Modern science and technology, and, perhaps especially the new genetic technologies, are, when it comes to their societal applications, too risky to be left to the scientists who developed them. The rapid ongoing commercialization of the new technologies calls into question the status of the scientists in terms of having privileged access to knowledge and information, and creates the need for new forms of knowledge production, and new types of knowledge producers and disseminators. In particular, the commercialization of new technologies and the concomitant social problems call forth an active involvement of the “public” in the setting of priorities, the implementation of programs and the assessment of the new scientific and technological applications. The challenges of biotechnology create, as it were, new public awareness contexts, or assessment spaces, into which actors and agencies from different societal spheres are called upon to participate. Instead of assuming one privileged (scientific) actor as the center, modern advances in science and technology call forth a wide range of actor-networks and interests who in dialogues and encounters assume new forms of responsibility.

It appears to be a distinct trait of the present scientific-technical era that policy-administration is delegated to new brokers - it is no longer the political party system and the state bureaucracy that is primarily charged with policy advice and proposals. A new brokerage system seem to be arising as ethical committees, green councils, technology assessment agencies, consumer organizations, etc are increasingly called upon to translate scientific and technological issues into ethical and political standpoints.

Viewing the current social landscapes which are shaped by and in turn are shaping that which is called “knowledge” societies, we can detect a plethora of voices which seek to respond to the challenges of modern techno-science in ways which appear distinctively new and epochal. It may well be that what we call knowledge societies are to be characterized by the creation of new spaces of deliberation and discourse, linking scientists and publics in wholly new manners (Gibbons et.al. 1994). Indeed, one could suggest that spaces of assessment and ethical discourse are a fundamental characteristic of knowledge societies: only to the extent to which a society contains a plethora of voices and concerns should it be labeled a “knowledge society”. According to Ulrich Beck, new forms of cognitive practice and reflexive knowledge are taking shape in the "risk society" (Beck 1992). In the proposed project, we aim to confront Beck's theory of reflexive modernization with comparative Nordic research into the ongoing practical activities of knowledge brokers. In such a way we hope to develop also the theoretical discussions in social theory beyond the present state of risk and dangers.

From this point of view the Nordic countries can be seen as model countries; the consensus conferences of which Denmark has been in the lead are seen as interesting models to mediate diverse social interests and public concerns. In a recent doctoral dissertation by Thomas Achen, we can detect variations in the ethical “spaces” and brokerage nodes created in the Nordic countries as a response to the advances in genetic technology (1997). An important question raised by Achen´s study is whether or not these observed differences in creating “deliberative spaces of reflection” (types of brokerage) are merely surface phenomena covering basically the same strong material- industrial interests, or whether these differences also have an impact in the shaping of industrial interests. There are clear differences in styles and mentalities between the Nordic countries, but there is also a common basis of general welfare and adherence to science and technology in all these countries.

Some of these comparative issues were addressed in a broad manner within the framework of the Nordic-British collaboration on “public understanding of science and bio-technology” in 1998-99, of which this project application is one result. In the course of discussions, significant differences in national political cultures were identified with implications for PUS policies and practices in the Nordic countries as well as in Britain (Miettinen ed. 1999). In order to sustain this broad comparative framework for our project, we plan to continue collaboration with the British researchers connected with the new ESRC research program on “Governance, science and social change” now under consideration.

By suggesting the term of broker(age) as an entrance in analyzing the social relations created by the new techno-science we hope to be able to advance the theoretical and practical understanding of the constitutive characteristics of knowledge societies. The term broker(age) has been defined in recent network analyses as "the occupancy of a structural position that links pairs of otherwise unconnected actors" (Fernandez & Gould 1994). It resembles the idea of network actors or of "nodes": a person, group, organization, thing, event, and so on, linked to other in a network....sometimes referred to as a node." (Emirbayer & Goodwin 1994). In different historical periods types of brokerage emerge with considerable consequences both for organizational policies and strategies, as well as collective and individual actions. The advantage of such an approach is that it not merely enhances our theoretical understanding in creating analytical types but that it also makes possible a methodological translation of such categories to analyze specific types of actual social activities.

Attending to the broker relations emerging in the field of modern biotechnoscience also provides a sharper focus for investigating some of the key interactions between local and global entities which mediate the intersection between science and society today. The negotiations of trade related intellectual patent rights (TRIPS) on the global level, for example, certainly affect local settings in several ways (Slaughter & Leslie 1997). It is in the aim of the project preparation to seek to develop a conceptual understanding of how these more complex globalizing currents shape the evolution of events in the bio-technical sphere.

