The politics of science and sustainable development: Marcuse's new science in the 21st century

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 68-83

  Farrell, Katharine ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BIMODAL ASSOCIATION; ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS; POLITICAL THEORY; SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; THEORETICAL STUDY; TWENTY FIRST CENTURY;

EID: 57649128430     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: 15483290     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455750802559616     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990)
2. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, "A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues," in Robert Costanza (ed.), Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 137-152
3. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, "The Good, the True and the Post-modern," Futures, Vol. 24, No. 10, 1992, pp. 963-976
4. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, "Science for the Postnormal Age," Futures, Vol. 25, No. 7, 1993, pp. 739-755.
5. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, 1991 [1964]), p. 239.
6. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 254.
7. Marcuse, op cit., p. 236, emphasis original.
8. Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990, 1991, 1993), op. cit.
9. Silvio, O. Funtowicz, and Jerome R. Ravetz, "The Worth of a Songbird: Ecological Economics as a Postnormal Science," Ecological Economics Vol. 10, No. 3, 1994, pp. 197-207
10. Jerome R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)
11. Jerome R. Ravetz, The Merger of Knowledge with Power: Essays in Critical Science (London: Mansell, 1990).
12. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (London: University of Chicago Press, 1970 [1962]).
13. T.F.H. Allen, Joseph A. Tainter, J. Chris Pires, and Thomas W. Hoekstra, "Dragnet Ecology - 'Just the Facts, Ma'am': The Privilege of Science in a Postmodern World," BioScience, Vol. 51, No. 6, 2001, pp. 475-485, p. 476.
14. See Fred Luks, "Post-normal Science and the Rhetoric of Inquiry: Deconstructing Normal Science?" Futures, Vol. 31, No. 7, 1999, pp. 705-719. There are strong similarities between this description of postnormal science and Ulrich Beck's description of sub-politics, and it seems plausible to describe postnormal science as a domain of sub-politics.
15. See Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1992). However, whereas Beck looks at these questions from a social theory perspective, the aim here is to focus on the connection between a scientific, methodological description found in postnormal science and the critical theory description advanced by Marcuse.
16. Allen, et al, 2001 op. cit.
17. Mario Giampietro, Multi-scale Integrated Assessment of Agroecosystems (London: CRC Press, 2004).
18. Ravetz, 1990, op. cit.
19. Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott and Michael Gibbons, Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001)
20. Luigi Pellizzoni "Uncertainty and Participatory Democracy," Environmental Values, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2003, pp. 195-224.
21. This is a topic addressed in great detail by Beck, op. cit. in his theory of risk society. Insofar as links between Marcuse's 1964 text and postnormal science are revealed here, systematic consideration of how they relate to Beck's works is clearly a next step.
22. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991, op. cit., p. 137.
23. Ravetz, 1971, op. cit., p. 199
24. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994, op. cit., pp. 204-205. The concept of extended peer review can also be related to Bruno Latour's more recent work concerning the politics of nature and a parliament of things. However, discussing the links between Latour's work and the extended peer review concept would bring us far off our current course, so a simple indication in that direction is all that can be safely accommodated here
25. Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring Science into Democracy (London: Harvard University Press, 2005). For background concerning Latour's position on the construction of scientific facts
26. see Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (London: Sage Publications, 1979)
27. and Bruno Latour, Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (London: Harvard University Press, 1999).
28. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991, op. cit., p. 144.
29. Ibid.
30. Ravetz, 1971, op. cit., pp. 157-162
31. Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), pp. 140, 259.
32. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990, op. cit., p. 210.
33. John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (New York: Holt, 1927), p. 182.
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Farewell Address. Washington D.C. January 17, 1961," in Martin J. Medhurst (ed.), Dwight D. Eisenhower: Strategic Communicator (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 191-192.
35. Max Horkheimer, "Notes on Science and the Crisis," trans. Matthew J. O'Connell, in Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (eds.), Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1989 [1932]), p. 52.
36. Joan Martinez-Alier, The Environmentalism of the Poor (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002), p. 271.
37. Giampietro, 2004, op. cit., p. 77.
38. NUSAP, which stands for Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment, Pedigree, is a kind of scientific results disclosure procedure, developed by Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990, op. cit.
39. Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Matthieu Craye, Silvio Funtowicz, Penny Kloprogge, Jerry Ravetz and James Risbey, "Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Measures of Uncertainty in Model-Based Environmental Assessment: The NUSAP System," Risk Analysis, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2005, pp. 481-492, as a tool for providing scientific information to policy makers in a manner that points out not only the factual assessments but also the imprecision and limitations of the data and procedures of analysis. For more information
