Representing Biotechnology: An Ethnography of Quebec Science Policy
Abstract
In recent years, the sociology of science has been profoundly renewed by the use of an ethnographic approach to the study of scientific practice. The same cannot be said of science policy studies. Only a limited number of authors have studied in detail the construction and application of particular science policy programmes, and their contributions are mostly based on the a posteriori examination of public documents. In this paper, we resort to an ethnographic approach in order to study how the science and technology staff of the Quebec Government, starting in 1981, went about devising policy measures as part of what they saw as a general science policy framework for biotechnology. Science policy practices, at least at that stage, appear to be first and foremost representational practices grounded in particular kinds of literary activities characterized by an extended intertextual web. In such a framework, the native category of file or dossier plays a central role, allowing for the basic classificatory operations in which representations are grounded.
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Research for this paper has been made possible by grants from the PAFACC programme of the Université du Québec à Montréal, and from the `Programme des Actions structurantes' of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Science, Gouvernement du Québec. This study would not have been possible without the open cooperation of the civil servants interviewed and the authorization given by deputy ministers for complete access to government documents; to all of them we want to extend our grateful thanks.
1.
1. B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979; 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); M. Lynch, Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985); K. D. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981).
2.
2. E. Shils (ed.), Criteria for Scientific Development: Public Policy and National Goals (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1968); R. Gilpin, France in the Age of the Scientific State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968); J.-J. Salomon, Science et politique (Paris: Seuil, 1970); R. Duchesne, La science et le pouvoir au Québec (1920-1965) (Québec: Editeur officiel du Québec, 1978); H. A. Averch, A Strategic Analysis of Science and Technology Policy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); C. H. Davis and R. Duchesne, `De la culture scientifique à la maîtrise sociale des nouvelles technologies, 1960-1985', Questions de culture, Vol. 10 (1986), 123-50.
3.
3. D. S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York: New American Library, 1971); G. B. Doern, Science and Politics in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972); P. Aucoin and R. French, Savoir, pouvoir et politique générale (Ottawa: Conseil des sciences du Canada, 1974).
4.
4. D. Bennett, P. Glasner and D. Travis, The Politics of Uncertainty: Regulating Recombinant DNA Research in Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
5.
5. J. M. Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1976).
6.
6. B. Latour, Science in Action (Milton Keynes, Bucks.: Open University Press, 1987).
7.
7. S. L. Star, `Introduction: The Sociology of Science and Technology', Social Problems, Vol. 35 (1988), 197-205.
8.
8. E. M. Gerson and S. L. Star, `Representation and Rerepresentation in Scientific Work' (unpublished manuscript, San Francisco, CA: Tremont Research Institute, 1987); Lynch, op. cit. note 1; M. Lynch and S. Woolgar (eds), Representation in Scientific Work, special issue of Human Studies, Vol. 11 (1988); B. Latour and J. De Noblet (eds), Les Vues de l'Esprit, special issue of Culture Technique, No. 14 (1985).
9.
9. Latour, op. cit. note 6.
10.
10. M. Callon and J. Law, `On the Construction of Sociotechnical Networks: Content and Context Revisited', Knowledge and Society (forthcoming).
11.
11. Latour, op. cit. note 6, 254 ff.
12.
12. Examples of the possible outcomes of such an endeavour can be found in M. Callon (ed.), La science et ses réseaux (Paris-Strasbourg: Editions La Découverte-Conseil de l'Europe, 1989); Latour, op. cit. note 6; and M. Callon, J. Law and A. Rip (eds), Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology (London: Macmillan, 1986).
13.
13. See, for example, S. Woolgar (ed.), Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers (London: Sage, 1988).
14.
14. Gouvernement du Québec, A l'heure des biotechnologies: Programme d'intervention pour le développement de la recherche en biotechnologies au Québec: Phase I: 1982-1987 (Québec: Secrétariat au Développement scientifique, 1982).
15.
15. Gouvernement du Québec, Un projet collectif: Enoncé d'orientation et plan d'action pour la mise en oeuvre d'une politique québécoise de la recherche scientifique (Québec: Editeur officiel du Québec, 1980).
16.
