Since the constructivist turn in the sociology of scientific knowledge, it is no longer possible to speak about the relationship between science and politics. Whereas in the older tradition of the sociology of science, one could metaphorise the political dimension of research and the political role of scientists as an interface between two different social institutions - each with their specific norms, processes and procedures, this is hardly tenable from a perspective which stresses the constructedness of knowledge. There are several reasons for this. Political considerations have been shown to play a formative role in the production of scientific knowledge which has resulted in the notion that scientific knowledge is always political through and through. The same constructivist turn has not only recreated science as a political phenomenon, but has also redefined the political itself. Both science and politics seem to have been reconstructed as networks of power with humans and artefacts as the nodes and symbolic and material translation processes as the links between the nodes.

This does create a problem, though. It becomes necessary to analyze the co-production of science and social order(s). If everything plays around in a seamless web, how can we sensibly speak about the politics of science except in the thick description of case studies? Or does it not make sense anymore to try to make generalised statements about the politics of science? This would be rather ironic since scientific research seems to have become more controversial than ever. This was the theme of two workshops organised by the Dutch graduate school Science, Technology and Modern Culture WTMC. The first, the Summer School, was held in September 2001, the other in May this year. We wished to discuss with the PhD students how one could analyse the political roles played out by scientific experts and indeed by research itself and also how one could systematically study the influence of political processes in knowledge creation. This is the more pertinent since PhD students are increasingly confronted with situations in which they are asked to advise the public in controversies relating to new technologies and state of the art research. At least this is our experience in the Netherlands: the media and public institutes in general are quite interested in students of science, including PhD students, doing case studies on, for example, new reproductive technologies, the use of scientific expertise in parliamentary debates about drug policies, or the future of cloning humans and their tissues.

The central question around which the Summer School turned out to revolve is one of language: how can one in present-day “social studies of science speak” conceptualize the political without falling back to positions that are either implicitly or explicitly based on models of the political or of science that we have been deconstructing? We do not think that we found a solution, although several candidates did turn up. The extent of the problem was clearly demonstrated in a role playing exercise the PhD students did for a whole day. The challenge was to play out a scientific hearing to inform a jury that had to judge the credibility of the science used to back up statements about global warming put forward on the tables of political decision-makers. The jury consisted of experts from different fields. They had to write a report to their government clarifiying whether a phenomenon like global warming actually exists and what course of action the government should take in the light of these conclusions. In the course of the hearing, the dispute about whether or not global warming exists, and if so what causes it, raged between the experts from the relevant scientific fields, social movements and interested parties. The PhD students had read the documents from the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) IPCC climate conference and the statements by the different parties before the exercise. Hence, they were thoroughly familiar with the line of reasoning of the actors they had to play out. Therefore it was no big surpise that the PhD students did their job very well. It was striking, we think, how all clichÈ-models of the political dimensions of scientific research dominated the discourse. The rationalist model in which “good science” should underpin and determine the political course of action; the cynical model in which every political movement or economic actor can tailor the science to their needs and find the appropriate scientific spokes person; and the legal model in which scientific arguments are one of the many different arguments that should be weighed against other considerations.

The hearing itself can be seen as an exemplar of the latter. Given the fact that the majority of the PhD students were Dutch, it may come as no big suprise that seeking consensus was the main motive that drove the actions of the jury and the different parties alike. More surprising was that it proved very difficult for the participants to actually mobilize the insights generated by the last decades of science studies in this dispute. The approach that comes closest seems to be the co-production of knowledge model (Callon, 1999), which enables one to seamlessly include actors other than researchers and to equalize influences no matter what their motive. One pays a price for this, though: the actor-network theoretical perspective effectively represents all movements in one dimension. Therefore it makes by definition invisible analytical distinctions between different types of institutions or social domains. This is the same problem brought up by early critics of Latour that ANT effectively represents all scientists as political actors and science as politics.

The take we had on the problem in the Summerschool was that of the thought figure. We proposed to see the different models and mid-level theories about recent developments in the scientific system (mode II (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001); triple helix (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000); postnormal science (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993; Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1999; Ravetz, 1999); strategic science (Cozzens, Healy, Rip, & Ziman, 1990; Rip, 2002); coproduced science (Callon, 1999) as thought figures of politics of science. This means that images of the interplay of science and politics were understood in two-tier fashion, as at one and the same time involving epistemic claims about natural and social realities, and as cultural goods through which institutional and actor-group identities are actively shaped in tandem with reconfigurations of institutions, networks and agency.

