The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power

6. Nanoscience, Green Chemistry, and the Privileged Position of Science

This chapter compares two cases of forefront science. The first, nanoscience , is a classic hot research arena: scientists rush into each niche as soon as it opens; conferences and professional publications buzz with the latest results; pundits offer glowing predictions of benefits to environment , world hunger, and medicine; government officials generously dole out taxpayers’ money; and voices even arise to counsel the need for prudent foresight.1 A very different profile characterizes the second case, that of “green chemistry,” which aims at redesigning molecules and chemical production processes to make them more benign: research is coming nearly a century later than it could; conferences are few in number ; funding is niggardly; public attention is slight; and little fame accrues to participants.2 What can we learn from these polar opposite cases about the influence relations in and around contemporary science? The first section of this chapter describes nanoscience and technology R&D and the social forces impelling the activities, both within the scientific community and more broadly. Section two explains some of what is and is not occurring in green chemistry, traces the factors that have caused it to lag, and discusses a recent surge that may ultimately 148 6 Nanoscience, Green Chemistry, and the Privileged Position of Science  .  bring green chemistry onto mainstream chemical agendas. The remainder of the chapter analyzes implications of the two cases for our understanding of scientists as participants in a system of power, including their roles as allies of business, and my analysis is intended as a contribution to reinvigorating the interests tradition in the sociology of knowledge. As the title of the chapter suggests, however, I do not see forefront technoscientists primarily as pawns of political-economic elites but argue that they also use these connections to enjoy a structurally privileged position in contemporary social life—exercising considerable discretion over matters of great public consequence and themselves being among the foremost beneficiaries of science funding and technological innovation. Although I start from the constructivist assumption that social forces have shaped the nanoscience-technology juggernaut and the green chemistry laggard, and although I inquire into what those forces have been, I aim to move beyond social construction of science and technology toward reconstructivist scholarship aimed at clarifying alternative possibilities , both substantive and procedural.3 I think there are lessons in the juxtaposition of the two cases for those who seek to reconstruct scienti fic research and technological practice along fairer, wiser, more democratic, or otherwise “better” lines. If technoscience in some respects constitutes a form of legislation that reshapes the everyday lives of billions of persons, is it not about time to develop procedures capable of holding the scientists and technologists doing the legislating a good deal more accountable for their actions?4 Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Nanoscience and nanotechnology are “the art and science of building complex, practical devices with atomic precision,” with components measured in nanometers, billionths of a meter.5 This is not a typical scienti fic field inasmuch as researchers do not pursue common substantive knowledge: “smallness” is the unifying attribute, so it may be more appropriate to term research and development at the nanoscale as an approach rather than a field. Indeed, in private some scientists go so far as to suggest that “nano” functions more as a label to legitimize receiving grant monies than as a coherent set of research activities. Nobelist Richard Feynman is generally credited with calling attention to the possibility of working at the atomic level on nonradioactive Nanoscience, Green Chemistry, and Science 149 materials in a 1959 lecture at Cal Tech titled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,”6 and he no doubt was a source of inspiration for at least some of the nanoscience that gradually began to develop. Most such research actually being conducted is relatively mundane, whereas the hype and concern about nanotechnology are due more to the dramatic notions first presented in then-MIT graduate student K. Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.7 This visionary/fictional 1986 account for nontechnical readers sketched a manufacturing technology that would construct usable items from scratch by placing individual atoms precisely where the designers wanted. This he contrasted with contemporary manufacturing, which starts with large, preformed chunks of raw materials and then rather crudely combines, molds, cuts, and otherwise works them into products. The current approach uses far more energy than “molecular...