The sociologist - or, for that matter, the politician or the public - cannot conclude from the analysis of the social processes of conflict, negotiation and consensus formation within the profession, which side is right and whether the dissidents in a controversy have been suppressed for good reasons or not. Outsiders may exert some procedural control over the professional controversy by providing suitable arenas. They may even deliberately support dissidents in order to keep the controversy going. The final test, however, is always with the professional community itself. Only the community can decide whether dissent should be accepted as an indicator of

334

Wolfgang van den Daele

substantial lack of knowledge and the beginning of a controversy or dismissed as a political manoeuver. This analysis does not imply that there is anything like an absolute or culture-free test of truth and reality. Knowledge is socially constructed, and scientists and engineers etc. construct within the limits set by modern culture and professional traditions. However, after they have been institutionalized as specialists for questions of truth and reality, and have organized a differentiated domain of knowledge and know-how, they have gained a competitive edge in their domain and can only be challenged from within. There is no expertise apart from the experts. (Cf. Krohn and Küppers, 1990 for a similar argument concerning the adminstration of the boundaries of science through the scientists.)

V. The Limits and Relevance of Professional Mandate in the Regulation of Risk What then, after all, is left of the "decline" of the experts? What has been the effect of the political criticism and of all the internal controversies surrounding expert advice? Criticism and controversies establish the crucial role of the differentiation between analytical and normative problems in risk assessment and tend to narrow the mandate of experts down to empirical matters, shifting evaluation to public debate and decision making, at least temporarily. Negotiations differ in style and rationality depending on whether they have to do with analytical or normative problems. Arguments about the functioning of a technology, the probability of certain impacts, and the existence of risks are different from arguments about the usefulness and the desirability of a technology, and the acceptability of the risks. The line of demarcation between analytical and normative problems may be difficult to draw and may itself be a matter of negotiation. But when they came under political attack, the experts retreated to such demarcation lines and confined themselves to the empirical, the analytical and the objective (Weinberg, 1972; Mazur, 1977). Again, it is not neccessary to assume that truth and moral evaluation, or facts and values can be distinguished in essence or in absolute terms. A more sophisticated reflection may reveal that they cannot. It is sufficient that a relative distinction is well accepted in our culture as a routine device to demonstrate relevant differences. And wherever the line of demarcation between analytical and normative is drawn it differentiates between matters for which professionals can claim exclusive competence and matters that can properly be claimed by political actors. The modest retreat to the hard core of empirical analysis is not the normal, but rather the exceptional case for professions. According to the sociologist, Everett

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

335

Hughes, it is constitutive for "professions" that they have a broad mandate "to tell society what is good and right for the individual and for society at large in some aspect of life" (1958:79). The paradigm of a profession is provided by the physicians insofar as they control the social definitions and rules relating to health and disease. Such a mandate presupposes social and political consensus over the values to be pursued. The technological communities of applied scientists and engineers were for a short while equally able to exert such a mandate, namely, as long as the general confidence prevailed that new technologies were socially beneficial and manageable. Scientists and engineers could, for instance, determine not only that nuclear energy was operationally feasible, but also that it was an appropriate choice for energy policy and that its risks were acceptable and justified by the prospective benefits. This mandate (which in fact was a variant of technocracy) was withdrawn during the controversies over the risks of new technologies. In this sense the expert communities have become de-professionalized, and decisions on risks have been shifted back to political procedures. However, the withdrawal of the political mandate of the experts is, as we have seen, not a complete disestablishment, and it may not last. Experts maintain a key role in questions of fact, explanation and prognosis even if their knowledge is internally contested. They may, under external pressure, admit that they are not competent to decide on "acceptable risks". They will not, however, admit that they are not competent to decide on the causality or probablity of events or that subjective fears or astrology are as good indicators of the existence of a risk as scientific observations. And in general the public will support such claims. The relevance of experts is guaranteed by the fact that in debates over the risks of new technologies, even if they are highly politicized, it is virtually impossible for the conflicting parties not to refer to experts as arbiters. Theoretically, of course, there is the option to declare expert knowledge irrelevant and to deal with risk regulation solely as a matter of political choice. Advocates of nuclear energy sometimes seem to suggest that we ought to break through the endless debates over residual risks and unresolved problems of waste disposal, and just choose the kind of energy future we desire and accept the implied risks. On the other hand, critics of the technology may likewise try to downgrade expert knowledge. If, for instance, someone whose arguments in a public hearing had been rejected as not representative of the state of accepted knowledge in the technical field replies that there is no guarantee in science that minority views of today could not become the mainstream tomorrow (cit. Becker, 1982:182), then this amounts to the argument that expert knowledge should not really count for the decision that is to be taken. Positions which declare experts irrelevant are, however, not likely to be taken seriously. In many cases special knowledge, scientific testing and theoretical modelling are indispensible for identifying both the causal effects of a technology and the possible options for controlling such effects. Social and environmental interconnections in the real world may still be too complex to be captured by

336

Wolfgang van den Daele

scientific analysis. But commonsense reasoning has little chance to do any better. In general, advocates of a new technology will at least try to avoid the impression that they are pushing a political option through without taking the available knowledge into account. Critics, on the other hand, consider such knowledge an important weapon which they can raise against majority views. The latter can only lose if decisions are shifted to the established political channels too quickly. Both sides would then hesitate to go too far in arguing that controversies do not matter or that knowledge is, in principle, not available or arbitrary. In addition, the legal procedures through which decisions on technologies must eventually pass, require the consideration of the available expert knowledge as a minimum, if not conclusive condition of formal rationality. Conflicting parties involved in risk regulation cannot, therefore, afford to bypass expertise altogether. But they will try to mobilize counter expertise on their side. Such a strategy, however, is more than just a symbolic concession; it has its own costs. It shifts the controversy from the political to the professional domain, where the outcome can no longer be simply politically controlled. Those who lose in such a strategy will not easily give up. They normally find flaws in the procedure, which make the result inconclusive in their view. The political effects of the professional display and assessment of controversies among experts reach, however, beyond those immediately concerned. The broader public which observes the procedure, or the legal bodies which evaluate it may not see such flaws and find the result conclusive. A division of labor acccording to which normative and evaluative issues would be decided through political procedures and the mandate of professional experts confined to empirical and technical matters may not be the final word on the politics of risk regulation. It is true that as long as there is a major conflict in society over the acceptability of risks of new technologies, over the distribution of gains and losses, and over the burden of proof in cases of irreducible uncertainty, the experts will not enjoy a mandate which delegates policymaking to their professional communities. But what happens when the conflicts end? Then the professionals have a chance to regain this mandate. A conflict may end when a solution is achieved, for instance by legal regulation, or when the issue just disappears from the political arena because public attention changes and critics invest their energies elsewhere. In both cases the experts stand ready to step in. Formally their task would be only to support the implementation of the regulations, either the new ones or the old ones. But no regulation can cover all the policy issues which arise in a technical field. These issues will then be recaptured by the professional communities and elements of technocracy will reemerge. Take drug safety as an example. This has been a topic of political and public debate for quite some time, fed particularly by the thalidomide casualties. The law was then amended and the issue returned to the relative "silence" of professional circles of experts in regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical firms and medical research institutes.

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

337

It is difficult to imagine that this could be otherwise. Permanent and recurrent problem solving must be translated into administration and routine, and will then heavily rely on experts. It seems that the politicization of technical issues is the exception and professional dominance the rule. In principle, it may be possible to challenge such dominance again and again by inducing further conflict. This is, however, an uphill fight. Political mobilization is more difficult to sustain than professional activity and interest. It is expected that this dilemma can be avoided by integrating lay citizens somehow into expert routines, for instance, through membership roles in regulatory bodies. Such participation may be an appropriate means to politicize a technical issue by channelling existing public concern into the professional community. Lay members will, however, find it difficult to impress the profession when such concern is low. Without strong support from outside lay members are easily "captured" by the experts, and it may even be difficult to recruit them. What remains is that the professions themselves change. The external constraints, the legal regulations, for instance, under which the experts work are revised and the internal structure of the professional communities is eventually more differentiated, admitting diverging attitudes and options. Thus, the mandate the profession might retain once public debate and political conflict phase out is probably not the same which it held before. This may be considered as a major political achievement. Still, it proves the point that the role of experts can at best be redefined, but not replaced through political procedures. To sum up: Although the role of experts in risk regulation has been challenged over the last decades, the experts have survived. Issues of social choice implied in the regulation of technologies can be shifted to political processes of conflict and consensus formation. Issues of technical analysis, of prognosis and explanation cannot be shifted. They remain the domain of professional judgement. Experts may disagree, but their controversies belong, so to speak, to the profession. Outsiders can suspect that experts are biased, partial or even corrupt. But they cannot declare matters of fact to be matters of social choice. Nor can they as a rule substitute professional expertise with commonsense judgements. Expert knowledge has become institutionalized as an element of the differentiated culture of modern societies and it is unlikely that this process will be reversed in the context of the current debates over risks. If these debates ever lose momentum, the experts will regain a broad mandate in which they claim the politics of risk regulation as a professional domain. The prospects of democratic control lie in the option to challenge technocracy through new conflicts and to influence the boundary conditions and the orienttion of professional work. The domain of expertise can be recurrently redefined, but it cannot be replaced by political processes.

338

Wolfgang van den Daele

References Beck , Ulrich 1986 Risikogesellschaft.

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Becker, Ulrich 1982 Staatliche Gefahrenabwehr in der Industriegesellschaft. Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Sektion des Internationalen Instituts für Verwaltungswissenschaften, Volume 6. Speyer: Hochschule für Verwaltungsschriften. Bell, Daniel 1976 "Welcome to the Post-industrial Society" Physics Today 29:46-49 Bell, Daniel 1980 "The Social Framework of the Information Society", pp. 620-634 in Micheal Dertouzos and Joel Moses (eds.), The Computer Age. Cambridge: MIT. Campbell, Brian 1985 "Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes Among Experts". Social Studies of Science 15:429-453. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1991 "Risikokommunikation: Gentechnologie", pp. 11-62 in Helmut Jungermann, Bernd Rohrmann and Peter Wiedemann (eds.), Risikokontroversen: Konzepte - Akteure Strategien. Berlin: Springer. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1989 "Restriktive oder konstruktive Technikpolitik?", pp. 91-110 in Joachim Hesse et al. (eds.), Zukunftsoptionen - Technikentwicklung in der Wissenschafts- und Risikogesellschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Douglas, Mary and Aaron Wildavsky 1982 Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Berkley: University of California.

Risk.

Evers, Adalbert and Helga Nowotny 1987 Über den Umgang mit Unsicherheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Feyerabend, Paul 1985 "Galileo and the Tyranny of Truth", pp. 155-166 in George Coyne et al. (eds.), The Galileo Affair: A Meeting of Faith and Science. Citta del Vaticano: Specola Vaticana. Fischer, Frank 1990 Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise. Newbury Park: Sage. Gans, Herbert

Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks

339

1975 "Social Science for Social Policy", pp. 13-33 in Irving Horowitz (ed.), The Use and Abuse of Social Science. New York: Transaction. Gouldner, Alvin 1979 The Future of the Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Oxford University Press. Grupp, Michael 1979 "Science and Ignorance", pp. 147-160 in Helga Nowotny and Hilary Rose (eds.), Counter-Movements in the Sciences. Dordrecht: Reidel. Hughes, Everett 1958 Men and Their Work. Glencoe: Free Press. Krimsky, Sheldon 1982 Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy. Cambridge. Krohn, Wolfgang and Günter Küppers 1990 "Science as a Selforganised System - Outline of a Theoretical Model", pp. 208-222 in Wolfgang Krohn et al. (eds.): Selforganization - A Portrait of a Scientific Revolution. Dordrecht: Reidel 1990. Krohn, Wolfgang and Johannes Weyer 1989 "Gesellschaft als Labor". Soziale Welt 40:349-373. Lindblom, Charles 1979 "Still Muddling, not yet Through". Public Administration

Review 39(6):517-526.

Lindblom. Charles and David Cohen 1979 Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving. New Haven: Yale University Press. Martin, Brian 1988 "Analyzing the Fluoridation Controversy: Resources and Structures". Social Studies of Science 18:331-363. Mazur, Allan 1977 "Science Courts". Minerva 15:1-14. Nelkin, Dorothy 1977 "Scientists and Professional Responsibility". Social Studies of Science 7:75-95. Nowotny, Helga and Helmut Hirsch 1980 "The Consequences of Dissent: Sociological Reflections on the Controversy of the Low Dose Effects". Research Policy 9:278-294.

340

Wolfgang van den Daele

Robbers, Gerhard 1987 Sicherheit als Menschenrecht.

Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Sesto, Steven del 1983 "Uses of Knowledge and Values in Technical Controversies: The Case of Nuclear Reactor Safety in the US". Social Studies of Science 13:395-416. Simon, Herbert 1983 Reason in Human Affairs. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Weinberg, Alvin 1972 "Science and Transscience". Minerva

10:209-222.

Wildavsky, Aaron 1988 Searching for Safety. New Brunswick: Transaction. Wright, Susan 1986 "Molecular Biology or Molecular Politics? The Production of Scientific Consensus on the Hazards of Recombinant DNA Technology". Social Studies of Science 16:593-620. Wynne, Brian 1982 Rationality and Ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain. Chalforn St. Giles: The British Society for the History of Science Monographs 3. Wynne, Brian 1988 "Unruly Technology: Practical Rules, Impractical Discourses and Public Understanding". Social Studies of Science 18: 147-167. Zapf, Wolfgang et al. 1987 Individualisierung

und Sicherheit. München: Beck.

Expertise as a Network: A Case Study of the Controversies over the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Organisms1 Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

I. Introduction In the introduction to the book The Knowledge Society (Böhme and Stehr 1986:4) we read the following statement: ... the vigorous extension of socio-historical analysis to the analysis of the genesis and development of scientific knowledge in recent years, has not found a parallel in efforts to extend and explicate the nature of the role of scientific and technical knowledge in the transformation of social relations generally. The obvious lag in this area is, so it seems, due to the somewhat surprising lack of interest of many sociologists of science in the impact of science on society. Paradoxically, the new sociology of science has for the most part been an internalist sociology of science with a distinct agenda. Nonetheless, the growing impact of scientific and technical knowledge on all facets of social and intellectual life in modern society has not found the same degree of attention as has the somewhat narrow and in many ways necessary analysis of the social construction of scientific knowledge.

This rather common critique of the new, post-Kuhnian sociology of science 2 seems to us to miss the point, insofar as it looks at a new approach through precisely those dichotomies which the new approach had been designed to overcome. It thus rests upon a misunderstanding of the research program of the new sociology of science. In this paper, by drawing on a case study of the controversy over the release of genetically engineered micro-organisms (GEMs) into the environment, we will show that the tools offered by the new sociology of science allow for a radical shift in the way of asking those very questions which the latter has been accused of leaving aside. We will of course also provide some provisional answers to the newly framed questions. This text, however, has to be seen more as a programmatic statement than as a summary of end results.

342

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

Traditional approaches to "science and society" have been criticized within the new sociology of science on general grounds. For instance, several authors have pointed out the inadequacy of the ballistic metaphor which is constitutive of discourses on the "impact" of science on society (Akrich, 1989). At a more general level, dichotomies such as micro/macro, external/internal and content/context have been shown to be more a sociologist's contribution to the construction of "society" than analytical tools which could be used to account for it (Callón and Latour, 1981; Latour, 1983; Pickering 1989; Callón and Law, 1989). In this paper, while not addressing these general arguments, in keeping with the stance taken by the new sociology of science we will emphasize process instead of grounding the discourse in a priori established dichotomies. The paper will focus on a topic which is very often mobilized by many traditional analyses of the "impact" of scientific knowledge on society, namely the topic of "expertise" and "expert knowledge". "Expertise" has been used as a sort of natural laboratory by different authors interested in exploring knowledge/power relationships or the role of knowledge in shaping new social relations, particularly with regard to the passage to a post-industrial or post-modern society. However most of the work done in the "public vs. experts" tradition has tended to take "experts" and "expertise" - both the very idea and the actual content of expertise - for granted. In this paper we will adopt a different approach and take "expertise" both as the central theme of inquiry and as our starting point in order to reconstruct links between scientific activity and what traditional approaches used to call "the wider social context". In order to do so, we have adapted Latour's (1987) advice to avoid studying "ready made expertise" and to study, instead, "expertise in the making". This we will do by looking at the construction of expertise for regulating GEMs. But, first, we will provide some elements for a critical analysis of recent discussions on the topic of expertise.