Earlier policy models, like the socalled linear model of innovation, Don K. Price’s A Truth speaks to power, or Robert Merton’s CUDOS norms-model all had clear boundaries between science and society and were predicated on powerful metaphors that assumed clearcut boundaries between science and society. They can be seen as the product of a post-World War II social epistemology, and once commonly accepted came to function as social facts despite an anemic picture of the states of affairs they were supposed to portray. In present-day discussions regarding the Anew production of knowledge@ or a new Asocial contract for science@ the earlier images and metaphors are being replaced by new ones, this time predicated on a social epistemology informed by globalisation and fusion of different stakeholder interests. The new models and metaphors are no less anemic than their predecessors, but given the new context they serve to reinforce and legitimate new institutional arrangements where the accent is on hybridity and porosity. The models and metaphors are nevertheless part and parcel of new forms of boundary work, this time in a co-production of A metascience, social organisation and economics of research in society at various levels (micro/meso/macro) that ought to be the units of analysis for a more reflexive mode of A new science policy studies (SPS). Since the learning lies in reflection-in-action it is not unusual to find some of the scholars in this field playing a double role, for example as participant observers and experts in research foresight, social constructive technology assessment, consensus conferences around new technologies (e.g. nanotechnology), and ethical, legal and social aspects of science (ELSA) pertaining to opportunities and threats in for example biotechnology (cloning, GMO-foods). In such processes STS-scholars may have an important role to play, generating critical science policy knowledge in the very process of advising decision-makers. Therewith we come a full circle, as we are confronted with the same types of problems faced by our colleagues in the natural and social sciences that interact with politicians in the domain of global change where climate is both research and politics.

Of course, this creates a tensions between the participant/advisory role and the reflexive/analyst role, as the role play in our Summer School demonstrated. How do actors including scholars in our field themselves solve these tensions? This is apparently a question quite relevant to understanding the politics of knowledge making, yet one that cannot be answered by the usually rather abstract studies of mode II or triple helix interactions at the systemic level. It asks for case studies, either focused on the actors involved or on the communication between the actors.

This was the theme of the second workshop on the politics of science (Workshop Heterogenous Knowledge Practices) which we organised May this year. The question we put central in the discussions with the PhD students was if a methodological focus on knowledge practices could generate new questions about the politics of knowledge that remain invisible in the studies mentioned above. Steve Epstein=s study of the invasion of lay experts in the making of knowledge about Aids was one B among others - of the inspiring cases (Epstein, 1996). Epstein convincingly shows that science studies tend to Afollow the actors@ in a very narrow way, thereby in fact reifying the boundary around science that science studies are supposed to challenge. His narrative history is a succesful attempt to lay bare the politics of knowledge by following a broader category of relevant actors. Epstein is not the first to do this (see e.g. the work of Stuart Blume (Blume, 1974; Blume & Catshoek, 2001)) but his study does represent one of the new approaches to be explicit again about the political dimension of science studies without falling back into (implicit) functionalist models.

The limitation of Epstein’s work is that it focuses on the influence of lay experts in so far as they have organised themselves as social movements. Although this itself is still a topic that needs further exploration and more (comparative) case studies, there are many instances in which politics and policy do matter without a relevant social movement that can carry the invasion of the scientific by the lay experts. For example, the shaping of much of the genomics research agenda and the funding of nanotechnology research agenda=s seems to take place without much social movement influence. It might be an interesting challenge for science and technology studies to study the politics of this type of hybrid agenda building and thereby maybe re-politicise the cultural study of knowledge practices.

Reference List 1. Blume, S. (1974). Towards a political sociology of science. New York: Free Press. 2. Blume, S., & Catshoek, G. (2001). Amsterdam: Patientenpraktijk. 3. Callon, M. (1999). The Role of Lay People in the Production and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge. Science, Technology, and Society, 4(1), 81-94. 4. Cozzens, S. E., Healy, P., Rip, A., & Ziman, J. (1990). The research system in transition. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 5. Epstein, S. (1996). Impure Science. Aids, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. 6. Etzkowitz, H., & Leydesdorff, L. (2000). The dynamics of innovation: from national systems and “Mode 2” to a triple helix of university-industry-government relations. Research Policy, 29, 109-123. 7. Funtowicz, S., & Ravetz, J. R. (1999). Post-Normal Science - an insight now maturing. Futures, 31, 641-646. 8. Funtowicz, S., & Ravetz, J. (1993). Science for the Post-Normal Age. Futures, 25, 735-755. 9. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: SAGE 10. Leydesdorff, L., & Etzkowitz, H. (1998). The Triple Helix as a model for innovation studies. Science and Public Policy, 25(3), 195-203. 11. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge (UK): Polity Press. 12. Ravetz, J. (1999). What is Post-Normal Science? Futures, 31, 647-654. 13. Rip, A. (2002). Regional Innovation Systems and the Advent of Strategic Science. Journal of Technology Transfer, 27, 123-131.

Authors’ addresses: Paul Wouters: Networked Research and Digital Information (Nerdi), NIWI, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, http://www.niwi.knaw.nl/nerdi, email paul.wouters@niwi.knaw.nl Aant Elzinga: University of G–teborg, Department of History of Ideas and Theory of Science; Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, SCASSS, Uppsala; email Aant.Elzinga@SCASSS.uu.se Annemiek Nelis: University of Amsterdam, Department of Political Science; email anelis@fmg.uva.nl