Some Preliminary Clarifications
Before revisiting the conjuncture of the Rothamsted GM wheat field trials, I would first like to reiterate the most salient parts developed thus far and afterward offer a brief conceptual overview of the work that is going to follow. Doing so will hopefully make the orientation of the book clearer and the significance of this chapter more evident. Before doing so, however, it needs to be clear from the outset, that the case study stretches across two chapters; this and the one following. Chapter 6, therefore, engages with the Technological and Appropriative aspects of the field trials while Chapter 7 discusses Ideological elements articulated not only during this specific conjuncture but also recurring across the broader debate. This division of the empirical section is implemented so as to make the substantive material more readily available to the reader and, at the same time, signify the gradual expansion of analytical focus from particular events surrounding the field trials to broader social dynamics unfolding across wider stretches of time and space.
Following Chapter 1, which familiarized the reader with the main themes of this book, a variety of theoretical, ontological and methodological issues were raised. The discussion started with the problem of technological determinism and then explored alternative approaches, such as Misa's “meso- level studies,” Hughes's “technological momentum” and Jasanoff's idiom of “coproduction.” Despite their ontological and methodological merits, these three approaches did not convincingly tackle the imbalance between the “social” and the “technological” encountered, not only in technological determinism, but in the broader theoretical avenues of humanism and post- humanism as well. Chapter 3 discussed specific ontological and methodological contributions found in the writings of Merton, Collins, Latour, Callon, Law and Pickering and argued that, despite the breakthrough these studies have offered in STS, they still do not appear to resolve the underlying tension that surrounds the human/ non- human relations.
By referring to the work of Benton, it was suggested in Chapter 4 that instead of construing humans and non- humans in terms of either an uncompromising dualism or a hybrid lacking distinct ontological characteristics, one should place various entities on an ontological continuum. In doing so, the researcher is able to grasp the social and natural worlds regarding both shared ontological features and species- specific characteristics.