Review of Practising Interdisciplinarity, edited by Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, xvi + 294 pp.
Does interdisciplinarity really exist? As a discourse, yes, but hardly or not at all in practice, according to the authors in this volume of papers. An outspoken polemical position is taken by Peter Weingart, the initiator of two conferences out of which this volume grew, and which were held at the University of Bielefeld’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research. Weingart takes a puzzled look at the enormous literature on interdisciplinarity which, according to him, mostly proclaims its moral desirability. The few studies that look at the functioning of interdisciplinary research, such as the 1985 OECD study Interdiscplinarity revisited, find few supporting instances which really work. Weingart passes a similar judgement on the idea of ‘Mode 2 knowledge production’, proposed by Michael Gibbons and others, and which gained wide currency since it was proposed in 1994. The concept of Mode 2 knowledge focuses on the institutional side of knowledge production, and claims to see a tendency away from the universities and the academic disciplines. Weingart suggests that Mode 2 knowledge is old wine in new bottles, and that it falls prey to the same difficulties threatening the notion of interdiscplinarity. How is it possible, asks Weingart? This question can be seen as central to the book as a whole. How, ‘in the face of all available evidence to the contrary, and very little reason for hope, [can] the discourse on interdisciplinarity persist?’ (p. 26) Academic specialization is an ongoing process, and it is unhampered by the discourse on interdisciplinarity, perhaps even reinforced by it. In the many cases where interdisciplinary research programmes are given priority by science bureaucrats, ‘virtually nothing is known about their contributions to knowledge and the quality of life’, writes Edward Hacket in his contribution on the interdisciplinary programs of the US National Science Foundation (p. 259).
the mapping of disciplines on scientific problems
Let’s look, first, at some of the claims of interdisciplinarity. One involves the idea of maps, on which the old academic disciplines stand as solidified nations, while interdisciplinarity is about crossing borders, trading zones and the permeability of boundaries. The metaphor of hybridization evokes a similar phenomenon, that of the blurring of boundaries between species (disciplines) with a separate genetic make-up. Ever since the conception of interdisciplinary, protagonists have argued that interdisciplinary research maps better on scientific problems as they impose themselves than the old disciplines. Julia Thompson Klein notes in her contribution a striking resemblance between interdisciplinarity and postmodernist notions of hybridization of cultural catagories and identities (p. 22).
Two major points can be raised against this claim of interdisciplinarity. The first is theoretical/epistemological, the other is of an empirical nature. The metaphor of maps involves the idea that interdisciplinary research somehow better fits with real problems in science. The map of science should be redrawn, and we should get rid of the old disciplinary structures. This, according to Weingart, involves a mistaken realist presupposition of a real world with real (interdisciplinary) problems out there. Any new interdisciplinary structure is as much a social construction as the old disciplines, along with the scientific problems that it is supposed to address. When all is said and done, the only achievement of the notion of interdisciplinarity is to stress innovation. Of course, innovation is part and parcel of science anyway, but interdisciplinarity would stress it more.
the insurpassable disciplines
The second point against any overstatement with regard to interdisciplinarity concerns the continuing importance of the academic disciplines for the organization of science. Scientific research fields, so the argument of Stephen Turner goes, will want to control a steady influx of new practitioners, and they do so by controlling the student’s market. The very definition of a discipline involves a system of academic learning and teaching, mostly supervised by the university departments, the disciplines’ organizational representatives. Nowhere is Turner implying that disciplines are the ‘natural’ way of organizing knowledge at the universities. Instead, he emphasizes the contingency in their coming into to being, illustrated by the historical case of sociology. But once established, the disciplines are self-perpetuating.
Interdisciplinary endeavours are usually organized in centers and institutes, as Turner notes. But even if an interdisciplinary department would be in existence at a particular university, it would be still different from the disciplinary departments of, for instance, physics and sociology. The point is that most universities have deparments of physics and sociology. Turner argues that disciplines ‘are cartels that organize markets for the production and employments of students by excluding those job-seekers who are not products of the cartel’ (p. 51). Students who enroll in an interdisciplinary department, with no identifiable sister departments at other universities, run a considerable risk when they want to pursue an academic career. A similar point is made by Wilhelm Krull, who remarks that especially in the discipline-oriented specialization at German universities (and for that matter in many European universities), prevents highly talented young researchers who have engaged in an interdisciplinary project from ‘getting back into the system’ (p. 269). Krull implies a tension between universities on the one hand, and funding organizations on the other hand, a point to which I will come back below.