II. Analyzing "Expertise" In the literature on controversies, the term "expert" is taken as self-explanatory. While we have not conducted a detailed historical study of the semantic shifts undergone by this term, it can be assumed that "expert" is not a term originating from within scientific practice. It is a term which makes sense only within a juridical, or quasi-juridical context. In other words, built into the notion of expert we find the notion of an interface linking, and thus demarcating, scientific activity from other spheres of human activities. Correlatively, the reproduction of this demarcation can be shown to be linked to the existence of an open agonistic field where it plays a strategic role. Expertise can be thus analyzed as an actively

Expertise as a Network

343

(re)constructed boundary, which has to be studied as an ongoing accomplishment and not be taken for granted, as in most traditional analyses. A second point concerning the "demarcation issue" between experts and the public relates to the fact that when different authors point to the existence of such a boundary, it is not always clear who or what they are demarcating. For instance, it is not clear whether boundaries are being drawn between persons (experts vs. non experts), practices (laboratory routines vs. debates in a public forum), institutional settings (research centers vs. court-rooms) or processes (research vs. regulation). We are here in fact confronted with a possible multi-layered description which cannot be represented by simplistic dichotomies. When re- or deconstructing what should count as expertise, actors move more or less freely through these different "layers", actively shifting boundaries and linking heterogeneous situations in order to achieve robustness. If we want to account for this dynamics, we have to follow their movements instead of paying attention only to a priori defined "structural constraints". The question of "demarcation" has been raised by scholars who, like Dorothy Nelkin (1975), have tended to describe (or prescribe?) the process of deligitimizing expertise. More recently, van den Daele ([1989] 1992) has criticized that position: The role of experts in risk regulation has been challenged during the last decades, but the experts have survived. Issues of social choice implied in the regulation of techniques can be shifted to political processes of conflict and consensus formation. Issues of technical analysis, of prognosis and explanation cannot be shifted. They remain the domain of professional judgement and controversy. Outsiders can suspect that experts are biased, partial or even corrupt. But they cannot declare matters of fact to be matters of social choice. Nor can they as a rule substitute professional expertise with common sense judgements. Expert knowledge has become institutionalized as an element of the differentiated culture of modern societies and it is unlikely that this process will be reversed in the context of risk controversies.

In spite of its apparent opposite stance, van den Daele's position is a mirror image of Nelkin's position. Both Nelkin's and van den Daele's approaches point to a possible description of scientific and technical controversies as a two-phase process: - a first phase relating to the risk assessment process as such and concerning only "experts"; - a second phase, during which the results of risk assessment, produced by scientific actors, are used by non-scientific actors in order to reach a decision. This two-phase model can lead to different conclusions: - one can for instance claim that there appears to be no direct or linear path from

344

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

expert work to decision-making; expertise, in other terms, can be seen as something which has to be there but, at least in borderline cases, more as a formal, procedural requirement than as a source of specific knowledge or know-how; it is a necessary, but not sufficient condition; - one can, on the other hand, claim that decision-making is, after all, grounded in the actual content of expert work, which thus occupies a central place in the whole process of technology assessment or of a technological controversy. Both positions, however, share the same basic premise which has been strongly criticized, and rightly so, by Rip and Groenewegen (1989:156; our translation): Facts are not first established by the scientific community and only afterwards mobilized in the political arena. Regulatory facts, i.e. facts which are expected to play a regulatory role, are the result of an hybrid construction process integrating heterogeneous elements and, for that very reason, achieve a robust status.

It could be argued that only experts participate in this process of heterogeneous construction. For sure, during a controversy characterized by a struggle between experts and counter-experts, expertise undergoes a process of deconstruction/reconstruction. This is why Nelkin argues that expertise has become delegitimized. However, it is not as much expertise as such which is being deconstructed, but, rather, particular experts in particular situations. This is why van den Daele can argue that expertise is reinforced by this process: experts can only be deconstructed by other experts. Moreover, it is by deconstructing an expert that a counter-expert constitutes his/her own expertise. This is true if only certain people are recognized as experts. If everybody could become an expert, for example through "political processes" 3 , then we could say that expertise can undergo a complete deconstruction process. But, clearly, this does not seem to be the case. So the question has to be reframed: under what conditions can a person attain an "expert status"? This amounts to asking what makes the legitimacy of an expert. This way of phrasing the problem of expertise seems to us circular. It appears to be grounded in the use of a sociological construct, namely legitimacy, which acts as a kind of deus ex machina. While legitimacy might be a useful way of naming a phenomenon, it is surely not a way of accounting for it. Is there a way of avoiding using this construct? We think the answer is yes: what we have to do is "simply" to follow the process of constructing an expertise by highlighting the formation of links among the technosocial elements which constitute the (temporarily) stabilized network. Such a network, we will argue, is synonymous with expertise. Traditional analyses are implicitly (most of the time) or explicitly (rarely) grounded in the idea that "expert knowledge" is something which is contained within or is a property of given individuals or groups of individuals. In other words, "expertise" is constructed first through what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) call an "ontological metaphor" (i.e. "parts of our experience are treated as discrete

Expertise as a Network

345

entities or substances of an uniform kind") and then related to human actors through a "container metaphor" (i.e. experts contain expertise). Contrary to this claim, and using a different metaphor, we will argue that "expert knowledge" is a property of a heterogeneous network. Throughout this text, the term network will be used in the sense of the "sociology of translation school" (Callón, 1980, 1991; Callón, Courtial, Turner and Bauin, 1983; Latour, 1987), i.e. as being constituted by a set of heterogeneous actors - both human, such as scientists, politicians, etc., and non-human, such as technical devices, microbes, etc. - defined by their roles, attributes, identities, programs, etc., and by the relationships between these actors (Callón, 1991). A network, from this point of view, performs the basic operation of translating actors into one another through the establishment of intermediaries which embody the translation. We will claim that: a) the construction of "expert knowledge" is coextensive with the construction of a temporarily stable network, and b) a central element of such an endeavor, an element which gives robustness to the network, is to be found in the setting up of formal or informal standards. Standardization "blackboxes" a network and allows it to function as a single point to be linked up with other, extended networks. This way of addressing "expert knowledge" enables us to get rid of the sociological construct which has been extensively used to address the topic of experts and controversy, namely the notion of "legitimacy". As we pointed out in a related text (Cambrosio and Limoges 1991), strictly speaking there is no such thing as legitimacy: what counts is the ability to link black boxes and therefore to construct a long, strong network which will not be easily circumvented. This ability is itself at stake during a controversy. Moreover, and correlatively, to equate "expertise" with the property of a network allows us to by-pass the demarcation 4 issue between experts and non experts which, as we have seen, is one of the two major recurring themes 5 in the literature on expertise. From this point of view, the important thing is not to show that the implementation of expertise is characterized by negotiations or controversy; rather, the important point is that expertise is from the very outset embodied in an heterogeneous network where, for instance, regulatory tools play an essential role, thus becoming part of a cascade of translations. What does it mean to claim that expertise is a property of a network? It means that, while knowledge and know-how can be said to be embodied in persons (both in the case of "tacit knowledge" and of "formal knowledge"), they cannot function as "expertise" unless they become part of a network. 6 This is suggested by Callón (1991), when he notes that humans can be equated to a "set of skills" which are expected to perform certain tasks in a more or less routinized way. Moreover, "one cannot describe a skill without reconstructing the network (including humans, tests, machines, etc.) without which these skills could not be expressed or activated": one can thus speak of "networked skills". Concrete expression to the preceding, rather sketchy remarks, can be given by drawing on a case study of a recent controversy, where the issue of technical

346

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

expertise was very much at stake. It should again be stressed that theoretical stance and methodological approach are intimately linked. We will be able to vindicate the emphasis upon networks as analytical objects by looking at a situation where expertise, while being already labeled as such, is not yet fully black-boxed.

III. The Debate over Genetically Engineered Microorganisms (GEMS) Born in the early seventies with the development of genetic engineering techniques, the debate over the safety of recombinant DNA (rDNA) research has gone through two main phases (Limoges et al., 1990). The first phase (1973-1981) concerned the possibility that genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs) might escape from the laboratory. Critics of rDNA research pointed to the likelihood of such an event and to its possible dangerous consequences. Supporters of rDNA research emphasized the existence of safety measures which would make such an event very unlikely. Both camps agreed that those GEMs presumed to present possible hazards for the environment or for the human species, should be contained within the laboratory. The main granting body for US biomedical research, the National Institute of Health (NIH), issued a document (known as the NIH Guidelines) in 1976 whose purported goal was to make sure that potentially hazardous GEMs could neither escape from nor survive outside of the laboratory. The Guidelines, which set up a classification of experiments and prescribed, accordingly, the use of related levels of physical and biological containment, went trough several revisions and can be seen as a decisive tool in the closing of the debate. The second phase (1983-1987) concerned the environmental release of GEMs, and profoundly transformed the debate, since GEMs were no longer to be contained within closed walls but had, by definition so to speak, to be introduced into the environment. While they can be seen as referring to the use of a common basic technique (rDNA), the two phases of the debate do not share many features. For instance, the set of relevant actors (human and non-human) is quite different in the two cases. In a related paper (Limoges et al., 1989), we analyzed in detail the emergence and development of the central episodes of the controversy over the release of GEMs in the United States. We will not repeat here this rather complex story. For this paper it is enough to recall that the controversy was initiated in 1982 by the request of a team of Californian scientists, and shortly thereafter of a company, to field-test recombinant strains of bacteria which could protect plants from frost damage. Because of the controversy raised by these proposals, the experiments

Expertise as a Network

347

were eventually performed only in 1987, five years after the initial proposal. In the meantime, a complex series of events unfolded, some of which were provoked by groups claiming to represent the interests of the public. Apart from a few direct actions, such as the savaging of field-test plots, the latter consisted, for the most part, in multiple lawsuits against regulatory agencies by several "environmentalist" groups, and were thus predicated upon the existence (or non-existence) of a regulatory framework. Unlike the first phase of the rDNA controversy, which, from a regulatory point of view, was dominated by a single agency (NIH) 7 , the controversy over the environmental release of GEMs resulted in a regulatory quandary which involved several agencies (the NIH, the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], the Department of Agriculture [USDA], and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA], etc.). After several years of attempts to get out of this quandary, a "Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology" was established in 1986. This involved the coordination of the biotechnology activities of some eighteen Federal agencies and executive committees. However, numerous regulatory ambiguities and conflicts remained, including a lack of consensus and inconsistencies among federal agencies on several key points. 8 If the conduct of the public controversy was predicated upon the existence of regulatory institutions, the latter, in turn, maintained complex links with scientific entities of different size, stability and continuity (from long-standing professional associations to short-lived research fronts and self-proclaimed sub-disciplines). Scientists from such diverse disciplinary backgrounds as molecular biology, ecology, epidemiology and medicine, to name just a few, engaged in open dispute with one another. Each grounded their arguments in the certified body of knowledge, techniques and routines which, they claimed, were warranted by their discipline. Each sought to question the adequacy, for the purpose at hand, of the knowledge, techniques and routines warranted by the other competing disciplines. The clash did not oppose experts of the same discipline having different opinions, but experts from different disciplines, confronting the "incommensurability" of their respective techniques and routines. 9 If we look more closely at the "expertise side" of this controversy, we have a situation where the expertise is in the making. A contrast with the first phase of the rDNA controversy will be very useful. While one could say, and rightly so, that even during this first phase the expertise had to be constructed, the analysis of the closure of the controversy shows that the latter was made possible, among other things, by the use of previously standardized containment devices, such as biological safety cabinets (BSC). BSC, for instance, were central devices in the establishment of a hierarchy of "levels of containment" which was then matched to a classification of rDNA experiments on the basis of the latter's potential risks. In other words, decades of "safe microbiological techniques" (this includes not only technical devices, but also practices, institutions, papers, etc.) could be mobilized as a black box. Accordingly, very few experiments had to be conducted in order to assess risks. In the case of the environmental release of GEMs, we

348

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

have an entirely different situation. No ready-made black box is available. Thus, as a result of an interactive process which mobilized regulatory agencies such as EPA and scientists from different backgrounds, research centers were set up in order to develop the "relevant technical expertise": not only technical devices, standards protocols, etc. (the basic metrological system), but also the very definitions of the non-human actors involved had to be constructed almost from scratch. A network of institutions was created, some of which at first sight were devoted to "regulatory science" while others addressed more "fundamental research" topics. In practice, this distinction was not so clear-cut. Research centers specifically dealing with GEMs release were for example established by the EPA at Corvallis (Oregon) for terrestrial systems and Gulf Breeze (Florida) for aquatic ones. The EPA also funded an Ecosystem Research Center at Cornell University whose work was in part directed towards the assessment of environmental release. Other federal agencies participated in the construction of similar institutions, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) center on microbial ecology at Michigan State University, which also maintains working (and funding) links with the Corvallis center. It is important to stress that the activities of these institutions are centered around different lines of work, defined in part by the use of different tools or by different uses of similar devices. Each center can be represented as a center of built-in controversy. Without going into detail, it can be noted that risk assessment of GEMs is being tackled with such different tools as mathematical modelling, gene probes and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques, phenotypic probes, microcosms, mesocosms, numerical taxonomy and community structure studies. What all these techniques, tools, devices and centers have in common is that they are used as resources in order to define a domain of uncertainty 10 which will constitute the appropriate field of intervention for the different research groups. Unlike the situation characterizing the first phase of the rDNA controversy, where a relative consensus, as summarized in the various editions of the NIH Guidelines, was reached concerning the use of certain standardized tools and methods, such consensus has yet to appear during the second phase. No common approach to risk assessment in the case of the planned release of GEMs into the environment has been established and a great diversity of tools, some of which we mentioned above, are being used to address the issue. It is in this sense that one of our previous claims needs to be qualified. The problem in establishing risk assessment procedures for the release of GEMs is not that there are no pre-existing bodies of knowledge and practice which could be used to bring about a robust closure of the controversy; rather, it is that there are too many potential candidates for such a role! Furthermore, rather than consensus on risk assessment methods, one finds statements such as "[...] we should not forget that the fundamental parameters needed for developing a predictive ecology may not be present in the published literature" (Lindow et al., 1988:1562). The persistence

Expertise as a Network

349

of the debate provides an exceptionally good opportunity to observe the construction of risk assessment expertise. This will enable us to show that "non-technical" issues, such as regulatory schemes, are present from the very beginning, and are indissociable from the construction of "technical expertise", the latter being recognized as such only when it corresponds to a stable network. Furthermore, and correlatively, expertise will clearly be shown to be best understood as an ongoing accomplishment, rather than as the unquestioned mobilization of well-defined, pre-existing bodies of knowledge. By this, we mean that a) different tools, models, entities, etc. can be mobilized in the construction of expertise as an heterogeneous network; b) the elements of such a network can be linked according to different modalities; c) the meaning and status of these elements (and of their links) are open to negotiations. To start our "demonstration", let us look at Figure 1, which represents the EPA Biotechnology Risk Assessment Program." We will focus on a single element, namely "microcosms", corresponding to one of the boxes of the diagram which appears to refer to "techniques and methods to determine survival, growth, reproduction, fate and potential effects of GEMs". Microcosms, as an artifact 12 , are not yet stabilized, i.e. there are many unstandardized versions of what passes for microcosms. As pointed out by an environmental scientist (interview, January 1990): [ . . . ] essentially, we have a set of systems now. We have small soil cores or small soil microcosms that range to about a hundred grams, which are useful very early in a chemical history, you might say. We have the soil cores which are useful later on when you know something else about the metabolism and have a pretty good idea of what it's likely to do. And then we have the big box which can be used as an alternative to the field or just before going to the field and you still have serious questions remaining about which you really want some quantitative answers. There is a lot of difference between aquatic microcosm technology and terrestrial microcosm technology.

