Mark B. Brown

The civic shaping of technology : California's electric vehicle program

Constructivist technology studies have often cast government as one “social group” among many, reflecting a liberal pluralist view of politics. This article argues, in contrast, that due to the conceptions of citizenship conveyed by policy designs, governments have a special role to play in the shaping of new technologies. This argument is illustrated in the case of the controversial 1996 decision by the California Air Resources Board to significantly revise its electric vehicle program. The article shows that the board’s decision changed the image of citizenship conveyed by its policy design, thus influencing the civic values embedded within electric vehicle technology.

Politicizing science: conceptions of politics in science and technology studies.

This essay examines five ideal–typical conceptions of politics in science and technology studies. Rather than evaluating these conceptions with reference to a single standard, the essay shows how different conceptions of politics serve distinct purposes: normative critique, two approaches to empirical description, and two views of democracy. I discuss each conception of politics with respect to how well it fulfills its apparent primary purpose, as well as its implications for the purpose of studying a key issue in contemporary democratic societies: the politicization of science. In this respect, the essay goes beyond classifying different conceptions of politics and also recommends the fifth conception as especially conducive to understanding and shaping the processes whereby science becomes a site or object of political activity. The essay also employs several analytical distinctions to help clarify the differences among conceptions of politics: between science as ‘political’ (adjective) and science as a site of ‘politics’ (noun), between spatial-conceptions and activity-conceptions of politics, between latent conflicts and actual conflicts, and between politics and power. The essay also makes the methodological argument that the politics of science and technology is best studied with concepts and methods that facilitate dialogue between actors and analysts. The main goal, however, is not to defend a particular view of politics, but to promote conversation on the conceptions of politics that animate research in social studies of science and technology.

Science, Democracy, and the Right to Research

Debates over the politicization of science have led some to claim that scientists have or should have a “right to research.” This article examines the political meaning and implications of the right to research with respect to different historical conceptions of rights. The more common “liberal” view sees rights as protections against social and political interference. The “republican” view, in contrast, conceives rights as claims to civic membership. Building on the republican view of rights, this article conceives the right to research as embedding science more firmly and explicitly within society, rather than sheltering science from society. From this perspective, all citizens should enjoy a general right to free inquiry, but this right to inquiry does not necessarily encompass all scientific research. Because rights are most reliably protected when embedded within democratic culture and institutions, claims for a right to research should be considered in light of how the research in question contributes to democracy. By putting both research and rights in a social context, this article shows that the claim for a right to research is best understood, not as a guarantee for public support of science, but as a way to initiate public deliberation and debate about which sorts of inquiry deserve public support.

Three Ways to Politicize Bioethics

Many commentators today lament the politicization of bioethics, but some suggest distinguishing among different kinds of politicization. This essay pursues that idea with reference to three traditions of political thought: liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism. After briefly discussing the concept of politicization itself, the essay examines how each of these political traditions manifests itself in recent bioethics scholarship, focusing on the implications of each tradition for the design of government bioethics councils. The liberal emphasis on the irreducible plurality of values and interests in modern societies, and the communitarian concern with the social dimensions of biotechnology, offer important insights for bioethics councils. The essay finds the most promise in the republican tradition, however, which emphasizes institutional mechanisms that allow bioethics councils to enrich but not dominate public deliberation, while ensuring that government decisions on bioethical issues are publicly accountable and contestable

Fairly Balanced The Politics of Representation on Government Advisory Committees

The United States Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires advisory committees to be “fairly balanced.” By examining legislative, judicial, and administrative interpretations of FACAs balance requirement, this article identifies a prevailing double standard: public officials assess committee members classified as experts in terms of their professional competence, while they assess those classified as representatives in terms of their political interests. Although the prevailing approach seeks to prevent the politicization of expert advice, it actually promotes it. Advisory committee balance is better understood, this article suggests, in terms of social and professional perspectives. This approach avoids both naively apolitical and destructively partisan conceptions of advisory committee balance. It also suggests a promising way to think about the role of technical expertise in public deliberation.

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Three Ways to Politicize Bioethics”

My primary aim in writing this article was to promote more thoughtful discussion of what it means and could mean to politicize bioethics. The peer commentaries are encouraging in this regard, and I am grateful to the authors for taking the time to respond. I am not sure how Sam Berger (2009) got the idea that republicanism involves “the elimination of interest groups” or that it might “hide groups’ actions behind the veneer of individual citizen engagement” (61). Berger’s characterization might apply to an extreme version of communitarian republicanism, which my article explicitly rejects. The Machiavellian republicanism I describe relies on diverse institutions and associations — including interest groups, although I focus on bioethics councils — for facilitating popular political engagement. Moreover, I endorse the “liberal emphasis on the irreducible plurality of values and interests in modern societies,” (Brown 2009, 43) and I note that excluding interests from public deliberation works against disadvantaged groups. The article also includes a paragraph on “non-deliberative contributions to public bioethics” where I praise the actions of a disability rights group (43). It is true that some theorists of republicanism and deliberative democracy have neglected interest groups, but my article criticizes the standard liberal view of politics for “reducing it to interest group competition,” (43, emphasis added) not interest group competition as such. Berger’s (2009) other main point is that my article “ignores political realities” (61) by underestimating the difficulties of promoting intelligent public engagement in complex bioethical issues. Here Berger’s comment overlaps with Chris Durante’s concern that my article “lacks a detailed method of engaging the public” (55). My article did not aim to provide such a method, nor to describe the practical challenges of public engagement. Berger (2009) notes correctly that popular understanding of many bioethical issues is rather dismal, and that public opinion is necessarily framed and easily manipulated by the media. But criticizing efforts to expand public engagement on the basis of poor public understanding of science puts the cart before the horse. Is it really surprising that standard public surveys regarding isolated scientific facts reveal widespread ignorance? Who

The Politics of Science before Scientism

When scientists today fret over popular “denial” of climate change and human evolution, or when activists call for more public engagement in the politics of science, they often suggest that we face unprecedented challenges. But Andrew Jewett’s rich and compelling study shows that earlier thinkers faced similar issues in different contexts. It thus provides valuable resources for understanding the politics of science, and it may also inspire a certain humility and magnanimity in today’s debates. Between the 1860s and the 1960s, Jewett shows, a large and diverse group of American thinkers “contended that science, as they understood it, offered the basis for a cohesive and fulfilling modern culture” (p. 9). Jewett calls them “scientific democrats.” Weaving a narrative from short discussions of an astounding number of thinkers, Jewett shows that their “belief in science’s political promise operated as a central driving force in the development of the American scientific enterprise” (p. 11). Going beyond explicit commentaries on science and democracy, Jewett recovers the “subterranean presence” of “vernacular traditions of political thought” (p. 18) within controversies over the purpose of university education, the methods of academic disciplines, the possibility of value-neutral science, the relation of science and religion, and many other disputes. Scientific democrats located the promise of science not primarily in industrial production, administrative efficiency, or science literacy but, rather, in the moral education of citizens. Part 1 of the book examines how scientific democrats shaped American universities in the decades after the Civil War. University leaders at Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and elsewhere hoped that science-driven universities could replace denominational colleges, and Protestant Christianity more generally, as the nation’s key source of moral and civic education. They believed that science embodied a republican way of life opposed to the Gilded Age’s valorization of commercial and partisan interests. They argued that science could foster a humble, cooperative, deliberative pursuit of the common good and that “the scientific enterprise reflected the true spirit of Christianity at work” (p. 39). These early scientific democrats differed sharply over the requirements of scientific method, the relation of science and religion, and the role of government in the economy.