The new genetic technologies pose a set of issues which social scientists have hardly started to address.

Is it possible to see the emergence of new awareness contexts and of new societal responsibilities in the wake of the commercialization of the new genetic technologies?

What mechanisms are in operation in the creation of new types of awareness contexts, both on the individual and collective level?

What are the relations between the new contexts of assessment and other societal networks, both in the private and public spheres?

Are new publics, or societal identities, taking shape in response to the bewildering landscape of options, threats, horizons, and ambivalences inspired by the genetic technologies?

How are we to characterize the modes of public responses to genetically manipulated organisms in food?

Are these responses fundamentally different from those which are being articulated in relation to medical applications of the possibilities to manipulate with human genes?

How are concerns mediated "from above" - i.e., as top-down initiatives from positions of authority - eventually interacting, if at all, with concerns that are mediated in more bottom-up, grass-roots fashion?

Are modes of public responses to bio-technology disperse and diffuse events - or can one detect more structured patterns of responses? If so, how are we to understand the emergence of such patterns?

Are there distinct national, or sub-national, "styles" of response? What social and cultural factors can help explain these different styles?

How does the emergence of various brokerage relationships impinge on the conditions of research and knowledge production? What are the effects for university research?

How does it affect the credibility of knowledge claims made by research communities?

How are the review process in science production affected? Is extended peer review (demanded by brokers) impinging on traditional scientific peer reviews?

The idea behind this research project in its planning stages is to take the terms “brokerage” and “brokers” far beyond the economic universe into the world of knowledge, and more specifically into matters of “translating” or “mediating” systems of knowledge from one context or universe of meanings into others.

In opting for the idea of brokerage and systems of brokerage we want especially to focus on the practical translations of science into “manageable” units and processes, i.e. into situational settings and practices. These notions seem especially pertinent to the field of biotechnology as socio-cultural-material systems, whether on the transnational or national levels, are being challenged to mediate new scientific-technical advances into sets of other issues, thus creating new discursive spaces or exploiting previously given ones.

Brokers act as “middlemen” as they translate one system of thought-practices into others. Brokers can be found among classic “intellectuals”, but brokers are also found in the practical realm of technoscience policy in the form of councils and committees, social movements and other interest groups which “localize” technoscience into practical concerns and issues. Brokers also embrace consultant agencies acting both on the local and the international, as well as the national level.

Brokers can further be linked with one another into more or less complex systems and networks with more or less definable boundaries setting communicative “agendas”. One may even think of the legal system from this point of view of a broker system as it falls upon the juridical system to translate sets of issues into practical-legal actions. In her study Science at the Bar Sheila Jasanoff (1995) has supplied a wealth of illustrative examples of how courts in USA come to act as “brokers” of scientific knowledge, as the courts have become key actors in creating the new science policy, and many of the conflicts over biotechnology have taken place in the courts. As already suggested, a broker(age) is a "structural position which links pairs of otherwise unconnected actors."

In the study by Hernandez and Gould referred to earlier, five types of (structural)brokerage are distinguished:

-liaison

-representative

-gatekeeper

-itinerant broker

-coordinator

The liaison is a brokerage relation in which all three actors occupy different groups. A typical example is the "arbitrator" between union and management negotiations (p1458). A second type of brokerage is the representative created "when one member of a subgroup takes upon itself or is given the role of communicating information to, or negotiating exchanges with outsiders."( p 1457). Such a situation is to be found when e.g. a leading firm of industry were to act as a spokesman for the rest of the industry in discussions with ethical committees or with the government. A third type is the gatekeeper role in which an "actor screens or gather resources from the outside and distributes them to members of his or her subgroup." (p 1457) In the case of health policy, the Ministry of Health or else the medical associations often act in such gate keeping roles. The itinerant broker is the one where an intermediary actor mediates exchange of information between two principals belonging to the same subgroup. The fifth and last type of structural brokerage is found in a situation where all three actors belong basically to the same group. Hernandez & Gould labels this type a "local broker" or "coordinator".

Thus types of structural brokerage can be exploited in order to identify actual empirical instances created by the occurrence of modern (practical) bio-technology. Such identification of brokers can help in understanding different patterned responses among the public, but on a more modest level it can also help in merely structuring and discussing analytical categories:

What type of brokerage seems to dominate, and with what consequences on the level of social responses to ambivalent information. In comparing the Nordic countries it may for instance be possible to identify different types of (dominant) brokerage systems, and thereby help accounting for different modes of responses in various countries. If viewed from within the technology regimes (see below) suggested by Jamison et. al (1999) it could be that Finland and also Sweden employ more state-like regimes (considered as continua ) while Denmark appear to rely on more populist regimes. But each of these suggested regimes must confront more corporate regimes as biotechnoscience is heavily commercialized - and the interesting question is to what extent the Nordic countries approach the challenges posed by modern science with regard to social organization and social processes.

