Pascal Mwale
Democratization of Science and Biotechnological Development:
Public Debate on GM Maize in South Africa
Abstract
The Mandela government that came into power in
1994 made the democratization of science and technology a priority in post-apartheid
South Africa (Joubert 2001: 316). Attendant
ideas of Science Communication and Public Understanding of Biotechnology have hitherto become currency in South Africa’s public sector drive towards the
democratization of science. Democratization of science and technology implies
that the people as non-experts are an integral part of all deliberations on
policy, regulation and control of science and technology, for example, in
debates or controversies on issues arising from biotechnology. Democratization of
science and technology is about the sociopolitical control of science and
technology by wider society. Science and technology must be controlled by wider
society because evil-minded groups of people can ill-use it to inflict harm on
other groups of people. Moreover, certain unscrupulous and corrupt business
entities can collude with the state and/or powerful and influential
sociopolitical figures in societies to exploit and abuse indigenous scientific
resources as well as endogenous modes of specialized scientific knowledge. On the latter, for example, they
can evoke intellectual property rights (IPR) to patent resources that are not
theirs historically. Thus, the ideal-type of democracy makes it imperative for
the people of South Africa and of other societies in Africa
to understand and actively participate in developments in science and
technology. This need necessitates increasing
scholarly attention to be given to questions of science communication and
public understanding of science, arising at the intersection between science,
society and politics in South and southern Africa. Some of the major drivers of the
processes of the democratization of science are social movements, which are
elements of civil society (Ballard, Habib and Valodia 2006). Social movements
do fill and are apt to fill an important gap in science communication and
public understanding of biotechnology in South and southern Africa. Scientists are accused generally
of being poor communicators of science and technology, preferring to work in
isolation, behind closed doors, in laboratories (Latour 1987). Science
communities are notoriously insular (Weingart et
al
2000). News media practitioners are
accused of misrepresenting-- by distorting, oversimplifying, or
sensationalizing-- science in public domains and of passively resisting science
communication
(Joubert
2001: 324-5). Yet there is a lack of scholarly attention to the role of social
movements in the democratization of science in Africa as a whole. Practically, the democratization
of science is partial, ad hoc, and biased in South and southern Africa.
Therefore, overall, it is unclear what the nature and role of interventions of
social movements are in the democratisation of science in Africa.
Introduction
Aim of paper
This paper selects as a case the
South African debate on GM maize. First, the paper looks at the background to
the processes of the democratization of science in South Africa.
Second, the paper puts the idea of ‘civil society’ in the crucible, that
is, South Africa, examining specifically the nature, role,
scope and limits of ‘social movements’ in science communication in South Africa. Biowatch SA’s intervention into GM
regulation in South Africa is selected as a specific instance
of the case study. The overall aim of the paper is to help improve our
understanding about the dynamics of public debate on biotechnology in South Africa by looking at the case of public
debate on GM maize. Rather than attempt to arrive at neat and tight conclusions
about the democratisation of science as well as the attendant ideas of science
communication and public understanding of science, the paper will further
complicate these ideas with the hope of suggesting critical insights into the
interaction between science, society and politics. The paper argues that inasmuch as the
intervention of social movements might be the drivers of the democratisation of
science—as they help fill a gap filled neither by scientists nor news media
practitioners-- the conceptual morass in
which the idea of civil society is swamped renders it extremely difficult for
thinkers to readily appreciate its political potency and agency in Africa
vis-à-vis biotechnological development. Civil society, as an idea, is
ill-defined. The
regrettable result is science miscommunication and public misunderstanding of
biotechnology in South and southern Africa. To remedy science miscommunication and public
misunderstanding of biotechnology, the paper recommends more issue-specific and
multi-stakeholder studies around biotechnology at both country and regional
level.
The Democratization of
Science, Science Communication and Public Understanding of Biotechnology in
South and southern Africa
Southern African societies –just like their counterparts in the
developed world in the post-Human Genome Project era—are yet to discover
science fully. This is in spite of all the life-changing decisions and
activities at the level of macro policy- and decision-making within science
communities and the state. After the dismantling of both dictatorial and racist
regimes in southern Africa—totalitarian regimes which excluded the vast majority of the people
from both politics and science--a crucial and urgent need arose in the emerging
democratic regimes of the region for the democratization of science. The
ideal-type of democracy makes it imperative for people of South Africa and whole societies in the region to understand and actively
participate in developments in science and technology.
The process of the
consolidation of democracy has ignored, and failed dismally to recognise, the
central place and crucial role of ‘the people’, that is, non-experts, in
science and technology communication in the region. There is need for ‘the
democratization of science’ in the region, and in Africa at large.
There is a general consensus among
theorists of democracy that the further development of the postcolonial African
state will not be achieved without our being cognizant of and respecting the centrality of involving ‘the people’ in
both policy- and decision-making as well
as in actual developmental tasks. Catchall phrases like ‘participatory parity’
(Fraser 1993), ‘the bottom-up approach’ (Obadare 2004), ‘public understanding
of science/biotechnology’, among others, attest to this realisation on the part
of theorists of democracy of the centrality of ‘the people’ in development.