Microcosms are not yet sealed black-boxes; they are still open, transparent devices which display for everybody to see the networks that compose them. Figure 2 represents two possible types of microcosms: it can easily be seen that the "same" artifact can assume very different forms (for instance: a "low-tech" vs. a "high-tech" form). If one wanted to regroup these different varieties under a common definition, it could be said that microcosms are a sort of "container" which, to quote a researcher, are used "to simulate the environment but in a convenient, contained ecosystem". In other words, microcosms are being presented in response to the need to perform field experiments while adopting safety measures. And thus, by bringing the environment within the laboratory, where it can precisely be contained, the external/internal dichotomy is reversed. The diagram of Figure 1 presents microcosms as a "mandatory" step on the path leading to the establishment of risk assessment guidelines. We are not using

350

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

Figure 1. EPA Biotechnologiy Risk Assessment Program (reprinted from Frederickson and Seidler 1989:1.4)

Expertise as a Network

351

Air Inlet

Rain Nozzle

Figure 2. Two types of microcosms (reprinted from Frederickson and Seidler 1989:2.3-2.4)

the term "mandatory" in its legal or bureaucratic meaning. In other words, we are not arguing that scientists working on microcosms are somehow maneuvering or even conspiring to establish formal regulations which would compel their colleagues to use microcosms. What we do mean, is that microcosms have the potential of being accepted as "state of the art" technology and thus to become an essential tool of a standardized risk assessment practice. A distinction should here be made between the standardization of microcosm as a technical object and the standardization of microcosm as a risk assessment tool. In the former case, one is standardizing the device (types of plastic, analytic instruments, parameters such as relative humidity, etc.). In the latter case, the objects of standardization are set protocols of risk assessment, including correlations between GEM performance in microcosm and field. This distinction is actually rooted in different lines of work referring to sometimes diverging, sometimes converging networks. As pointed out by Panem (1984:94) once a tool (a piece of equipment, a reagent, a technical method) becomes recognized as "state of the art", scientists who do not use it run the risk of "faring poorly in terms of grant review and in publication potential". The tool becomes an "obligatory passage point" (Latour, 1987). Needless to say, as in most cases of scientific and technical innovation, this can be achieved without a ruling from a Federal agency or some other legal structure. In other words, should the process represented in Figure 1 be implemented, then the following translation would become true: "if you want to assess hazards associated with the release of GEMs in a scientifically sanctioned way, you have to go through microcosms, which embody the relevant expertise in this domain". Through this translation a network has been set up, one of the elements of which ("microcosms") acts as a provisional boundary demarcating

352

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

what should count as relevant knowledge and know-how (i.e. as "expertise"). In this particular case, as we will see, the relevant expertise can be equated to "microbial ecology", i.e. the discipline to which microcosms have become tied through the work of research centers such as those set up by the EPA. The fact that microcosms occupy (at least potentially) such a privileged place in risk assessment procedures 13 is clearly not the result of an unproblematic "match" between risk assessment needs and pre-existing devices. Microcosms were developed for ecotoxicological studies' 4 and had first to be transferred to (and shown to be relevant for) microbial ecology, while the latter was in the process of redefinition as a discipline.' 5 Correlatively, microcosms had to acquire a new technical status as appropriate devices for the study not only of chemical toxins, but also of GEMs. Last, but not least, it can scarcely be said that the path leading from microcosms as a tool for measuring GEMs survival and persistence in the environment to microcosms as a tool of risk assessment and regulation is a linear one. The development of microcosm work can therefore be traced out as the construction of expertise. For these reasons, focusing attention on microcosms as the result, and the embodiment, of a technosocial construction process is a good analytical strategy for understanding the construction of this particular risk assessment expertise. To achieve the status of a relevant technical device, microcosms had to be so constructed that to question them would amount to questioning the expertise represented by the heterogeneous, technosocial networks they embody.' 6 And, indeed, if we "open up" microcosms they can be shown to contain the following elements (the list is not comprehensive): - Institutional settings. Microcosms are one of the elements intervening in the construction of standards by EPA laboratories. Conversely, it can be said that their eventual robustness is to be found in the network which these laboratories, as institutional actors, have been able to mobilize for their construction. - Disciplines as well as actors whose identity is in turn translated by these disciplines. For instance, the following distinction among different types of microcosm according to different disciplines has been proposed by researchers in the field (Sussman et al., 1988:265-274): 1. Microcosms of use to macro-ecologists and ecotoxicologists "in studies on bio-accumulation of chemicals, and ... in studies on the fate and gene exchange of GEMs". These are often discussed in terms of "representing a sub-unit of nature brought into the laboratory". 2. A "simpler" microcosm which "is often the type envisaged by microbial ecologists" designed to answer specific questions concerning risk assessment from a soil core, etc. Some specific aspect of a microorganism is studied in its "natural habitat" including soil, roots, detrital particles, anoxic microsites, microand mesofauna, etc..

DISCIPLINES

Con Evo I ID. I Devi

TECHNICAl

DNA p r o b e s j GEM e x t r a c t i o n GEx duct Reseacc mate P r o g r e s s lew Technical 3lopments

Aerosol Survival Plant Sampling Guidelines b l i s h Need for

Establish

obial Dispersal

Release

sis

Development

88

Field Methods Team

;onduct Research

89

R e p o r t BCA D i s p e r s a l M o d e l 7603 A

90

Establish to M e a s i Reentraii ι Environmer of Random τ

91

. DEVICES

STANDARDS

94 Figure 3. Flow Chart of the research path (1984-1995) of a team working on the development of risk assessment methods for the release of GEMs into the environment.

95

Expertise as a Network

353

3. A third approach (within animal systems) argues for the use of guts of gnotobiotic animals raised in air-tight plastic containers as microcosms. - Models of work and new entities such as specific definitions of GEMs. The microcosm had been devised first as an artifact for measuring the effect of chemical substances on ecosystem processes. As we will see in more detail in the next paragraphs, this work was funded by the EPA thanks to the existence of a regulatory arena established by this agency under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). RDNA was then redefined as a "toxic chemical" and microcosm could thus be used to assess not only substances, but also organisms such as GEMs, conceived of as containers of rDNA. As shown by Figure 1, microcosms can actually become a central element in the environmental risk assessment program, and thus a sociotechnically obligatory passage point for other actors. From this perspective, microcosms are said to be comparable to an engineer's black-box in which a number of "integrative measures of ecosystem structure and function" (e.g., oxygen uptake, heterotrophic activity, etc.) can be assessed. It is interesting to note that this move has spurred opposition based on the following heterogeneous criticisms: microcosms would not be an appropriate "black-box" since they would be characterized by high labor and skills requirements, operational complexity, high cost, lack of correlation with field tests and "deficiencies in ecological theory and practice", especially in terms of problems with scale and boundary conditions (see, e.g., Gillett, 1986; Sussman et al., 1988; Frederickson and Seidler, 1989). The response to these criticisms is to standardize the microcosm by linking it to already existing, robust networks such as those found in molecular biology - more precisely, so-called "gene probes" - or traditional approaches such as "standard culture methods" 17 . Our analysis could be pushed farther, but the preceding elements are sufficient to make our point. A technical device like microcosms, while part of a larger network, can itself be "opened up", exposing a network of heterogeneous elements. The microcosm can correspondingly be defined as an "intermediary" (Callón, 1991) which translates the different actors of a network into one another. To give a sense of how microcosms fit into larger networks, we will now concentrate, again for illustrative purposes, on a single laboratory. More precisely, we will focus on a flow chart representing the activities of a laboratory team from 1984-1995 (see Figure 3). This particular team has been chosen because it played an important role in one of the controversies related to the release of GEMs into the environment. Through their research design and data analysis of small field tests conducted as risk assessment experiments, they provided relevant expertise which was instrumental in bringing to term, at least temporarily, that debate. We are thus in the favorable situation of being able to study a laboratory which is already recognized as a center of expertise while the heterogeneous elements of that expertise still lay open for us to witness. The flow

354

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

chart has been prepared by the Team Leader, who noted that it had been devised "to plan for growth and integrate anticipated new research components". Given the limits of the present paper, we will leave aside many of the noteworthy features of the flow chart 18 and comment only on some elements more directly relevant to our purposes. The reader will notice that the flow chart is divided into two main sections: "exposure" (above) and "hazards" (below). The origin of these two categories is to be found in the TSCA, mentioned earlier, which is one of the two main pieces of legislation underlying the EPA's activities. 19 Under the TSCA regime, the two principle aspects for chemical regulation are defined as following (Gillett 1986:515-516): a) hazard assessment: "in which the potential adverse impacts of the substance/product on organisms and processes are first identified, then quantified in relation to experimental exposure"; b) exposure assessment: "in which the distribution of the substance/product is described in relation to the activities of the affected species". Thus, from the very outset, work within the team, as represented in the flow chart, is constructed through regulatory categories - in this case "exposure" and "hazards" - which are defined by the TSCA. In other words, the idea that "facts" are first constructed in a scientific setting and then interpreted in the socio-political arena is blatantly contradicted by looking at the actual construction of risk assessment facts, i.e. of the "data base" which will be used in the production of regulations and in their implementation. But there is more: "exposure" and "hazard" had been devised as categories relating to the regulation of chemical substances. GEMs are generally perceived as biological objects. How did that regulation for chemical substances participate in the construction of risk assessment facts for biological objects? To make this possible, as we already alluded to, GEMs had to be constructed as first being, for all practical purposes, rDNA (instead of, for instance, a population of microorganisms); subsequently, rDNA was redefined as a "toxic chemical" 20 . The translation of GEMs from reproducing organisms into chemical toxins rested on the definition of chemical substances by the TSCA as "any organic or inorganic substance of a particular molecular identity including ... any combination of such substances occurring in nature" 21 . Thus, our first remark can be expanded by noting that regulatory categories which, as we have pointed out, participate in the construction of risk assessment facts, are themselves the result of an hybrid construction process whereby different kinds of scientific work (for instance molecular biological tools as opposed to traditional ecological approaches) interact with performative pieces of legislative discourse. Having started from the left side of Figure 3, we now look at its right side. It appears clearly that the work of the team is geared toward the production of standards. The central section of the flow chart gives us a graphic representation of the heterogeneous elements which intervene in the production of these

Expertise as a Network

355

standards. For instance, and without going through a detailed analysis of the different elements comprised in the central portion of the chart, we can point out the presence of several "disciplines" - or, rather, of several networks of skills embodied in individual scientists - and of technical devices, such as so-called microcosms and mesocosms. Microcosms, as we have shown, can themselves be shown to be constituted by a more or less extended network. Once the production of robust standards is achieved, all these elements will become invisible. Standards will then function as black-boxes, which will possibly be used in the construction of further, more extended networks.

IV. Concluding remarks At the beginning of this paper, we pointed out that critics of the new sociology of science often missed the point. For instance, they took for granted dichotomies which may present convenient ways of naming things in everyday life but certainly remain poor analytical tools when applied to an understanding of sociotechnical processes. This is shown in their reliance upon a distinction between micro- and macrolevels and in their discussion of the demarcation between experts and non-experts. We have set up to show, in addressing the specific case of expertise, the advantage of not taking the latter for granted, as naturally given, and of focusing, instead, on the process of its construction. This study shows that expertise in the making can be accounted for as the property of an heterogeneous network, and not as an attribute of individuals or groups of individuals. Put in other words, expertise in the making is an effect coextensive with a network. For sure, networks can be transformed into more or less stable configurations and boundaries can be correlatively constructed around them, thus giving rise to the territorial metaphors (such as the demarcation between experts and nonexperts or of disciplinary fields of expertise) which underlie much of our thinking about expertise. However, it should be emphasized that such a state of affairs has to be studied as an accomplishment, as the eventual temporary stabilized result of strategies in an agonistic field and not as some a priori given reality. By treating expertise as the property of a network, one can moreover avoid falling into the trap of constructing a series of discrete entities (scientific, regulatory, etc.) which would be opposed one to another, or would correspond to different phases in the deployment of expertise. In the course of the analysis, we have also pointed out that the work actually done by actors struggling to achieve the definition of standards required for stabilizing networks and thence producing expertise shatters other well-established dichotomies such as external/internal (the "environ-

356

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

ment", by definition "external", can be brought within the laboratory) or pure science/regulatory science. This should make clear that the dichotomy between macro- and micro-levels is more the projection of uncritically accepted "spontaneous" categories in the mind of the analysts, an hypostasis, than a reality which warrants an accounting. As our analysis shows, in order to be understood, processes that might be regarded as "micro" (for example the stabilization of artifacts such as microcosms, or the translation of rDNA into toxic chemicals) in fact require the reconstruction of the networking processes that generated them. This reconstruction brings into the analysis such so-called "macro"-actors as government, the legislative and regulatory apparatus, judicial proceedings, and controversies evolving at the research work site, in the inter-disciplinary arenas, as well as in the national press. Since the "new sociology of science" covers all the spectrum of what used to be called the micro- and macro-levels, one may wonder whether its critics, pleading for a return to the "larger" societal concerns do not, in fact, more than anything else betray some nostalgia for the sociological gigantomachy which used to reign supreme in the discipline and which subsumed everything under "macro"-entity confrontations, such as between classes, capitalism and socialism, or modernity and post-modernism.

Notes 1

2 3

4

Research for this paper was made possible by a contract from the "Centre québécois de valorisation de la biomasse" and by a grant from the "Programme des Actions structurantes", Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Science, Gouvernement du Québec. We would like to thank Denyse Pronovost, Stéphane Castonguay, Dominique Charron and Eric Francoeur for their skillful assistance. We would like to thank Aaron Cicourel for his thoughtful comments. Last, but not least, we would like to thank the scientists who agreed to be interviewed and provided us with relevant documents. The norm of confidentiality does not allow us to reveal their names, but without their cooperation this paper could not have been written. For on overview of the new sociology of science see, for instance, Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay (1983) and Star (1988). The so-called "cultural revolution" in China, characterized by slogans such as "be red, not expert", could be seen as aiming at a total deconstruction of expertise; however, this is not the case, since a new boundary was drawn between "experts" in the interpretation of the writings of Chairman Mao and the "uneducated masses". It can be noted that to speak of "demarcation" is to use a territorial metaphor, insofar as one thinks of two clearly defined, non overlapping "territories" separated by a boundary; in turn, this implies that something or somebody is on either side of the demarcation line, since an object or a person cannot be at two different places at the same time. The network metaphor, form this point of view, is more flexible: a given human or non-human entity can be conceived of as a point belonging to several different networks.

Expertise as a Network 5 6

7

8 9 10

11 12

13 14 15

16

17

18

357

The other being the role of experts. It could also mean that there is no such thing as knowledge and know-how outside of a network. This more "radical" stance need not be discussed within the limited frame of this paper. The NIH, unlike EPA, USDA or FDA, is not a regulatory agency. However, it can be said that the NIH Guidelines played, for all practical purposes, a regulatory role as far as rDNA research is concerned. While the NIH Guidelines applied only to federally funded research, industry opted for voluntary compliance. For more details on the "Coordinated Framework", see Limoges et al. (1989). Disciplines should not be taken for granted as a priori analytical categories. For a discussion of this question, see Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman (1989). "Uncertainty", thus, is not to be taken for granted: this notion, and the domain which it marks, is the result of an active construction process. On "uncertainty" as a construction see Campbell (1985). This is of course only one among several possible representations of EPA Biotechnology Risk Assessment Program. On this topic, see Levin et al. (1987). The term "artifact", as used in this text, is meant solely as a reminder that microcosms are the result of a construction process (a product of human activity) which involves choices between different design alternatives. No inferences are intended concerning the value or quality of microcosms as scientific and technical instruments. For more details on this topic see Gillett (1986). Ecotoxicology, can be loosely defined as the study of the impact of chemical toxic substances on the environment. As noted by one of our respondents, a very significant component of recent environmental biotechnology applications relies upon knowledge of microbial ecology. This component of microbial ecology has been recently influenced through EPA's program in biotechnology risk assessment. On the more general topic of the dynamics of disciplines in the different fields related to the environmental applications of genetic engineering (molecular biology, microbial ecology, plant pathology), see Cambrosio, Limoges and Hoffman (1989). While we cannot go into a detailed analysis of the debates surrounding the use of microcosms, let us point out that this is precisely what happened when people, claiming allegiance to several (sub)disciplines, methodologies or models of work actively contested the primacy of microcosms as the technical device for assessing risks related to the release of GEMs. This is one of the reasons why we argued that microcosms, as a device, are not yet stabilized. Standardization can moreover be extended to the organism itself. For instance, if the job is to assess biotechnology, without access to industrially developed organisms (due to trade secrets, patent policies, proprietary rights, etc.), arguments must be inferred from standard microorganisms acting as analogues. We will also not address the very important question of how the flow chart has been constructed and how it has been and is being implemented. Sociologists have been variously trying to chart the evolution of research within a laboratory (see, for instance, Fujimura, 1986:ch.3 and Zeldenrust, 1985). The interest of the present chart is that it has been produced by a scientist directly concerned with the research path thereby represented. Of course, the fact that the chart was not drawn for sociological purposes, but for the laboratory's own scientific and administrative purposes, should

358

19 20

21

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman prompt cautious use. We think that, for the specific point we want to make, the chart's use is warranted. The other being FIFRA or "Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act". The tension among the definition of GEMs in terms of chemical substances or of organisms is part of a more general tension among the rDNA technical practices which point to concerns over what are the objects of assessment: the product or the process? A consensus was declared by a rather newly organized set of actors, loosely defined as microbial ecologists: product, and not process, was the relevant category. But of course, product and process are not hard and fast entities; they operate at different levels and can be transformed into one another. Is the product the rDNA, the organism, or the organism's end-products (metabolites)? On TSCA (as well as Federal Autarkies relevant to biotechnology regulation) see Appendix D in the 1986 special issue "Biotechnology". Environmental Management 10:549-563.

