Biotechnoscience in Context: Co-production of Science and the state in India Jawhar CT University of Hyderabad
We are living in an age where science and technology has become an inseparable part of our life, the interrelation between science and society demands an active academic and public debate. In the conventional way of understanding, the relationship between science and polity remain two domain of inquiry. This standard understanding of science considered scientific knowledge as objective, value-free, and discovered by experts. It keeps aloof from the contextual analysis of science and technology, so the politics and political actors have nothing to do with science and technology. In the last three decades, many historical and sociological studies about science and technology shows that society and culture have a great influence on the shaping of science and technology. The theoretical and empirical studies of Science and Technology Studies (STS) shows this influence in the context of different technologies. Understanding the interface between genetic and society is an important access strip to understand the relationship between science and the state. This work is an attempt to understand political sociology of biotechnoscience in the framework of Science and Technology Studies (STS). In this project I will address the question of co-production12 of knowledge and the state in the context of india in general and the discourse of democracy, citizenship and governance in the context of biotechnology in particular. It also pose question on role of scientific knowledge and technological artefact both embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. The broader objective of the present project is to map the interface between science, technology and politics in general and genetics in particular. The introduction of GM technology in India was celebrated as a shift from green revolution to gene revolution. The wider debate over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in India started after the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) under the Ministry of Environment and Forests gave its clearance for the production and consumption of BT brinjal. BT cotton has been on the market for some years and the anticipated release of BT brinjal, the first GM food has seen a confrontation between government agencies and civil society groups. The civil society groups "12 According to Jasanoff, (2004) “Science, in the co-productionist framework, is understood as neither a simple reflection of the truth about nature nor an epiphenomenon of social and political interests. Rather, coproduction is symmetrical in that it calls attention to the social dimensions of cognitive commitments and understandings, while at the same time underscoring the epistemic and material correlates of social formations� (Jasanoff: (2004) States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order). 14