
-47-
We are not all Modern Now: Dislocation, Uncertainty and
Ambiguity as New Forms of Governance
John Pennington, Programme Leader, Toi te Taiao: The Bioethics Council,
New Zealand
Increasingly we are confronted with technologies which defy the kinds of institutional,
scientific and governance structures and systems which have, until recently, provided the
methods and mechanisms for ordering, controlling and legitimating unruly nature.
Technologies such as stem cells, embryo research, cybrids, food scares. Genetically modified
food and crops and genetic testing are redefining the relations between society, technology
and nature and are practically given shape in view of very concrete policy issues.
This presentation will explore some of the assumptions of modernist forms of state craft
and indicate the limitations of forms of governance derived from these assumptions. This
presentation will also outline some of the developments and changes we are witnessing as a
result of what the authors of a recent EU report labelled as the ‘politics of life’. The politics of
life presents challenges to modernist forms of governance which traditionally have relied on
beliefs in inter alia the state as a unified space, science as the ground of universal certain
knowledge, that a clear boundary exists between scientific knowledge production and other
societal processes and a clear boundary exists between the realm science and the realm of the
political. The politics of life challenges these assumptions by noting a conceptual change in
the notion of ‘politics’, towards actions which take place outside formal institutions
traditionally considered the exclusive centres of political power. The underlying concept here
is that power as traditionally understood is not to be thought of as a commodity, to be shared
with members of an a priori given public, but as the product of interactions and take place
between diverse groups of people struggling over meanings, values and the legitimation of
action.
New and emerging technologies present severe problems for modernist forms of
governance grounded as they are in ideas of a separation of facts and values, a boundary
between science and politics and probabilistic risk assessment, and logos and pathos. It has
become increasingly apparent that uncertainty as opposed to risk better encapsulates where
we stand today with regard to emerging technologies. For a variety of reasons the risks posed
by technologies such as stem cells, genetic testing and the like cannot be measured and
calculated or weighed up as harms and benefits. As a consequence the prevailing dominant
forms of knowledge upon which policy and decision making have been based are increasingly
contested. The remainder of this presentation will explore some of the institutional and
non-state responses to issues of governance generated by new and emerging technologies and
suggests that new ways of meeting these challenges need to be institutionalized.