References Akrich, Madeleine 1989 "La construction d'un système socio-technique. Esquisse pour une anthropologie des techniques". Anthropologie et sociétés 13:31-54. Böhme, Gernot and Nico Stehr (eds.) 1986 The Knowledge Society. Dordrecht: Reidei. Callón, Michel 1991 "Réseaux technico-économiques et irréversibilités", pp. 195-230 in R. Boyer, B. Chavance and O. Godard (eds.), Les figures de l'irréversibilité en économie. Paris: Éditions de l'EHESS. Callón, Michel 1980 "Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is not. The Socio-logic of Translation", pp 197-219 in Karin D. Knorr, Roger Krohn and Richard Whitley (eds.), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordrecht: Reidel. Callón, Michel and Bruno Latour 1981 "Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So", pp. 277-303 in Karin Knorr-Cetina and Aaron V. Cicourel (eds.), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Callón, Michel and John Law 1989 "On the Construction of Sociotechnical Networks: Content and Context Revisited". Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science Past and Present 8:57-85.

Expertise as a Network

359

Callón, Michel, Jean-Pierre Courtial, William A. Turner and Serge Bauin 1983 "From Translations to Problematic Networks: An Introduction to Co-Word Analysis". Social Science Information 22:191-235. Cambrosio, Alberto and Camille Limoges 1991 "Controversies as Governing Processes in Technology Assessment". Analysis & Strategic Management 3: 377-396.

Technology

Cambrosio, Alberto, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman 1989 "Constructing and Reconstructing Disciplines Amidst Scientific Controversy". Paper presented to the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Irvine, CA, November 15th-18th). Campbell, Brian L. 1985 "Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes Among Experts". Social Studies of Science 15:429-453. Daele, Wolfgang van den 1992 "Scientific Evidence and the Regulation of Technical Risks: Twenty Years of Demythologizing the Experts", pp. 323-340 in Nico Stehr and Richard Ericson (eds.), The Culture and Power of Knowledge. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Frederickson, J.K. and Ramon J. Seidler 1989 Evaluation of Terrestrial Microcosms for Detection, Fate and Survival Analysis of Genetically Engineered Microorganisms and Their Recombinant Genetic Material. Report prepared for the Environmental Research Laboratory/Corvallis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Richland, Washington; PNL-6828 UC-11; EPA-600/3-89/043. Fujimura, Joan H. 1986 Bandwagons in Science: Doable Problems and Transportable Packages as Factors in the Development of the Molecular Genetic Bandwagon in Cancer Research. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. Gillett, James W. 1986 "Risk Assessment Methodologies for Biotechnology Impact Assessment". Environmental Management 10:515-532. Knorr-Cetina, Karin D. and Michael Mulkay (eds.) 1983 Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London: Sage. LakofF, George and Mark Johnson 1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno 1987 Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

360

Alberto Cambrosio, Camille Limoges and Eric Hoffman

Latour, Bruno 1983 "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World", pp 141-170 in Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay (eds.), Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London: Sage. Levin, Morris Α., Ramon Seidler, Al W. Bourquin, John R. Fowle III and Tamar Barkay 1987 "EPA Developing Methods to Assess Environmental Release". Bio/Technology 5:38-45. Limoges, Camille, Alberto Cambrosio, Frances Anderson, Denyse Pronovost, Dominique Charron, Eric Francoeur and Eric Hoffman 1989 "A Public Assault on Biotechnology? Accounting for the Controversy Over the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Organisms". Paper presented at the Conference on "Science, Technology and Social Change. Questioning and Assessment" (Vezprem, Hungary, January 18th-20th). Limoges, Camille, Alberto Cambrosio, Eric Hoffman, Denyse Pronovost, Dominique Charron, Stéphane Castonguay and Eric Francoeur 1990 "Controversies over Risks in Biotechnology (1973-89): A Framework of Analysis", pp. 155-174 in Managing Environmental Risks. Proceedings of an Air and Waste Management Association Specialty Conference. Pittsburgh: Air and Waste Management Association. Lindow, Steven E., Guy R. Knudsen, Ramon J. Seidler, Michael V. Walter, Victor W. Lambou, Penny S. Amy, David Schmedding, Valerie Prince and Stephen Hern 1988 "Aerial Dispersal and Epiphytic Survival of Pseudomonas Syringae during a Pretest for the Release of Genetically Engineered Strains into the Environment". Applied and Environmental Microbiology 54:1557-1563. Nelkin, Dorothy 1975 "The Political Impact of Technical Expertise". Social Studies of Science 5:35-54. Panem, Sandra 1984 The Interferon Crusade. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute. Pickering, Andrew 1989 "Big Science as a Form of Life", pp. 42-54 in M. De Maria, M. Grilli and F. Sebastiani (eds.), The Restructuring of the Physical Sciences in Europe and the United States, ¡945-1960. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Rip, Arie and Peter Groenewegen 1989 "Les faits scientifiques à l'épreuve de la politique", pp. 149-172 in Michel Callón (ed.), La science et ses réseaux: Genèse et circulation des faits scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte.

Expertise as a Network

361

Star, Susan Leigh, (ed.) 1988 "Special Issue: The Sociology of Science and Technology". Social 35:197-310.

Problems

Sussman, M., C.H. Collins, F.A. Skinner and D.E. Stewart-Tuli 1988 The Release of Genetically-Engineered

Micro-Organisms.

London: Academic Press.

Zeldenrust, Sjerp 1985 "Strategic Action in the Laboratory: (Inter-) Organizational Resources and Constraints in Industrial and University Research". Paper presented to the 10th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., October 24-27).

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality Arie Rip

Scholars have given advice to decision makers ever since Plato was invited to Dionysius's court in Syracuse in the fourth century B.C..' The impact of the advice was never unrelated to the experience and authority of the adviser, but the main determinant was, and perhaps still is, how much trust the advisee put in the adviser. In the knowledge society, expert advisers base their authority on the scientific basis of their advice. Trust in their advice will now also be related to the overall confidence in science, which may not be high, at least if one takes seriously one of Richard Nixon's aides who said (at the time of the controversy over the Supersonic Transport airplane): "ah, who believes scientists anyway!". Scientific experts themselves are in any case often concerned about their social or public legitimation, and the possibility of lack of trust in science. What is different in the present situation is the public or semi-public character of much of the advice, which introduces different, more universalistic requirements of validity. In this chapter, I want to show that the validity of expert advice in a knowledge society does not, or at least not only, depend on the supposedly universalistic character of scientific knowledge. The situation is more complex, and the expert's role encompasses more considerations than scientific validity alone. In addition, scientific knowledge is not produced in a social and political vacuum, and this is reflected in what we know, and what we do not know, and we want to know. 2 For scientists, the fact that expert advice is increasingly based on new scientific research, or new assessments of existing research, is a challenge. A new audience requires a different style and a different packaging, and perhaps new substance as well. A striking phenomenon is the external pressure on science to produce "hard" facts. Politicians and other parties in public arenas are not interested in arguments that "on the one hand X, but on the other hand perhaps Y". They get exasperated with such statements in public hearings, and call for a "one-handed scientist". If available evidence seems to support their position, it is obviously in the interest of decision-makers to make it as solid as possible. Sometimes, however, the interest is in softening the facts: when delays are tactically useful, or when the

364

Arie Rip

position of one's opponent has to be undermined, the uncertainties of science may be emphasized. 3 It is true that in our scientific age, it is important for decisionmakers to present science as an independent input into the decision-making process, but they will make an effort to have it serve their ends, or at least that it does not counteract them. Scientists are often happy to oblige, and transform the provisional fabrications of the lab bench into simple, black-and-white facts. But the blackness and whiteness of such facts is the result of a translation process: complexity is reduced with the public arena in mind into which these facts will be delivered. Instead of a scientific forum there is now a hybrid forum: the results should be acceptable to colleague scientists, but also exert some force in socio-political arenas. The discussion, after Chernobyl, of standards for admissible radiation levels in food and in the environment is a case in point. When lichen in the North of Scandinavia turned out to be heavily contaminated, and the meat of reindeer feeding on it had a radiation level up to ten times as high as the then admissible level, a number of "work-arounds" were proposed to save the meat (and the lifestyle of the Laps). One of them was to raise the standard to ten times its original value, the argument being that this would increase the radiation pressure on humans only negligibly (at least for those who do not eat too much reindeer meat). Scientific calculations went into this argument, while credibility was also important: Norwegian Laps criticized the decision because it applied to reindeer meat only, not the other food. Thus, the public would see it as an ad-hoc and political ploy, and not feel confident about the safety of the reindeer meat. This particular criticism did not get any follow-up, but it could have led to pressure on a whole range of standards and a re-assessment of the evidence for them. What this brief discussion highlights is the point that fabrication of facts for public arenas has to manage the pressures and constraints deriving from socio-political forces, in addition to the force of experiment and argument. The balance of these forces will create focal points, where effort has to be exerted, whether in assembling and reassessing evidence, or in managing the insertion of fact fabrication in socio-political processes. Thus, the scientific work behind standard setting is not just the limited task of overcoming local uncertainties in solving the problem of a safe concentration level. It also requires assessments of what the problem really is: is it about biological mechanisms of carcinogenesis, or about expected exposure levels? Is the aim to achieve scientific stability with respect to scientific peers, or socio-political stability with respect to interest groups and public debate? In fact, local uncertainties can only be addressed after one has decided what is to be considered certain and what uncertain - and this choice itself is often what is at issue in a public debate. Can we take the negligibility of cancer risks of low-level radiation or minute amounts of dioxin as certain, i.e. not an issue that we have to look into, or should it be considered uncertain and in need of further investigation? Much of the debate in public controversies draws its heatedness, as well as its inconclusiveness from the fact

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

365

that the argument is played out on two levels at the same time. Any particular "fact" will be discussed in detail only if it is relevant, i.e. if there is some consensus about the agenda (what is to be considered uncertain and in need of resolution); but at the same time, such "facts" will be submitted as part of an argument to put such an issue on the agenda at all. A highly visible case of cancer, or a dramatic exposure to radiation, with the attendant concern about causality and health effects, will be important in setting the agenda, even when the facts of the matter still have to be fabricated, and some parties argue that existing knowledge suggests that there is no cause for concern.

I. The Ozone Layer Debate As an example, I shall discuss the case of the possible damage from chlorofluorocarbons (used in spraycans) to the stratospheric ozone layer.4 The debate started in the 1970s with an "early warning" by atmospheric scientists, and the two levels were therefore visible from the beginning: is there cause for concern? what is the value of the facts and what further research should be done? The different parties involved had their own research agendas and socio-political agendas, and it is the overall socio-cognitive dynamic of the controversy which determines what the focal points will be, and thus, what kind of research will become important. In the course of time some procedures and apportioning of roles crystallize and the fabrication of facts becomes semi-public again, as in most cases of standard setting. Before that happens, however, scientists are faced with a lack of boundaries between their work and the public debate, and attempt, after the first heady months of early warning and publicity, to create some closure, if not cognitively, then socially. One of the leading atmospheric scientists said (New Scientist, 24 June 1976: Vol. 70, p. 685): At the moment, half-baked ideas are being produced at a ferocious rate. That's all right when you're only talking to your friends, but it's most regrettable that scientists are telling politicians that they must regulate (as if the evidence was hard).

So, scientists should have refrained from speaking out until they had hammered out some solid solution among themselves. I shall show in more detail how ineffectual such a proposal is, but the above statement shows clearly how scientists felt they had let the djinn out of the box, and now tried to put some box around it again. Early in 1974, two American atmospheric chemists, Rowland and Molina, speculated about chlorofluorocarbons (cfc), often called "freons" after the Dupont

366

Arie Rip

trade name, and a propellant widely used in spray cans because of their safety and low cost. They were not being decomposed in the lower atmosphere because of their chemical inertia (which made them safe as a propellant), but the amount present in the lower atmosphere, according to sensitive concentration measurements, appeared to be lower than the amount emitted until then. The only place where they could disappear to seemed to be the stratosphere, and there they would be decomposed by hard UV radiation from the sun. The resulting increase in the concentration of reactive chlorine radicals, however, would reduce the stationary concentration of the stratospheric ozone layer. This, in turn, would allow more of the hard UV radiation, normally absorbed by the ozone layer, to reach the earth's surface, causing a higher incidence of skin cancer and possibly other negative effects. From an article published in Nature in June 1974, which did not draw any public reactions, Rowland and Molina went on to a presentation at an American Chemical Society conference in September 1974, the kind of meeting that attracts professional chemists from industry and government as well, and is covered by the media. There, their piece of informed speculation turned into an "early warning". Interested parties started querying the implication Rowland was now drawing: stop using cfc in spraycans. Other atmospheric scientists confirmed their reasoning as potentially correct. Policy-makers, media, and environmental groups took up the cause of the ozone layer. Thus, an arena was created for the main contestants to engage in a scientific-cum-political struggle, and high on the agenda were the questions: Are there sufficient ground for concern? Should we do something, and if so, what? The main battle was waged during the second half of the 1970s. Although the controversy has not been resolved, the debates have become less public now, the main activity going on between national governments, industry organizations, and international bodies. The decrease of public debate has in fact led to a feeling that there might not be a real threat to the ozone layer, after all. More recently, the discovery of unexpected "ozone holes" above the Antarctic led to renewed public interest. This surge of publicity is, in fact, superimposed on a long-term trend toward recognition of the seriousness of the issue by governments and industry, even while the causality and the extent of impacts is still not completely clarified. Since 1987, there is a framework convention, the Montréal Protocol, for the protection of the ozone layer, signed by many countries (with a recent agreement, signed by about 60 UN members, to reduce cfc emisssions to zero by the year 2000): industry spokesmen, at least in the U.S.A., also support some international regulation of cfc. It is not my intention to retrace the full course of the controversy here. My aim is to analyze how facts are fabricated between contending actors in public arenas, and the case of impact of cfc on the ozone layer is particularly suitable because the science, as well as the socio-political network of it, are inextricably interwoven. The main scientific problem is the complexity of the chemical-

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

367

meteorological atmospheric models, the uncertainties about relevant reactions and transport routes, and a lack of data. Present atmospheric models contain about 160 chemical reactions and more than 40 reactive species. Each time a reaction rate is remeasured, a new reaction or new species discovered, or an additional product found for a known reaction, the whole interlocking system is affected, sometimes with dramatic differences in model outcomes. The research delivering such new insights is not conducted in a socio-political vacuum: many of the scientists involved are employees of or funded by industrial or government organizations like Dupont Company, the US Chemical Manufacturers Association, U.S. National Air and Space Administration or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And even without such direct ties, scientists will respond to the state-of-the-debate, as they respond to the state-of-the-art in more academic scientific fields. Thus, the input of new research results into the models, and consequently, outcomes as well, are not independent of the perspectives and interests of the actors. From the beginning of the debate, in the autumn of 1974, three kinds of actors could be distinguished. There are the chemical industry and the aerosol manufacturers, who (in the words of Dupont Company's nationwide public relations campaign of the time) want both themselves and the ozone layer to survive. There are environmentalists, concerned scientists, and worried consumers, who each from their own background and goals, argue that the ozone layer should be protected from unnecessary interference. There is a third actor, US federal agencies and State governments seeing an opportunity to expand their regulatory scope, Congressional committees fighting for "turf', and national and international government bodies everywhere whose business it is to negotiate and regulate, serving the public interest at the same time. Researchers are linked to one of these three kinds of actors, directly or because they share the goals. Sometimes they try to maintain a quasi-independent position as well, in order to avoid contaminating their science, as well as the standing of their input in the debate. Although there were, at the beginning, many uncertainties, lack of data and lacunae in understanding, it was not just because science did not deliver a conclusive solution, and left an "open space" in the arena, that there was room for interests and values of the actors to influence their positions and actions. The different actors defined the cognitive situation itself differently. For industry, there was only a speculative "theory" (as they called it pejoratively), and no regulation should occur until research had been conducted to clear up the basis for this "theory". Accordingly, their own research focused on measurements of actual concentrations, and on alternative "sinks" for cfc in the lower atmosphere. If cfc would, for instance, decompose in sunlight at the surface of sand grains - amply available in the Sahara and other deserts - that would explain away the concentration deficit in the lower atmosphere, and have the added benefit of making the difficult measurement of chlorine concentrations in