In a project on Public Participation and Science and Technology Policy Options, the concept of brokers has been used to identify some of the key cognitive processes at work in the quest for sustainable development (see chart).

1. Organizers of networks: horizontal, vertical

2. Translators/interpreters: within domains, between domains

3. Project managers: insiders, outsiders

4. Entrepreneurs: administrative, commercial, academic, civic

Four main types of brokers have been identified as being of special significance. On the one hand, there are the network-builders, those who establish new kinds of links between disparate research groups and individuals. The main distinction is between those network-builders, most commonly within transnational corporations or organizations, who make connections in a top-down, hierarchical fashion and those who establish what might be termed horizontal linkages, often at a local level, between representatives from different social domains or constituencies. Brokerage here consists of mediation, and creating new arenas of interaction for previously separated units.

Secondly, there are translators or interpreters who serve to transfer a certain language or conceptual framework that has been developed in one sphere of knowledge production into another. This appropriation process can take many forms; and often involves the borrowing of terminology across disciplines, as well as across societal domains. The third form of brokerage is more specifically business-oriented, and consists of the actual management of projects. Here the brokerage takes on the character of organization and leadership, and the main distinction is between insiders and outsiders, that is, established or new members of an

organization. In the environmental field, many companies and organizations have established, for example, new units for environmental management and assessment, and often recruit new people to manage these activities. The units that are, as it were, generated from within, by insiders, are often more effective in instituting the new activity within the organization.

Finally, and perhaps most significant, are the forms of brokerage that resemble entrepeneurship, namely taking risks, mobilizing resources, and creating organizational innovations. Knowledge entrepreneurs can now be found within all societal domains - in companies, state agencies, universities, and the various formal and informal interest organizations of the civil society.

In the project on public participation, three main strategies were identified in relation to the politics of sustainable technology (see chart).

locally-based transnational national/regional

public empowerment corporate expansion social order

cultural criteria economic criteria political criteria

appropriate to context market steered policy negotiated

social learning management administration

"from below" "from above" by sector

horizontal networks vertical integration formalized systems

community ethos commercial ethos bureaucratic ethos

participation investment representation

"strong democracy" market democracy electoral democracy

citizen consumer voter

What seems to be emerging, at least in the quest for sustainable development, are three rather distinct strategies of scientific and technological politics. Each has its own types of institutional learning, and each implies quite different conceptions of democracy. There is, at work in each of the three main strategies, a different processual logic, based on what might be termed different normative or motivational systems.

Each tends to be based in a separate sphere of society, and the problem, at least in the environmental field, is that the different strategies tend to compete for resources and influence. A closer look at the political and social dynamics of brokerage might well contribute to a more effective interaction between the different strategies.

In the proposed project, this framework will be applied to the new genetic technologies. The more normative or processual framework developed by Jamison et. al. (1999) may in fact be further refined and developed by employing the more structural framework of Hernandez and Gould,and vice verse. More importantly, one may also study whether the new bio-technology seemingly create entirely new type of brokerage links between previously separated spheres of societal action.

Achen, Thomas (1997) Den bioetiske udfording - En retspolitisk studie om forholdet mellem etik, politik og ret i det lovforberedande arbejde vedr bio- og genteknologi i Danmark, Norge og Sverige, Linköping Studies in Art and Science, nr 169.

Bech, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society, London: Sage

Emirbayer, Musstafa & Jeff Goodwin (1994) “Network Analysis,Culture and the Problem of Agency” in American Journal of Sociology,:99 no 6, pp 1411 - 1454.

Fernandez, Roberto & Roger Gould (1994) “A Dilemma of State Power in the National Health Policy Domain” in American Journal of Sociology:99, no 6, pp 1455 - 1491.

Gibbons, Michael et. al (1994) The New Production of Knowledge, London, Sage.

Hviid Nielsen, Torben (in press) Livets tre og kodernes kode. Fra genetikk til bioteknologi, Norge 1900-2000. Oslo

Jamison,Andrew et.al. (1999), Public Engagement and Science and Technology Policy Options (PESTO) final report, Department of Planning and Development skriftserie 237, Aalborg University.

Miettinen,Reijo (ed.) (1999), Biotechnology and Public Understanding of Science, Helsinki: Academy of Finland.

