Date:
Location:
"The Precarious Expert: Science and the State During China's GMO Controversy"
Speaker:
Abigail Coplin, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science, Technology and Society, Vassar College.
Contact:
Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu
Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Abstract:
As ongoing struggles with COVID-19 illustrate, we face a global crisis of scientific expertise. Literature probing the interplay between experts and the political sphere, however, largely focuses on Western, democratic contexts. Drawing on ethnography in Chinese agrobiotechnology companies, in-depth interviews with researchers, entrepreneurs, and officials, and analysis of varied media and policy documents, this talk leverages China’s ongoing GMO controversy to reveal the powerful—yet precarious— position of Chinese scientific experts within China’s policy making processes. It shows how the Chinese government’s interweaving of science and political legitimacy in the post-socialist era creates a dynamic in which criticism directed at scientific experts is actually a critique of the party state. While researchers’ ties to the state have afforded them substantial influence over China’s developmental trajectory, their politicized professional identity and hybrid position straddling the state/society boundary have also undercut their ability to make credible scientific claims, made them targets of public censure, and placed them at risk of being used as scape-goats by the state. When to speak of “science” is to speak of “governance,” only the state can mollify technoscientific crises. Ultimately, China’s scientific controversies render experts ever-more reliant on the state.