These phrases point to the need for broad-based, or community-wide,
participation in developmental planning and implementation.
Perhaps due to the
over-determination of the ideal-type of democracy, on the one hand, and the rapid pace of advances in science and
technology, for example, biotechnology, on the other hand, the democratic imperative of
participatory parity, or the
all-inclusiveness of voices, in biotechnological policy-and
decision-making has been low and poor,
if not non-existent.
At the
continental level, biotechnology raises both hopes and fears in individuals and
diverse groups of people in Africa because it has enormous implications for Africa’s development. As Fukuyama (2002) argues, in biotechnology both the good and the bad are
‘closely interconnected’, and hence the need for tight political controls over
biotechnological development, use, or research (Fukuyama
2002:181-2). Africa’s involvement in the global biotechnology movement could lead to a
shift in Africa’s location, from the periphery to the centre of the global
technology movement. Unlike other kinds of science and technology,
biotechnology allows Africa to leapfrog; the operating knowledge is not contained only within
the Euro-American cluster. African scientists, for example, are investigating
various aspects of 80, 000 cells that will collectively define genetic
‘characteristics and proclivities’ of every person on the globe. This repositioning
of Africa in the global biotechnology movement and on the world market has
enormous implications for the development of the continent, potentially leading
to significant changes in global power politics and important shifts in
international economic and trade relations. Biotechnology could positively
change the position of Africa on the world market.
South Africa’s Public Sector Drive towards the Democratizations of Science
South Africa provides a relevant and an
interesting context for beginning to study the problematic idea of the
democratisation of science as well as the attendant ideas of science
communication and public understanding of science. In southern Africa, South Africa plays a leading role in
biotechnology. South Africa, as the regional leader of
biotechnological innovations, also becomes the crucible for testing new models
of international agricultural economics as well as the initial market for
multinational companies’ ventures into biotechnology in southern Africa.
South Africa was the first southern African country to conduct experiments on GM
cropping in 1997. GM crops, such as GM cotton, have been grown commercially in South Africa since 1997. The South African government gave its approval for
commercial activities on GM maize cropping in 1998. A year later, in 1999
parliament passed the GMO Act.
The South African National Biosafety Strategy was published in 2001. Futhi, a
much-improved South African dairy cow, was the first higher mammal to be cloned
on the African continent in 2003.
South Africa is currently engaged in innovative research on human migration
patterns based on tracking of mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
Impressive as these policy and practical strides the country has
taken into the new biotechnology might look, the issues which biotechnology raises are
knotty and sticky, and have led to profound and persistent disagreements in South Africa’s public domains since the
commercialisation of GM crops in 1998. Since then, South Africa has found herself at the centre of
intense and deep controversies surrounding GM cropping, stem cell research,
cloning, antiretrovirals (arvs), among others, providing a regional platform
for public debates on conflictual scientific issues that originated outside Africa. South Africa is, inescapably, the epicentre of
public debate on GM technology. For Van der Walt, because
of its leading position in science and technology in southern Africa, South Africa ‘has become
the primary biotechnological battleground in Africa’ (Van der Walt 2000: 35).
As far as science and technology are concerned, post-apartheid South Africa has a big public sector drive. Science and technology are integral to human development in the new South Africa—no matter how development is characterized. According to the South African government’s White Paper on Science and Technology (September 4, 1996), South Africa will use science and technology to provide basic services, infrastructure and effective health for all South Africans and to become economically competitive on a global scale.
Since 1994, the state has made a number of landmark decisions and crucial initiatives to put the people at the centre of deliberations on policy, regulation and control of science and technology. For example, four years into the new dispensation, South Africa declared 1998 the Year of Science and Technology in South Africa (YEAST 1998). The aim of YEAST 1998 was to make South Africans more aware of how Science and Technology affected them in their everyday life. At present, South Africa is the only government in southern Africa that has a Science Communication unit and a Public Understanding of Biotechnology program. The South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) houses both the unit and the program. SAASTA is a business unit of the National Research Foundation (NRF). The Science Communication unit of SAASTA aims to develop and implement new science communication initiatives in response to national challenges and needs ‘in line with international trends in the field of science communication.’ As a concept, science communication is multi-stakeholder, bringing within its purview such players as scientists, news media practitioners, statespersons and politicians, and social movements—in short, it involves both expert and non-expert publics. The Public Understanding of Biotechnology program of SAASTA aims to ‘promote a clear understanding of the potential of biotechnology and to ensure broad public awareness, dialogue and debate on its current and potential future applications, including Genetic Modification (GM).’ The Public Understanding of Biotechnology program is committed to incorporating the views of non-expert publics into discussions and debates on developments in biotechnology, especially in genetic modifications technology and its most notable products like GM maize. Additionally, South Africa initiated the Southern African Science Communication Network (SASCON), which is also housed by SAASTA. As a regional networking unit, SASCON ‘believes that the way southern Africans understand, communicate and use science and technology significantly affects their economic, social and environmental wellbeing.’ Thus, it aims to provide a forum for scientific knowledge and information exchange, to improve non-expert publics’ understandings of science, and to improve news media’s engagement with science.