Slaughter, Sheila & Larry Leslie (1997), Academic Capitalism, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press.

Our strategy for developing this research project on knowledge brokering take its point of departure in, on the one hand, discussions, scholarly achievements and network effects of the British-Nordic collaboration in 1998-99 on “public understanding of science”. This collaboration - initiated and supported by the social research councils of the participating countries - raised broad, comparative issues on public understanding and participation in relation to recent developments in biotechnology. One of the outputs of this collaboration is the proceedings report published by the Academy of Finland in 1999 (Reijo Miettinnen (ed): Biotechnology and Public Understanding of Science). A large number of the persons who will take part in preparing this project also took part in that collaboration. On the other hand, we aim to develop our research strategy by exploiting experiences and results from ongoing or recently finished research projects in the Nordic countries on related issues, such as “Prometheus Unbound? On the Relation between Science and Power in Modern Denmark” (Bertilsson 1998), the PESTO project (Jamison 1999) in which Nordic contributions were salient, and the history of biotechnology in Norway (Hviid Nielsen, forthcoming), in Finland (Alestalo, Research Group on Comparative Sociology) and others. All participants are actively engaged in the field of science and society, and in the public understanding of science (PUS). Through this, we hope to develop what was achieved within the earlier network framework in a further and more systematized manner as part of the basis for specific, empirical research and theoretical development. The idea is also to extend such research into other Nordic countries, such as Iceland, as well as into the Baltic countries,

Project preparation will be organized as two two-day works-shops in Sept/Oct 1999 and Dec 1999/Jan. 2000. The aim of this process is to develop a full research project proposal for NOS-S by the next deadline, February 1, 2001. In the first work-shop participants will present prepared contributions about experiences and research results from related research projects from which our research may profit. Presentations will also be prepared discussing key methodological and conceptual issues raised in the preliminary framework of the project as described in this proposal.

Such contributions will also be presented at the second work-shop, but at that time they will be selected and formulated in such a way that they may contribute to discussions about specific issues raised in a new, revised version research project plan. This revised draft of the research plan will be written after, and on the basis of results from, the first work-shop, and it will be circulated among participants some time before the second work-shop takes place. This revised research plan should at that time also include drafts of plans for specific, empirical research for each participating country, in addition to a revised version of the overall conceptual and methodological framework of the project.

These are the researchers who will take part in the preparation project:

Professor Margareta Bertilsson, Copenhagen University, leader

Professor Andrew Jamison, Aalborg University

Assistant Professor Jesper Lassen, Aalborg University

Researcher, Mark Elam, Copenhagen University

Professor Hans Glimell, Gothenburg University

Professor Aant Elzinga, Gothenburg University

Associate Professor Thomas Achen, Linköping/Norrköping University

Professor Marja Häyrinen-Alestalo, University of Helsinki

Acting Professor Esa Väliverronen, University of Helsinki

Researcher Karoliina Snell, University of Helsinki

Research Director Egil Kallerud, Norwegian Institute for Studies in Research and Higher Education, Oslo

Professor Torben Hviid Nielsen, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo

Researcher Vera Schwach, Norwegian Institute for Studies in Research and Higher Education, Oslo

These researchers take part partly because they possess extensive expertise from which the project may profit, partly because they will also be expected to take on key roles in performing and/or leading the actual research during the research phase.

In addition to those listed above, researchers from Iceland and Lithuania will be invited to join our workshops. Iceland is not already part of our project mainly because efforts during the British-Nordic collaboration on “public understanding of science” to ensure Icelandic participation proved unsuccessful.

The support we apply for is to cover travel and accommodation expenses for 13 – 15 persons for two work-shops. We will organize these workshops in a way that minimizes costs, but also facilitates participation by all the researchers involved. We apply for a total amount of 190 000 DKK, including management overhead charged by Copenhagen University.

The goal of the preparation project is, as mentioned, to submit a high quality research project to NOS-S by the next deadline, February 1, 2001. This will be a three years’ research project which will encompass empirical mapping of the new awareness contexts in the different Nordic countries, as well a theoretical/conceptual effort which will draw on the empirical research, as well other research projects and networks, such as a UK program in “Science, Governance and Social Change” which is presently being considered for funding by the British social science research council (ESRC). Part of the three years project plan will be an outreach phase during the last half year of the project. These dissemination efforts should, as we see it at the moment, include national conferences between researchers and "practitioners" about the changing contexts of assessment. Other forms of publication and dissemination will also be considered, such as use of the new telecommunications media and the Internet.