The social warp of science: writing the history of genetic engineering policy.

Abstract

Traditional empiricism, although largely abandoned, has marked the social studies of science through the persistent division between macrolevel analysis of the institutions promoting and regulating science and microlevel analysis of the laboratory, theories, and experiments. Further traces appear in the largely separate methodologies used in social studies of science, which do not draw from political theory, and studies in political theory, which are silent with respect to the expression of power in the development of science. Poststructuralist conceptions of science have reinforced this divcsion by encour aging a turn away from explanations that assume human agency and accountability . This article attempts to bridge the present methodological gulf between political theory and the social studies of science through methods that are sensitive to the nature and operation of power and to its expression in discourse. The application of these methods in the study of genetic engineering policy m the United States and the United Kingdom is outlined.