368

Arie Rip

the stratosphere superfluous. Some effects of sunlight and sand were indeed found, although too small in magnitude to explain the deficit. But as a result, much more became known about this particular part of the problem: its certainties and uncertainties were well articulated. The government interest in a solid basis for regulation led them to support the construction of models for stratospheric chemistry and meteorology that would allow predictions of future ozone layer concentrations under different scenarios of cfc emission, and thus provide guidelines for regulation. Within this overall goal, the US government agencies focused on one-dimensional models (i.e. considering vertical transport only, no horizontal transport) instead of more realistic twodimensional models. In this way, different model structures and outcomes could be compared and a consensus could hopefully be developed on how to regulate. Other governments, in Britain or Scandinavia, with less interest in immediate action, saw their task as creating understanding of the issue, and supported two-dimensional modelling. In retrospect, the one-dimensional models are now assessed as superb to derive "what i f ' scenarios, but difficult to relate to the actual world, where the atmosphere is not the same over the equator and the poles. Environmentalists were often less concerned with research than with arguing how unwise it would be to run even a small and speculative risk of disturbing the atmospheric balance. Their problem definition for scapegoating cfc can be recognized in the tenacity with which atmospheric scientists like Rowland, who invested heavily in pushing the early warning about cfc, focus their research on cfc as causal agents for atmospheric phenomena, including a conviction that the recent Antarctic "ozone hole" is also caused by cfc. Note that this is not a criticism: tenacity in pursuing a line of research is considered a scientific virtue. The point is, rather, that tenacity can be maintained only when it is embedded in a supporting network, in this case one linked to an early warning/environmental critic role. Not only are research agendas set and followed by the problem definitions of the different kind of actors, the agendas and problem definitions interact and create focal points for debate and research. Such focal points then become much more articulated than other parts of the problem. An example is how the first scientific report on the ozone layer problem, produced by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and invested with a lot of weight by all actors, had to be delayed when in the spring of 1976, at a late stage of the writing, a new finding was reported. It appeared (from research by Rowland) that two of the chemical species involved in the chain leading to reduction of the stationary ozone concentration, could react and form a compound that was much more stable than originally thought. Since such a compound would provide an additional stratospheric "sink" for cfc's reactive products, there would be less damage to the ozone layer. It was clear to everybody that this would have to be studied in detail before the report could be released. All the actors were waiting for the report, and would jump on this possibility to deconstruct it, or solidify its facticity, depending

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

369

on their problem definitions. The effect was that predicted decreases of the ozone layer (for the 21st century) were modified downwards, but still large enough for some government agencies to start preparing regulation, although the National Academy itself had advised to wait for two years' further research into the issue. It will be clear that the state-of-knowledge at any one point of time, that is, the map of understanding of the problem upon which advisory reports and actor's stances are based, is not independent of the previous evolution of the controversy. Problem definitions of powerful actors, as well as the evolving agenda of the debate, determine where the topography is more or less detailed or shows white areas of terra incognita. Socio-political actors and interactions thus help to determine what is known and what is problematic. In fact, it is impossible to disentangle "value" and "fact", and it is of little use to strive after it. It will not contribute to the resolution of the controversy, even if it may create some division of labour between scientists and other actors. To complete the analysis, the same line of argument can also be applied to the state of knowledge at the time Rowland and Molina started thinking about cfc and the ozone layer. Stratospheric chemistry of that time was shaped by the concern to know about the impact of exhaust gases from rockets and spacecraft, and more recently by the debate about the impact of the proposed supersonic transport aircraft. Accordingly, the U.S. National Air and Space Administration was the biggest funder and assessor of research, and interest in, as well as knowledge of, the impact of nitrogen oxides and dust was highest. Rowland and Molina could base their analysis on a partial understanding of stratospheric chemistry, and had, of necessity, to be speculative to round off their argument. 5 While I have discussed one historical case only, the point is clear that the dynamics of controversies are irreducibly socio-cognitive, with focal points thrown up through interlocking actors' strategies, which then determine research agendas and the state of knowledge. The present debates on the greenhouse effect, and on global climate changes in general, offer many supporting examples. One striking point is the political mobilization, in the late 1980s, to do (and be seen to be doing) something about global climate change, while the possibility of a greenhouse effect had been raised by scientists since Arrhenius in the 19th century, and some debate and some research had been going on in the 1960s and 1970s. The present massive research effort derives from a political focal point and growing political consensus, so there is no linear causality from scientific expertise to political decision making. In fact, in symposia and editorials in scientific magazines, scientists are urged to create a consensus in order to put some weight behind the political necessity of doing something about global climate change. 6

370

Arie Rip

II. Standards for Dioxin in the Netherlands In situations of hybrid forums, as discussed in the preceding section, it becomes vacuous to inquire where science ends and politics begins. Attempts by scientists or others to create or maintain boundaries between the two, although sometimes useful in terms of a division of labour, will also hide the actual dynamics of hybrid fabrication of fact. That might be too high a price to pay for a superficially sound division of labour. This is a strong claim, and to support it I shall discuss a case of expert advice for a standard for dioxin in the environment. The story of the original standard, its modification, and a recent debate following the discovery of emissions of dioxin from waste incineration plants (in the Netherlands) show that experts actually mix science and politics by following a pragmatic rationality, taking into account the societal effects of various possible standards. This should not be frowned upon: such are the actual dynamics of expertise, and philosophically, it is better to accept it, recognize it, and introduce some accountability, than to push it out of sight. I will come back to this philosophical point, and its relevance for the knowledge society, in the concluding section. The story starts in 1980. Within the space of a few months, two widely divergent reports on admissible levels of dioxin in the environment were produced, and by the same scientists of the Netherlands Institute of Public Health (a research institute financed by the Ministry of Welfare, Public Health, and Culture, and the Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environmental Management). The first report was written because cancer cases were reported in a rural village, and spraying of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, with dioxin as a contaminant, in the surrounding forests was mentioned as a possible cause. A literature review was made, and the scientists concluded that dioxin should be treated as a proven carcinogen in animal experiments, and one with genotoxic effects. Since the contamination existed already, a scheme established by the Health Council, the main scientific advisory council to the Dutch government on health issues, was followed to calculate the level corresponding to an acceptable risk criterion. 7 An acceptable daily exposure level of 13 picogram was the result, and the report concluded that there was no real hazard, because measured exposure levels were below 13 picogram. When interviewed later, the scientists involved emphasized that the concentration of 13 picogram was not intended as a standard, only as a reference point to argue that in the actual situation cancers due to accidental exposure to dioxin containing 2,4,5-T were highly improbable - a subtle point, but of importance for later debates. At the same time, a controversy over a chemical waste dump near Amsterdam came to a head. Wastes of a 2,4,5-T chemical plant had been dumped in the municipal waste dump. After prolonged action by the citizen committee, the

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

371

municipal council had to admit that the wastes contained dioxin. The debate then centred on the suspected carcinogeneity of dioxin. An estimated daily intake of 100 to 150 picogram was accepted as a realistic estimate by both parties in the conflict. The citizen group then quoted the report of the Netherlands Institute of Public Health to argue that dioxin was a complete carcinogen, and that an acceptable intake level was 13 picogram, which would require a major and very costly clean-up operation. The experts of the municipal council of Amsterdam quoted an acceptable level of 140 picogram, supporting it by an argument that dioxin was not a complete carcinogen. It turned out that their argument was based on a confidential report from the same Netherlands Institute of Public Health. Had the scientists turned around completely in the course of three months? One reading of the events is that they had continued their assessment of the evidence after bringing out their original report, and had introduced revisions which had to go through peer review, by members of the standing Health Council committee on carcinogeneity of chemicals, before they could be made public as providing the basis for a standard. (The report was made public two years later.) Another reading, favoured by the citizen groups and their counter-experts, was that the scientists of the Institute were swayed by the daunting prospect of being responsible for a major clean-up operation, and decided to fiddle with the figures. The actual activities of the scientists appear to lie somewhere in between. No research results were used in the second report that had not been available at the moment of writing the first report. The latter, however, took existing, i.e. published, knowledge for granted, and decided to err on the side of safety by using the possibility of genotoxicity to reach and estimate the risk. When the debate about the waste dump focused on dioxin, however, it became crucial how dioxin should be classified in the Health Council scheme: as a complete carcinogen or only as a promoter. The Institute scientists decided that the mutagenicity tests, on which the suspicion of genotoxicity was based, had to be rejected formally because of their early date, and concomitant looseness of procedure. They also contacted the authors to inquire whether the results had been replicated, which turned out not to be the case. While in the first report the scientific rhetoric was geared to presenting all the evidence as "hard" as possible, as seemed suitable to the occasion, in the second report the reverse occurred. The "hardness" now resided in statements about the situation, with exposure levels ten times as high as the previously established "standard" being taken as certain. To manage these new constraints, the assessment of evidence was modified, first going back to the original experimental articles, and then questioning the facticity of the experiments themselves. If the facts putting dioxin into the category of a complete carcinogen had been more stubborn, the outcome might have been different. Now, it took relatively little effort to shift dioxin to the other category of promotor only. The shift did result in further controversy, and in loss of confidence in authorities with the citizen groups, also because the report was kept confidential

372

Arie Rip

during the period of peer review required to create a standard according to the Health Council scheme. Scientific quality control and boundary maintenance reduce instead of enhance social confidence in this case! The external criticisms were insufficient to deconstruct the proposed standard, partly because the network of evidence and argument was hard to rearrange, partly because the claimed separation between scientific and socio-political assessment was accepted by all parties. Thus, there is a curious ambivalence in the role of science in standard setting. On the one hand, it is common practice, and indeed unavoidable, to take socio-political context into account in deciding what to consider "hard", i.e. not suitable for deconstruction. 8 On the other hand, it is important for scientists to (re-)emphasize their role as expert and make it unassailable by erecting boundaries between their work and public debate. In their own practice of constructing advice, scientists apply what Ezrahi (1980) has called "pragmatic rationality": within certain limits, scientific criteria may be offset by administrative or political criteria, in order to create a robust outcome. Ezrahi's example is the Consumer (or Retail) Price Index, which has an important symbolic and administrative role in economic policy and negotiations. Its credibility rests, in part, on its acceptance by all parties as a reliable and unchanging reference point. Improving its scientific basis, with attendant recalculations, would only undermine its authority, with very little real gain. Ezrahi contrasts pragmatic rationality with Utopian rationality, where consensual science offers authoritative advice to a political arena which docilely follows the advice. This contrast between pragmatic and Utopian rationality actually surfaced in the third phase of the dioxin story, when dioxin emissions of waste incineration plants were recognized and measured, and sale of milk from contaminated areas was banned. Farmers, and directors of incineration plants, pressed for relaxation of standards. Toxicologists, on the other hand, argued that the existing standard was already too liberal. The Utopian rationalists have science at their side, 9 it seems, when they criticize the use of toxic equivalence factors (TEF) for the 17 or so species of dioxins that actually occur (of the 75 theoretically possible), which enable standard setters to calculate the equivalent concentration in terms of the well-known (and assumedly most toxic) 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodioxin (TCDD), for any actual mixture of dioxins. There is no proof that the safety factor of 250 used for the TCDD no-effect level is applicable to the other dioxins: these may be cancer initiators rather than promotors. The Utopians argue that a false sense of security is now created with the public. In contrast, the RIVM expert is pragmatic: The TEF concept is a reasonable attempt. While there are uncertainties, e.g., about initiation, there is a structure-chemistry argument to make plausible that none of them is an initiator. Indeed, in principle one should exclude this possibility on the basis of toxicologi-

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

373

cal studies. But there are so many other things that have to be studied as well, and one should choose one's priorities. Van der Heijden refers to a S w i s s study of 1985 which s h o w e d that s o m e mixtures are less toxic than calculated on the basis of T E F to argue that TEF-values may well be too high. But these TEF values have not been determined scientifically, they are based on international agreements, i.e. arrangements to be able to do something. The TEF-values have been purposively chosen to be on the high side. So to reproach us that the RIVM-standard is a semblance of security only, is a bit demagogical. As if we were swindling the public with this standard. That is definitely not the case. There are other arguments, for example about the neglect of special situations (like dioxin in mother's milk), and the issue o f interaction effects, especially with polychlorinated biphenyls, to which the R I V M expert replied equally pragmatically: When looking for interaction effects, why stop at PCBs? Why not look at PAC as well? Or nitroso-amines? There is no end to it. Of course, we have research going on on interaction effects, but for standard setting we do not do anything with it, for the time being. 10 For pragmatic rationality, the issue of safety factors in standard setting is also very interesting. The interviewer, at one point, asked: At the time, a safety factor of 250, instead of the more usual 100 was used because of some minor uncertainties/indications. So if 100 had been used in 1982, there would now have been no dioxin affair in the Netherlands? Van der Heijden: Indeed, it can be put that way. During last weeks, pressure has been exerted on us, from different sides, to revise the standard. But we won't do that. We have determined the standard in 1982 [i.e. in this context, the safety factor], and are not going to modify it retrospectively. That is to say, we are prepared to change the standard, but only on the basis of toxicological considerations. And not because we are so close to the standard in reality. There are a number of parties for whom it would be convenient if the safety factor had been 100, as Switzerland and Canada have done, instead of 250. But if we would relax that standard under pressure, we would lose our credibility. If one would force us to do it somehow, we would do better to quit our job. The interviewer then asked w h y a safety factor of 5 0 0 w a s not chosen at the time. Van der Heijden: If we had taken over the American standard at that time, that would have implied that the

374

Arie Rip

Netherlands should be treated as being a waste dump; in theory, we could not have lived in the Netherlands then.

The pragmatic rationalism of Van der Heijden, the expert from RIVM, stands out again, and while he may not have science on his side, he certainly has good reasons. He is mixing science and politics, and it is clear that in doing so he tries to answer three types of questions: - Which research, however important, will not be done? - How can credibility be maintained in the long term? - What is the societal effect of setting this standard, and is this acceptable? It is not easy to align the heterogeneous considerations, but it is the responsibility of the expert, when preparing his advice, to come up with reasonable, and concrete, answers to such questions.

III. Conclusion Running through the presentation of the two case studies is the notion that choices are being made what to consider certain, what to explore further, and which results to attempt to deconstruct. Such choices are related to the agenda of public or semi-public debates, and to actor's strategies in influencing the debate. Often, focal points emerge around which analysis and debate, and therefore also research, cluster. What we know in a certain domain is based on the research efforts that actors have exerted. In short, the state-of-the-art (i.e. our knowledge) in a domain derives from the state-of-the-debate. These processes come to a head when explicit advice is expected and prepared. The Ν AS report in 1976 on the risks to the ozone layer is a case in point, and standard setting for dioxin another. Experts, in constructing their advice, take actual and desired context into account. This is what they actually do, and for that reason alone one can elevate their practice to a prescription: experts should be pragmatically rational, and produce robust advice, which is able to create desired societal effects (or withstand undesirable interference), rather than formally correct statements which have no (or the wrong) purpose. The argument to shift from the descriptive to the prescriptive is thus that the mixing of science and politics, if it occurs anyway, had better be recognized for what it is, rather than being suppressed by assertions about the separation of science and politics, in an attempt to create or maintain special authority for science. Why is such special authority necessary (apart from the psychological needs of

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

375

scientific experts)? Should politics follow whatever science says, as if it were a black box into the operations of which one should not enquire? But why should voices from the black box be relevant to the complexities of the real world? Scientific research is so bound up, for its internal quality criteria, with the artificial, restricted world of the experiment (in a laboratory or another contrived situation), that a separate step of "concretization" is necessary to apply it to practical situations." Concretization entails getting mixed up in societal situations, and in the case of expert advice there is the additional point that potentially, intervention (perhaps of a minimal kind) is envisaged. So, Utopian rationality, even if it were possible, is not desirable. The hard facts, so beloved by scientists and decision-makers (as long as they help them along), must therefore be replaced by robust advice. Pragmatic rationality, which includes internal scientific validity as one aspect in the more comprehensive goal of societal robustness of advice, is a way to include politics without becoming a slave to it (as in advocacy science). Scientific experts should not embrace politics, but not be shy, either. Pragmatic rationality requires making pragmatic choices - as was very clear in the case of the RIVM expert - and being able to offer reasons for those choices. In fact, to avoid paternalism of scientists, deciding in their wisdom what is good for society, there should be an element of accountability as well: not only should the expert have good reasons for the choices made, it must be accepted that she or he can be called to account for them. One application of this perspective is the question of having lay people on advisory committees, to let the voice of society be heard, as it were. In the debates on recombinant DNA research, this has been a recurrent issue, with the Cambridge Institutional Review Board as a central example. 12 Of course, participation of lay people is important for symbolic legitimation. But the actual quality of the advice may not be improved through their contributions. Why should lay people be more knowledgeable about society than scientific experts? Studies of such mixed committees have shown that lay participants often become passive listeners; in a few cases, they get involved in the science, and become somewhat expert themselves. What is missing is an incentive to include societal considertations into the assessments. The combination of pragmatic rationality plus accountability of the experts is such an incentive, and my claim is that it is a better incentive than just having lay persons on board. 13 While the robustness of expert advice is served by pragmatic rationality, the wide recognition of a "political" component in expert advice may undermine the authority of scientific expertise. This is a real concern, but it should not be countered by pushing the scientists back into their black boxes. Policymakers, and society in general, should become acquainted with, and accept, the constructed character of science: the always precarious attempt to produce valid knowledge out of bits and pieces of evidence, experience, insight, and bold conjectures. Society and policy makers are right in not being satisfied with one-handed