mission-oriented research
Among the claims of interdisciplinarity is that it is much better geared to the current importance of strategic research or mission-oriented research. Not knowledge for knowledge sake, but knowledge production steered by societal stakeholders, or by the market. Will the imposition of practical ‘non-scientific’ goals on science lead to a science of a different nature? The idea of Mode 2 knowledge production, with its close interaction between scientific, technological and industrial research in permanently shifting research environments implies just this. Knowledge is generated within its context of application, and this would be increasingly true for university science, too. But, according to Weingart, this is a false argument. No matter to what extent practical problem areas are imposed on science, the social (sub)system of science must and will apply its methods of validation. The world of science is functionally differentiated from the rest of society and, therefore, science will continue to absorb new contexts of knowledge production within its own social structure. This is an a priori argument and Weingart knows it, but failing to see evidence of the contrary he warns not to take the rhetoric of interdisciplinarity at face value..
the changing order of knowledge
The only claim of interdisciplinarity that seems to survive Weingart’s scrutiny is the idea of the order of knowledge. Both Klein and Weingart in their respective contributions compare the call for interdisciplinarity as it came to the fore at the end of the 1960s with the Unity of Science movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which was influential if not prevalent through the 1960s. The latter view was reductionist. It had physics at the top of the hierarchy of the sciences. Weingart concedes that gone is the hierarchical notion of reductionism in the sciences, and that this makes for a different intellectual relationship between the sciences. It is now much easier to borrow ideas and methods across disciplinary boundaries, even if the disciplinary boundaries themselves would remain intact.
I believe that Weingart hits the nail on the head, but that he makes too little of it. The implications of ‘conceptual interdisciplinarity’ are more important that he is willing to admit.
One important consequence of the reductionist vision was the ‘physics envy’ of the other sciences. From chemistry to sociology and psychology, sciences tried to mimic physics by adopting among other things its deductive structure. From a conceptual point of view, this view reinforced the sciences’ disciplinary structure, as each science had its own first principles which differentiated it from all the other sciences. The relinquishment of this view leaves many sciences undefended, physics in the first place.
To take one example of an interdisciplinary research field, which is mentioned by Weingart, too: climate research. Climate research is huge nowadays, with two major international research programmes currently underway: the World Climate Research Programme, led by the World Meteorological Organization, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, under the nominal supervision of the International Council of Scientific Unions, the latter the mouthpiece of ‘pure science’. Central to both programmes are the famous and infamous General Circulation Models, which predict global warming. Now physicists of the older reductionist type, Frederick Seitz being a vocal case in point, do not respect the General Circulation Models. They loath them, being much too complex and drawing on too many different areas of scientific knowledge to qualify as first-rate physics. As Myanna Lahsen and Simon Shackley have shown in their work, complex models show up very low in the disciplinary hierarchy of physics.
But this disciplinary hierarchy is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the organization of knowledge production in fields such as climate research, and certainly also to biomedical science, as Hollingworth and Hollingworth emphasize in their contribution to the volume. Physicists of the ‘new kind’ (meteorologists, oceanographers) may still wield more power than biologists, for example, but the reason for this may be their better access to and control of technologies. Physicists of the ‘old kind’ are witnessing their once sacrosanct position at the universities steadily eroding. Lahsen dates the symbolic downfall of physics in 1993, when the US Congress decided not to fund the Strong Super Collider. It is also the year of the end of the Cold War, which did so much to give physics its golden age.
The erosion of the disciplines
There is one question that the editors of this volume fail to ask in a systematic way: who is sustaining the discourse of disciplinarity, and what purpose does it promote? Much of the rhetoric on interdisciplinarity came from the ideologically motivated originators of the idea of interdisciplinarity in the 1970s. The Center of Disciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld (ZiF), which is treated by Sabine Maasen in her contribution to the volume, practices a bottom-up approach, and remains perhaps closest to the 1970s discourse. But nowadays the locus of the discourse of interdisciplinarity has shifted to more powerful bureaucracies.
A number of contributions to the book focus on bigger interdisciplinary endeavours in various research fields. More so than the ZiF case, they are the result of top-down planning. Reading this volume, one could get the impression that it is the US National Science Foundation, the Volkwagen Stiftung, the German National Science Foundation (DFG), etc., which initiate interdisciplinary research and get hurt sooner or later in confronting the entrenched disciplines at the universities.