Thus, Mandela’s vision to democratize science and technology
explains South Africa’s commitment to promoting science communication and public understanding
of biotechnology. Overall, South Africa’s drive towards the democratization of science and technology has
(universalizable) justification.
Non-experts are key social actors in science communication for at least
three reasons. First, non-experts are the major consumers of products of
science and technology. They ought to
have a say in major decisions and activities of scientists and relevant
government agencies. Second, scientists need the goodwill of non-experts in order to get public support and secure funding from the public sector for their
research. Third, recent surveys have shown that social perceptions of non-experts and those of the media are in
approximate alignment with science news stories. In other words, non-experts
play an important role in determining what science news stories make it to
print or air (see, for example, Trumbo et al 1998: 240; McInerney et al 2004:
347; Tanner 2004: 353, 360).
One significant dimension of the problematic of the democratization of science is how non-experts can be said to understand, discuss and debate the latest developments in science and technology such as biotechnology and its most notable products. The question of the democratization of science is challenging because it is fundamentally about the participation of non-experts in science and technology.
Therefore, whereas the overall goal
of the paper is to help improve our understanding about the dynamics of public
debate on biotechnology in South Africa by looking at the case of public debate
on GM maize, the paper actually isolates for illustratory and elucidatory
purposes the particular case of Biowatch SA, a local social movement registered
as an environmental non-governmental organisation and it was formed in 1997.
Social Movements and the Democratization of Science
Quite
evidently then, the question that is still lingering is how to get non-expert
publics or ‘the people’ to discuss and debate biotechnology in particular or
science and technology in general. In spite of a big public sector drive, there
is a gap filled by neither the scientists nor the media in science
communication and public understanding of biotechnology in South
Africa. This in spite of
the fact that both scientists and news media practitioners claim to have social
legitimacy because they uphold ‘the public value’ and work for ‘the public
interest’. Social movements try to fill the gap left by scientists and the news
media. They evoke public value and public interest to try to legitimate their
intervention in society. Social movements are important
in public scientific controversy and public debate on biotechnology because--
in spite of their well-known or traditional role as activists and lobbyists in
the sociopolitical as well as ethical and cultural realms of society-- they
play a significant educational role as scientific information providers. Using
appropriate mediating and dissemination instruments especially the print news
media, social movements articulate the basic science underlying the key
scientific issues arising in the debate, thereby providing crucial detail about
the basic science. They also fuel, or accentuate, public critique –that puts
the evidence, legitimacy and credibility of the experiments and findings to
question-- by proffering the counter-science or the alternative scientific or
quasi-scientific evidence. Thus, social
movements can help us begin to appreciate not only the fate of science in
public domains but also the extent to which science is vulnerable when it is
exposed to public critical examination, outside its professional field of
production, for example, the laboratory or the scientific community.
Non-experts stand to benefit significantly from social movements’
role as educators, information providers, and articulators of science in public
debate on science. In South and southern Africa, and in the case of the
experimental science of genetic modifications technology and its most notable
products, social movements –if seen as activists and lobbyists-- contribute
greatly to the intensification of the controversy over experimental science in
that they bolster and augment their arguments or reasoned opinions with
non-scientific discourses such as human rights,
democratic governance, colonialism and imperialism,
postcolonial or post-independence development,
and globalization discourses, among
other non-scientific discourses. It can
be suggested that by exploring social movements’ public engagement in debate on
controversial biotechnological products such as GM maize, it is possible to begin
to notice clearly the problematic intersection between science, politics and
society. An exploration of how one social movement intervened in GM regulation
in South Africa is one of the most feasible
ways of beginning to look closely at the
problematic idea of the democratization of science.
Biowatch SA Takes the
State and the Biotech Corporate Industry to Court
South Africa did not itself experience food shortages
in the 2001/2002 season. The southern African GM debates that was triggered by
widespread acute hunger in the southern region forms the background to the
court case in which Biowatch SA took the State and multinational GM seed
company Monsanto and its allies and licensees to court on the behalf of ‘the
people’ in what it called a ‘public interest’ case. Briefly UN WFP offered GM
maize, procured from the US, to hunger-stricken countries. The
US-produced GM maize met with resistance in the region, which led to Zambia’s total rejection of the GM maize grain
and conditional acceptance by the majority of countries in the region. Biowatch SA sued both the state and the
biotech industry in the Pretoria High Court in what turned out to be a rather
protracted, emotive court trial, from 2004 to 2005. Biowatch SA accused them of
withholding information from ‘the people’ on the risks and dangers of GM
technology. It wanted the ‘veil of
secrecy’ on information on GMOs to be removed. In its submissions to the high
court, Biowatch SA argued that since July 2000, the Department of Agriculture
had consistently denied it access to information on GM field trial licenses or
permits. In spite of that, Biowatch SA argued, South African law on GMOs –the
GMO Act (1999)--specified that no modified crops could be released unless there
had been a ‘suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks’ to human health
and the environment. ‘The people,’ who Biowatch SA claimed it represented, were
entitled-or had a right of-- access to information which affected their
environment, and so the high court should have assessed for itself whether or
not the information was ‘genuinely confidential’.
