Science and Activism

Key Themes/Qns

(1) Overarching Question
What was the relationship between science and activism in the C20 and C21?

  • Mainly, who uses science to speak?

Activism

  • OED: A policy of active participation or engagement in a sphere of activity, or the use of vigorous campaigning to create social and political change
  • In this case, we see how science is being used as a central tool by various groups to produce SOCIAL or POLITICAL changes

(2) Scientists

  • What work has activism done for science, and scientists?

(3) Activists and Lay Citizens

  • What work has science done for activists, and also activism?
  • Why do citizens adopt/use science to speak?
  • And why women feature prominently in these activist roles?

(4) HPS Scholarship

  • What role have critical perspectives on science played in social and political campaigns? How have these changed over time?

Scientists as Activists

  • Don't forget, scientists are citizens too, and thus have responsibilities that they seek to fulfil as citizens

The Far-Left (Dissident Scientists)

1930s: The British Scientific Left

  • People like JD Bernal, Joseph Needham, JBS Haldane, Julian Huxley
  • Inspired by Marxist ideologies after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the 1931 Congress where Hessen presented his paper on Newton
  • Critical of the view that science was a disembodied, value-free pursuit
  • Science only emerged out of specifically socio-political contexts and so, if powerful people controlled science, then science only served them!
  • Instead, science to serve the workers and people requires a political re-organisation
  • ISSUE: Scientific institutions in Britain were still viewed as spaces for scientific/academic discussion, rather than political campaigning, and so these scientists didn't manage to rally much support

See Sci and Communism L1

  • Marxism and ideas of science (dialectical materialism)
  • To understand why Marxism promoted this view of science
  • See Hessen's paper readings (L1) to understand his push towards recognising Newton as a man of his times, not just as a man of pure brilliance/idea!

Ecology and the Ecological Society of America (ESA)

  • Founded in 1915

Activism:

  • They put together a list of areas that the government needs to preserve, through protests, contacting politicians and administrators
  • Assumed a place in the political debate over the management of natural resources
  • To preserve these areas because of their scientific value

Again, we get this consistent theme of scientists being uncomfortable because political activism contradicted the ideals of the disinterested, objective scientist

  • 1944: ESA voted to restrict the committee's ability to advocate policy positions, and so the organisation drew a line between professional science and political advoacy!

Impact of WWII

  • WWII changed the professional scientist-state relationship
  • Scientists placed in positions to press for government funds, whether it pertains to 'basic' or 'applied' research
  • Emergence of the MIC and the appeal of the MIC to scientists meant that scientists had good reasons to keep politics separate from science
  • Any advoacy was in no way radical, because they didn't call for changes to the structures of government

We know from SftP/Primary Source work that scientists gain $$, prestige and knowledge from being involved in contracts with the government. They are incentivised to follow the norm!

Anti-Nuclear Activism: The Greater St. Louis Citizen's Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI)

  • Founded in 1958
  • Sought to educate the public about nuclear fallout
  • Declared that it was politically neutral, as the organisation envisioned its role as just gathering and disseminating data about nuclear fallouts

1958 Baby Tooth Survey

  • Analysing for the presence of Sr-90, showing that levels of Sr in baby teeth had risen after the nuclear age
  • Model for citizen science too, as non-scientists were involved!
  • CNI scientists produced data, increased visibility about atomic testing all for political purposes (expert-produced information for political activism)
  • 1963: Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty signed

1960s: New Radical Scientists Movement

  • Vietnam War's escalation suggested that radical activism was the only solution available

March 4th Protests

  • Not solely restricted to the US, but took place across universities in Britain, France and Japan
  • Challenging the university's alleged autonomy from political issues
  • Science Action Coordinating Committee and Union of Concerned Scientists formed

SftP and SESPA

  • Professional scientists working as activists
  • To question the underlying assumptions of scientific research by adopting a Marxist view (they are, in this way, related to the 1930s' Leftist scientists in the UK)
  • Science always served political ends, so they wanted to make sure it was GOOD politics guiding science
  • Parallel in the UK: British Society for Social Responsibility in Science
  • Allowed scientists to gather attention, resources, prestige and authority
  • Gaining political and social power, and help them marshal resources for their own work
  • To achieve a more 'equitable' world!

