Helena Mateus Jerónimo

Jacques Ellul and the Technological Society in the 21st Century

Jacques Ellul does not need presentation. He has a vast trajectory as philosopher, economist and writer. The themes approached by Ellul ranged from technology, economy and sociology towards philosophy. This book, edited by three senior lecturers as Jeronimo, Garcia and Mitcham, explores the connection of capitalism with technology and human agency. Is technology functional to the interests of humankind?, or it is a new fresh instrument of control?. To catalog and give full description of 17 chapters is almost impossible in a book review, but what is important to discuss is the legacy of Ellul, who was a critique of technological world in XXth century, as well as his contradictions. The preliminary chapters are oriented to explain the reception and evolution of Ellul in United States as well as his view on the actual problems of ecology we are experiencing. The second section signals to the cultural glitches in communication process. The last one is reserved to a theological journey into the cosmology of modern world. The main thesis of Ellul was formulated as follows. Technology oppresses human beings by eroding their tradition and nature ability to imagine. That way, the ongoing advance of technology not only reduces the scope of symbols and symbolism but changes radically the capacity of culture to produce meaning. Managerial logic undermined the authentic democracy at the time the needs for efficacy rises. But the question is efficacy for what?. The life becomes in a great business which are controlled by the monopoly of patent and health services. It is vital not to lose the sight that the net of specialists attempts to discipline the social order to impose a limited body of knowledge that supposedly will mitigate the consequences of decision-making process. As

Risks, alternative knowledge strategies and democratic legitimacy: the conflict over co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in Portugal

The decision to incinerate hazardous industrial waste in cement plants (the so-called ‘co-incineration’ process) gave rise to one of the most heated environmental conflicts ever to take place in Portugal. The bitterest period was between 1997 and 2002, after the government had made a decision. Strong protests by residents, environmental organizations, opposition parties, and some members of the scientific community forced the government to backtrack and to seek scientific legitimacy for the process through scientific expertise. The experts ratified the government’s decision, stating that the risks involved were socially acceptable. The conflict persisted over a decade and ended up clearing the way for a more sustainable method over which there was broad social consensus – a multi-functional method which makes it possible to treat, recover and regenerate most wastes. Focusing the analysis on this conflict, this paper has three aims: (1) to discuss the implications of the fact that expertise was ‘confiscated’ after the government had committed itself to the decision to implement co-incineration and by way of a reaction to the atmosphere of tension and protest; (2) to analyse the uses of the notions of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’ in scientific reports from both experts and counter-experts’ committees, and their different assumptions about controllability and criteria for considering certain practices to be sufficiently safe for the public; and (3) to show how the existence of different technical scientific and political attitudes (one more closely tied to government and the corporate interests of the cement plants, the other closer to the environmental values of re-use and recycling and respect for the risk perception of residents who challenged the facilities) is closely bound up with problems of democratic legitimacy. This conflict showed how adopting more sustainable and lower-risk policies implies a broader view of democratic legitimacy, one which involves both civic movements and citizens themselves.

Fukushima: A Tsunami of Technological Order

Reflecting on the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, in Le Bluff technologique (1988: 109), Jacques Ellul reflected on the paradox of increased unpredictability linked to technological power defined in terms of efficiency. Modern technological progress brings with it the desire to control nature and tame chance by means of calculating rationality that reduces contingencies, yet contemporary technological society has increasingly been confronted with incalculable complexities and become vulnerable to unexpected threats. Far from disappearing, as modernity claimed, unpredictability has become endemic as a result of the prodigious multiplication and power of our means of action.

Hermínio Martins and the State of the Social Sciences: An Interview with the Author

The interview with Herminio Martins from 2011, published in Analise Social, the oldest Portuguese social science journal, focused on the trajectory of social sciences in Portugal. However, as it comprehensively covers the theoretical and institutional state of social sciences in general, it is of undeniable interest for this volume. Among the various topics covered, Martins inveighs against the sociological mainstream and criticizes the lack of theoretical thinking and attention to epistemology and temporality in the social sciences. He distances himself from the marketization of the university and the ‘officialization of scientism’, from ‘the dirigisme in relation to production of knowledge’, and the ‘frenzy of “article-ism”’. He favours an inter-disciplinary dialogue, and looking to horizons beyond a mere ‘theory-franchise’, defending his own contribution to a theory of social action which incorporates the notion of uncertainty.

Introduction: Ellul Returns

Many nineteenth century thinkers, convinced of the Enlightenment premise that both nature and society were intelligible, and carried away by the growing prestige of the sciences, saw progress as a natural human development and believed that rational criteria guided societal choices. Biological evolution also appeared to provide a model for change applicable to history. An associated triumphalism in modernity dominated European popular culture until the outbreak of World War I and the post-war rise of dictatorial regimes. Yet even then a positive view of science remained largely intact. Even after World War II, the Shoah, saturation bombings of civilians, and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the industrialization of science proceeded at an ever faster pace, assisted by an increasing involvement of state power. The United States science adviser Vannevar Bush (1945) went so far as to present post-World War II science as an “endless frontier” and font of social benefits in healthcare, economic development, and military defense.

Social sciences and the democratic ideal : from technocracy to dialogue

Social sciences were launched on a wave of expectation that scientific study of society would yield practical benefits, through improved understanding, policy and organisation. This expectation was strengthened through the twentieth century: social sciences staked out new disciplinary areas and developed distinctive methodologies (such as game theory) alongside those imported from the natural sciences. Promising transferable skills for students as well as technical insights for policy makers, they were major beneficiaries of universities’ postwar expansion. But the social sciences now have a harder time selling themselves, partly because they lack any clear consensus as to the values they serve and the direction they should take. Social scientists are a dispersed group with clearly different views about what they stand for, why we should read them, and why universities and governments should continue supporting them.