10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17080
application/pdf
2038-3460
17080
2
en
Maurizio Teli
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy, MIT Press, 2009
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
3
Book Reviews
2013-01-06
2023-05-30
2013-01-06
2023-07-14
191-194
TS
Maurizio Teli
2012
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17080
191
Fondazione <ahref
2038-3460
2
en
194
Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy, MIT Press, 2009
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17080/15999
3
                                                         TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)       191




environmental issue became a full         process, Asdal argues instead that it
economic issue as the controversy of      takes a great deal of effort to make
climate change replaced that of acid      nature a relevant object of
rain in the end of the 1980s. The         government. Further, she argues that
vulnerable nature at the heart of the     nature, once established as a political
issue was transformed from national       object, is rather unstable and that it
to global, and the political              might very well get ignored in favor
technology advocated by Norway in         of      for    example      economic
the international negotiations was a      considerations. Additionally, she
system of climate quotas based on         shows empirically how nature and
marked economy.                           science can open a political process
In examining the history of               to new actors and even democratize a
Norwegian environmental politics,         formerly closed process, rather than
the book represents a new way of          short-circuit it. Considering the
construing 20th century Norwegian         political technologies of numbers,
history. By employing the term of         Asdal nuances the weight put by
political technologies to trace the       Peter Miller and much of the
history of environmental politics,        governmentality literature on the
Asdal investigates into the more          power of numbers as a powerful tool
general history of Norwegian politics.    for     government.     She     shows
This relation to more traditional         empirically how it might take a great
historical literature is important for    deal of effort to establish such a
her approach in that it not only          political technology of numbers, and
involves the transportation of ideas      that it might not work as planned or
from science and technology studies       work at all.
and the field of governmentality
studies into the field of Norwegian
history – it brings something back as                      ***
well. Most importantly, and this is
one of the definite strengths of the
                                           Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and
book, Asdal approaches the origin
                                                      Yannick Barthe
and development of environmental
politics by studying its history in       Acting in an Uncertain World: an
empirical detail. By doing this, she        Essay on Technical Democracy
nuances and criticizes some of the              2009, MIT Press, 301 pp.
more theorizing and philosophical
work on politics and its relations to
nature and science within both                         Maurizio Teli
science and technology studies and                  (Fondazione <ahref)
the field of governmentality studies.
By reference to Bruno Latour’s
argument that Nature by way of            When I started reading the book by
scientists short-circuits the political   Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and
192   BOOK REVIEWS




      Yannick Barthe with the idea of            in the two processes helping to
      writing a review of it, my constant        overcome        uncertainties:      the
      feeling was one of dealing with an         exploration of possible worlds and
      extremely relevant theme, that is the      the constitution of the collective.
      relationship between delegations in        According to the authors, the
      representative      democracy       and    engagement of concerned groups in
      techno-scientific issues that challenge    these      processes,      substituting
      the structure of delegations in its        secluded research (science and
      current shape. Moreover, the more I        technology done by professionals
      was engaging with the emergence of         closed in their laboratories and
      hybrid forums, the social spaces of        professional    communities)       with
      relations between what the authors         collaborative research (when research
      call    “secluded      research”    and    professional engage with research in
      “research in the wild” where the           the wild, the one emerging from
      consolidated knowledge and the             people in context different from
      political    decision     making     are   professionalism) and changing the
      questioned, I was continuously             process of construction of the
      attracted by the book argument as a        collective, from a process of
      theoretical tool to investigate the case   aggregation     of    the    “formally
      of the High Speed Train between            identical” (votes) to a process of
      Turin and Lyon. That looks to me as        composition of what is “specific and
      a typical case of a “concerned             singular” (voices), is what allow the
      group”, a group of people “alerted         passage       from        “deliberative
      by unexplained phenomena which             democracy” to “dialogic democracy”
      concern and affect them, [that]            (134-135). In one sentence, I can
      decide to make problematic events          describe the book as entirely devoted
      visible and undertake a primitive          to investigating such passage, both
      accumulation of knowledge” (82).           theoretically and with a rich set of
      Referring to one of the books that         examples, from nuclear waste to
      the authors point to, Latour's Politics    AIDS, and to show how the passage
      of Nature (2004), concerned groups         acts as a form of “democratization of
      are defined through their ability to       democracy”, topic that closes the
      act at the stage of introduction of        book in Chapter 7 and that is taken
      perplexity on the possible worlds and      over since the beginning of the book,
      collectives populating contemporary        that is dedicated “to all those who,
      society. They do not limit themselves      by inventing technical democracy, re-
      at the stage of perplexity because,        invent democracy”. But how do the
      through what the authors called            authors develop their argument?
      “primitive        accumulation        of   They do that through seven chapters.
      knowledge”, that is the process of         In chapter 1, “Hybrid Forums”, the
      classifying unexplained phenomena          author defines such forums as “open
      “according to their similarities or        spaces where groups can come
      dissimilarities” (81), they also engage    together to discuss technical options
                                                         TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)         193