16. The Secretariat for Scientific Development was created in November 1980, under the responsibility of the Minister of State for Cultural and Scientific Development; it took the name of Secretariat for Science and Technology in September 1982 under a junior minister (`Ministre délégué'), and became a fully fledged ministry, the Ministry for Science and Technology, in June 1983. These transformations show the growing importance given to the science and technology domain by the government, as well as illustrating the instability of the institutional organization of science policy in Quebec as in almost all other governments.
17.
17. The Canadian constitution gives to the provinces full responsibility in certain domains, such as natural resources and education, but the federal government also supports, as the provinces do, industrial development and university research, creating an overlap rich in conflicts and competition.
18.
18. Government of Canada, Biotechnology: A Development Plan for Canada: Report of the Task Force on Biotechnology (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1981).
19.
19. Government of Canada, Biotechnology in Canada: Background Paper No. 11 (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Science and Technology, 1980).
20.
20. Government of Canada, Biotechnology: An Approach to National Development (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Science and Technology, MOSST-03-81-DP, 1981).
21.
21. The Conseil de la politique scientifique du Québec was created in January 1972. It was reorganized and took the name of Conseil de la science et de la technologie by the same law which provided for the new Ministère de la Science et de la Technologie in June 1983.
22.
22. Gouvernement du Québec, op. cit. note 14.
23.
23. Gouvernement du Québec, Le Virage technologique: Bâtir le Québec, Phase 2: Programme d'action économique 1982-1986 (Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, 1982).
24.
24. These assumptions are not an exclusive feature of `common-sense' representations; for instance, Mertonian sociology of science is based on the axiomatic idea of the specificity of science; contributions in the `new' sociology of science, with their stress on treating scientific activity as a kind of work, have been accused of not taking into account the specificity of scientific practices.
25.
25. All interviews and documents used in this paper are in French; all quotes have been translated by us. We are, of course, aware of the fact that translations, especially when analyzing discourse, are a very problematic issue. We will use interchangeably the English terms `file' and `dossier' to translate the French term `dossier'. We will avoid using the English term `record', which, in the present context, refers to the French term `inventaire' (as we will see, a central component of files) and use instead the term `inventory' to translate the latter term.
26.
26. The `external/internal' dichotomy will be evoked on several occasions in this text. We would like to stress from the very outset that we do not intend to confer a firm epistemic status to this dichotomy and, therefore, we will not use it as an analytical tool. Rather, we conceive of it as the sometimes shifting and sometimes temporarily stabilized result of the activities of participants positioning themselves on both sides of an interactively constructed boundary. As noted before, the analysis presented in this paper deals with the governmental side of this process. For a critique of the internal/external dichotomy, see A. Pickering, `Big Science as a Form of Life', in M. De Maria and M. Grilli (eds), The Restructuring of the Physical Sciences in Europe and the United States, 1945-1960 (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, forthcoming); for a critique of the content/context dichotomy, see Callon & Law, op. cit. note 10.
27.
27. S. Wheeler (ed.), On Record: Files and Dossiers in American Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1969).
28.
28. One of the authors (A. C.) is presently conducting a study of the construction of medical files in a hospital where a computer-based system for the handling of clinical data is being introduced.
29.
29. Every document bears a stamp showing, among other information, the file number.
30.
30. Here the term `dossier' refers to a subset of the overall dossier: for example the dossier `international cooperation' is a standard dossier belonging to the biotechnology dossier.
31.
31. For a stimulating analysis of conventions, see H. S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982).
32.
32. G. N. Gilbert and M. Mulkay, Opening Pandora's Box (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 187.
33.
33. The origin of the humorous piece is unknown (the text circulated in English). We have respected the original layout.
34.
34. The Quebec Government classification distinguishes between `fonctionnaires', including the clerical personnel, `professionnels', with university degrees and without managerial responsibilities, but responsible for dossier definition and/or implementation, and `administrateurs' who manage services, directions and general directorates. Deputy ministers, and assistant deputy ministers, appointed by Cabinet, run ministries under the political supervision of ministers and belong to the category of `administrateurs d'Etat'.
35.
35. Gerson & Star, op. cit. note 8.
36.
