Undone science: Social movements, mobilized publics, and industrial transitions

Abstract

The MIT Press, 2016. 258 pages. Paperback. $35.00. ISBN: 9780262529495.This book can act as a valuable guide to governments and policy practitioners seeking to form and implement science and technology policy. First, the author points out several excluded areas in science and technology policy that have resulted from complex political, cultural, and historical contexts as well as information controlled problems by a few elite bureaucrats and politicians. This is a kind of "Undone Science." Then, the theories and concepts regarding Social Movements Studies and Science and Technology Studies are reviewed with different dimensions to emphasize mobilization for public interests. The roles of various civilian organizations, including business corporations, community groups, and networks of science experts are important for materializing the public interests when civilian organizations are participate in public policy processes (Hess, 2016; 201). The complexity of modern science and technology policy is increasing, because various citizen for social equality and improvement of quality of life are expanding. Because this policy area is full of huge uncertainty and variability, there might be a kind of fallibility given that a few elites make exclusive policy decisions. Therefore, an open-door policy process might be necessary to negotiate and arbitrate with diverse stakeholders. Meanwhile, if there are many players in policy process, it can cause conflicting goals for governments to pursue and prioritize when in implementing policies due to the diversification of values. Hence, it is an important matter in which direction the governments should enforce the policies. There can be two conflicting vectors in implementing policy, seeking stability, or instability. Seeking stability refers to the pursuit of planning and control to maintain the status quo. On the other hand, seeking instability often takes the form of policy innovation, original attempts, and pioneering. The top-down approach to implementation ensures stability, while the bottom-up approach to implementation creates more instability compared with the top-down approach. The top-down approach can bring stability of public administration to governments because this way has functional rationality and governments can obtain normativity and legitimacy of public administration and policy implementation. However, there is a less probability that sufficient discussions between various parties involved in science and technology policy will be reflected in this policy process. In the case of the bottom-up implementation, the situation or context surrounding policy can be diversely interpreted though the policy objective may become ambiguous due to dynamic interactions. Aligned with the book, bottom-up policy practices might be expanded in science and technology policies because several policy participants including citizens, community organizations, and other stakeholders are open to engagement in the policy process. These days policy is the product of compromises, and ...

Health policy counterpublics: Enacting collective resistances to US molecular HIV surveillance and cluster detection and response programs

“…While health policy counterpublics can include scientists and other health experts, they are not fully coextensive with the sort of 'scientific counterpublics' discussed by Hess (2011Hess ( , 2016. Hess uses this concept to describe the role of marginal voices within communities of scientific practice-for example, researchers in areas such as cancer who work outside of dominant paradigms supported by national funding bodies and philanthropies.…”

“…In fact, it has become common sense in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to say that the contestation of a problem is constitutive of the problem itself, or that issues are only enacted as 'political' once they are successfully characterized and recognized as such (Callon et al, 2011;Law, 2009;Mol, 1999;Murphy, 2006). However, creating new territories for political struggle in policy is often difficult, particularly when arguing, from a subordinate or marginal position, against trajectories set in motion by arms of the state (Brown et al, 2012;Epstein, 1996;Hess, 2016;Rogers, 2022). The formation of publics centered on the problematization of policies in the public sphere also requires resources and sustained work by activists, state actors, experts, and other actors (on 'problematization', see Bacchi, 2012Bacchi, , 2016.…”

“Nursing (Her) Storytelling”

“…1 Thus, the presence of social movements and health activisms can serve as epistemic correctors, contributing to a fairer and less distorted science by questioning what is being taken for granted and by making visible what is being ignored. 2,3 One of the project's lines of research focused on collecting life stories of feminist activist health professionals in the 1970s in Spain. We were particularly interested in the role of activist groups in generating alternatives to accepted knowledge in the medical profession, 4 such as the Women's Health Movement in the United States and the influential book Our bodies, Ourselves.…”

Inflammatory agriculture: Political ecologies of health and fertilizers in India

“…The fact that researchers have documented claims of fertilizer harm since the 1980s (e.g. in Gupta, 1998;Nichter, 2002) and little work has investigated the mechanisms for them is a testament to undone science and the ways that capitalist interests continue to direct flows of research funding (Hess, 2016). It is, thus, imperative to take villager reports seriously in a way that goes beyond social analyses and to critically engage with literature that can shed light on actual socioecological changes that might help unpack these perceptions (cf.…”