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Technologies of Democracy: Experiments and Demonstrations

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Abstract

Technologies of democracy are instruments based on material apparatus, social practices and expert knowledge that organize the participation of various publics in the definition and treatment of public problems. Using three examples related to the engagement of publics in nanotechnology in France (a citizen conference, a series of public meetings, and an industrial design process), the paper argues that Science and Technology Studies provide useful tools and methods for the analysis of technologies of democracy. Operations of experiments and public demonstrations can be described, as well as controversies about technologies of democracy giving rise to counter-experiments and counter-demonstrations. The political value of the analysis of public engagement lies in the description of processes of stabilization of democratic orders and in the display of potential alternative political arrangements.

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Notes

  1. This raises a problem of the delimitation of democratic activities. Without entering a theoretical discussion that would be beyond the scope of this paper, here it is assumed that “democracy” is at stake when public problems are defined and when oppositions are made explicit between groups of actors (lay and professionals, citizens and politicians, activists and industrialists).

  2. This means that this paper is not attempting to identify a “deliberative ideal” (Blondiaux 2005), or to propose ways to “improve the public sphere” and “improve the quality of civic engagement and public deliberation” (Fung, 2003, p. 340).

  3. Empirical materials are derived from a forthcoming PhD dissertation (Laurent, forthcoming) and from previous works (Laurent 2007; Laurent 2009 and Laurent 2010a).

  4. The scholars who wrote the advisory report had mixed feelings about their involvement (Joly and Kaufman 2008).

  5. Excerpts from the presentation of Vivagora on its website (www.vivagora.org; my translation).

  6. The Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, is a major public research institution in France. Traditionally active in nuclear energy, CEA has become involved in bio and nanotechnology since the late 1990 s.

  7. These objectives are presented at www.ideas-laboratory.com.

  8. Author’s interview with a councilor from the Grenoble metropolitan area council (Grenoble, January 2007).

  9. This case is presented at: http://www.ideas-laboratory.com/index.php/projets/exemple-de-productions/?lang=en.

  10. See, in particular the work of Michel Callon et al. (2001; English translation: Callon et al. 2009).

  11. These quotes are excerpts of interviews conducted by the author with members of the Grenoble metropolitan area council.

  12. Both expressions were used by IFOP’s employees in interview with the author.

  13. Intervention at the “Living Knowledge” conference (Paris, Ecole des Mines, Aug. 30, Sept 1, 2007).

  14. For reviews, see the works of Pierre Chambat (1994), Josiane Jouet (2000), and Serge Proulx (2005).

  15. See an example described in the work of Celine Verchère and Emmanuel Anjembe (2010).

  16. When using this argument, sociologists of use often refer to the work of philosopher and historian Michel de Certeau (1984).

  17. The participatory method for the design of industrial objects is a licensed methodology developed by Philippe Mallein (the director of the Ideas Laboratory).

  18. This is Eric von Hippel’s term in referring to the growing involvement of users in innovation processes (von Hippel 2005).

  19. Nanotechnology has indeed been constructed as a program based on expectations for the future (Selin 2007). These expectations are linked to existing products through science policy instruments such as roadmaps and development plans (Laurent 2010a, pp. 26–46).

  20. Author’s interview with the facilitator of the IFOP nanotechnology citizen conference (Paris, January 2009).

  21. Cf. Bourdieu’s call for the “objectivation of the subject of objectivation” (Bourdieu 2004).

  22. Thus, more recent public engagement initiatives in nanotechnology could be studied in the very same terms. For instance, a national public debate on nanotechnology was organized in France in 2009. It was conceived as an opportunity to replicate a technology of democracy already well established, but for which nanotechnology appeared as a difficult trial to pass (Laurent 2010a, b, pp.179–189).

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  1. Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Mines ParisTech, 60 Boulevard Saint-Michel, 75272, Paris Cedex 06, France

    Brice Laurent

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Laurent, B. Technologies of Democracy: Experiments and Demonstrations. Sci Eng Ethics 17, 649–666 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9303-1

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