36. We use the term `trajectory' as a rough translation for the French word `filière'. It may be added that, since technologies are implemented within industries, even when a classification by technological trajectory is adopted, government officials have to think in terms of industrial sectors. As pointed out during an interview, this apparently requires peculiar skills: `Professional employees who monitor a technological trajectory instead of a sector have none the less to keep in touch with industries, with the real people, without stumbling over the feet of their colleagues who monitor sectors. Professionals able to do this are difficult to find: they must exercise diplomatic skills [towards their colleagues] while maintaining direct links with the industry'.
37.
37. These officials felt the necessity of legitimating their initiative by arguing that their mandate included keeping abreast of possible future developments in the pharmaceutical sector. Again, one can see that the existence of a mandate is perceived as a sine qua non condition for the start of an activity; the actual content of the mandate can, of course, be negotiated.
38.
38. Of course, during interviews people may retrospectively speak of the `biotechnology dossier' when recalling this period, but this is clearly an anachronism.
39.
39. This is not, of course, the place to analyze how `biotechnology' became a recognized entity in the international arena. We can only point to the fact that several foreign governments issued reports on this matter; particularly important for the Quebec Government, given its cultural and political links with France, were J. de Rosnay, Biotechnologies et bioindustries (Paris: Seuil-La documentation française, 1979) and J.-C. Pelissolo, La Biotechnologie, demain? Rapport au Premier Ministre (Paris: Délégation générale à la recherche scientifique et technique, 1980); also important were Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development, Advisory Board for the Research Councils, The Royal Society, Biotechnology: Report of a Joint Working Party (London: HMSO, 1980) and OECD, Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy, Biotechnology and Government Policies (Paris: OECD, 1981). We may add that even a cursory glance at this kind of document shows that issues of definition and classification (`What is biotechnology?', `Which disciplines belong to it?', `How does biotechnology fit within the existing industrial structure?', and so on) occupy an important place.
40.
40. Whenever we use the term `reality' in this text, we do not intend to make any ontological claim. We simply refer to the category mobilized by government officials to account for what they perceived and constructed as `external constraints', such as in the expression: `We have to take into account the economic (or political, partisan, and so on) reality'.
41.
41. See note 17.
42.
42. This had been made especially clear for science and technology policy in the critical assessment of the Canadian Federal Ministry of State for Science and Technology by Aucoin & French, op. cit. note 3.
43.
43. The `Ministère du Conseil exécutif' is the Quebec equivalent of a Privy Council, the Prime Minister's own ministry, devoted to general planning of governmental actions and the consistent integration and supervision of all the other ministries policies. It provides support for the different ministerial committees and embodies light structures, called secretariats, under the responsibility of Ministers of State or Junior Ministers (`ministres délégués'). This is why secretariats are said to have an `horizontal' mandate.
44.
44. The `Ministère de l'Energie et des Ressources' in charge of energy, mining and forest policies.
45.
45. Gerson & Star, op. cit. note 8.
46.
46. B. Latour, `Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands', Knowledge and Society Studies: Past and Present, Vol. 6 (1986), 1-40.
47.
47. See also J. H. Fujimura, S. L. Star and E. M. Gerson, `Méthodes de recherche en sociologie des sciences: travail, pragmatisme et interactionnisme symbolique', Cahiers de recherche sociologique, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1987), 63-83; Star, `Layered Space, Formal Representations and Long-Distance Control: The Politics of Information' (paper presented to the conference on `The Place of Science', Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, May 1989).
48.
48. A. Cambrosio, C. H. Davis and P. Keating, `Le Québec face aux biotechnologies', Politique, No. 8 (1985), 77-101.
49.
49. Gerson & Star, op. cit. note 8. As pointed out by a reviewer, further research on `how universities, and other interested parties, went about including and excluding persons, labs, and so on, from the category of “biotechnician”, and how this was seen to have various practical pay-offs for the universities and scientists', could certainly be very rewarding. However, this is outside the scope of the present paper.
50.
50. S. Raffel, Matters of Fact (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 48.
51.
51. Raffel, ibid., 48-49, goes on by noting that: `When the grounds of recording are examined, the “real” world ceases to be a given. Rather, the grounds which make it seem reasonable to write records determine in advance both the characteristics of actual records and of the “real world” as it will appear to record-writers. It is not that records record things but that the very idea of recording determines in advance how things will have to appear. A record is a way of giving evidence, and a way of giving evidence is to record what one witnesses. Consequently, insofar as the “real world” is constituted by and through its record, it is simultaneously constituted by and through the enforced conceptions of adequate evidence as witnessable evidence which create and limit the activity of observation'.
