Abstract:
The relationship between science and society is oftenconceptualised as a ‘social contract’ between experts and the politicalcommunity, which agrees to separate science from politics, and the naturalfrom the social. The role of science, as per the contract, is to speak truth to power, or more generally, to give technical solutions to the problems of democratic society. The social contract of science has offereda strong theoretical foundation for sociology of science to understand thesocial dynamics of public engagement with science and technology incontemporary liberal democracies. The recent ‘deliberative turn’ in thefield emphasises the need for more public deliberation and citizen participation in the scientific and technological decision making process.The paper critically examines the deliberative turn by highlighting thechanging relationship between science, state, and publics under the emergent biopolitical paradigm where biological life itself has become thecentre of politics. The paper analyses the case of the public controversyover the spraying of a lethal pesticide called Endosulfan in the government-owned cashew plantations in Kasaragod in northern Kerala thathas generated genetically mutated, disabled and diseased bodies. The socialmovement that has been formed in the context of the controversy, the paper points out, is organised around the disfigured biological bodies of theEndosulfan survivors. The paper develops the biopolitical category ofnon-publics based on empirical analysis of the Endosulfan controversy to understand how their disfigured bodies have turned out to be the new siteof the political, opening up fresh possibilities for democratisingscience-society relationship.
About the Speaker:
DR. SHIJU SAM VARUGHESE is assistant professor at theCentre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP) inthe School of Social Sciences of Central University of Gujarat,Gandhinagar. His academic specialization is in Sociology of Science and Technology, and his current research interests are public engagement withscience and technology, sociology of media and science communication, newsocial movements and science, social history of knowledge, and regional modernities in South Asia. His publications include several journalarticles and book chapters, and two books. *Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spacesand Practices in Transition* (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2015), the volume that he has co-edited with Satheese Chandra Bose, re-examines theidea of ‘region’ as a discursive category to understand Kerala’sexperiences of modernity. His recent book, *Contested Knowledge: Science, Media, and Democracy in Kerala*,explores the complex relationship between science and mass media in thecontext of public deliberations over science during risk controversies.