Essay
On Science and Society
An essay discussing the intricate relations between science and society, with a focus on the varied forms and characteristics of knowledge
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Our Common Ground Final Paper 2013/14Human Geography
Grade: 8
Subject: Science and Society
On Science and Society
There are some great questions that have intrigued and haunted us
since the dawn of humanity: “What is out there?”, “How did we get
here?”, “What is the world made of?” The story of our search to answer
those questions is the story of science […]. The history of science is often
told as a series of „Eureka!‟ moments, the ultimate triumph of the rational
mind. The truth is that power and passion, rivalry and sheer blind chance
have played an equally significant part […]. It is a tale of power, proof,
and passion.
Opening words by Michael J. Moxley
from the 2010 BBC documentary series The Story of Science.
S cience is bifurcated at its very root. Its contradictions exist between its two
aspects: the instrumental and the humanistic – the former aims for rationality
while the latter for emancipation and enlightenment. This has a crucial
implication on how knowledge is conceptualised. As summed up by Aitken and
Valentine (2012, p.11), “knowledge is contested, controversial and partial; […] it is
about power and career enhancement as much as it is about a search for
enlightenment; […] it is about moral integrity and a need to understand more fully
social and spatial injustices, but […] it is also about the academic culture of
particular places and particular times”. Indeed, the history of science has witnessed
changes in dominant concepts as well as in core beliefs in the answers to important
questions for humankind. It would not be ludicrous to postulate that there exists a
close relation between the knowledge that is prevalent, and ultimately science, and
society, with its underlying structures and various forces.
In his 1957 book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi spoke of the concept of the
always-embedded economy. Economic actors, according to him, were not born with a
propensity to barter and trade as seems to be suggested by Adam Smith. Instead, they
are „constructed‟, and in turn, the market in which they operated are also constructed
and embedded in a specific institutional setting. As such, the market itself should not
be separated from the society – the economy for Polanyi is an instituted process. To
take Polanyi‟s proposition a step further, one can argue that it is not only the
economic actor who acts for and in his interest who is socially constructed and
,embedded. The scientist, too, is embedded in his own social context, albeit the
influence of what is here considered „social‟ and „social construct‟ maybe different
from that upon Polanyi‟s economic actor. As Bourdieu (1975) informs us, to do
science is to (competitively) struggle. Science has its own interest, and it appears
„disinterested‟ only when it is considered in relation to a field different than its own. It
is through this „interest‟ that the structure of the field of science can be observed. It is
because of this interest that the social fault lines, the social cleavages, inequality and
unevenness are reflected in the realm of science, among those who practice science.
This essay embraces the position that science cannot be analytically separated
from society. The relationship between science and society is closely knitted: while
the former attempts to study the latter, it is at the same time influenced by the latter in
various ways, and it is used, arguably, by the latter as a mechanism of self-regulation
and self-control. Science has a place in society so that society can reflect upon itself,
yet science of society runs the risks of telling society the story it wants to hear. Such
relationship is particularly important for human geography as a discipline, as while
for some there is great ambivalence around its essence (cf. Dear, 1988), increasingly
attention is being paid to the social structures within which human (spatial) actions
take place. The emergence of structuralist perspective, for example, stresses the role
of social forces, context and structures that previous geographical approaches (e.g.
behaviouralism and humanistic) seem to have overlooked. Interestingly, even this
approach itself, which emphasises the social aspect, has geographical roots (see
Ernste, 2008 on French structuralism). The interconnection between science and
society, therefore, is a prominent one.
The intricate relationship between science and society will be explored within
the scope of this essay in two ways. The first section reviews Bourdieu‟s essay on the
„specificity of the scientific field‟ and Foucault‟s concept of power and discipline, and
how it is exercised within society. Bourdieu‟s and Foucault‟s were selected because
they tie in closely with the somewhat newer body of literature discussed in the
following sections (on Stephan Fuchs, Michael Gunder, Mike Hulme and David
Seidl). The paper concludes by drawing from the context of my own research.
On the scientific field, knowledge and power - Pierre Bourdieu and Michel
Foucault
The scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in
which the specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific
authority, defined inseparably as technical capacity and social
power, or, to put it another way, the monopoly of scientific
competence, in the sense of a particular agent‟s socially recognised
capacity to speak and act legitimately […] in scientific matters.
2
, Bourdieu (1975, p.19)
The scientific field, argues Bourdieu, is a site of struggle for scientific domination.
Scientific choices (i.e. one‟s own research locale, research methods, means and venue
of publication, etc.) are not „free‟ choices. They would be if they are un-determined
by non-scientific factors. In contrast, however, these are active strategies deployed by
researchers and scientists, given their position within the struggle (or the competition)
to gain recognition. Such recognition (among fellow competitors) is a type of social
capital which, when accumulated, transformed into legitimacy and thus authority
(1975, p.21-22). Accumulation occurs when a competitor is able to convince the
others that the scientific capacities he possesses are at the highest position in the
scientific hierarchy (p.24). Some scientists have a clear advantage over the others
from the outset (i.e. better access to resources), but all knows that to accumulate the
social capital they need for the recognition they want, there is a specific „path‟ they
must take (p.25). Doing science, therefore to Bourdieu, is a constant struggle to be
acknowledged and recognised.
Science itself has a self-sustaining mechanism that upholds such interest.
Through what Bourdieu calls „conservation strategies‟, the field of science can
effectively erect invisible (or clearly visible, depending on how one chooses to look at
it) barriers against what it does not wish to consider of its kind. For example, a
university can choose to propagate a certain agenda, or the board of editors of
prestigious journals that is able to pick what to include and what not to, and through
this a division (or a distinction) is made between what is considered „science‟ and
what is not. It is therefore substantially more difficult to subvert the established
system than to conform to it, to build on it, and to extend on what has already been
published. For Bourdieu, the structure of the scientific field can be anything between
the two extremes: one of monopolistic scientific authority, and another of perfect
competition. However, neither is ever achieved because of the inequality, the
unevenness with which scientists are endowed with capacity and legitimacy. As such,
Bourdieu comes to the conclusion that one is limited by the very struggle one is in,
and thus one‟s scientific capacity is no more than the “particular state of science or
scientific institutions with which they are in league” (p.25).
While the education system for Bourdieu can diffuse a specific agenda as an
attempt to conserve existing knowledge and power balance, for Foucault, it is in itself
a site of power, a place where power is exercised and internalised. Power, for
Foucault, is neither centralised nor coercive. It is grassroots, microscopic and
dispersed, diffused through discourse; and in turn, the institutions within a society
facilitate such diffusion: the education system, the prison, the media, etc. There exists
a relation between knowledge and power whereby they constitute each other. Such
constitution is possible as knowledge and power turn society into something that is
governable. As he tells us, “[i]t was through the development of the science of
government that the notion of the economy came to be recentred on to that different
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