Representing Biotechnology: An Ethnography of Quebec Science Policy

Abstract

In recent years, the sociology of science has been profoundly renewed by the use of an ethnographic approach to the study of scientific practice. The same cannot be said of science policy studies. Only a limited number of authors have studied in detail the construction and application of particular science policy programmes, and their contributions are mostly based on the a posteriori examination of public documents. In this paper, we resort to an ethnographic approach in order to study how the science and technology staff of the Quebec Government, starting in 1981, went about devising policy measures as part of what they saw as a general science policy framework for biotechnology. Science policy practices, at least at that stage, appear to be first and foremost representational practices grounded in particular kinds of literary activities characterized by an extended intertextual web. In such a framework, the native category of file or dossier plays a central role, allowing for the basic classificatory operations in which representations are grounded.

The Long Now of Technology Infrastructure: Articulating Tensions in Development

“…It should endure beyond any particular scientific question, and it is often linked to governance and sustained state funding. Like the technical and organizational work characterized above, institutionalizing is a practical activity (Cambrosio 1990). Science policy and the reports of funding agencies are politicized documents with carefully worded programmatic statements that often hide the nuanced debates behind their formulation (Jasanoff 1990).…”

Situated bio-regulation: Ethnographic sensibility at the interface of STS, policy studies and the social studies of medicine

“…They have shown how patterns of coordination and choreography between actors or actants can emerge as well as how knowledge production in these settings requires negotiation and interpretation between engaged individuals. In the last two to three decades, ethnographic methodologies have increasingly also helped to illuminate processes of science policy making (Cambrosio et al, 1990), and policymaking in general (Shore and Wright, 1997;Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003;Bevir and Rhodes, 2006;Glynos and Howarth, 2008;Wagenaar, 2011).…”

Emergence and development of the National Innovation Systems concept

“…7 Cambrosio et al (1990) followed up on Latour's (1987) work by adopting an ethnographic approach in order to study how the Québec government in Canada devised and applied biotechnology policy measures.…”