376

Arie Rip

scientists, but they should not expect hard facts, either. As I have been showing in the cases, and arguing in my interpretation, robustness is what one should aim at, rather than hard facts.' 4 This requires a change of perspective with scientists, and with society, but not always in practice, where pragmatic rationality is already the tacit rule in expert advice. It need not remain tacit.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

6

Actually, Plato came twice to Syracuse: first invited by Dionysius the Older, with little mutual satisfaction, and then invited by Dion, an important adviser to his son and successor Dionysius the Younger. The development of Plato's political philosophy is related to these excursions into political practice. Some of the case material and analysis in this chapter are based on Rip and Groenewegen (1989:149-172). Compare Brian Campbell (1985:449) on MacKenzie Valley Pipeline enquiry. Apart from his general analysis of uncertainty as symbolic action, he notes that "[t]he political effectiveness of expertise is not diminished by the use of uncertainty arguments. Concretely, Judge Berger used scientists as expert sources in justifying his extremely firm uncertainty position". The analysis draws on data in Dotto and Schiff (1978) and Ember et al. (1986). In describing the early stages of the controversy about the impact of cfc of the ozone layer, I have not gone into specific details of hybrid fabrication of facts. It would be possible, for instance, to analyze the differences in rhetorical structure of Rowland and Molina's article in Nature (June 1974) and an article by Cicerone and colleagues in Science (September 1974) with similar scientific content. Rowland and Molina construct their argument so that potential environmental impacts can be mentioned, while Cicerone et al. conclude in terms of a research agenda without saying explicitly why such research would be important for other than scientific reasons. The two groups of authors have different segments of the audience in mind, and the impacts of their articles differ. These differences can be traced throughout their later work and involvement in the debate. Going into such detail, however, would make it impossible to discern the broader issues of the socio-cognitive dynamics of the controversy, and the way focal points are created that shape research agendas and thus also the state-of-the-knowledge. It is within such broader dynamics that the strategies of separate scientists and groups can be given meaning. A striking example is the final paragraph in an editorial comment in New Scientist, 8 September 1990: "scientists must help the world face climate change by building a wider consensus, and by sidestepping charges of uncertainty and bias. That is just what scientists did, very effectively, in Sweden last week". Earlier, New Scientist, in an editorial comment on "precautionary principles" (19 May 1990) had noted the results of a world-wide survey of scientists: 76% is of the opinion that the earth is warming up because of human activities (i.e. the greenhouse effect), while only 41% finds that this is scientifically proven. In my terms: Opinion (based on the state-of-thedebate) is sufficient, also for scientists, to argue for measures.

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality

7

8

9

10

377

At the Bergen conference, 8-16 May 1990, a regional follow-up to the Brundtland report (Report of the World Commission on the Environment and Development, 1987), the Ministerial Declaration on Sustainable Development in the ECE Region said in point 8: "We invite the international science community to contribute towards the advancement of sustainable development policies and programmes. Scientific analyses and forecasts are especially needed to help identify longer term policy options. "The parallel scientists" conference on sustainable development, science and policy echoed this sentiment in strongly moral terminology (general observations, 1): "the Science Community has the obligation to provide the empirical and knowledge base for the faith we have in Our Common Future" [i.e. the Brundtland report]. Again, a shared vision of a desired future is to guide the construction of the knowledge base, and support our faith. The quotes are drawn from a thesis, on moral aspects of global environmental debates, by Ibo van de Poel, University of Twente, Netherlands. An important distinction within this scheme is the one between complete carcinogens, where even one molecule can cause cancer (thus, no-effect levels do not exist, one has to ban the chemical, or base a standard on an acceptable risk criterion), and a promotor, which increases the chances of cancer, but in relation to dosage, and with a no-effect level. For a more extended discussion, also of the scientific aspects, see Van Eijndhoven and Groenewegen (1991). Rip and Groenewegen (1989) and Van Eijndhoven and Groenewegen (1991) discuss a second, and contrasting, case of standard setting in the Netherlands. The standard for levels of formaldehyde (used in chipboard) in ambient air (in houses and public buildings) came under pressure because of new scientific findings, suggesting carcinogeneity. Quite some effort was spent in checking the quality and relevance of the scientific evidence, which led to the conclusion that existing standards need not be changed (and existing housing need not be renovated). As one of the standards advisory committee members explained in an interview: "the 120 microgram level [existing standard, A.R.] was very important in the case of those houses, the standard was already in use. Of course, you need standards, even if scientifically the situation is unclear. You cannot conclude that the standard should be exactly 120, it might well be 90 or 150. The argument in the report for 120 is correct, and consistent with the outcomes of the carcinogeneity experiments. But when you arrive at 110, you can as well take 120, and if that fits with the existing standard, you will of course do so" (data from Rip and Groenewegen 1989). NRCHbl 1 August 1989 (Science & Education Supplement) has an extended presentation of the view of Seinen and Van der Berg, which can be characterized as Utopian rationalist, and Van der Heijden (RIVM), as pragmatic rationalist. Earlier in the interview, Van der Heijden has made another point: since 1982 more and more PCDDs and PCDFs have been studied and TEF-values determined for them. Each time this happens, it implies a higher TEQ-value. So it has seemed that the Dutch people were exposed to increasing amounts of dioxines (TEQ values were increasing). "But in fact, it was just a different way of calculating. We have been taking more and more PCDDs and PCDFs into account. The real intake probably did not change very much." Average intake is now about half the level of the standard, so if something happens one can quickly exceed the standard and get into problems. "When we set up the

Arie Rip

378

11 12 13 14

standard in 1982, it was, of course, not possible to foresee this. The expanded definition, as TEQ, came only later." They further criticize Seinen/Van den Berg (the Utopian toxicologists): "We do not understand their objections. Total TEQ-value that the average Dutch person gets is much higher than before. We maintain the standard for 2,3,7,8-TCDD, but add the other PCDDs and PCDFs to it [i.e. to the exposure concentration]. But now they start fighting the standard for other reasons. What alternative do we have?" The term "concretization" has been introduced by Böhme et al. (1973). The focus on "restricted" situations is analyzed in Rip (1982). See Krimsky 1982. I have argued the same point for advice on environmental release of transgene organisms (Rip 1991). Rip (1986) shows the importance of the concept of robustness in the resolution of controversies.

References Böhme, Gemot, Wolfgang van den Daele and Wolfgang Krohn 1973 "Die Finalisierung der Wissenschaft". Zeitschrift für Soziologie 2:128-144. Campbell, Brian L. 1985 "Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes Among Experts". Social Studies of Science 15(3):429-453. Cicerone, Ralph J., Richard S. Stolarski and Stacy Walters 1974 "Stratospheroc Ozone Destruction by Man-made chlorofluoro Methane". Science 185:1165-1166. Dotto, Lydia and Harold Schiff 1978 The Ozone War. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Eindhoven, José van and Peter Groenewegen 1991 "The Construction of Expert Advice on Health Risks". Social Studies of Science 21(2):257-278. Ember, Lois R., Patricia L. Layman, Wil Lepkowski and Pamela S. Zurer 1986 "Tending the Global Commons". Chemistry & Engineering News 24): 14-64. Special issue on ozone depletion and greenhouse effect.

(November

Ezrahi, Yaron 1980 "Utopian and Pragmatic Rationalism: The Political Context of Scientific Advice". Minerva 18(1):111-131.

Expert Advice and Pragmatic Rationality Krimsky, Sheldon 1982 Genetic Alchemy: The Social History Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

379

of the Recombinant

DNA

Controversy.

Molina, Mario J. and F.S. Rowland 1974 "Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluormethanes". Science 249:810-812. Rip, Arie 1982 "The Development of Restrictedness in the Sciences", pp. 219-238 in Norbert Elias, Herminio Martins and Richard Whitley (eds.), Scientific Establishments and Hierarchies. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook. Dordrecht: Reidel. Rip, Arie 1985 "Experts in Public Arenas", pp. 94-110 in Harry Otway and Malcolm Peltu (eds.), Regulating Industrial Risks: Science, Hazards and Public Protection. London: Butterworths. Rip, Arie 1986 "Controversies as Informal Technology Assessment". Knowledge 8(2) (December) 349-371. Rip, Arie and Peter Groenewegen 1989 "Les faits scientifiques à l'épreuve de la politique", pp. 149-172 in Michel Callón (ed.), La science et ses réseaux. Genèse et circulation des faits scientifiques. Paris/Strasbourg: Editions La Découverte/Conseil de l'Europe. Rip, Arie 1990 "Experts between pragmatic rationality and a compartmented danger culture", forthcoming in Proceedings of a Symposium on "Biotechnology and the Environment: Managing the Risks" (Montréal, 15-16 November).

On the Authors Zygmunt Bauman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Leeds, Leeds, England. Until 1968 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. His recent publications include Legislators and Interpreters (1987); Modernity and the Holocaust (1989); and Modernity and Ambivalence (1991). Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology, Universität München, München, Germany. He edits Soziale Welt. Among his rcent publications is Gegengifte (1988); (with Elisbeth BeckGernsheim) Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe (1990); Risk Society - On the Way to Another Modernity (1991); and Politik in der Risikogesellschaft (1991). Gemot Böhme is Professor of Philosophy, Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany. His previous positions include a research fellowship at the Max-Planck-Institut in Starnberg, Germany; visiting professorships at the Institut for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and visiting fellowships at Harvard University and the University Linköping, Sweden. His recent publications include Alternativen der Wissenschaft (1980); Das Andere der Vernunft (1983); Anthropologie in pragmatischer Absicht (1985); The Knowledge Society (1986) and Der Typ Sokrates (1988). In addition to classical philosophy his main interests are history, sociology, and philosophy of science. Alberto Cambrosio is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Studies in Medicine at McGill University, Montreál, Montreál, Québec, Canada. His research interests are the sociology of biomedical knowledge and the sociology of scientific innovation. Some of his recent papers were published in Social Studies of Science (1990); Social Problems (1990) and Science, Technology & Human Values (1990). Wolfgang van den Daele is Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin and Director, Department of Standard Setting and the Environment at the Science Center, Berlin. His research interests are in the social studies of science, technology assessment and environmental sociology. Recent publications include Mensch und Mass (1985); "Der Traum von der alternativen Wissenschaft" Zeitschrift für Soziologie (1987) and Die Kontrolle der Forschung am Menschen durch Ethikkommissionen (1990). Peter Drucker has been since 1971 Clark Professor of Social Sciences and Management at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, USA, which in 1987 named its Graduate Management Center after him. From 1979 to 1985 he also served as Professorial Lecturer in Oriental Art at Pomona College, one of the Claremont Colleges. From 1950 to 1971 Mr. Drucker was Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. Among his recent publications are: "Innovations and Entrepreneurship" (1985); "Frontiers of Management" (1986); "The New Realities" (1989); "Managing the Non-Profit Organization" (1990); and "Managing for the Future: The Nineties and Beyond" (1992).

382

On the Authors

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt is Rose Isaacs Professor of Sociology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. He has served as visiting professor at numerous universities including Harvard, Stanford, Zürich and Vienna. He is a Fellow of the Israeli Academy of Sciences. He was the recipient of the 1988 Balzan Price for Sociology. Among his recent publications are Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (1986); (with A. Shachar) Society, Culture and Urbanization (1987); European Civilization in a Comparative Perspective (1987); Patterns of Modernity (1987); (with I. Silber) Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture, Past and Present (1988); and (with E. Ben-Ari) Japanese Models of Conflict Resolution (1990). Richard V. Ericson is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge and the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. He has also been Visiting Research Professor, College of Public Programs, Arizona State University. He is one of the founding editors of the Canadian Journal of Sociology. His recent books include Making Crime (1981); Reproducing Order (1982); The Ordering of Justice (1982); Visualizing Deviance (1987); Negotiating Control (1989); and Representing Order (1991). His research interests include policing; mass communications; and knowledge, communication and social control. Steve Fuller is Professor of Science Studies, Center for the Study of Science in Society, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. He is the founding and executive editor of Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy. He is author of Social Epistemology (1988) and Philosophy of Science and its Discontents (1989). In 1990, he was Visiting Lecturer for Dutch Graduate Programs in Science and Technology Studies. His current research interests include the rhetoric of the social sciences; cognitive science; and the embodiment of knowledge. Eric Hoffmann is a research assistant in the Centre de recherche en Évaluation Sociale des Technologies, Université du Québec à Montreál, Montreál, Québec, Canada. He is presently completing a dissertation in the history of science on E. Cohn and Blood Fractionation at Harvard Medical School (1940-1953). Christoph Lau is Professor of Sociology of Science at the University of Erlangen-Niirnberg. His main areas of interest are the sociology of science, sociological theory, and the sociology of organizations. His publications include "Theorien gesellschaftlicher Planung"; Gesellschaftliche Evolution als kollektiver Lernprozeß (1981); Definitionsmacht und Grenzen angewandter Sozialwissenschaft (1989, with Ulrich Beck). William Leiss is Professor of Communication, Vice-President (Research) and Director of the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Among his recent publications are The Limits of Satisfaction (1976); Social Communication in Advertising (1986); C.B. Macpherson (1988); and Under Technology's Thumb (1990). He is currently working on a new book entitled Toward Consensus in Environmental Controversies. Camille Limoges is Professor in the Department of History and the Centre de Recherche en

On the Authors

383

Évaluation Sociale des Technologies (CREST) of Université du Québec à Montreál, Montreál, Québec, Canada. He is author of La sé natuelle (1970); and a former co-editor of Studies in History of Biology. He has published widely in the history of biology and, more recently, on the social assessment of technology. Richard G. Lipsey is currently Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Alean Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research for whom he is directing a large-scale, international research project on Economic Growth and Policy. Dr. Lipsey received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1951, M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1953 and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1957. He has held a chair in Economics at the London School of Economics and was chairman of the Department of Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Essex. From 1970 to 1986, he was Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Economics, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. From 1983 to 1989, he was senior economic advisor for the C.D. Howe Institute. Dr. Lipsey has authored several textbooks in economics and published over eighty arcticles on various aspects of theoretical and applied economics. Judith Marquand is Professor of Policy Research, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England. She has worked as an economist with a wide variety of British government departments. Since 1981 her main concern has been training policy, which is now the responsibility of the Employment Department. As a Simon Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, she wrote Autonomy and Change: The Sources of Economic Growth (1989). Both in research and its integration into practical decision-making, her interests lie in developing the newly emerging socio-economic paradigm, rooted in the way that individuals think, learn and intereact, which challenges conventional economics and its methodological cousins in other disciplines. Arie Rip is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Current research interests are the dynamics of technological development in context; quality control in science and recent "political" transformations of science; sociology of risk; and technology assessment. He co-edited Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology (1986), with Michael Callón and Lohn Law, and The R&D System in Transition (1990), with Susan E. Cozzens, Peter Healey, and John Ziman. Uwe Schimank is a research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Research, Köln, Germany. He took his doctorate in sociology at the Universität Bielefeld, and has taught at the Universität Wuppertal, Germany. Current research interests include theories of societal differentiation and the sociology of science. Among his recent publications is Konflikte und Gleichgewichte im Forschungssystem (1990). Nico Stehr is Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology. His research interests center on the sociology and philosophy of science; the history of sociological thought; the uses of social science knowledge and the knowledge society. He has co-edited Society and Knowledge (1984), Knowledge and Politics (1990) with Volker Meja and The Knowledge Society (1986) with Gemot Böhme. With David

384

On the Authors

Kettler and Volker Meja he is the author of Politisches Wissen (1989) as well as co-editor of several previously unpublished manuscripts by Karl Mannheim. His current research interests are reflected in Practical Knowledge (1992) and Labour, Property and Knowledge: Toward a Theory of the Knowledge Society (1992).