Genomics

  • Politically-challenging field due to associations with 'race' and governance (national genomes) (NATAE L5), and also its links to government and private corporations!

L1 Bliss

  • Argues that by engaging in activism, geneticists were able to increase the visibility and reputation of their field as they engaged in social causes
  • A field-based struggle in which scientists are using activism to protect, enhance and enlarge the field's expertise
  • Through: (1) Promoting social equality (2) Deliberately sampling minorities in data collection (3) Involving minority scientists (which is helpful!) (4) Allow indigenous groups to represent themselves

You can rationalise why these strategies are useful

  • Involving minority scientists give the scientists a touchpoint to more easily access the minority groups that they want data from (awareness of cultural contexts etc)
  • Having a more equal rs with the indigenous groups generates trust, gives them an easier time getting the data they need

Environmental Toxicology

  • Recognition of mutagens present in the environment, and how they present various biological problems to humans

L1 Frickel Ch 4

  • Explores the membership composition of the U.S Environmental Mutagen Society to argue that the 1960s/70s counterculture allowed the emergence of 'scientist-activists', and this climate enabled the emergence of environmental toxicology too!
  • Shows the type of scientists that typically were involved in activism (middle-aged, people with job stability, the EMS also had a heterogenous membership, but homogeneous core!)

Questions of WHO/what kind of scientists would likely engage in activism?

L1 Frickel Ch 5

  • Explains the various strategies used by scientist-activists to illustrate the importance of dealing with enviromental toxicology
  • Frame amplification: To make the problems obvious and ubiquitous (its everywhere!)
  • Frame extension: Showing that there were many ways of dealing with this (so it's not difficult!)
  • Frame translation: Telling other scientists/stakeholders whey they needed to care about the problem (Latourian concept)
  • Scientists must be able to ensure these resonated with people's lived experiences, and must have data to back up their claims

L1 Haraway

  • Articulates the differences between the Old Left and New Left scientists, and how this affected their activism
  • Old Left: The 1930s British scientists, who campaigned for scientists to be integrated/involved in state policies (because the status quo was problematic due to the powerlessness of scientists!)
  • New Left: Inspiring grassroots movements against military use of scientific research, they don't WANT scientists in state work! SftP/SESPA more directly challenged capitalist structures and practices! These people were radical, because they directly wanted to change the capitalist system (unlike the liberals in the Federation of Atomic Scientists)

See Haraway:

  • Sure, they adopt far-left positions, but they are different in goals; they didn't want scientists being involved in the state's research unlike what the 1930s scientists wanted
  • WWII certainly had an impact to emphasise the POWERLESSNESS of the scientist, even if they were involved in state policies

L1 Schmazler and Allen

  • Documents the far-left ideologies of the SftP scientists, noting that while they were inspired by the 1930s Leftist scientists, they are fundamentally different, because they despised the state-scientist partnership, and looked at RACE and GENDER, rather than CLASS
  • See the 4 documents analysed; mainly, it questions the capitalist practices of science for ignoring the needs of the common person
  • Also tries to show how Marxism could inform scientists in their research/work

Citizen Science (Activists as Scientists)

  • Science as a means to conceptualise identity

Celebratory or Cynical? (See Kimura and Kinchy)

  • Celebratory because: Citizen science helps individual citizens become more aware/knowledgable, and is good for science too!
  • Cynical: Is citizen science just another way of exploiting labour to help lazy governments?

What is the Role of Neoliberalism in this?

  • Neoliberalism: Rise of free-market capitalism and decrease in state interventions in the markets (so privatisation), which means the state decreases its presence in the economy (Thatcher - Reagan)
  • Generally, this means that R&D funding by the government/public sector doesn't increase much, cf. PRIVATE funding
  • Industries are dominating, and industries are very specific in what they choose to fund so that they can better manipulate the markets
  • So, citizens have an 'obligation' to become more involved

CNI and Nuclear Activism

Baby Tooth Survey

  • Women activists made demands to the council to test for Sr-90 in dairy products
  • Writing to their local congressmen, AEC etc.
  • Conducting 'tooth roundups' to collect and catalogue the teeth for the professional researchers

Women as Activists

  • Noting that gender roles and expectations may have influenced the observation of WHO stands up against these harmful agents
  • Social roles as mothers
  • Privileged socio-economic status/background too!