40. see: http://www.nusap.net. GLUE (Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation) is a methodology based on Monte Carlo simulation for estimating the predictive uncertainty associated with models. For more information
41. see http://www.es.lancs.ac.uk/hfdg/freeware/ hfdg_freeware_gluepapers.htm. For examples of participatory integrated assessment
42. see B. De Marchi, S.O. Funtowicz, S. Lo Cascio, and G. Munda, "Combining Participative and Institutional Approaches with Multicriteria Evaluation: An Empirical Study for Water Issues in Triona, Sicily," Ecological Economics, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2000, pp. 267-282
43. Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi, "Multiple-Scale Integrated Assessment of Societal Metabolism: Introducing the Approach," Population and Environment, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2000a, pp. 109-153
44. Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi, "Multiple-Scale Integrated Assessment of Societal Metabolism: Integrating Biophysical and Economic Representations Across Scales," Population and Environment, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2000b, pp. 155-210
45. and Giuseppe Munda, "Social Multi-criteria Evaluation: Methodological Foundations and Operational Consequences," European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 158, No. 3, 2004, pp. 662-667. For examples of advanced model sensitivity analysis
46. see Andrea Saltelli, Karen Chan, and E. Marian Scott (eds.), Sensitivity Analysis (London: Wiley, 2000)
47. Andrea Saltelli, Sensitivity Analysis of Scientific Models (London: Wiley, 2007).
48. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990, 1992, op. cit.
49. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, "The Poetry of Thermodynamics," Futures, Vol. 29, No. 9, 1997, pp. 791-810
50. Silvio Funtowicz and Martin O'Connor, "The Passage from Entropy to Thermodynamic Indeterminacy: A Social and Science Epistemology for Sustainability," in Kozo Mayumi and John Gowdy (eds.), Bioeconomics and Sustainability: Essays in Honor of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999), pp. 257-286.
51. Marcuse, op. cit.
52. Albert Camus, The Rebel (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953 [1951]).
53. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 14.
54. Here it should be noted that Marcuse's discussion of technology as ideology is quite different from the valorization of technology in the form of proactive cyborgism, as proposed by Donna Haraway (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
55. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991). Where she proposes that the technologization of human interactions should be embraced, had Marcuse the chance to respond, we might expect him to classify Haraway's cyborgism as a form of one-dimensional technological fetishism, lacking precisely the kind of critical stance that is so difficult to achieve from within a world where technology is the dominant ideology.
56. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 168, emphasis original.
57. Ibid., p. 98, emphasis original.
58. Ibid., p. 137.
59. Ibid., p. 141.
60. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1967 [1925])
61. Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959 [1929]).
62. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 233.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 235.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., pp. 150-151.
67. Ibid., p. 237, emphasis original.
68. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1997, op. cit.
69. Funtowicz and O'Connor, op. cit.
70. see Latour, 2005, op. cit.
71. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 149.
72. Ibid., p. 128.
73. Ibid., p. 183.
74. Ibid., p. 209.
75. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, "Emergent Complex Systems," Futures, Vol. 26, No. 6, 1994, pp. 568-582
76. Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1997, op. cit.
77. Funtowicz and O'Connor, op. cit.
78. E.g., Sabine U. O'Hara, "Discursive Ethics in Ecosystems Valuation and Environmental Policy," Ecological Economics, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1996, pp. 95-107
79. Sybille van den Hove, "Participatory Approaches to Environmental Policy-making: The European Commission Climate Policy Process as a Case Study," Ecological Economics, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2000, pp. 457-472
80. De Marchi, et al, op. cit.
81. Pellizzoni, op. cit.
82. Graham Smith, Deliberative Democracy and the Environment (London: Routledge, 2003)
83. Munda, op. cit.
84. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action - Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann, 1984)
85. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action - Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge: Polity, 1987)
86. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)
87. John S. Dryzek, Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy (London: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1987)
88. John S. Dryzek, Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
89. Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971 [1968]).
90. Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, trans. Hella Beister, Max Pensky and William Rehg (Oxford: Polity Press, 2003).
91. Horkheimer, op. cit.
92. Indeed, just such changes are oberservable in the Netherlands. There the consequences of successful water mangement systems - which were used to literally create huge tracts of that country - are now leading to a complete reconceptualization of the role of people, water and technology in the country's water management systems. See, Rutger van der Brugge, Jan Rotmans and Derk Loorbach, "The Transition in Dutch Water Management," Regional Environmental Change, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2005, pp. 164-176
93. Rutger van der Brugge and Jan Rotmans, "Towards Transition Management of European Water Resources," Water Resources Management, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2006. pp. 249-267.