Tim Turpin and Sam Garrett-Jones, in their article on Australia’s research system, identify yet another actor in the game of interdisciplinarity. Writing about a major reform of the country’s higher educational system in 1987, they note that as a result of the reform the university’s research environment has changed from local individual autonomy to centralized policy. The university’s central boards have assumed more power to be able to compete in a much more market oriented research and educational environment (p. 84).
When central university bureaucracies assume more power, it is the departments that suffer. In the Netherlands, a reform of the system of university governance in the 1990s abolished the departments altogether. The departments used to be fairly small. Their staff usually controlled the departments’ own educational programs. The departments have now been fused into much bigger units, and at several universities education and research have been uncoupled.
It remains to be seen what this will mean for the disciplinary structure of education, but it is clear that the disciplines have greatly suffered. At my home university, the University of Amsterdam, a severely declining enrollment of chemistry students coincided with the loss of autonomy of the Faculty of Chemistry with its previously almost autonomous departments such as Organic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry. The loss of autonomy and the loss of students are two separate phenomena, but together they will leave the chemists vulnerable to any major reform, whether aimed at research or education. More than ever, the notion of interdisciplinarity is a pawn in the game of power at the universities. As such, it has an uncanny degree of ‘realness’.
A report on the Postgraduate Forum for Genetics and Society 5th annual colloquium, University of Nottingham, July 2001
The annual colloquium of the postgraduate forum for genetics and society comprised delegates from a range of disciplines including anthropology, psychology, sociology, law and ethics. Although the forum is based in the UK, the growing number of members from elsewhere in Europe were also represented.
Many of papers presented can be situated within the critical social science literature about the dynamics of relationships between different kinds of expertise. The confronting of specific and apparently novel problems in this field was used too as a vehicle for the working through of debates in and beyond the social sciences about how we as societies and individuals frame and respond to risks. The themes covered can be divided (with the customary arbitrariness) into the following: firstly, governance and regulation; secondly, critiques of concepts in ethics and law; thirdly, representations of genetics- including both the issues of control of representation of science and the representation of views of >affected’ lay individuals by social scientists; and finally, papers concerned primarily with lay action and agency.
regulation and governance
The state response to the body of practices collectively recognised as biotechnology was the subject of five papers. I include here those papers which concern the ways in which law and ethics can be developed or are deployed in this context. Mavis Jones, from the University of East Anglia addressed the gap between the proliferation of policy responses and the mistrust amongst the public(s). Her discussion was based on a discourse analysis of directives from the EU (relating to the use of GMOs), guidelines from the Health and Safety Executive and documents from the UK’s Human Genetics Commission. These discourses were found to fall under two main themes: risk and transparency, each of which was related to a >grand narrative’, of rationality and democracy respectively. For Jones, these apparently newer discourses act as a kind of >lingua franca’ in the debates about innovation; nevertheless, they >may in fact serve to reproduce traditional approaches to science policy’. Understanding such discursive practices then may be helpful in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of policy regimes in this context.
The impact of different regulatory environments on biotechnology companies was addressed in a paper presented by Filippa Corneliussen from the University of Nottingham: interviews with founders of biotech companies, their management scientists and senior scientists were used as data for a comparative analysis of the regulatory regimes in Scotland and Norway. Very different regulatory regimes were shown to characterise the two nations. In Norway, informal networks between scientists and regulators manage much of the day to day work of compliance. There are serious penalties for not complying with the extensive regulations surrounding biotechnology industries in Norway; however, these have rarely been applied. A more formal and bureaucratic style of regulation exists in Scotland. In both cases, however, those interviewed did not view the raft of regulations as inhibiting their company’s formation or development. Thus the commonly held assumption that extensive regulation in this sensitive field impedes the development of science R&D was not supported by Corneliussen’s evidence.