The state [Department of Agriculture, the Executive Council for
GMOs, and the Registrar for Genetic Resources] and the biotech industry
[Monsanto and Stoneville Pedigree Seed Co.] counter-argued that some of the
information Biowatch SA was seeking was ‘confidential’ and could not be
disclosed to it. On March 3, 2005, the high court ruled in favor of Biowatch SA. In the ruling, the
high court judge ordered the state to give Biowatch SA the information it had
been requesting--but to which it had been denied access-- for four years. On the next day, March 4, 2005, the Department of Agriculture reportedly began to prepare the
information for Biowatch SA, in compliance with the high court order.
Notably, soon after the high court drama the state instituted a
study on the implications of GM maize imports on South Africa’s export trade. The state put on hold GM maize imports into South Africa, implying that in the course of the studies, no GM maize imports
were allowed into South
Africa. The study
began in March 2005 and was scheduled to be completed early 2006. The
Department of Trade and Industry launched a study to assess the implications of
GM maize imports on South
Africa’s export
trade. This state-run study was in response to society-wide concerns—as
expressed by certain ‘social movements’ in various public forums—that GM maize imports would depress local maize
prices and hinder robust exports to markets abroad where consumers rejected GM
products. The department also launched two supplementary studies; the first, to
assess the implications of GM products within the SADC region, where most
countries had rejected GM products; the second, to assess the trade
implications for South
Africa as an
exporter of GM products.
Social Movements and Civil Society in General
Biowatch SA is a nongovernmental organization involved largely in
environmental activism in South Africa. It is a ‘social movement’
(Greenstein 2005). The high court case described above raises important
questions, chief of which is about the sources of authority and power of
‘social movements’ and ‘civil society’ as a whole. ‘Social movements’ are
generally conceived of as instantiations or elements of ‘civil society’. Arguably, the idea of civil society has
western roots. The question of the origin, or provenance, of ‘civil society’
has been a subject of extensive debate, especially about the meaning,
applicability, and use of the idea of civil society in non-western contexts
like Africa (See, for example, Bratton 1989; Callaghy 1994; Camaroff and
Camaroff 1999; Chandhoke 2001; Deakin 2001; Ferguson 1980; Gellner 1990; Howell
and Pearce 2001; Hutchful 1998; Kavraji and Khilnani 2001). Not wishing to be
drawn into the rather frustrating and sterile ‘ancestry of civil society’
debate, some African thinkers have even gone to the extent of proposing an
‘alternative genealogy of civil society’ for Africa (Obadare 2004).
The Idea of Civil Society
in Africa
Social movements, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are
not a new phenomenon in Africa. Nyang’oro (cited in Bashaw
2001) observes that nongovernmental organizations ‘have been actors on the
development stage for several decades,’ prior to global financiers like the
World Bank, or global governmental organizations such the United Nations, or
any other official relief agency. Academic experts and higher education
institutions ‘discovered’ NGOs and gave them international attention only in
the mid-1980s (Nyang’oro in Bishaw 2001: 251). For several years, NGOs have
occupied a central place in people’s economic and social life in Africa. NGOs’ interventionist
work in emergency food, refugee shelter and rehabilitation and in community
development is acknowledged universally. Their intervention in Ethiopia’s
1985/6 food crisis is inerasably memorable. Other than charity and relief, on
the political plane, NGOs have successfully mobilized the people towards
resistance against totalitarian rule, resulting in positive political change,
for example, the United Democratic Front (UDF) in South Africa, Public Affairs Committee (PAC) in Malawi,
and numerous others outside Africa such as in South America.
However, social movements in Africa are constrained and limited in important ways. The constraints are
both structural-political (external to NGOs) and strategic (internal to NGOs). African
states, argues Bashaw, ‘are not much inclined to give enough room to enable
NGOs to operate and function smoothly. This is certainly the case in Africa’ (Bashaw 2001: 252).