Citizen Radiation Measuring Organisations (CRMOs), Japan

Grandma and Grandpa Labs

  • Citizens could bring in food samples to test for its level of radioactivity
  • The citizens trained to operate the equipment (learning from scientists)

Being 'Scientists

  • To help the women and members escape stereotypes about women being too outspoken
  • To also allow the CRMOs to escape the characterisation of the organisation as a 'terrorist' group (this must be situated within Japan's domestic political context and definition of the 'good' citizen!)
  • A good citizen in Japan: Self-reliant, collaborative rather than divisive = science was the ideal tool for responsible, good citizenship

The Akwesasne Community and Environmental Pollution

  • Pollution by the industries at the St. Lawrence Riverway
  • Mohawks Agree on Safe Health: To get information that the state agencies didn't provide
  • Katsi Cook's breastmilk testing, and getting formal collaboration (CBPR) with scientists at the State University of New York

Challenges

  • For the Awkesasne community, they distrusted the state and scientists for fear of misuse of their biological samples
  • What emerged, then, was a new sort of research model to ensure that the community was on equal power relations as the scienitsts
  • A forum was created to overcome historical inequalities and restore power!

Environmental Hazards in Nogales, Mexico and Teresa Leal

  • Globalisation and the NAFTA allowed the increase of factories along the US-Mexico border (Maquiladoras)
  • Regulation became lighter, more pressure on environmental resources! (neoliberalism!)

Strategies

  • Resisting the lay-expert divide by empowering the women in the border towns to recognise their exploitation
  • 'Gossip' to improve the health of the people
  • Making community members their own WATCHDOGS
  • Science as a tool of empowerment
  • Citizens can use science to become independent (empowerment)
  • Neoliberal environment: Plugging the gaps in public monitoring (CRMOs)
  • Helping activists fulfil their roles as a good, ideal citizen
  • Countering/fighting systemic inequalities (Akwesasne)

--> There are fundamental problems/caveats though. See Kimura and Abby

L2 Di Chiro

  • Leal recognises very clearly that environmental movements are complex, and intertwine with GENDER issues. But also, that she knows the problem isn't just getting the companies to re-locate (that's just moving the problem elsewhere)
  • Her strategy, through her Comrades group, was to empower women, blend their experiences with the knowledge of doctors and sicentists
  • Organising grassroots campaigns to protest against the council, and also using popular epidemiology to force the government's attention
  • The complexity of activism against globalism, and the need for transnational organisations/networks
  • Leal believes that science is 'objective', which is why it is a useful and powerful tool to employ (it cannot be ignored)

L2 Kimura

  • Explores why science, rather than radical politics, was employed by the CRMO
  • Notes also how neoliberalism carved out a new concept of 'good citizen' in Japan --> The CRMOs used science to be apolitical, docile and to look after their fellow citizens
  • The CRMOs see their tasks as straightforward, and argue that science makes them apolitical (and so cannot be hijacked by the New Left). Testing defers the agency of being political!
  • Beneath this image, though, Kimura believes that measuring is a subtle way of pointing out the gaps in the government programme, and so complex meanings must be recognised with the act of testing!

L2 Hoover

  • Demonstrates the creation of a new scientific collaboration between researchers and indigenous groups, community-based participatory research (CBPR)
  • Shows also that 'citizen' in citizen science is a contested definition, particularly for the Akwesasne, a tribe that doesn't feel like they are Americans or Canadians (their land transverses the 2 countries). Also, environmental citizenship here to protect the land/environment they inhabit
  • In collaborating with scientists, an entity that they have come to distrust, the Akwesanse tribe demanded equality, and ownership of the data collected. This allowed scientists also to be more ethical, and produce a better research protocol

The Akwesasne case study is interesting because it is the one that really probes the concept of 'citizen'

  • They are a tribe, an indigenous group. They aren't Americans or Canadians (that's fluid too by nature of where they live)
  • They have a stronger sense of belonging to the tribe than they do to the government (civic dislocation) --> In using science, they are able to create a 3rd space of sovereignty (and circumvent the state)!