Name Index Abbott, Andrew 163, 164, 186 Adam 61 Akrich, Madeleine 342, 358 Amy, Penny S. 360 Anderson, Allen R. 140, 145 Anderson, Frances 360 Andrews, Edmund 162, 186 Arendt, Hannah 32 Argote, Linda 180, 186 Aron, Raymond 16, 112 Arrhenius, Svante August 369 Arrow, Kenneth 301, 313 Avery, Dennis 276, 277 Bacon, Francis 26-27, 61-62, 65, 68, 70, 71, 119, 160, 229 Baker, James A. 274 Bannon, Liam 106 Barkay, Tamar 360 Barnes, Barry 16, 107, 146, 147, 232 Basiuk, Victor 15, 16 Bates, Benjamin 169, 186 Bateson, Gregory 92, 105 Baudelaire, Jacques 32 Bauin, Serge 345, 359 Bauman, Zygmunt 75-77, 81-106, 131-134, 143, 146, 228, 229 Bechmann, Günther 247 Beck, Ulrich 8, 193, 194, 196, 199-214, 216, 220, 229, 235, 236, 239, 243, 246, 247, 325, 338 Becker, Gary S. 304, 311, 313, 335 Becker, Ulrich 338 Bell, Alexander G. 166 Bell, Daniel 4, 5, 7, 9, 15, 25, 32, 56, 107, 112, 116, 127, 144-146, 228, 229, 323, 338 Benamon, Michael 100, 101, 105 Bennett, B. 307, 314 Bennis, Warren G. 109, 146 Benveniste, Guy 109, 146 Berg, Axel van den 377, 378

Bergendal, Gunnar 49 Bemal, John D. 15, 16 Bilsky, Lester J. 230 Birch, Anthony H. 139, 146 Birdzell, L. E. 297, 299 Birnbaum, Norman 106, 108, 118, 129, 146 Bismarck, Otto von 119 Block, Fred 16, 113, 146 Bloor, David 143, 184, 186 Blumenberg, Hans 218, 229 Böhme, Gernot 15-17, 25, 39-50, 143, 174, 186, 218, 219, 229-231, 341, 358, 378 Bonss, Wolfgang 244, 247 Borscheid, Peter 222, 230 Boulding, Kenneth 137, 146 Bourdieu, Pierre 185 Bourquin, Al W. 360 Bowlus, Charles R. 228, 230 Boyer, R. 358 Brannigan, Augustine 170, 186 Braverman, Harry 131, 146 Brenner, Reu ven 79, 180, 186 Brint, Steven 15, 17 Bruce-Briggs, Barry 146, 147 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 116, 147 Burdeau, Georges 41, 49 Callón, Michel 342, 345, 353, 358-359, 360, 379 Cambrosio, Alberto 317, 319-321, 341-361 Campbell, Brian 329, 338, 357, 359, 376, 378 Campbell, Donald 160, 186, Cannon, Walter B. 92 Cardinal Bellarmin 323 Carr-Saunders, A. M. 135, 147 Castonguay, Stéphane 356, 360 Chaplin, Charlie 280 Chapman, Κ. 312

386 Charron, Dominique 354, 356, 357, 360 Charance, B. 358 Chiang Kai-check 279 Cho, Emily 81-83 Cicerone, Ralph J. 376, 378 Cicourel, Aaron 356, 358 Clark, Colin 145, 147 Cohen, David 325, 339 Coleman, James 181, 186 Collins, C. H. 361 Collins, H. M. 115, 147 Collins, Harry 184, 186 Collins, Randall 186 Comte, Auguste 41, 160 Condorcet, Antoine 31 Cooper, C. L. 313, 314 Coser, Lewis A. 147 Courchène, Thomas 298 Courtial, Jean-Pierre 345, 359 Covello, Vincent 69, 71 Coyne, George 338 Croskery, Peter 166, 187 Crozier, Michael 242, 247 Cutler, Tony 6, 17 Daele, Wolfgang van den 41, 49, 217, 219, 229, 230, 244, 247, 317-319, 323-340, 343, 344, 359, 378 Dahrendorf, Ralf 18, 147 Darwin, Charles 162 Dasgupta, Partha 130, 143, 147 Davidson, Donald 176, 180, 187 Davidson, Duncan 161, 187 Dennet, Daniel C. 137, 147, 176, 187 Derber, Charles 15, 17, 147 Dertouzos, Michael L. 16, 298, 338 Descartes, René 35 Dilthey, Wilhelm 55 Dion 376 Dionysius the Older 376 Dionysius the Younger 376 Dobson, W. 298, 299 Dogan, Mattel 181, 187 Dosi, G. 311,313 Dotto, Lydia 376, 378 Douglas, Mary 236, 247, 326, 338

Name Index Drucker, Peter F. 4, 8, 17, 108, 138, 145, 147-148, 251-255, 257-277 Duerr, Hans P. 98, 105 Dunn, William N. 17 Durkheim, Emile 30, 32, 45, 113, 135, 148 Edge, David 147 Edwards, Derek 51-59, 180, 188 Eindhoven, José van 377, 378 Eisenstadt, Shmuel 24, 25 Elias, Norbert 379 Ellul, Jacques 40, 49, 93-94, 99, 101, 105 Elster, Jon 170, 178, 185, 187 Elzinga, Aant 223, 230 Ember, Lois R. 376, 378 Engels, Friedrich 152, 280 Epple, Dennis 180, 186 Erez, M. 308, 313 Ericson, Richard V. 3-19, 143, 359 Etzioni, Amitai 149, 230 Etzkom, K. Peter 154 Eulau, Heinz 108, 109, 148 Evans, J. 313 Eve 93 Evers, Adalbert 236, 237, 240, 247, 325, 338 Ewald, François 236, 237, 247 Ezrahi, Yaron 321, 372, 378 Feuer, Lewis S. 148 Feyerabend, Paul 160, 163, 167, 170, 187, 323, 338 Fielding, Alan 153 Fischer, Frank 325, 338 Fisher, A. 145, 148 Ford, Henry 31, 265, 289 Fortier, Pierre 296 Foucault, Michel 23, 31, 33, 53, 55, 117, 148 Fowle III, John R. 360 Francoeur, Eric 356, 360 Fraser, Kennedy 105 Frederickson, J. K. 353, 359 Freeman, C. 313 Freidson, Eliot 108, 143, 148 Freud, Sigmund 23, 31 Friedberg, Erhard 242, 247

387

Name Index Friedmann, John 148 Fry, R. 307, 313 Fujimura, Joan H. 357, 359 Fuller, Buckminster 101 Fuller, Steven 78-80, 157-190 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 185 Galbraith, John K. 7, 17, 110, 114, 148 Galilei, Galileo 323 Gans, Herbert 325, 339 Gella, A. 148 Georghiou, L. 310, 313 Gershuny, J. I. 145, 148 Gibbons, M. 311 Gick, M. L. 308,313 Giddens, Anthony 115, 129, 144, 148, 149, 181, 187 Gillett, James W. 353, 354, 357, 359 Gillispie, Charles C. 222, 230 Ginzberg, Eli 16 Gipsen, C. W. R. 120, 121, 123, 149 Godard, O. 358 Gogol, Nikolai 48 Goldhamer, Herbert 119, 149 Goldthorpe, John H. 125, 149 Gouldner, Alvin 323, 339 Goode, William J. 122, 149 Goodman, Leo A. 101 Goslin, David A. 145 Gouldner, Alvin W. 15, 17, 116, 132, 149 Greer, B. 308, 313 Grilli, M. 360 Groenewegen, Peter 344, 360, 376, 377, 378, 379 Gross, Bertram M. 122, 149 Grotius, Hugo 35 Grupp, Michael 331, 337, 339 Habermas, Jürgen 25, 38, 44, 45, 47, 49, 53, 56, 136, 139, 149, 178, 184-185, 187, 188 Hack, Irmgard 224, 230 Hack, Lother 224, 230 Hacking, Ian 160, 188 Halfmann, Jost 233 Halliday, Terence C. 139, 149 Hansen, Peter 288

Hartmann, Heinz 244, 247 Haskell, Thomas L. 136, 143, 149-151, 154 Hayek, Friedrich von 179-180, 188 Head, J. G. 159, 188 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 31, 39, 49, 68 Heine, Helmut 242, 247 Henne, D. 308,314 Herder, Gottfried 37 Hern, Stephen 360 Hesse, Joachim 338 Hirsch, Helmut 333, 339 Hirschhorn, Larry 16 Hirschmann, Albert 180, 188 Hobbes, Thomas 30 Hoffman, Eric 317, 319-321, 341-361 Hofstadter, Richard 149 Hollinger, David A. 145, 150 Holyoak, K. J. 308, 313 Holzner, Burkart 17, 142, 150 Horkheimer, Max 31, 32 Horowitz, Irving L. 152, 339 Hortleder, Gerd 39, 50 Huber, Mary T. 126, 127, 153 Hughes, Everett C. 141, 150, 334-335, 339 Humphrys, G. 314 Hunter, Alfred A. 131, 150 Huyssen, Andreas 105 Illich, Ivan 101 Ingram, David 185, 188 Innis, Harold A. 144, 150 Insel, Barbara 276, 277 Jacoby, Russell 123, 150 Japp, Klaus-Peter 233 Jeeves, M. 308, 313 Johnson, Mark 344, 359 Jokisch, Rodrigo 39, 50 Jonas, Hans 229, 230 Joyce, James 32 Judge Berger 376 Jungermann, Helmut 338 Kapp, Karl W. 220, 230 Kaufmann, Felix X. 235, 247

388 Kenney, Martin 224, 230 Kettler, David 136, 150 Keynes, John M. 3, 17, 113, 150, 171, 174, 188, 275 Khaldun, Ibn 119 Khrushchev, Nickita 283 King, Lauriston R. 109, 150 Kissinger, Henry 119 Klaw, Spencer 150 Kluge, Norbert 229, 230 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 356, 357, 358, 359 Knudsen, Guy R. 358 Koch, Claus 136, 150 König, René 8, 17 Kolb, D. A. 307,313 Kondratieff, Nikolai 276 Konrad, György 15, 17, 116, 150 Kornhauser, William 224, 230 Kranzberg, Mel vin 146, 148 Kreibich, Rolf 8, 217, 230 Krimsky, Sheldon 331, 339, 379 Krohn, Roger 358 Krohn, Wolfgang 49, 218, 229, 230, 231, 329, 334, 339, 378 Kronwinkler, Trude 126, 151 Kiing, Emil 15, 18 Küppers, Günther 225, 230, 334, 339 Ladd, Everett C. Jr. 109, 150 Lakoff, George 344, 359 Lambou, Victor W. 360 Lane, Robert E. 4, 15, 18 Lapp, R. E. 150 Larson, Magali S. 110, 145, 151 Lash, Scott 125, 151 Latour, Bruno 173, 188, 342, 345, 351, 358, 360 Lau, Christoph 196-197, 235-248 Lauretis, Teresa de 105 Law, John 342, 358 Lawrence, R. 298, 299 Layman, Patricia L. 378 Le Pore, Ernest 187 Lea, Stephen 181, 188 Leiss, William 26-27, 61-71 Lem, Stanislav 47 Lepkowski, Wil 378

Name Index Lerner, Allan W. 131, 151 Levin, Morris A. 357, 360 Lieberman, Jethro K. 151 Limoges, Camille 317, 319-321, 341-361 Lindblom, Charles 325, 339 Linde, Hans 40, 50 Lindow, Steven E. 348, 360 Lipsey, Richard G. 144, 253-255, 279-299 Litan, R. 298, 299 Locke, E. A. 308, 314 Lord Acton 285 Lord Cherwell 119 Lübbe, Hermann 109, 151, 232 Lüschen, Günther 17 Luhmann, Niklas 83-85, 106, 143, 151, 185, 202, 217, 228, 230, 235, 237, 247 Lukàcs, Georg 29, 33 Lundgreen, Peter 230 Lynch, William 185, 188 Lyotard, Jean-François 55, 185 MacCrimmon, K. R. 68, 71 Machiavelli, Nicolo 30, 119 Machlup, Fritz 15, 16, 18, 126, 127, 151 Mackenzie, G. 149 Malinowski, Bronislaw 16, 18 Malthus, Thomas 174-175 Mannheim, Karl 136, 151, 183 Mao Tse-tung 274, 356 Marcuse, Herbert 4, 18, 101, 136, 151 Maria, M. de 360 Marquand, Judith 255-256, 301-314 Marris, Stephen 276, 277 Marshall, Thomas H. 139, 152 Martin, Brian 333, 339 Martins, Herminio 379 Marx, John H. 142, 150 Marx, Karl 29, 31, 39, 41, 46, 50, 112, 152, 174, 179, 181, 188,200, 280 Mautz, Renate 242, 247 Mazur, Allan 334, 339 McArthur, R. 310, 314 McLuhan, Marshall 101, 144 Meja, Volker 122, 150, 154, 231 Melanson, Philip H. 109, 150 Mensching, Horst G. 228, 232 Mercier, Pierre-Alain 106

389

Name Index Merton, Robert Κ. 15, 18, 111, 124, 137, 152, 228, 232 Metcalfe, J. S. 313 Metternich, Klemens Fürst von 119 Michelet, Karl Ludwig 37 Middleton, David 180, 188 Miles, I. D. 145, 148 Mills, C. Wright 115, 152 Molina, Mario J. 365-366, 369, 376, 379 Monk, P. 152, 159, 164, 188 Montgomery, David 131, 152 Moore, Wilbert E. 16, 140, 145 Morgan, Peter 214 Mosco, Vincent 186, 188, 189 Moses, Joel 16, 338 Mulkay, Michael 229, 232, 356, 359 Mumford, Lewis 42, 50, 101 Nehru, Jawaharlal 274 Nelkin, Dorothy 331, 339, 343-344, 360 Nelson, R. 311, 313, 314 Newton, Isaac 158 Nietzsche, Friedrich 23, 31, 53 Nisbett, Richard E. 137, 154 Nixon, Richard M. 363 Nowotny, Helga 138, 142, 152, 236-237, 240, 247, 325, 332, 338, 339 Oehler, Christoph 229, 231 Offe, Claus 141, 145, 152, 235 Orwell, George 48 Otway, Harry 379 Pacey, Arnold 125, 152 Pahre, Robert 181, 187 Pakenham, Sir Edward 288 Panem, Sandra 351, 360 Parfit, Derek 177-178, 188 Parsons, Talcott 30, 32, 37, 122, 139, 144, 153, 154 Paulus, Paul 189, 190 Peirce, Charles S. 135, 183 Peltu, Malcolm 379 Perez, C. 3 1 1 , 3 1 4 Perl, Martin L. 109, 153 Perrow, Charles 216, 232 Pickering, Andrew 342, 360

Pigou, A. C. 304,314 Plato 157, 160, 363, 376 Plessard, François 106 Poel, Ibo van de 377 Polanyi, Michael 15, 18 Popper, Karl 160, 167 Porter, Michael E. 298, 299 Portwood, Derek 153 Prebisch, Raul 276, 277 Prince, Valerie 360 Pronovost, Denyse 356, 360 Proust, Marcel 32 Pufendorf, Samuel von 35 Pursell Jr., Carroll W. 146, 148 Quine, Willard 161, 189 Radder, Hans 229, 232 Radkau, Joachim 223, 232 Raschke, Joachim 238, 247 Rawls, John 181, 189 Ray, T. 313 Reich, Robert B. 298, 299 Remington, John A. 229, 232 Renan, Ernest 37 Rhodes, Richard 227, 232 Ricardo, David 174-175, 283, 292 Richardson, J. 307, 314 Richta, Radovan 7, 9, 15, 18, 112, 153 Rieff, Phillip 147, 153 Rilling, Rainer 222, 232 Rimbaud, Arthur 32 Rip, Arie 317, 321-322, 344, 360, 363-379 Robbers, Gerhard 326, 340 Robertson, I. 314 Robertson, J. M. 62, 71 Rohrmann, Bernd 338 Roqueplo, Philippe 246, 248 Rose, Hilary 339 Rosenberg, Nathan 281, 299 Roth, Roland 247 Rouse, Joseph 117, 153 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 30 Roszak, Theodore 101, 106 Rowland, F. S. 365-366, 368, 369, 376, 379 Rubin, Michael R. 15, 18, 126, 127, 153

390 Rucht, Dieter 247 Rudder, Helmut de 151 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 5, 19, 110, 122, 143, 153, 229, 232 Sahlins, Marshall 96, 98, 106 Sahner, Heinz 151 Samuelson, Paul 164, 189 Sapsford, David 276, 277 Scadigli, Victor 95, 106 Schaefer, Wolf 176, 189 Schaffer, Simon 160, 189 Schelsky, Helmut 7, 19, 108, 136, 153, 217, 232 Schiff, Harold 376 Schiller, Dan 159, 189 Schiller, Herbert I. 8, 19 Schimank, Uwe 195-196, 215-233 Schmedding, David 360 Schon, Donald 215, 233 Schultze, C. 297, 298, 299 Schumpeter, Joseph A. 30, 180, 189, 295, 311, 314 Sebastiani, F. 360 Seidler, Ramon J. 353, 360 Semenko, Dave 27 Senghaas, Dieter 136, 150 Sennett, Richard 85-87, 106 Sesto, Steven del 333, 340 Shahidullah, Muhammad 17 Shapin, Stephen 160, 189 Sheldon, Eleanor B. 16 Shils, Edward 124, 153 Sibley, Mulford Q. 144, 153 Sills, David 153 Silver, R. 308, 314 Silverberg, G. 313 Simmel, Georg 84, 110, 111, 137, 138, 143, 153-154, 177, 189 Simon, Herbert 176, 255, 301, 306, 314, 330, 340 Simons, Geoff 103, 106 Skinner, F. A. 361 Slater, Philip E. 109, 146 Sloan, Alfred 31 Smith, Adam 162, 175, 253, 280 Smith, Anthony 16, 19