Some of the implications of considering genetic information as >special’ were highlighted by James Mittra (University of Warwick) in a paper which analysed the developments which have taken place in relation to genetic testing and insurance in the UK over the last six years. Much of the debate, according to Mittra, takes place around possible future scenarios, whilst current problems are not squarely addressed. Defensive policy making around short term goals characterise the terrain here, with insurance companies staunchly defending their right to underwrite and the government primarily concerned with allaying fears of genetic discrimination. The argument developed here was that the >special’ attention given to genetic information complicates the debate and frames the way that individuals and groups respond to the issues. This issue was echoed in other papers throughout the symposium, which struggled to consider the ways in which >genetics’ is special -or not- in a range of contexts. Mark Taylor, from the University of Sheffield, explored the implications of this in relation to provisions against discrimination in the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). The issue of genetic regulation within the contractual context is still largely unregulated in the UK. A widespread assumption is that the law requires development to tackle potential injustices. However Mittra questioned the extent to which the incorporation of HRA into UK law will support such a development: he believes that whilst the principles of HRA would support the proscribing of unfair genetic discrimination, they would fail to support a blanket ban. This left us with a discussion of the possibility that there could be >fair’ genetic discrimination.
A paper addressing the effectiveness of the UK’s Local Research Ethics Committees (LRECs) as quasi regulatory bodies in the context of research was presented by Emma Williamson (University of Bristol), on the perspectives of participants in epidemiological genetic research. The project will draw on interviews with participants in a longitudinal panel who have been intensively researched via their donation of samples and of medical and lifestyle data. Both the genetic research project and the accompanying social science inquiry presented here include children as participants, an issue of particular interest to the (social) researchers. The question of the particular place of social research within the UK’s Research Ethics Committee system was discussed. Broadly speaking the approach here was to support the extension of the current system of ethical review to include social research. (This is the practice in many parts of the UK, but perhaps less consistently so than with the experimental or clinical research which these committees were designed to oversee.) In the next section I discuss papers which can be considered as offering a critique of concepts or institutions in bioethics and in law.
critiques of ethics and law
Klaus Hoeyer (University of Copenhagen) drew on fieldwork with those involved in collecting and donating samples for genetic research in Northern Sweden. His observation that donors did not show any particular interest in the information offered in the course of obtaining informed consent for this research led to a discussion about the ritual aspect of such a procedure. There was a challenge here to the way that the social issues around new genetics become reduced to the obtaining of informed consent. The practice of giving blood was analysed in the context of the ethos of the Swedish state health care system. Hoeyer’s suggestion that we see the donation of blood less as a conscious expression of meaning and more as a practice brings us to some of the methodological issues about interviews which are discussed below. Oongah Corrigan (Goldsmiths, London) also addressed the processes of obtaining informed consent in the field of drug trials and pharmacogenetics in particular. With research in pharmacogenetics, we have an expansion of the extent and the contexts in which DNA samples may be requested from patients. For Corrigan, the formalised practice of informed consent. and other procedural approaches cannot substitute for research looking at the areas of tension or concern for patients in these trials. Traditionally, these kinds of dilemmas are not situated in an empirical context- although this may be said to be changing- and the bioethics model less regard to the dynamics of doctor/patient or expert/lay relationships than does sociology. This analysis emphasised the way in which particular perspectives in ethics -derived from Kantian universals- have shaped bioethics.
Continuing this critical engagement with core concepts in bioethics was Harald Schmidt’s paper about the use of the concept of human dignity, a concept frequently invoked in discussions of bioethics, including those around the assisted reproductive technologies. Schmidt (University of Munster) claimed that such a concept is of very limited use in the case of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Indeed, it was suggested that >human dignity’ tends to be used as a way of stopping rational argument, particularly by those opposing scientific developments in this context. In support of this claim, Schmidt reviewed the ways the concept has been deployed in theology, philosophy and in political and legal contexts. Its prominence in the latter context was traced to the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials and the concern to protect the rights of (born and living) people which is etched into the charters and declarations of that era. With reference to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Schmidt challenged the debate about the >true’ moral status of the embryo with a position that that status could and would change over time. He did not argue for or against pre-implantation diagnosis, but that the use of the concept in this context was obfuscating a debate which desirably should take place >by society as a whole and not a particular society’.
Finally in this section, Anne Wilkinson (University of Leeds) addressed the presumption of liberty, taking the position that such a presumption should be set aside in the case of new reproductive technologies. Beginning with a consideration of the limits of philosophical tools of utilitarian and consequentialist reasoning for this field, where some of the problems are difficult to predict, Wilkinson went on to consider the role of theology and of the law in this context. Following Devlin (1965), Wilkinson suggested that the law could be seen as a boundary marker >like an inter-country borderline, which meanders according to geographical and historical factors’. It was suggested that the new statutory and advisory committees composed of representatives from the science, the law, religion and >the laity’ were crucial mediators. As though to reiterate the difficulties here though, the following set of papers address the diverse kinds of expertise which are brought to bear on social issues raised by developments in the new genetics.