This is true for oppositional civic organizations. For most African states,
NGOs are a thorn in the flesh. A case in point is Malawi
where constitutional constraints are without doubt intended to contain and
frustrate the political programs and activities of NGOs. Malawi’s
NGO Act (2001) prevents NGOs from having, or appearing to have, ‘objectives
that are political in nature’ or to indulge in ‘partisan politics’. Khembo
(2004) argues that this wording is vague, and it has led to arbitrariness in
the interpretation of the act itself. Khembo feels pity for NGOs operating in
Malawi because in practice, ‘lack of clarity [in the NGO Act] has meant that…
the church, civil society organizations … have invariably been accused of peddling
“partisan politics”’ (p.84), leaving NGOs in a very precarious position in
which the NGO Board may at any moment cancel registration of a suspect NGO at
will. For Khembo, it is accepted fact that ‘civil society, especially the NGO
community, is not entirely immune from calculated legal suffocation’ (Khembo
2004: 86). The Malawian legislators
seem to feel at ease with charitable NGOs—a purely economic civil society—but
uneasy with NGOs that position themselves as oppositional civic organizations—a
political civil society. Not doubt, when Biowatch SA contested the South
African state power by using the judicial machinery it positioned itself in an
oppositional manner, and hence its self-evidential political nature.
Bashaw, however, cautions against our falling for a myth: the mere
fact that NGOs do interventionist work does not imply that ‘the people’ can
then trust them, ‘simply because they are different from the state…We cannot
love NGOs just because they are nongovernmental’ (Bashaw 2001:253). Strategically,
it is argued that most NGOs are ill planned: their plans are short-term and
often geared to alleviating immediate consequences of poverty. NGOs do not plan
in the long-term, and so they ‘give little attention to matters concerning
development theory’ (Cherret et al in Bashaw 2001:253). If they are assessed on
the long-term basis, most NGOs do not seem to impact positively on poverty in Africa. Most people previously
helped by NGOs remain trapped in the vicious cycle of abject poverty (UNDP 1993
in UNO 1995 in Bashaw 2001: 253). Yet, unlike states, NGOs are not directly
accountable to ‘the people’ for issues of poverty let alone development in any
state. No citizenry or population group can blame an NGO for not delivering
public utilities like water and electricity or for not providing in time basic
property like houses or land for houseless or landless majorities.
Thus, in spite of Keane (1998, 2003)’s efforts to revive our
interest in ‘the old idea’, ‘civil society’ remains saddled with serious conceptual
and empirical difficulties. As a subset of ‘civil society’, the idea of ‘social
movements’ suffers from similar problems as ‘civil society’ does.
Conceptual obscurantism, or definitional
imprecision or fuzziness, leads to confusion as to what ‘social movements’ are –or ought be, as an ideal-type--and what
their potency and agency could be in sociopolitical reality, for example, in
Africa’s postcolonial states.
Political Control of
Biotechnology in Africa: The People, Civil
Society, and the State
The idea of ‘social movements’ raises an important question around
the issue of the political control of biotechnology. The question is two-fold,
involving both representation and accountability. Representation: because
‘social movements’ claim to represent ‘the people’-- whether ‘the people’ are
perceived as consumers, or as end-users of biotech products in their programs
and activities, while they simultaneously contest similar claims by the state
and political party groupings to represent ‘the people’. They claim to uphold ‘public value’ and to
work to promote the ‘public interest’ or ‘the general interest’.
Accountability: because ‘social movements’ tend to position and express
themselves as though sociopolitical accountability is categorical, and not
hypothetical–i.e. an unconditional, and not a conditional (or prima facie)
obligation. They believe that the state’s accountability to ‘the people’ is
categorical. Thus, the question is: from what source of authority (or mandate
or legitimacy) can a ‘social movement’ claim to represent ‘the people’?
The question is important because the issue of the political control
of biotechnology does not directly suggest that social movements will get to
decide whether or not we will control this new technology. Fukuyama, for
example, is unequivocal about the collective identity of those who will get to
decide about the political control of biotechnology, just as he is clear about
the source of their authority (or mandate or legitimacy) in society. For him,
decision- and policy-makers will be a ‘democratically constituted political
community, acting chiefly through their elected representatives, that is
sovereign in these matters and has the authority to control the pace and scope
of technological development…[i.e.] institutions that can capture the will of
the people’(Fukuyama 2002: 186).
Thus, when it comes to legislators --in parliamentary
sovereignties-- there is little or no doubt about the source of their political
authority to represent ‘the people’ in decision- and policy-making on matters
biotechnological. It is standard liberal democratic political thinking that
legislators govern or lead by the general consent of ‘the people’ as
voter-citizens. However, when it comes to
‘social movements’, as instantiations of ‘civil society’, it is not immediately
clear what the source of their authority is.