52.
52. On lists and, particularly, on how they are reflexively tied to organizational mandates, see also J. Law and M. Lynch, `Lists, Field Guides, and the Descriptive Organization of Seeing: Bird Watching as an Exemplary Observational Activity', Human Studies, Vol. 11 (1988), 271-305.
53.
53. Latour, op. cit. note 6.
54.
54. Gerson & Star, op. cit. note 8.
55.
55. The lack of bioindustries in Quebec was a major problem facing science policy officials, who conceived of their task as that of facilitating the technology transfer from the university to industries yet to be born; see Cambrosio, Davis & Keating, op. cit. note 48.
56.
56. It is, of course, not possible to define a priori what should count as `technical', as opposed, for example, to `political' criteria. We use these labels only to point to the heterogeneous nature of the classificatory practices we analyze.
57.
57. Despite the diversity of criteria, officials still faced the threat of being blamed for not having taken into account yet other criteria, a case in point being claims from members of parliament of due attention not having been paid to regional (read: electoral) considerations.
58.
58. On the notion of `situated actions', see L. Suchman, Plans and Situated Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); on negotiations, see A. Strauss, Negotiations (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1978).
59.
59. By using the term `arbitrary', we do not mean, of course, that the inventory's categories do not adequately represent `the world out there', nor do we mean that the inventory is the result of random or idiosyncratic decisions taken by a limited number of individuals. In fact, in line with the argument of this paper, we do fully agree with the remark of a reviewer that `what “biotechnology” is likely to include (either as a bureaucratic dossier, or scientific domain), has no determinate a priori shape until the interaction between agencies, universities, and previously established networks of scientists gets underway. Both dossier and scientific domain, it seems, take shape as this multifaceted interaction proceeds'. `Arbitrary', thus, is used here in a sense reminiscent of Everett C. Hughes' dictum `It could have been otherwise'; see E. C. Hughes, The Sociological Eye (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1970), 552. People or institutions who have been excluded from the interactive construction process might then come to perceive it as `arbitrary' — that is, as not corresponding to what they construct as `the world out there'.
60.
60. On the notion of `enrollment', see, for example, M. Callon and J. Law, `On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrollment and Counter-Enrollment', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12 (1982), 615-25.
61.
61. See, for example, L. Boltanski, Les cadres (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1982). Callon & Law, op. cit. note 10, and Latour, op. cit. note 6, have greatly extended and refined the notion of `spokesperson', applying it in a symmetrical way to situations where the relevant groups are both human and non-human. Thus, to stay in the domain of biotechnology, a molecular biologist can be a spokesperson not only for his/her fellow molecular biologists, but also for the population of genetically engineered E. coli.
62.
62. On `uncertainty', see S. L. Star, `Scientific Work and Uncertainty', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 15 (1985), 391-427.
63.
63. To avoid any semantic confusion, it should be clear that our use of the term `intertextuality' is distinct from those current in literary analysis. It simply signalizes the empirically observed practice of explicit and implicit referencing and quoting between documents, without implying adherence on our part to a particular school of literary criticism.
64.
64. The document produced by professionals will need the approval of the direction of his service, of its directorate or of the directorate general. It will also be screened by the assistant deputy minister and finally be discussed and eventually approved, by the deputy minister (or the `Bureau des sous-ministres' [BSM], the coordination team of the ministry) and only then sent to the minister and his private cabinet. Once it has the minister's approval, it may take the form of a memorandum sent to the Treasury Board, to one or more ministerial committees (and the secretariats staffing them) and finally may go to Cabinet. Needless to say, this process almost always involves a lot of see-saw episodes and numerous revisions.
65.
65. A parallel might be drawn with the persuasive power of references in scientific texts; see G. N. Gilbert, `Referencing as Persuasion', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 17 (1977), 113-22. On the related topic of the persuasive power of scientific texts, see J. Law and R. J. Williams, `Putting Facts Together: A Study of Scientific Persuasion', ibid., Vol. 12 (1982), 535-58.
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