L2 Kimura and Abby Ch1

  • History of citizen science, showing it usually arises from government oversight
  • Notes that it is not all roses and flowers: There are key issues that citizen science faces. (1) Volunteering (it can corrode social values, paint false pictures of the efforts required to overcome problems) (2) Contaminating science by politicising it? (3) Neglecting the broader social contexts of issues by focussing too much on science
  • But it does empower them, make them more aware, help them argue for change
  • Also helps scientists (collect data, new types of research, diversifies perspectives)

L2 Kimura and Abby Ch 2

  • Notes the celebratory and cynical aspects of citizen science
  • It helps citizens better understand what 'citizenship' means/can be, helps them challenge power inequalities
  • But also, empowerment is a problematic concept. Empowering the individual =/= the group, and with more power/awareness, citizens may neglect systemic issues. Also that citizen isn't a homogeneous idea!
  • Potential problem of replacing citizen science with government support (neoliberalism)
  • Also concerns that activists may be criticised for using their data for political agendas! (they are making science political, after all!)

HPS and Activism

  • HPS has always been a field tightly linked to social and political projects

HoS in the 1930s

1931 International Congress of the History of Science and Technology

Hessen & Principia

  • Argued for an externalist analysis on Newton's work, rather than internalist
  • A transformative moment for Marxist scientists, as it provided a way for them to understand how they could bring together their Marxist leanings and science! --> How they could meaningfully conceive themselves as scientists
  • HoS was already an academic subject at Harvard, UCL and Moscow
  • Envisioned as a way to bridge science and the humanities, as a MEANS and a POLITICAL programme
    --> The idea here is that from its conception, HPS has always been viewed politically!

STS Developments in the 1960s - 70s

1962 Kuhn: Structure of Scientific Revolutions

  • While not entirely externalist, it argued for the role of communities in producing knowledge; science isn't simply cumulative, but a product of SOCIAL dynamics (it requires norms to produce anomalies etc.)
  • Kuhn was writing during the Cold War (MIC)!
  • A progress for HPS studies, but wasn't focussed on the social relations of science, just promoting the view that science is a social activity --> Other scholars could come in and expand this!

High Church and Low Church Divisions

  • High Church: Viewing STS as a scholarly activity
  • Low Church: A concept that STS is inherently political, and so ought to be activist-oriented

Low Church: To force science to become more accountable and be concerned with military manipulations of science

  • Linked closely with neoliberalism and the various movements in the 1960s-70s
  • STS scholars too were concerned with trying to promote science to benefit the population!

To this end:

  • Broadening access to S/T
  • Calling for diversification of the workforce (and showing its benefits) --> PoS
  • Giving lay citizens tools to challenge authority of experts --> HoS informs citizens of how science has historically been used to this end!
  • Dissident scientists --> STS can help illuminate the political entanglements of science, empowering scientists too!

This is why critical perspectives on science and scientists matter so much

Case Studies & Readings: What role can HPS scholars play in science-related activism?

Plastic Pollution

  • How to make plastic pollution in the oceans more VISIBLE as a problem by framing better metaphors, so that they can better explain the problem and inform policy

L3 Liboiron

  • Argues that the agency of plastics are deeply impacted/affected by their physical properties (size, density, chemical composition etc.)
  • Recognises that plastic pollution cannot be framed in a conventional sense of pollution (does not conform to the matter out of place framework, and is not easily solved with threshold theory in chemical mutagens)
    --> Because in plastics, we lack proper/definitive evidence, and there really isn't a simple 'threshold' for harm to marine organisms
  • So, we must re-define and re-represent the problem of plastic pollution, taking into account SCALE and merge the scientific and cultural aspects together (where the STS scholar comes in)

Environmental Hazards & Lawsuits in Taiwan (1970 - 92)

  • The case of the Radio Corporation of America in Taiwan
  • How STS scholars can contribute to lawsuits and defend the rights of the workers by exposing the power assyemtries in scientific evidence that biases the corporations

L3 Chen

  • The controversy is a symbol of globalisation, part of Taiwan's push towards economic prosperity in the late Cold War
  • Employees believed that the company mistreated them and exposed their dorm water to chemicals, increasing cancer rates
  • Legal proceedings against the RCA began in 2009, with the problem of scientific causation a key concern
  • As an STS scholar, Chen notes the importance of scientific work/data in the lawsuit, and also notes the monopoly of the company in acquiring information
  • For Taiwan, a country's growth which saw many technological catastrophes due to capitalist industrialisation, STS scholars are extremely pertinent in exposing the problems of attributing culpability in these issues, the inherent systemic biases of S/T!