representations of genetics
Sarah Cassidy (University of Edinburgh) considered the claims about the evolutionary and by implication genetic basis to human behaviour and society in the field of evolutionary psychology. A quantitative survey of coverage of evolutionary psychology in the UK broadsheet press was used to look at the uptake and diffusion of these ideas. In contrast to >classic’ patterns of science coverage, media coverage here was found to stress the political and social implications, and is seen as having a wider relevance. The paper concluded with a comment about the emergence of competing discourses on genetics in the context of a move towards greater inclusiveness in policy processes. The contested nature of these discourses was the subject of Nicola Lindsey’s paper. Lindsey (Imperial College, London) unpacked some of the conceptual issues around the use of the term >gene talk’. In early formulations the term referred to >the use of genetic language in secondary and tertiary contexts, apart from the disciplinary practice of genetics’ (Howe and Lyne, 1992: 112). This paper underlined the extent to which the term >gene talk’ has been mobilised to support notions about which knowledge (and talk) is legitimate and which is not. Examples of such contests were cited from within science Bthe critique of sociobiologists by molecular geneticists being one such- and from scientists’ challenges to the validity of lay people engaging with the subject of genetics in a particular social context.
In a dramatic paper entitled >Determined to kill’ Jennifer Bostock from King’s College London deployed a series of images in which >abnormal’ brain physiology and >fatally damaged’ DNA were said to be represented amongst other >normal’ examples. These aimed to put the audience in a position analogous to that of a jury presented with expert evidence for a claim of >genetic defense’ in a court of law. The paper explored the question of how courts are to interpret the results of genetic research, and the extent to which there is anything uniquely deterministic about such a defense in comparison to for example relying on psychosocial evidence.
Moving to the interstices between lay and medical more specifically, two papers considered the significance of genetic counselling. For Melanie Pearce (University of Nottingham), genetic counselling is a key site for the dissemination of scientific knowledge about genetic disorders. Yet there is a paradox here as the traditional rationale for such counselling involves a stance of non-directiveness. Based on semi-structured interviews with genetic counsellors, Pearce explored the process of this work, and the different expectations brought to the genetic counselling sessions. Georgina Haarhoff from the University of Cambridge drew on interviews with individuals diagnosed with colorectal cancer and with their spouses to explore the impact that a subsequent genetic diagnosis has on the individual: Haarhoff posed the question of whether the genetic diagnosis in itself is associated with a particular orientation towards the experience of having cancer.
Discussions about methodologies were interwoven with the substantive points which I have made above, but two papers in particular addressed methodological issues about interviewing specifically. Caroline Benjamin (University of Liverpool) outlined a model for research which would enable account to be taken of linked historical events in the experience and referral of women to a breast cancer family history clinic. Life course methodologies were used here to locate individual women’s experiences in relation to time, place, and institutional contexts, including for example the NHS. Based on initial interviews, themes relating to >intergenerational transference’ were discussed, and in this context the significance of a particular chronological age with fear of illness was marked. Lotte Huniche from the University of Copenhagen spoke of her conversation with one individual who is >at risk’ of developing Huntingdon’s disease, and whose relatives portray him as not actively speaking of or doing anything about it. The discussion of this persons’ life trajectory was used as a way of considering the perspective of those whose voice is not expressed, who are considered passive, and how they may differ from those seen as active. It is the latter group, inevitably perhaps because of their accessibility, who are usually the focus of social research. This presentation fed into a discussion in which the pre-eminence of interviews in this field of research, together with the normative assumption that narrative is process for establishing control, were questioned.
lay action and agency
Sahara Gibbon (UCL) explored the work of a cancer charity, drawing on her fieldwork with the charity which is active in fundraising and lobbying for a particular cancer. The organisation has become a funder of research in its own right, and it was the role of lab tours for supporters (including relatives of those who had died from the illness) which were described in the paper. In addition to their more obvious function of informing supporters, these tours could, in Gibbon’s analysis, be considered as memorial events, as the presence of plaques and names on a memorial wall hint. Whilst such memorialising >could be redemptive for those involved, the tensions between remembering and forgetting are a feature of such practices’.
