10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17243
application/pdf
2038-3460
17243
1
en
Barbara L. Allen
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Luigi Pellizzoni and Marja Ylönen (eds.), Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments, Ashgate, 2012
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
6
Book Reviews
2015-07-10
2023-06-17
2015-07-10
2023-07-31
154-156
TS
Barbara L. Allen
2015/07/10
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17243
154
Virginia Tech University
2038-3460
1
en
156
Luigi Pellizzoni and Marja Ylönen (eds.), Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments, Ashgate, 2012
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17243/16108
6
Book Reviews                                                 Tecnoscienza – 6 (1)


  Luigi Pellizzoni and Marja Ylönen (eds.)
Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments. Farnham:
Ashgate, 2012, pp. 246.

Barbara L. Allen Virginia Tech University

    This book and its message does not purport to present a cohesive view
of the relationship between technoscience and neoliberalism, but instead
is a collection of a broad array of interpretations written by over a dozen
scholars addressing this topic. The editors of Neoliberalism and Techno-
science: Critical Assessments state that while, this “[t]heoretical and meth-
odological pluralism may lose something in argumentative elegance”, the
variety of ideas seeks to be “thought-provoking” at the very least (233). I
think the editors, Luigi Pellizzoni and Marja Ylönen, have taken on a dif-
ficult task by not inscribing the collection a bit more carefully with a
more cohesive theoretical framework (13). While a plethora of ideas re-
garding the relationship between neoliberalism and technoscience may
seem fair-minded and all encompassing, it left this reader wondering ex-
actly what it was I was trying to understand. That said, there were some
excellent analyses in this volume worthy of the importance of this politi-
cal juggernaut in our contemporary world.
    The term, neoliberalism, a key condition of late capitalism, should be
defined before beginning any serious critique. I take as a starting defini-
tion that of David Harvey: “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory
of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can
best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and
skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets, and free trade”(2). The role of the state is to
facilitate the construction of markets where they do not exist (i.e. water,
pollution, carbon, health care, etc.) but to withdraw from any form of so-
cial provision through privatization, deregulation and the like. This is a
fairly mainstream definition but, as the editors point out, there are many
definitions to choose from when considering an analysis of neoliberalism.
    The book consists of 3 sections, each containing 3 chapters on topics
examining the governmental, institutional, and cultural aspects of the ne-
oliberalism/technoscience relationship as well as specific issues regarding
humanity/humanism and the environment. In the editors’, Pellizzoni and
Ylönen’s chapter, “Hegemonic contingencies: Neoliberalized technosci-
ence and neorationality”, the premise gets at the heart of one of the prob-
lems in the book. They assert that studies of neoliberalism fall into two
camps: those that examine the economic/political processes (i.e. Harvey’s
concept, mentioned above) and those that see it as a discourse between
individuals, nature, and society – a sort of Foucauldian “governmentality”
perspective. These latter approaches, argue the editors,, have opened up
Book Review                                                             155
deliberative processes in science and technology but at the same time
such processes carefully construct their publics, a sort of disguised he-
gemony masquerading as democratic. These processes of co-option and
obscuration of power combined with growing economic commodification
and appropriation leads to a less-then-free public realm where agency is
construed as entrepreneurialism.
    In the chapter, “Neoliberalism and technology: Perpetual innovation
or perpetual crisis?”, Reynolds and Szerszynski make a strong and coher-
ent argument that the new industrial economy is not new but, instead, a
continuance of labor flows south and shipping containers north that has
characterized global re-spatialization in the previous decades. The neolib-
eral knowledge based economy could be characterized by the financial
speculation and creation of global financial innovations such as deriva-
tives and futures that brought the entire market down in 2008. So instead
of science as a new force of production, science is instead “cannibalized
and privatized” such that it becomes a product itself (42).
    Simone Arnaldi examines the promises and perils of human enhance-
ment in his chapter on the intersection of transhumanism and neoliberal-
ism. While the fountain of youth ethos and the push for the utopian body
pervade transhumanist thinking, Arnaldi points to some darker elements
in this evolution. Leaving our “political futures to be created as an aggre-
gate result of personal choices”, problematically envisions the market as
mechanism for social coordination (99). The chapter includes a thought-
ful analysis of the notion of perfectibility in transhumanism and neoliber-
alism in the work of Francis Fukuyama.
    Providing another analysis of human enhancement, Imre Bárd’s article
contrasts the arguments of bioconservatives with those of transhumanists.
The first group sees human enhancement and the drive for bio perfection
as impinging on human dignity and potentially creating severe injustices
and political imbalances. On the other hand the technoprogressive think-
ers argue that humans have always enhanced their performance with
technology and this era is part of that continuum. The latter position is
closely aligned with neoliberal capitalism and the “rise of enterprise cul-
ture” leading to the autonomous, self-governed “entrepreneurial self”
(126). He concludes with the very interesting question of how we can un-
derstand human enhancement differently once disentangled from politi-
cally problematic neoliberal narratives.
    The final section of the book covers one of neoliberalism’s strong-
holds in technoscience and governance — environmental issues. Les
Levidow et al. show the influence of neoliberal politics on the emergence
of sustainable biofuels policy in the EU through the use of supposedly
benign market mechanisms to guide production and use. A technological
“fix” developed to define sustainable biofuels has been the creation of
carbon cycle accounting. This lies at the heart of the EU’s “Low-Carbon
Economy,” a policy concept fetishizing carbon cycles as the prime indica-
tor of sustainability” (165). The overall impact of this technological fram-
Book Reviews                                                Tecnoscienza – 6 (1)

ing has been to depoliticize the agendas inherent turning biofuels “green”
while at the same time marginalizing other voices, including those from
the global South and critics of GM agriculture.
    Nicely expanding the carbon market debate is Anders Blok’s chapter,
“Configuring homo carbonomicus: Carbon markets, calculative tech-
niques, and the green neoliberal”. Carbon markets have become “core
sites of the contentious entanglement of new techno-scientific knowledge,
neo-liberal market-based policies, and public concerns with environmen-
tal risks” (187). Expanding the often optimistic governmentality ap-
proaches to neoliberalism, Blok points to the plethora of technoscientific
institutions, mechanisms, and emergent expertise necessary to sustain
carbon marketization while simultaneously shaping political subjectivities
and resistance. He argues that homo carbonomicus is at the same time an
imperfect neoliberal subject and, following Boltanski and Thévenot, an
embodiment of several moral grammars of worth or ethico-political
standpoints.
    Several days ago I spoke with a U.S. Environmental Protection Agen-
cy (EPA) official whose job it was to regulate industrial hazards. He ex-
plained to me that given the current anti-regulatory spirit (i.e. neoliberal
political “lobbying” from industry) in the US, the agency had to think of
creative ways to regulate. Besides the agency’s declining funding there
was additional pressure not to do anything. The EPA official explained
that their new approach was to innovate in terms of making more data
available to citizens to use as they want. His hope was that the agency
could work with data specialists to help design ways in which an inordi-
nate amount of environmental data could be made understandable and
useable by non-experts. So as in Harvey’s definition of neoliberalism, the
EPA is not regulating in the traditional sense, but instead is relying on the
entrepreneurial citizen with free access to information to make choices
for themselves. From a governmentality perspective —an approach es-
poused by some in this volume — the EPA could be seen to be enabling a
civic participatory realm full of deliberatory opportunities and democratic
promise. I have serious doubts that this will be the outcome.

References
Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford, New York: Oxford
       University Press.




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