Understanding and Learning from Natural and Technological Disasters

  • STS scholars construct understanding of how knowledge is created, and how knowledge travels
  • They can thus expose the ways that disaster investigations, especially technological disasters, reinforce power inequalities!

L3 Knowles

  • Argues that historians of science and technology can provide important tools towards reducing disaster losses in the C21
  • Historians recognise the 'black box' of technology, and also can show how disasters in technological systems often reveal social stratification in their aftermath
  • They also can show the political entanglements of trying to deal with these disasters, and how authorities defer responsibility
  • Finally, by asking WHO is doing the investigation and WHY they want the investigation, we can show how these investigations are merely 'show', rather than solution
  • To also caution against the view that disasters are inevitable legacies of our time, and we must embrace them because disasters = markers or progress

L3 Breymen et al.

  • Identifying how social movements have shaped STS, and how STS has contributed to social movements in the C20
  • There is a longer history, but generally, STS has always been associated to social movements, especially those about technology
  • Close associations with the New Left in the 1960s, because this movement called for a more human-centred approach to technology (SftP, for instance)
    --> STS scholars have helped by identifying how technology inherently exacerbates inequalities
  • C21: STS scholars are even more important, because the increasingly techno scientific nature of movements (Arab Spring, new types of concerns about AI)

Pregnancy Testing and Cambridge HPS

  • Jesse Olyszynko-Gryn's investigations of why Primodos continued to be used as a test kit despite its various problems
  • Showing that this was a regulatory failure, and called for more accountable biomedical research infrastructures!

L4 Oreskes and Baker

  • Critcise the STS view of science-as-game, noting that this view would produce only more problems in a post-truth world
  • Science as game: Comparing science with neoliberal game, whereby there is no external standard of truth outside science, and so, respects the 'marketplace of ideas' and free engagement ideals (it means, in climate change debates, respecting the claims of sceptics)
  • When STS scholars refuse to categorise GOOD and BAD science, they favour a weakened procedurals that allows illegitimate science to become legitimate
  • Adopting alternative epistemologies can allow STS scholars to be more active and challenge claims of industries/rich and powerful, rather than simply give them space to develop!

L4 Hoover (Conclusion)

  • Environmental contamination and activism in the Mohawk community takes 3 forms: Individual, Social and Political
  • Noting that this concept of transgressing boundaries is very evident in their activism. The whole reason for this activism is that environmental hazards have transgressed the natural/synthetic boundary. This forces them to transgress the lay-expert boundary.
  • Also shows the various grassroots movements that the community undertakes to overcome the damages caused by the environmental destruction

EXTRA Moore

  • An article that helps to describe how neoliberal globalisation has impacted the conduct and regulation of science (to explain why, in such a climate, we get activism about science)
  • Neoliberalism promotes the economy as its own entity, and focusses on self-responsibility of the citizen
  • We see scientisation in politics (states using science more and more to make policy), and also how more international regulatory bodies emerge, and they also rely on science for their work to generate standards
  • Social movements have created epistemic modernisation in S/T --> Emergence of new disciplines, new lay/expert cooperations, and also more scrutiny of power inequalities!
  • Showing that maybe there needs to be a reform in the relationship between society and science, or between the government and science
  • Providing ways for re-orienting certain pressing problems (eg. plastics pollution)
  • Pushing for broader reforms!