Erstwhile theorization about the idea of ‘civil society’, from which
the idea of ‘social movements’ is derived, is not helpful either. For example,
theorists of ‘civil society’ here in the South are far from clear about the
political potency and agency of the idea of civil society, thereby
frustrating others to the extent of
debunking the idea altogether. Mbembe (2001), for instance, thinks ‘civil
society’ is yet to emerge in postcolonial Africa. For Mbembe, ‘civil society’ will emerge only when ‘places and
spaces where ideas of autonomy, representation, and pluralism can publicly
crystallize, and where juridical subjects enjoying rights and capable of
freeing themselves from the arbitrariness of both state and primary group (kin,
tribe, etc) can come into being’ (Mbembe 2001:39). Therefore, Mbembe envisions
postcolonial ‘civil society’ in the form of autonomous--self-legislating and
self-governing—associations and institutions of society that ‘will articulate,
autonomously and publicly, an idea of the general interest’ (Mbembe 2001: 39).
At present, all we seem to have on the ground is a multiplicity of disparate
‘normative, economic, military and governmental spheres’ that reflect a
‘heteronomous and fragmented conception of the political community’, instead of
‘a consolidation of a constitutional state and right-bearing citizens in civil
society’ (Mbembe 2001: 39).
Other postcolonialist theorists, namely, Khilnani (2001) and
Chatterjee (2001) cast more doubts over the political potency and agency of the
idea of civil society. Khilnani thinks that in the South ‘civil society is best
thought of as a complicating term, one that embodies a range of historical
idioms intended to establish a legitimate political order’(Khilnani 2001: 13).
Contemporary scholarship is not in agreement about-- and is yet to locate--the
proper location of the sources of ‘civil society’. Is it in the economic, or
the expressive, or the cultural? In other words, does ‘civil society’ reside in
the economy, or ‘in society independent of the economic domain’ (i.e. interest-based associations ‘where ideas are
publicly exchanged’), or in ‘a set of cultural acquisitions’? (Khilnani 2001:
13-14).
Hitherto, for Khilnani, the idea of civil society has not been
deployed to ideal-typically refer to a substantive, determinate category in
postcolonial states, whether it has been conceptualized as an idea distinct
from, or opposed to, the state, or as a set of politicized, or depoliticized,
or apolitical, associations that complement the state in governance functions,
or normatively as ‘moral and political’ collective ‘human capacities’, or as an
amalgam of ‘commercial societies’
(Khilnani 2001: 24-25). In spite of its ‘promise’ for sociopolitical change in
the South, theorists of ‘civil society’ are conscious of the experimental if
not elusive nature of the idea itself.
Ultimately, Khilnani doubts the adequacy and even significance of the
idea of civil society because ‘in the task of developing viable and durable
democratic politics in the South, the idea of civil society is hardly a
self-sufficing one, let alone a fundamental “key”’ (Khilnani 2001: 32).
Chatterjee debunks the idea of civil society altogether and opts for another
idea which he christens as ‘political society’. For Chatterjee, ‘civil
society’, for example in postcolonial India,
fails dismally to reach out to and represent wider society and the diversity of
interests:
An important consideration in thinking about the relation between
civil society and the state in the modern history of countries such as India is
the fact that whereas the legal-bureaucratic apparatus of the state has been
able…to reach as the target of many of its activities virtually all of the
population that inhabits its territory, the domain of civil social
institutions… is still restricted to a fairly small section of ‘citizens’. The hiatus is extremely significant because
it is the mark of non-western modernity as an always incomplete project of
‘modernization’ and of the role of enlightened elite engaged in a pedagogical
mission in relation to the rest of society (Chatterjee 2001: 172).
Chatterjee seems to be relegating civil society organizations to
elitist, western-style special-interest associations that could hardly justify
their claim to serving ‘the general interest’. He claims that his idea of
‘political society’ will be more inclusive and more empowering in postcolonial
states:
But then how are we to conceptualize the rest of society that lies
outside the domain of modern society? The most common approach has been to use
a traditional/modern dichotomy. One difficulty with this is the trap, not all
easy to avoid, of de-historicizing and essentializing ‘tradition’. I think a
notion of political society lying between civil society and the state could
help us see some of these historical possibilities. By political society, I
mean a domain of institutions and activities where several mediations are
carried out’ (Chatterjee 2001: 172-3).
Political societies may resort to strategic maneuvers, resistance
and appropriation akin to those of political parties, but they are
distinctively ‘population groups’—and not bodies of citizens-- whose demands on
the state are based on ‘the violation of the law’. They demand state welfare as
a matter of right. The welfare functions, which political societies demand of
the state, are seen as collective rights, rather than as individual citizenship
rights. The degree to which political societies are recognized by the state and
nongovernmental organizations depends on the pressure they are able to exert on
state and non-state agencies (Chatterjee 2001: 177). In essence, political
society stands for a community that comes into being spontaneously, for
example, ‘through the illegal occupation
of a particular land or the collective illegal consumption of a public utility’
such as ‘associations of squatters, encroachers on public property, ticketless
travelers on public transport, habitual defaulters of civic taxes, unauthorized
users of electricity, water, or other public utility, and other such violators
of civic regulations’ (Chatterjee 2001: 177).
Chatterjee’s substitute idea is forceful
but not convincing. Chatterjee assumes there is a dichotomy between
‘population’ and ‘citizenship’. Nevertheless, his assumption is questionable.