Name Index Snapper, John 162, 187, 189 Snow, C. P. 144 Soete, L. 313 Sowell, Thomas 167, 170, 174, 175, 189 Stalin, Josef 274 Star, Susan L. 356, 361 Stark, David 131, 154 Stehr, Nico 3-19, 42, 49, 76-78, 107-155, 174, 176, 186, 218, 230, 231, 341, 358 Stewart-Tuli, D. E. 361 Stich, Stephen P. 137, 154 Stichweh, Rudolf 227, 233 Stigler, George 159, 189 Stolarski, Richard S. 378 Stoneman, Paul 130, 143, 147 Ströker, Elisabeth 232 Sussman, Marvin 352, 353, 361 Szelenyi, Ivan 15, 17, 116, 150 Tarpy, Roger 188 Tawney, Richard H. 135, 154 Taylor, Frederick W. 37 Taylor, Mary H. 15, 18 Thompson, Gordon B. 96-97, 106, 158, 189 Touraine, Alain 23-25, 27-38, 154 Turner, William A. 345, 359 Ulrich, Otto 44, 50 Urry, John 125, 151 Vico, Giovanni Battista 55 Walter, Michael V. 360 Walters, Stacy 378 Wanner, Richard 184, 186 Wasko, Jane 186, 188, 189 Weber, Max 40, 53, 112, 120, 121, 134, 144, 154, 200 Webley, Paul 188 Wehrung, D. A. 68, 71 Weil, Vivian 162, 187, 189 Weinberg, Alvin 331, 334, 340 Weingart, Peter 139, 154, 230, 231, 244, 248 Weizenbaum, Joseph 83, 88, 102, 104, 106 Weyer, Johannes 329, 339

Name Index Whitehead, Alfred Ν. 118, 155 Whitley, Richard 145, 155, 358, 379 Wicklund, Richard 163, 190 Wiedemann, Peter 338 Wiio, O. A. 16, 19 Wildavsky, Aaron 236, 247, 325, 326, 330, 338, 340 Wilensky, Harold L. 122, 141, 155 Will, Frederick 183, 190 Williams, John 6 Williams, Karel 6 Wilson, P. A. 135, 147 Winter, S. 311,314

Wittrock, Björn 230 Wolf, A. 308, 314 Woodmansee, Martha 164, 181, 190 Woodward, Kathleen 99, 105 Woolgar, Steve 183, 184, 188, 190 Wren, T. 188 Wright, Susan 333, 340 Wynne, Brian 329, 333, 340 Zapf, Wolfgang 326, 340 Zeldenrust, Sjerp 357, 361 Zidon, I. 3 0 8 , 3 1 3 Zurer, Pamela S. 378

Subject Index absolutism 35 adviser (see expertise) automation 265 autonomy 94, 99 biotechnology 222-223, 227, 244, 260, 331,332, 347, 349, 357, 358 black box 9, 13, 108, 256, 301, 319-322, 345-348, 349, 353-355, 375 boomerang effect 194, 201, 205 bourgeois society (see society) Bretton Woods Conference 275 Buddhism 37-38 bureaucracy 123-124, 129, 134 - theory of (Max Weber) 120-121 Cambridge Institutional Review Board 375 capital - human 255, 302-304, 310, 312 - physical 303 capitalism 12, 30, 38, 120, 135-136, 208 Carter Administration 258, 272, 273 charisma 34 Christianity 31, 33, 35-36 church 323 class struggle 54, 57, 125 Club of Rome 258, 260-261 cold war 253, 283-284 commercialization 224 communications revolution 287 competence 255, 305-313 competition 218, 225, 227, 254, 288, 293-297 complexity - analytical 220 - concrete 219-220, 330, 375 Confucianism 37-38 consciousness - class 29, 57 - false 33 - social 11 conservatism 56

constructivism 323, 330 copyright/patent 164-165 counsellor (see expertise) decision-making 305-307, 312, 321, 364 destruktive Gemeinschaft (Sennett) 85-87 dioxin 321,370-374 DNA - recombinant 320, 331, 332-333, 346-348, 353, 354-356, 375 - research 328 disciplinary 163-164 Dupont Company 365, 367 ecological expropriation 205 economics 158 economy 251-256, 301-313 - capitalist 54 - centrally planned 284-286 - economic order of 1950 253-254, 279-291,294 - goods 280 - industrial 251-252, 258-259, 262, 265-266 - of scale 254, 282, 291, 295 - of scope 254, 291 - "open world" 262 - primary products 251, 257-259, 261-262 - service 252, 254, 291-292 - service sector of 141, 143 - symbol 78,113, 252, 268-269, 271, 273 - world 251-253, 257-277 ecotoxicology 352, 357 egalitarianism, cultural 25, 55 employment 251-252, 263-264, 266-267 English Civil War 51 Enlightenment 29, 31, 37, 51, 301 entrepreneurship 121, 252, 265 Entzauberung (Disenchantment) 53, 58 environmental crisis 66-70

394 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 347-350, 357 expert (see expertise) expertise 7, 14, 69, 75-79, 81-105, 107-143, 193, 255, 306, 317-322, 323-337, 341-356, 363-378 - free-floating responsibility of 104 - marketing of 96-100 fact fabrication 321, 364-365 falsificationism 167 fascism 135 financial resource dependency 223-225 floating exchange rates 252 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 347, 357 Fordization 76, 90 Frankfurt School 36, 53 free-market system 253, 280, 284-286 French Revolution 37 functionalism 23, 30, 32 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 279, 282, 290 generation 47-48 genetically engineered micro-organisms (GEMs) 282, 320, 346-358 global climate change 369 globalization 286-287, 291, 294 Great Depression 258, 259 greenhouse effect 369 homo culturalis 36 homo oeconomicus 36, 301 identity 84, 87 idols - Bacon's 26, 62, 68, 70 - of technology 26, 61 -70 imperialism 38 individualism 37-38, 88-89 industrial revolution 289 - knowledge-based 289-292 industrial society (see society) industrialization 54, 135, 267, 283 information 25, 101-102, 159 information society (see society)

Subject Index infrastructure innovations 260 innovation 26, 65-66, 254-256, 289, 309-313 institutionalization 222-228 institutional determinants of cognitive selectivity 195-196, 222-228 instrumentalization 223 integration (social) 45-46, 48 intellectuals 23-24, 33-35, 80, 112, 123-125, 131-132, 136, 176 interchangeability of knowledge 159-162 International Monetary Fund 282 International Trade Organization 279 intuition 158-159, 161, 331 invention 165 Keynes' economic theory (see Keynesian model) Keynesian model 25, 113, 269 knowledge 3-15, 202-204, 208-209, 264-267, 302-308,311 - absolute 330 - and expertise 108-111 - as capacity for action 10, 77, 114-115, 132-133 - as product and property 157-185 - bureaucratic 120-121 - common-sense 236 - economic structure of 249-256 - economist vs. epistemologist view 159-185 - elite 108 - everyday 108, 244 - external 203 - limits of 328 - local 330 - materialist conception of 78-80 - objectified/objective 10, 124, 324 - personal 12 - political 116, 129 - practical 130, 318 - scientific 4, 6, 8, 11-13,41,52, 111-112, 114-115, 117, 128-129, 138, 197, 204, 216-218, 222-223, 226-227, 235-246, 319, 321, 325, 331, 363 - society (see society) - sociological concept of 9-12, 114-119

Subject Index - theoretical 7, 9, 112, 130, 244 - Tora 6, 112 - validity/value of 166-173 - workers (Machlup) 126-128 knowledge-based occupation 5, 12, 14, 77-78, 107-110, 119, 122-123, 128-133, 135, 139, 140, 142-143 labor 5, 6, 107, 197, 290, 303 - division of 113, 369, 370 laissez faire 285 learning 301-313 Lebensphilosophie 36 legitimacy 59, 76, 131, 344-345 living standards 253, 280-281, 297 logos 52 love (Luhmann) 84-85 Lutheranism 37 macroeconomics 251 market failure 301 Marxist tradition 29 mass-media 25, 26, 56 materialism 36 medieval world (see Middle Ages) Michigan State University 348 micro-macro distinction 341-342, 355-356 microbial ecology 348, 352, 357, 358 microcosm 320, 349-356 Middle Ages 215, 297 - medieval faith 218 model of intersystematic dynamics 215-221,228 modernism (see modernity) modernity 15, 23-24, 29-38, 51, 53-54, 98, 102, 111, 133-134, 218 modernization 10, 15, 193-197, 200, 224, 237, 239 - risks of 193-198, 201-202, 204-210, 213-214 monism 31, 32 monopoly 98, 161, 172, 194, 254, 294 mythos 52 National Institute of Health (NIH) 346-348, 357 National Science Foundation (NSF) 348

395 nature 40-41, 53, 6 1 , 6 5 , 330 - material appropriation of 10, 12, 25, 41-42 Netherlands Institute of Public Health 370-371 network 341-358 ozone hole 366, 368 ozone layer debate 321, 365-369, 374 particularism 23, 37 physics/engineering 171-173 pluralism 25 political mobilization 369 Positivism 29, 31 post-industrial society 5, 7, 8, 9, 112, 129 post-modern society 24-26, 51 -59, 133-134 post-modernism (see post-modem society) power 116-117, 136, 159-164 - knowledge as 3-15, 114-118, 129, 131, 135 - political 117, 120, 128, 134 professionalism 112, 122-123, 136, 163-164 professionalization (see professionalism) progress 26, 32, 38, 99, 218, 325 proletariat 206-207, 285 property 5, 107, 197 Protestantism 209 purpose-oriented thinking 92-94 radioactivity 201, 203 rationalism 31 rationality 32, 35, 76, 98, 100, 102, 301 - cognitive 24, 52 - instrumental 33, 123, 128 - pragmatic 321-322, 363-378 - programmatic 325 - technical 136 - Utopian 321, 372, 375 rationalization 4, 10, 24, 30-31, 34-38, 112, 139 - of risk management 196, 237, 244 Reagan Administration 267, 269, 272-273 Reformation 29, 35

396 regime - ancien 30 - political 38, 59 - revolutionary 38 relativism 159, 1 6 1 , 3 2 3 , 3 3 0 religion 58-59, 61 Renaissance 29, 35 revolution 52 - American 51 - French 51 - scientific-technological 112 risk - acceptable 65-66, 211-212, 335 - assessment 65, 67, 69-70, 319, 331, 343-344, 346-355 - consciousness 194, 212-214 - control of 317, 328, 330 - controversies 318-319, 332-334, 337 - definition of 194, 200, 202, 235-246, 326, 327 - distribution of 200 - environmental 66, 68-70 - industrial 237-238 - management 65, 317, 324, 325 - new technological 238-240, 325, 335 - perception of 69-70, 194 - regulation of 324-326, 328-330, 333-337 - scientific 196, 215-233 - social conflicts about definition of 197, 235-246 - society (see society) - technological 196, 235-236, 240, 317 - traditional 236-237 robotization 265 Say's law 170, 174-175 science 24 - and technology 11, 26-27, 108, 128, 136, 139, 183-198,218 - as risk-producer 212-213,215-229 - authority of 75 - natural 40-42, 209, 219 - society 3, 8 scientific autonomy 217 scientific specialization 195, 225

Subject Index scientification 116, 217-218 - of technologies 215-216, 219, 220, 222-223, 225 scientization 6 scientism 26, 29, 31, 55, 64 scruple 105 self-image - institutionalized utilitarian 195-196, 222-228 service class 125 skill 88-92, 107, 115, 130-131, 138, 140-141,255,304-308,311 society - bourgeois 6, 44-45, 53, 121 - industrial 57, 110, 112-113, 124, 129, 143 - information 3, 8, 63, 323 - knowledge 3-15, 26, 75, 78, 107, 110, 111-113, 116-117, 124, 129, 143, 157, 174, 176, 193, 217-218, 246, 323, 363, 370 - post-industrial 5, 7, 8, 9, 112, 129 - post-modern 24-26, 51 -59, 133-134 - risk 8, 193-194, 196, 199-214 - science 3, 8 social class - of experts 107, 109-110, 129, 132 - of intellectuals 112, 116 social control 31-32, 110 social determinism 33 socialization 31-32, 46 sociology 32-33 - of knowledge 122 - of science 333 - of technology 39-40 solidarity - (Durkheim) 45 - social 26 standardization 345, 347, 351-355 state socialism 135 state-of-knowledge 321, 369, 374 strategies of risk definition 244-246 subjectivity/subjectivation 23-24, 31-33, 35-36 Taylorism (see Taylorization) Taylorization 76, 90, 125

Subject Index technical state (Marcuse/Schelsky) 136 technocracy 136, 335-337 technocrats 129 technology 25, 39-48, 93-94, 101,111 techno-structure 25-26, 39-48 theory of evolution 162-163 threshold value 210-212, 329 Tora-knowledge (see knowledge) totalitarianism 194 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) 353-354, 358 trade - foreign 287 - free 262 - international 253, 282-283 - invisible 252, 266, 268 trading advantage 291 -292 transnational corporation (TNC) 287-288, 291 transscience 329 Treaty of Ghent 288 Treaty of Rome 290 truth - absolute 330 - scientific 217, 219 - veridical 4 tunnel vision 124-125

397 uncertainty 99, 105, 110, 131, 134, 348, 357 (see also risk) unemployment 252, 264, 291 universalism 23, 37-38 U.S. Bureau of the Census 126-127 U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement 290, 296 U.S. Chemical Manufacturers Association 367 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 367 U.S. National Academy of Sciences 368, 369, 374 U.S. National Air and Space Administration 363, 369 utilitarianism 301 utility 96-97 veridical truth (see truth) wealth 61, 64, 113, 199-200, 210 Wertrationalität 52-55 wisdom 92, 118 Wissensgesellschaft 217 World Bank 282 Zweckrationalität 52-55

w DE

G

Walter de Gruyter Berlin · New York

de Gruyter Studies in Organization (International Management, Organization and Policy Analysis) Editor: Stewart R. Clegg An international and interdisciplinary book series from de Gruyter presenting comprehensive research on aspects of international management, organization studies and comparative public policy.

Bill Ryan

Making Capital from Culture The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural Production 1992.15.5x23.0 cm. XII, 290 pages. With 11 figures. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-012548-X (Volume 35)

Peter Blunt/Merrick L. Jones

Managing Organisations in Africa 1992.15.5x23.0 cm. XIV, 356 pages. With 18 figures and 26 tables. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-012646-X. (Volume 40)

Toyohiro Kono

Long-Range Planning of Japanese Corporations 1992.15.5 χ 23.0 cm. XIV, 390 pages. Paperback. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-012914-0. (Volume 37)

ISBN 3-11-013793-3;

Walter de Gruyter & Co. Berlin • New York Genthiner Strasse 13, D-1000 Berlin 30 (FRG), Tel.: (030) 2 6005-0, Fax: 2 6 0 0 5 - 2 51 200 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, N.Y. 10532, Tel.: (914) 7 47-0110, Fax: 747-13 26

w DE

G

Walter de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Pierre Bourdieu / Jean-Claude Chamboredon / Jean-Claude Passeron

The Craft of Sociology Epistemologica! Preliminaries Edited by Beate Krais. Translated by Richard Nice 1991.15.5x23 cm. XVI, 271 pages. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-013004-1; Paperback. ISBN 3-11-011940-4

Niklas Luhmann

Political Theory in the Welfare State Translated by John Bednarz, Jr. 1990.13.5x20.5 cm. VI, 239 pages. Cloth.

ISBN 3-11-011932-3

Mats Alvesson / Per Olof Berg

Corporate Culture and Organizational Symbolism An Overview 1992.15.5x23 cm. XII, 258 pages. With 10 figures, 1 table. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-012154-9. Paperback. ISBN 3-11-013607-4 (de Gruyter Studies in Organization 34)

Social Structure and Culture Edited by Hans Haferkamp 1989.15.5x23 cm. VIII, 340 pages. With 23 illustrations. Cloth. ISBN 3-11-011310-4 In

Preparation:

Niklas Luhmann

Risk: A Sociological Theory 1993.13.5Χ20.5 cm. approx. 240 pages. Cloth.

ISBN 3-11-012941-8.

Translated from the German Original by Rhodes Barrett Walter de Gruyter & Co. Berlin • New York Genthiner Strasse 13, D-1000 Berlin 30 (FRG), Tel.: (030) 2 60 05-0, Fax: 2 60 05-2 51 200 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, N.Y. 10532, Tel.: (914) 7 47-0110, Fax: 7 47-13 26