Abstract
The production of scientific knowledge is increasingly taking place in inter- and transdisciplinary environ- ments. Multi-stakeholder arrangements give rise to a multiplicity of viewpoints and analytic assessments while also opening up scientific truth claims to greater scrutiny.
In his book The Paradoxes of Transparency: Science and the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management in Europe, human ecologist and sociologist Douglas Clyde Wilson examines how boundary work (here, the construction of the science–policy split) can be done and which paradoxes arise in each organizational environment in the process. In contrast to most comparable publications in science and technology studies (STS), here the key point for Wilson is the unique quality of scientific knowledge, characterized by its “radical commitment to transparency” (p. 21). It is this quality, so Wilson argues, that lends scientific knowledge great potential as a basis on which to legitimize political decisions. Thus his book focuses on how best to maintain this transparency and the role of science in providing objective and unbiased knowledge untouched by narrow interests and power configurations and free of moral and social influences. Wilson tackles this issue by analyzing the process of organizational adaptation in one of the oldest intergovernmental scientific organizations in existence, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
What is exciting about Wilson’s approach from an STS perspective is his conceptual framework. Based on the theoretical concept of communicative rationality introduced within Communicative Systems Theory (CST), he focuses on day-to-day sense making in people’s communication. Within this perspective, science has institutional impacts and power due to its reliance on truth and rational facts. Policy, by contrast, is characterized by negotiation between interests and values. In this sense, boundary work can be seen as a process of cultural translation that is faced with the difficulty of sustaining the quality of scientific knowledge. This cultural perspective has gained currency in STS of late. Environmental and natural resource issues are increasingly debated at an international level, requiring scientific advice on a global scale. Since the author concentrates exclusively on scientists working in an international scientific organization, one might ask how their efforts to achieve legitimacy via transparency are viewed by non-scientific actors within the fisheries system.
Wilson’s book constitutes an in-depth empirical case study of everyday boundary work in fisheries policy making. Although the title is somewhat misleading in its reference to the paradoxes of transparency – paradoxical situations are only one aspect of Wilson’s analysis – the book is nevertheless a must read for those concerned with the quality of scientific knowledge in policy advice. Finally, it is highly inspiring in its approach to researching scientific organizations and networks on an international scale.