His idea of ‘political society’ draws its conceptual force from the pragmatic
idea of ‘population,’ which is divested of its moral-legal demands, which are
usually normatively imposed on political individuality --or ‘citizenship’ --in
postcolonial states. The fact that violators of the law enjoy and benefit from
collective rights does not necessarily imply that the state and non-state
agencies will easily recognize their associations.
The pressure they are able exert on the
state and non-state agencies is more about provision of property or access to
public utilities than about the official recognition of their associations,
which, in any case, violate or sidestep the law. Thus, although political societies often get
what they demand as a collectivity, their ‘illegal’ deeds are bound to render
them marginalized if not excluded from mainstream political programs and
activities. The possibility of marginalization or exclusion renders them weak
and vulnerable ‘subaltern publics’. Therefore, the notion of citizenship, which
is infused with moral-legal imperatives, is still crucial to our conception of
individual or collective rights in a polity. On this, says Hawthorn (2001):
For states in the South…whose capacities are now
constrained…associations concerned with civil rights can press issues of
constitutional kind, those concerned with political rights for improvements in
political procedures. And both are likely to be able more effectively to do so
if there are opportunities for discussion and debate, opportunities that these
associations, with others, might be able to do something to improve. But it
is unrealistic to suppose that the associations can act greatly to extend the
scope of powers of public policies to improve the well-being of the majority of
the population. To be clear about the concept of ‘civil society’ is first to be
clear about what citizenship can be, about what the state can do, about a
point of politics itself (Hawthorn 2001: 286; my emphasis).
Hawthorn is hereby highlighting the interrelatedness of concepts of
population, citizenship, politics and the state. Thus, even if the state
deployed the concept of population for macro policy purposes or centralized
planning-- in the form of demographic statistics—it would not lose sight of the
political nature—or citizenship status—of the population.
Conclusion
The problematic idea of the democratization of science is
multi-issue in scope and is a multi-stakeholder effort. The idea is important
because it provides the basis for thinking more deeply about biotechnological
development in South and southern Africa. Science communication and public understanding of biotechnology do
not make sense outside the framework of the democratization of science.
Hitherto, scholarly attention has focused only on the role of scientists and
news media in making science more and more accessible to wider society,
especially to non-expert publics. Scientists are accused generally of being
poor communicators of their own trade, preferring to work in isolation behind
closed doors, in laboratories. News media practitioners are accused generally
of misrepresenting science in public domains. Social movements, as elements of
civil society, raise a hope of filling the gap left by both scientists and news
media practitioners. Looking at Biowatch SA’s intervention in GM regulation in South Africa a couple of years ago, one could see that there is room for such
hope. At least for starters, one could see that the processes of the
democratization of science are not the prerogative of one group of stakeholders
such as the state, scientists, or news media practitioners. Yet the idea of
civil society is swamped in confusion at present. Thus, there are reasonable
doubts about its political potency and agency to help democratize the new
science and technology [biotechnology] — i.e. to bring
biotechnology to ‘the people’. Moreover, the idea’s pretensions to introducing
and sustaining any desired sociopolitical change in southern Africa need to be interrogated
further.
There is little or no doubt though that social movements have, at
least at the empirical level, made their
presence felt in South and southern Africa, in Africa at large, as well as at the global level. A social movement such as
Biowatch SA would definitely be one to reckon with in South Africa. Once more, Biowatch SA managed to draw the attention of the high
court, sued the state and the biotech corporate industry, and eventually won
its ‘public interest’ case. However, in spite of such anecdotal evidence of
their integration into wider society, social movements still occupy a
theoretically obscure and politically contested space in Africa. The meaning of the idea
of civil society together with its attendant ideas such as social movements and
NGOs is not only conceptually fuzzy but also relentlessly contested by
traditional sources of power and authority such as state agencies, political
parties and trade unions, which have enjoyed and still enjoy moderately tidy
and neat conceptualizations. Since the meaning of the idea of civil society is
unclear, rendering theorization obscure, clear and tidy conclusions about the
democratization – that is, the sociopolitical control – of science and technology in the region, or
the continent at large, are not easy to reach.
In spite of the fuzziness of the idea of civil society, some would
be hesitant to leave all policy, regulation and control on biotechnology in the
hands of ‘parliamentary sovereignties’ (Fukuyama 2002) or “strong publics”
(Fraser 1993). These traditional sources of power and authority can help
democratize science and technology. African states might be resource-poor,
inefficient in terms of service delivery, generally corrupt, and the least
accountable to ‘the people’, but they are largely strong states. South Africa’s big drive towards the democratization of science is testimonial
to, or at least indicative of, a strong state.
