Beyond Public Perceptions of Gene Technology: Community Participation in Public Policy in Australia

Abstract

Public policy assumptions, which view "the public" as passive consumers, are deeply flawed. "The public" are, in fact, active citizens, who constitute the innovation end of the seamless web of relationships, running from research and development laboratory to shop, hospital or farm, or local neighborhood. "The public" do not receive the impact of technology; they are the impact, in that they determine with gene technology (GT) developers and sellers what happens to the technology in our society. In doing so, they, or more rightly we, exercise particular, contextual knowledges and actions. We suggest that it is the ignorance of this aspect of innovation in policy processes that produces the distrust and resentment that we found in our interviews with "publics" interested in gene technology. This is consistent with Beck's description of the deep structural states of risk and fear in modern advanced societies with respect to new technologies, such as gene technology. Only policy processes that recognize the particular, local and contextual knowledges of "the public", which co-construct innovation, can achieve deep, social structural consideration of gene technology. And only such a deep consideration can avoid the polarized attitudes and deep suspicions that we have seen arise in places such as Britain. Such consideration needs the type of processes that involve active consultation and inclusion of "the public" in government and commercial innovation, the so-called deliberative and inclusionary processes (DIPs), such as consensus conferences and citizen juries. We suggest some measures that could be tried in Australia, which would take us further down the path of participation toward technological citizenship.

Participatory storylines and their influence on deliberative forums

“…19 Around this time attempts to engage the broader public in the gene technology debate were largely restricted to public opinion surveys and focus groups. Different scientific and activist organizations were offering competing claims on "the Australian public's" attitude towards gene technology (see Dietrich and Schibeci, 2003;Kelley, 1995;.…”

“…Rather than seeking well-considered and reflective public input, it seems that the bureaucracy's current participatory storyline is driven by the desire to improve the public's understanding and acceptance of the technology (see also Dietrich and Schibeci, 2003).…”

Speech acts and performances of scientific citizenship: Examining how scientists talk about therapeutic cloning

“…Some examples include Irwin (1995), Irwin and Wynne (1996), Epstein (1996), Collins and Evans (2002), Dietrich and Schibeci (2003), Braun and Schultz (2010) and Delgado et al (2011). 2 Therapeutic cloning is the creation of embryos from cells such as skin cells with the aim of deriving cell lines that immunologically match the patient who donated the skin cells.…”

Avoiding the Trust Deficit: Public Engagement, Values, the Precautionary Principle and the Future of Nanotechnology

“…In Australia the Swinburne Monitor (Australian Centre for Emerging Technologies & Society 2007) and recent community attitudes surveys (Market Attitude Research Services 2008) confirm that in general Australians hold a positive view of science and technology and independent scientists remain a trusted source of information. Such trust is easily destroyed and the "risk society" thesis (Beck et al 2003) suggests that the dominant forces in history and society are often the unknown and unintended consequences of trusted policies (Dietrich and Schibeci 2003).…”