The ways in which hope is mobilised featured in Carlos Novas’ (Goldsmiths) discussion of the way in which patient and lobby groups in the USA intermesh with the work of geneticists and other scientists and practitioners. Taking the example a particular lobby group concerned with a rare metabolic disorder, he described how this group had played a key role in research to the extent of setting up a tissue bank and becoming a co-applicant for a patent in this context. The ways in which different interests intermesh are shifting, and the notion of a >political economy of hope’ was used by Novas as framework for the analysis of such developments. Sara Skodbo’s paper about technological information, identity and food in Norway was concerned with >the under-researched mechanisms behind everyday appropriation and negotiation of new technologies in industry’. Skodbo, from UCL, drew on her fieldwork in the food industry in Norway to explore how the uptake of technology depends on interactions with local knowledge and notions. In doing so the paper challenged the implicit assumptions in actor network theory and stressed the agency of the individuals involved.
Vajira Dissanayake (University of Nottingham and University of Colombo) presented preliminary results from a survey of attitudes to new reproductive and genetic technologies amongst doctors in Sri Lanka. He moved on to explore the ways in which a Buddhist cultural background may frame the debate associated with such technologies quite differently than it has been framed in Western Europe: a different stance on tissue donations and a profound sympathy towards overcoming reproductive failure was cited as examples of this. Dissanayake described the ways in which genetic predictive tests are commonly taken up by those with illness whilst also consulting a horoscope reader. This was a timely reminder of the pluralism of knowledge about illness: despite the pre-eminence which genetics has gained in recent years, it takes it place within a broader set of social responses to suffering of which orthodox medical practice is but one part.
Delegates were grateful to Filippa Corneliussen for coordinating the colloquium.The 6th annual colloquium of the PFGS is planned to take place in September 2002 at the University of Cambridge. Those interested in attending may contact Georgina Haarhoff at grh25@hermes.ca.ac.uk or refer to the PFGS website http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sociology/genetics/pfgs.
References
Devlin, P (1965/1990) Law, liberty and morality. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press.
Howe, H and Lyne, J (1992) Social Epistemology, 6,2.
A Report of the Summer School in Lausanne, 11-14 of September 2001
The Summer School “Knowledge in Plural Context” held at the University of Lausanne and the Federal Institute of Technology was the result of a stimulating process of application and invitation. The program of the four-day conference consisted of four types of events: plenary sessions, workshop sessions, roundtables, and social scientific happenings. About 85 participants, most of them doctoral students and post-doc’s, were welcomed with a Book of Abstracts. The opening plenary was conceived as an encounter and exchange between Helga Nowotny and Michel Callon. Those two tireless researchers, who never met before, have published books in 2001 about science, decision, and uncertainty, and have developed similar models of democracy with regards to scientific and technological development. Both contributions, supported with a paper and followed by a discussion, have set the thematic perspective of the Summer School. This event was followed by a set of three parallel sessions. The guest speakers turned into discussants in the workshop sessions. One year earlier, they were contacted by the organizers with particular demands: aside from their own talk, these personalities were asked to be discussant in some workshops, and to participate as much as they can throughout the conference. They were chosen not only because of their reputation, but also with regards to the way they work with juniors. This is how Michel Callon, Vololona Rabeharisoa, and Alberto Cambrosio participated the whole week, while Wiebe Bijker, Helga Nowotny, Frank Fischer and Sally Wyatt stayed as many days as possible, all contributing to a warm and stimulating atmosphere of work. After the parallel sessions, everybody was invited to the first social event of the Summer school: the public ceremony of the recently created Swiss Association for the Studies of Science, Technology, and Society. Aside of wine, grapes and cheese, there was a contest with surrealistic questions like “what the letters S.T.S. stand for”; the winners received huge Berlin keys of chocolate.
This intense first day of the conference was the 11th of September. As organizers, we have been very lucky to see all American guests already in Europe, and all participants coming by plane arriving on time. Surprisingly, the world events did not interfere with the unfolding of the conference’s program. The people were occupied with the terrorist attack on New York at breakfast and dinner, although everybody was concentrating on the work during the sessions. We have been living in another reality, like within a bubble, for the time of the conference. The morning of the 12th started with Alberto Cambrosio exploring the Plural Context of Biomedicine, followed by Vololona Rabeharisoa raising the fascinating issue of Patient Organizations and the Mobilization of Research. During the afternoon, six parallel sessions were held, some of which dealt with Plural Expertise of Risk, The Influence of Research Policy on Knowledge Production, How Subjects and Objects Connect Plural Context, while the day before we occupied ourselves with Assessing Radical Technological Change, STS and Normativity, etc. Then, a special roundtable was organized at night about the development of STS studies and research in Switzerland. The participation of Wiebe Bijker, who lived through a similar process years ago in the Netherlands, and of colleagues from Cornell, encouraged Swiss participants to cope with disciplinary and institutional obstacles to the development of STS research in Switzerland (see below).