Although the emergence of ‘strong’
states does not preclude the growth of a strong civil society, oppositional
civil organizations in Africa are politically constrained and limited in important ways. Biowatch’s
legal victory against the state and the biotech corporate industry raises
Mbembeian and Keanian quasi-utopian visions of a future African deliberative
democratic public sphere, an abstract ‘becoming’, with a bit of luck to be
realized when ‘the people’ are mobilized by civil society organizations--
rather than solely by political parties and trade unions—to participate in
societal deliberations on matters biotechnological, in particular, and, scientific
and technological, in general.
What Mbembe (2001) and Keane (1998; 2003) omit to
mention is the lineage and provenance of most associational and economic social
movements operating in the postcolony. Admittedly, social activists operate from and
in “weak publics” (Fraser, 1993) in that they are not an integral part of the
formal hegemony for decision- and policy-making at the level of
the nation-state. Even when they pose as pressure groups and help effect a
socio-political ‘paradigm shift’, as was the case with Public Affairs Committee
(PAC) in Malawi early 1990s, they remain enfeebled
social change agents, in the Fraserian sense. Political parties and
legislatures are the “strong publics” (Fraser, 1993). To be autonomous is to be
self-legislating and self-governing; a claim many a social activist might not make
without stuttering, or equivocating. They tend to pander to western
socio-political consciousness. Most of them rely on economic support from
similar groupings in the métropole (Quist-Adade and van Wyk, 2007).
For good or ill, the elites and the
officials speak for the “people” in the debate on GM technology in particular
and biotechnology in general. For example, small-scale farmers make infrequent
appearances in such debates. Small-scale farmers occasionally speak for
themselves. Most often, farmers unions speak for the small-scale farmers. The farmers unions re-present the small-scale
farmers as the helpless victims of agricultural biotechnology. Consumer rights
lobby groups also speak for “the people” as consumers. The lobbyists re-present
consumers as vulnerable to the deception and manipulation of GM food
manufacturers. For the lobbyists, the consumers lack knowledge and information
about GMFs to make informed choices. The lobbyists step in to protect the
consumers from bodily harm resulting from the consumption of GMFs. Social activists believe they are, and
position themselves accordingly as, protectors and promoters of “the public
interest,” the needs and aspirations of “the people.” It is in the very nature
of the public sphere in democracy to have “the people” represented in public
deliberation. Political expediency and logistics dictate that a few represent
the many.
In the regional GM debates,
journalists take it as axiomatic that the socio-politically- and/or
professionally-privileged voices draw on commonsensical views about reality.
For the journalists, it is also axiomatic that what is commonsensical must be
true and hence objective and universalisable. When the media play agent of
public opinion – that is relay-mediate the diversity
of opinions – in debate, they have inherent bias
to the voices of ‘elite-officials’. They also believe that they appeal to
commonsense and prevailing “regimes of truth,” one of which is that ‘science is
saviour’. Journalists’ belief in access to knowledge, commonsense, and truth is
tantamount to their believing they have access to reality itself. This renders
“public opinion” a
rather unstable and amorphous notion. ‘Unstable’ because its attribution is
ambiguous and constantly changing. In popular democracy, for example, “public
opinion” can be the collective opinion of voter-citizens, consumers of goods,
clients of public services, beneficiaries of state welfare or NGOs’ charity,
members of hegemonic institutions like political parties or religious
denominations, members of minority groupings, readers or viewers of media,
mainstream producers and/or suppliers of trendy products, and so on.
‘Amorphous’ because it applies to “the people” only in extenso.
The poor people, for example, are
not heard in these debates. The poor people form the socio-demographic majority
in popular democracy. The southern African GM debates shows a contradiction in
popular democracy in the sense that the socio-demographic majority are excluded
from, or marginalized in, debate. It looks as though the contradiction that is
central to the idea of popular democracy is thrown into sharp relief. The
exclusion, or marginalisation, of the socio-demographic and poor majority can
be attributed partly to the journalism practice of newsgathering in which voices
of the “elite-officials” are privileged as news sources and partly to the
exclusionary potential of the public spheres in the region. The media are a
proxy to “the people.” Journalists play agent of public opinion. This media
agency is taken as axiomatic in democratic politics. However, there is a
broader perspective to public opinion, which operates as a basis for media
agency. For example, Habermas conceives public opinion as “democratic
publicity”
(Habermas, 1989, p. 244), implying a set of opinions of a
“critically-debating public.” (Habermas, 1989,
p. 238).
Once more, the latter form of “public opinion” requires the media to do more
than just provide space for public deliberation. It requires them to
“mediatise.”
Finally, the paper recommends more
issue-specific and multi-stakeholder studies in things biotechnological at both
country and regional level. Regardless of whether the idea of civil society is
original or derivative, in-depth research on the idea is
required in order to further clarify its conceptual-epistemological status or
meaning and its conditions of applicability and use in South and southern Africa. Generally, future research in
science communication and public understanding of biotechnology in South and southern
Africa might further illumine the
complexities of ‘the democratization of science’ in South and southern Africa and Africa as a whole.
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