involving the collective, hybrid          forums act on the mechanisms of
because the groups involved and the       delegation through rethinking the
spokespersons claiming to represent       concept of representation. From the
them are heterogeneous, including         delegation to secluded research in
experts, politicians, technicians, and    order to establish the state of
laypersons who consider themselves        possible worlds to confrontation and
involved” (18). In this chapter,          cooperation, from the delegation to
hybrid forums are seen as a result of     parliaments in order to aggregate the
actions undertaken by concerned           collective, to a process of compo-
groups in situations of uncertainty,      sition of the collective itself, through
one of the key concepts of the book,      the voices of concerned groups,
that is defined as the situations in      therefore involved both in the
which “science often proves to be         research process and in the political
incapable of establishing the list of     one. Only fostering procedures that
possible worlds and of describing         allow the emergence of hybrid
each of them exactly” (21), that is, to   forums, according to the authors, is
pick up one of the strongest              possible to engage in the already
definitions of the book, “We know         cited “democratization of demo-
that we do not know, but that is          cracy”, and to search for a “common
almost all that we know” (ibidem). In     world” (in fact, the title of chapter 4
short, to pick up the topic of Chapter    is exactly “In Search of a Common
2, secluded research, hybrid forums       World”). A question remains unans-
emerge when science faces overflows,      wered, that is “where does dialogic
when the knowledge of secluded            democracy intersect the process of
research is unable to foresee all the     research?”, and here stands the more
states of the possible world and all      theoretically deep contribution of the
the potential compositions of the         book, unfolding between chapter 2
collective. Concerned groups are the      and chapter 3, that is conceptualizing
subjects able to make the overflows       research as a process of Translation,
visible, to make them part of the         with a caps T, done of three minor
collective, and to be debated and         translations: adapting the research
discussed at a level wider than the       problem in the world to the scale of
one of secluded research, that is to be   the laboratory (translation 1),
discussed     in    the    wild    (the   processing it through the laboratory
characteristics of research in the wild   work (translation 2), and bringing it
are discussed in chapter 3). Dialogic     back to the world at large
democracy is the form that the            (translation 3). The contribution of
cooperation       between     secluded    the book is to analyze how hybrid
research and research in the wild can     forums displace and enrich the
take, and it is explored in Chapter 4,    process of Translation, and it is
in particular with one of the main        therefore a clear Actor-Network
take of the book: democracy is a          Theory account of the relationship
matter of procedures, and hybrid          between        secluded         research,
194   BOOK REVIEWS




      concerned groups, procedural and          in order to understand what were the
      institutional arrangements.               conditions obstructing the strong
      What qualifies the advancement            concerned group in bringing a
      brought by the book is the intro-         dialogically democratic process into
      duction of the concept of measured        the controversy, that remains in the
      action, to which is dedicated the         domain of delegative processes.
      entire chapter 6. Such concept is
      rooted in the fact that “actors avail     Reference
      themselves of the means to be able at     Latour, B. (2004) Politics of nature: how to
      any moment to return to abandoned            bring the sciences into democracy,
      options, and that evaluations are            Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
      constantly revised in terms of new
      knowledge and points of view” (192)
      and it founds an empirical existence                         ***
      in what is known as the “precau-
      tionary principle” (ibidem), adopted
                                                Science, Design and Everyday Life
      as policy line in many EU contexts,
      and that applies to situation of
      uncertainty. This chapter is also the
      one that shows the weaknesses of the                 Donald A. Norman
      analysis carried out in the book. The
      whole chapter looks like the trial to            Living with Complexity
      convince the politicians (and the
      general public) to open up the space             2011, MIT Press, 298 pp.
      for hybrid forums, and dialogic
      democracy based on them, through                              and
      the undermining of opposing
      arguments, more than through an                        Matthias Gross
      empirically sounded discussion on
      under what conditions the hybrid           Ignorance and Surprise. Science,
      forums can be established. Shortly, it       Society and Ecological Design
      is more advocacy than analysis. This
      is why, going back to the High Speed             2010, MIT Press, 240 pp.
      Train between Turin and Lyon, the
      book has a low explanatory and
      interpretative power: the conceptual                Francesco Ronzon
      tools it provides are good at                 (Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona,
      describing the initial phase of the                 Politecnico di Milano)
      emergence of the concerned group
      opposing the train (like solving the      New technologies do not just consist
      uncertainties     related    to     the   of artifacts but perform as social
      effectiveness and the effects of the      design acts, so shaping and re-
      train itself) but they are insufficient   ordering people’s everyday life.
