Boundary Work, Associative Argumentation and Switching in the Advocacy of Agricultural Biotechnology

摘要

In this article, I have been concerned with the ways in which science-oriented discourses are utilized in boundary work that is, above all, advocative of a particular technology (and may have other more specific intents). I have suggested that a significant aspect of the science-oriented advocacy of agbiotech or GM agriculture is the discursive practice of associative argumentation, by which aspects of agbiotech are defined in terms of their traditional or conventional equivalents. Further, my analysis has shown that, in common with the XTP example, a dominant feature of science-oriented advocacy of GM is the practice of switching between a discourse of similarity (which attempts to normalize agbiotech) and a discourse of difference (which endeavours to portray agbiotech as superior to conventional equivalents). This raises interesting questions concerning the extent to which such practices are typical of the advocacy of novel technologies, and the ways in which public controversy and/or regulatory review might influence such practices. In common with the XTP example, I have suggested that such switching is discursively persuasive because it marshals together arguments of similarity and difference in mutually endorsing ways. However, although I have not undertaken a thoroughgoing review of public attitudes, I have suggested that the discourses described above also represent an example of sociological naivety (cPUS) because advocates seem to fail to account for the ways in which their values might be at odds with some broader social values. In the case of GM agriculture, this was to prove significant because public controversy largely led to the regulatory review which, temporarily at least, curtailed the commercial development of the technology in the UK. To some extent as a result of this curtailment, the OSI now advocates the use of processes of public dialogue to improve policy and to mitigate against controversies such as the 'GM crisis' (OSI, 2007b). It will be intriguing to assess the impacts that such processes have or do not have on scientists' boundary work, in the form of science-oriented discourses, relating to novel technologies.