Contemporary Change: Liberalization and Epistemic Modernization

The chapter discusses the problem of developing a historical sociological perspective on science, technology, and social movements during the period of the 1980s through 2015. It argues in favor of a historical dynamic based on liberalization and reflexive modernization that is similar to Polanyi’s double movement. The dynamic is formulated specifically for technological and industrial change based on the relationship between the liberalization of regulatory policy and the epistemic modernization of policy and knowledge production. Epistemic modernization involves the opening up of the research agendas of the scientific field to the concerns of undone science and the research needs of industrial transition movements and counterpublics. The theoretical framework is applied to a case history on the movement that supports greater access to and more research on cancer treatment based on complementary and alternative medicine. Both liberalization and epistemic modernization processes are documented for the movement.

Institutional Change, Industrial Transitions, and Regime Resistance Politics

The chapter focuses on the processes of industrial change in relationship to social movements. It builds on two literatures, one on institutional logics and the other on industrial transitions, and shows similarities and differences between the two literatures. It then examines the problem of resistance from industrial regime organizations or incumbent. Empirical material is based on the case of regime resistance to energy transition policies in the U.S., where the incumbent organizations have closed down the political opportunity structure for policy reform. It then draws on research that discusses three strategies that industrial transition coalitions can use to overcome regime resistance: countervailing industrial power (finding allies in neighboring industries), ideological judo (using regime ideology and frames to advance transition policies), and dual-use design (building coalitions by redefining energy transition policies in terms of a different institutional logic).

Introduction

Many of the political problems of the day—climate change, industrial pollution, nanomaterials, new technologies of surveillance, and the products of molecular biology—involve complex scientific and technological issues that can provoke sharp divisions in public opinion. Often environmentalists and other advocates of change call for policies that address public concerns with new and existing technologies, and often industrial corporations reply that such concerns are unwarranted and that their technologies are safe and broadly beneficial. Legislatures, regulatory agencies, executive offices, the courts, and voters find themselves caught in the middle, and sometimes they also become divided over how best to develop and to regulate industry....

The Epistemic Dimension of the Political Opportunity Structure

The concept of the political opportunity structure from social movement studies has undergone various expansions, including the development of a theory of the industry opportunity structure in social movement studies and of the intellectual opportunity structure in science and technology studies. The chapter then discusses how the theory of the political opportunity structure can be further developed through systematic consideration of its epistemic dimension. This dimension has two pairs of basic features: the level of scientization (the use of technical decision-making criteria) and the extent of public participation in the policy process, and the epistemic culture of risk evaluation (the preference of government regulators for narrow or inclusive methods) and the degree of precautionary preference when making decisions in situations of uncertain evidence. The framework is applied to cases of colony collapse disorder, the regulation of genetically modified food, nanotechnology, the smart meter movement, and climate science denialism.

Repression, Ignorance, and Undone Science

This chapter builds on two literatures: repression and backfire in social movement studies, and ignorance and suppression in science and technology studies. The chapter then introduces the concepts of undone science and industrial transition movements. Industrial transition movements are mobilized counterpublics of activists, advocates, entrepreneurs, and other agents of change who seek fundamentally new approaches to the design of industrial technologies, products, and organizations. There are four basic types of industrial transition movements based on the following goals: sunsetting industrial processes, developing alternative technologies and products, restructuring industrial organizations, and redistributing access to industrial goods. Undone science is the systematically produced absence of knowledge that industrial transition movements and other mobilized publics identify as potentially valuable for achieving their goals. Each type of industrial transition movement has its own associated type of undone science and a unique pattern of routinization.

Conclusion

The study of science, technology, and social movements could develop as a syncretism of concepts from the fields of SMS and STS, but I have argued that the research field requires its own conceptual toolkit that builds on and modifies the frameworks of the existing fields. To this end, I have suggested various bridges that synthesize the empirical research and conceptual developments of the two fields into a more coherent whole....

The Organizational Forms of Counterpublic Knowledge

The chapter reviews literature in social movement studies on resource mobilization, mobilizing structures, and organizations, then it examines a parallel literature in science and technology studies on networks. It suggests a way to build on these literatures by analyzing the organizational dimension of counterpublic knowledge, and it argues that three are four main types of organizational forms. Scientific and intellectual movements involve attempts to reform research agendas within the scientific field; science associations and public interest science organizations involve means by which scientists communicate with the public and political field; citizen-science alliances involve collaborative projects between citizen groups and scientists; and citizen science involves research projects by lay communities.

The Politics of Meaning: From Frames to Design Conflicts

The chapter reviews the literature on frame analysis and narratives in social movement studies and the parallel literature in science and technology studies on technological frames, boundary objects, and other cultural dimensions of science and expertise. It suggests the value of materializing the analysis of cultural meaning in the study of social movements and industry by developing the analysis of design conflicts. Three main types of design conflicts are reviewed: those based on social structural conflicts of race, class, and gender; those based on field-level industrial conflicts between incumbent firms and challengers; and those based on the environmental conflict between sustainability and resilience. This chapter uses examples from work on feminism, race, and design; on the solar energy and organic food movements; and on trade-offs between resilience and sustainability at the household and regional levels.