See PEM L12 HARDING CH 1

  • Here, Harding describes the epistemic developments in science in the 1970s/80s as a result of neoliberal globalisation
  • The rise of 'citizen science' is also about having citizens determine the research agenda --> They then recruit scientists for their goals!
    Examples cited: AIDS, environmental toxicology, breast cancer chemotherapy
  • Basically, when we think of citizen science, we can consider it a form of 'epistemic modernisation', in which more viewpoints/standpoints are being incorporated into scientific research --> Standpoint epistemology?
  • There are thus links between this and the notion of 'objectivity' where 'standpoint epistemology' is concerned (scientists cannot know the perspectives of citizens?)

What is important here is to question if Kimura is right to label them 'activists' can be ascribed on these actors if they themselves refuse to be considered activists (because they don't want to be called activists/be seen as political!)

  • What it means to be an activist? Is it enough for the group to identify as activists? Is that a NECESSARY condition?

'covert activism'? 'implied activism'?

AIDS Activism (See WWI L7 Epstein)

  • How AIDS activists and patients participate in the KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION regarding AIDS drug trials
  • Remember to explain the composition of the members in the movement - LGBT community, drug users etc. who have been neglected by the Reagan administration

Neoliberalism is also linked intimately to this notion of self-care and risk society

  • Neoliberal policies place the power/control in the hands of profit-driven private institutions
  • Tap on L12 PEM Wynne: Low risk is when the people in power can be trusted! So, a neoliberal climate makes it more important for citizens to self-care

Wynne's important argument:

  • Scrutiny CAN (but does not HAVE TO) arise from a lack of trust
  • Risk is rooted in a social-relational context (or how ppl in society relate to the public institutions in society): The need to respond to risk arises from the behaviour and (lack of) trustworthiness of expert institutions

Citizen science as a form of epistemic modernisation (Wynne, Harding)

Liboiron is concerned with how we can combine BOTH the natural and social sciences to make forms of HARM visible, and articulate enough for ACTION

Latourian view of Risk:

  • When we actively decide to label something as a 'risk', we are undermining the distinction between humans AND the object
  • This also means that said object is embedded in social and political relations

NOTE: There isn't a very strong relation between neoliberalism and the Akwesasne work here, because the pollution had occurred since the 1950s/60s and isn't a product of neoliberal policies

Also Kimura terms neoliberalism an example of Foucault's technology of the self, because neoliberalism encourages individuals to use certain tools/techniques to construct their own social and personal identity

Op Ed: "Yes, Science is Political"

  • The authors argue that scientists NEED to take active steps to participate in political discourse, because of the effects that politics has on science (and vice versa!)

This chapter notes the transformative power of citizen science, but also, the problems associated with promoting citizen science!

  • And also sort of answers the question: why are women more actively involved in activism?

Compare the Kimura and Di Chiro case studies: to show that the meaning/definition of 'activism' is quite malleable, and can be shaped by activists in whatever ways that suits their own political contexts

  • For the CRMOs, science is utilised to help them maintain neutrality, it helps them convey an image of neutrality (important in their context)
  • For Teresa Leal, she recognises that what she wants to achieve is very much political --> And so, she uses science to strengthen her political cause

Also, for the Akwesasne tribe, their use of science clearly is one filled with scepticism and questions about the unequal power relations in science --> This provides a bit of nuance in terms of how lay-citizens can perceive science (depending on their background)

  • Science has been employed by the state to deny citizenship claims for indigenous groups!
  • In their activism, they were trying to modify the practice of science to accommodate their cultural specificity

'the forcing function of knowledge' (a term that Howe uses in describing climate change) --> But could we also use it to describe the activists's actions? They seek to get more data, more research, to enforce/implement rational decisionmaking

See also the case study of the Kelab Alami fishing community in Johor, Malaysia

  • How science is used as a tool for activists to assert their citizenship, their right to live and right to exist in spaces controlled by people in power (this case study is from Kimura/Abby Ch 2)

Epistemic Modernisation

  • This introduction of lay/new perspectives into scientific studies and research, such that, science becomes increasingly connected to democratic goals
  • The social composition of science becoming more diverse, minorities becoming more involved in the researching processes

It's probably also related to this notion of the man-nature boundary idea, where STS scholars are careful to challenge the construction of this boundary, and its implications for society too!

  • These are fundamental issues to study when technological catastrophes occur!