Cultural Aspects of Innovation, including

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Cultural Aspects of Innovation, including
grass-roots innovations
NACI Workshop on Broad-based Innovations,
Pretoria, South Africa, Feb 27, 2009

• Andrew Jamison
• Aalborg University

Based on
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By way of introduction... A good
technology, firmly related to human needs, cannot
be one that has a maximum productivity as its
supreme goal it must rather, as in an organic
system, seek to provide the right quantity of the
right quality at the right time and the right
place for the right purpose.

Lewis Mumford, 1961

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The Cultures of Innovation
culture economic, commercial bureaucratic, professional civic, grass-roots
relevant contexts companies, business networks, markets governments, nation-states, societies movements, communities, regions
policy aims entrepreneurship, competitiveness construction, coordination appropriation,cooperation
policy orientation market-oriented expert-oriented change-oriented
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Changing Modes of Knowledge Production
Industrial Military
Commercial
Little Science Big Science
Technoscience Mode 1
Mode 1½ Mode 2 Before
WWII 1940s-1970s 1980s-
Form of Knowledge disciplinary multidiscipli
nary transdisciplinary Org
aniza- individuals and RD
departments ad hoc projects and tional
form research groups and institutes
networks Dominant values
academic bureaucratic
entrepreneurial
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From Little Science to Big Science

• change in size and scale
• mission orientation, external control
• university-government collaboration
• bureaucratic norm, or value system
• new role for the state science policy
• appropriate technology/technology assessment

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Critiques of Big Science in the 1960s

• moral, or spiritual (e.g. Martin Luther King)
• against injustice,poverty of the spirit
• for a new morality
• scientific, or ecological (e.g. Rachel Carson)
• against reductionism, the abuse of the planet
• for an environmental science
• humanist, or cultural (e.g. Lewis Mumford)
• against hubris, the myth of the machine
• for an appropriate technology

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An Appropriate Technology Movement in the 1970s
The New Alchemy Institute Ark
Tvindmøllen 1977-1978
Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy
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From Big Science to Technoscience

• change in range and scope
• market orientation, corporate control
• university-industry collaboration
• entrepreneurial norm, or value system
• the state as strategist innovation policy
• from assessment to promotion foresight

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The Age of Technoscience

• A blurring of discursive boundaries
• between science (episteme) and technology
  (techne)
• A trespassing of institutional borders
• between public and private, economic and academic
  
• A mixing of skills and competencies
• across disciplines and societal domains

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Contending Policy Strategies

• The dominant , or hegemonic strategy (mode 2)
• commercialization, entrepreneurship,
  transdisciplinarity
• The residual, or traditionalist strategy (mode
  1)
• academicization, expertise, (multi)disciplinari
  ty
• An emerging, or sustainable strategy (mode 3)
• appropriation, empowerment, interdisciplinarity

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Transdisciplinarity, or mode 2

• Knowledge which emerges from a particular
  context of application with its own distinct
  theoretical structures, research methods and
  modes of practice but which may not be locatable
  on the prevailing disciplinary map.
• Michael Gibbons et al, The New Production of
  Knowledge (1994)

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The Tendency to Hubris

• transgressing established forms of quality
  control
• a drift of epistemic criteria (Elzinga)
• transcending human limitations
• converging technologies (bio, info, cogno,
  nano)
• neglecting public participation and assessment
• lack of accountability and precaution
• overemphasis on entrepreneurship
• propagation of competition rather than
  cooperation

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The Forces of Habit(us)

• Technoscience primarily seen as providing new
  opportunities for scientists and engineers
• Taught by restructuring established scientific
  and engineering fields multi- or
  subdisciplinarity
• Politics and the rest of society left largely
  outside of research and education outsourcing
  of ethics
• A continuing belief in separating experts and
  their knowledge from contexts of use

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The Discipline as Habit(us)
A discipline is defined by possession of a
collective capital of specialized methods and
concepts, mastery of which is the tacit or
implicit price of entry to the field. It produces
a historical transcendental, the disciplinary
habitus, a system of schemes of perception and
appreciation (where the incorporated discipline
acts as a censorship).
Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and
Reflexivity (2004)
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The Need for a Mode 3

• At the discursive, or macro level
• Sustainable innovation, connecting technological
  solutions to social and environmental problems
• At the institutional, or meso level
• Responsible innovation, creating accountability
  procedures for science and engineering
• At the personal, or micro level
• Community-oriented innovation, fostering
  innovation processes at the grass-roots

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A Hybrid Imagination

• At the macro, or discursive level
• connecting innovation cultures, integrating ideas
• At the meso, or institutional level
• making spaces for collective creativity
• At the micro, or personal level
• combining identities and forms of competence

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For example Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini at a Slow Food
Cafe
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Vandana Shiva on GMOs
The conflict over genetically engineered crops
and foods is not a conflict between culture and
science. It is between two cultures of science
one based on transparency, public accountability,
and responsibility toward the environment and
people and another based on profits and the lack
of transparency, accountability, and
responsibility.

Stolen Harvest, 2000
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For example Fritjof Capra

• physicist-turned-environmentalist
• author of many popular books
• founder of Center for Ecoliteracy

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Since the outstanding characteristic of the
biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain
life, a sustainable human community must be
designed in such a manner that its technologies
and social institutions honor, support, and
cooperate with nature's inherent ability to
sustain life.
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For example
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a
public interest research and advocacy
organisation based in New Delhi. CSE researches
into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of
development that is both sustainable and
equitable.
Anil Agarwal, the founder of CSE, shown at work
with one of the six State of Indias Environment
reports that the centre has put out since the
1980s.
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and, not to forget, the new president!

• Raising money through the Internet
• Mixing old and new forms of communication
• Applying techniques of social networking
• Connecting people and cultures virtually
• In short, making appropriate use of technology

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In conclusion...

• To counteract the dominance of the commercial
• culture, we need policies that explicitly
  support
• the civic, not-for-profit culture of
  innovation,
• interdisciplinary educational programs,
• mixing expertise and social responsibility,
• creating sites for collective learning,
• in short, fostering a hybrid imagination!