The third day started with Wiebe’s talk on Research and Technology for Development, a new project of the EU with African and Caribbean countries where STS is challenged to contribute, and Sally Wyatt’s Using Personal Knowledge and Autobiographical Methods in STS. The afternoon was again occupied with the parallel sessions, including a double one about Boundaries> Work: Setting and Crossing Boundaries in Science and Technology, another entitled Knowledge Society at Stake. There were many sessions we cannot mention, for instance all those dealing with information technology. At night, a musician introduced the main reception of the Summer School. A text about Technology and Music supported his performance. Pierre AudÈtat took special care in playing a few tunes on piano and sampler together, prior to the discussion.
The last day started with Frank Fischer on Citizens, Experts, and the Environment before shifting to the closing theme of the Summer school: Science and its Publics. After an introductory talk by Pierre Saliot of the Cite des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, a roundtable was held with representatives of Universities, Museums, the Media, the Parliament, and Science policy. The closing event was a general discussion about science in the public sphere in Switzerland; this theme became popular after the particularly hot campaign about genetic engineering in 1998 before a referendum. Most of the participants expressed their satisfaction before leaving Lausanne, congratulating the organizers for the quality of work and the good atmosphere which greatly contributed to the success of the Summer School. The four days were filled with eight key contributions in plenary sessions, fifteen overcrowded workshops (with sixty-two presentations), two plenary roundtables, and two social happenings. About a quarter of the participants were from abroad and many of them afforded themselves their trip up to the Swiss border. Near half of the participants were women. All this has been made possible by a dynamic context and a collective process which might be of interest to the observer.
The landscape of “science, technology and society” studies in Switzerland evolved from almost nothing to a structured and differentiated field of research within a few years. The early 90s witnessed the appearance of the ESST Master’s Degree program, which is now located at the edge of the country (the French speaking part). At the same time other actors were trying to encourage this field of study to develop within the social sciences. In the mid-90s, a prestigious academic institution, the ETH of Zurich, decided to refresh its old fashion concept of “humanities for engineers” with a bright new place dedicated to the dialogue between disciplines, philosophy of science, and arts - the Collegium Helveticum. Demonstrating the seriousness of its project, the ETH appointed Prof. Helga Nowotny to lead the Collegium. In the Swiss Confederation, a country of 7 million inhabitants, composed of 26 member states, with about 10 universities including the Federal Institute of Technology, other scholars and young researchers were working in the STS field although without much contact. In the meantime, a research committee was formed within the Swiss society of sociology to create a virtual, or real, house for STS studies. The research committee made an application to a special priority program dedicated to help the social sciences, and manage to organize the first STS Spring School at the University of Zurich in 1999. The week-long event gathered about a hundred people with various backgrounds and revealed a surprisingly rich interest for this domain. The need for a second event of the kind in a near future was clearly established, and Lausanne, where several small teams of STS researchers are active, was chosen. This was the context and the origin of the Summer school.
The organization of the Summer school benefited from two different processes, a local one, and a national one. Over the course of 2000, the research committee grew and decided to become autonomous; that’s why the assembly decided to create a permanent association of academic character to promote STS studies in the country. At the local level, an organizing committee, gathering forces spread out both at the University and the Institute of Technology in Lausanne started with a Call for Participation. To say a word about the funding, it has been an architecture of different sources, tailor-made for fifty participants, though we ended with more than eighty. The CFP, entitled “Knowledge in Plural Context”, was designed to cover the spread of the field while still being focused on hybrid forms of knowledge and heterogeneous fora. Apparently, everybody found his or his place within this setting. A separate Call for the sessions used the electronic means of the Association, and circulated information back and forth, allowing a dynamic process of session applications. Many individual applications were received by organizers. The Summer School “Knowledge in Plural Context” greatly helped to assess the potential of STS studies in Switzerland, and gave a thrust to the Swiss Association for the Studies of Science, Technology, and Society (http://www.sts.unige.ch/).
The author works at the Observatoire EPFL, Science, Politique, SociÈtÈ, Ecublens, Switzerland.