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'But where are the Cossacks?':
An alternative strategy for popularization
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Today's scientific and technological communication stakes are such that we can no longer be content with merely asking ourselves whether they are giving a faithful or a distorted image of the results of scientific activity, with a view to affording the modem man of breeding an extra smattering of knowledge.
Another way of looking at the problem is to ask how best the popularization of science and technology can be utilized to further a particular policy goal, and what strategic decisions need to be made to help bring that goal about. If we called on the conceptual armoury and strategic models to be found in the literature of bath the East and the West, we would be in line with this perspective.
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The destabilizing nature of progress
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The consequence of scientific and technical progress is to upset established economic, social and cultural 'equilibria'. On an international scale, this shows up in the shape of development opportunities for some, and as a factor of relative regression for others.
If the fruits of scientific and technical research go exclusively to laboratories and industry, we are sacrificing a considerable amount of cultural capital. Yet, given the necessity of spreading knowledge throughout the non-specialist community, it must be admitted that science centres are not very productive. Our aim is not to denigrate their efforts but to emphasize the fact that they preach to converted minorities, and to schoolchildren, who, by their very nature, form a captive audience. What about the wider general public who should be the main target of any enterprise in this field?
One of the major obstacles when trying to popularize on a wide scale is the manner in which communication between science and the general public is conceived and processed. How can we ensure that the information proposed is operational for lay people, and that it answers the questions they are asking themselves? Now let's be clear about this-the history of technology, the wonders of the ocean depths, the secrets of the galaxies, medical research, etc. will always be objects of fascination. But today's popularization must concentrate on the ways and means of enabling lay people to acquire a level of scientific and technical literacy and to apply it in their everyday lives.
It is more a question of ensuring a spread of intelligence than of a whole welter of information which, if it is only slightly removed from the original scientific formulation, is no more than a caricature of classroom teaching without the constraints which that normally entails. Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond (1984) claims that 'the progress of freedom cannot be dissociated from the progress of culture'. An advance in the scientific and technical literacy of the individual is a condition for the furthering of democracy, and democracy is more a process than a de facto state of affairs. It is a question of strengthening the individual's capacity to understand the ins and outs of scientific and/or technological decision making as well as what is at stake, so as to be more able to participate in the process. It is a question of sharing out the intellectual treasures, the astuteness and the intelligence that lie behind advances in research in such a way as to benefit lay people in their everyday lives.
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Constraints of a mass-media society
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The strategy principles to be applied will have to come to terms with the media-led society in which we live. The systematic recourse to the techniques and strategies of the communications industry by all sections of society (Miège 1980) is a disruptive factor for the above-mentioned policy goal. How are we to know whether someone is informing the public or engaging in the self-interested promotion of an enterprise or research centre? This is made all the more difficult when it comes to science and technology as, most of the time, the advertisers involved also produce information themselves (Fayard 1988)!
The communications industry always situates itself with respect to the vital interests of the client. Dorothy Nelkin (1987) has identified the strategies used by scientific and technical advertisers - information is controlled and filtered at source and huge public relations campaigns are launched, backed up by crash training courses for the people called on to make public pronouncements. Inspired by the principles of the game of Go, the professionals of this strategy set up vast networks whose co-ordinated implementation is activated when the vital interests of their client are at stake. Using science centres, the sponsors follow a 'strategy of influence' (Fayard 1988) to promote their corporate image and to acquire or reinforce the public's confidence in that image. The confusion between public and private interests is skilfully stage-managed for the greater benefit of the communications industry.
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'The clash between two modes of knowledge'
and 'the dynamic paradox of strategy'
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Jean-Marie Albertini (1985) suggests looking on popularization as 'a clash between two modes of knowledge', each with a finality specific to those involved, leading us to consider the problem of a dialogue between systems oriented in different directions. It is indeed the case that science does to a certain degree conflict with the way our everyday experience leads us to represent the world. Why should the Earth revolve around the Sun, when in everyday speech it is the Sun that figes in the east and sets in the west? By revealing what goes on behind what is perceived, science sometimes denigrates common sense; all the more so since the products of science actually do work.
The relationship between scientific knowledge and common knowledge is a conflict one. According to Edward Lutttwak (1987), this kind of relationship is governed by a linear logic, but by a paradoxical logic which inverts opposites according to what he calls the' dynamic paradox of strategy'. Popularization then is seen as causing the opposite effects to those it initially claimed to be aiming at. It confirms the divide between scientists and lay people rather than smoothing it out. 1 have elsewhere called this the 'perverse effect' of popularization, which results in the scientist being confirmed as a scientist and in the lay person being confirmed as an ignoramus (Fayard 1988). Quite naturally the latter concludes that science is indeed an extremely complex area - 'science is arcane' (Nelkin 1985) - reserved for people who are above average and who are to be trusted because they are very clever... This brings to mind what Baudoin Jurdant (1974) called the 'ideological function of popularisation, as a symptom of scientism'.
Linear logic is dominant in milieux that are homogeneous and pursue similar objectives-scientific research and higher education. But the more science moves away from its bases, its laboratories, specialist conferences and teaching structures, the more its field of action becomes heterogeneous and conflictual, the more its activity is governed by a paradoxical logic.
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Traditional popularization,
or Napoleon on the plains of
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The strategy of traditional popularization is a caricature of a model that Carl von Clausewitz describes well (Earle 1943). It involves seeking a head-on clash of the strongest on bath gicles by a direct approach, counting on a decisive battle to settle the outcome. Traditional popularization dressed in missionary's clothes seeks to impose true knowledge on the approximations and errors of common knowledge. For some people it comes clown to no legs than 'eradication' the false beliefs of the non scientist.
The efficacy of such a model supposes firm determination on the part of the attacking force and a balance of power clearly in its favour, but also the possibility of interaction. When it comes to popularization, the interaction (the battle), whence the superiority of scientific representations is meant to spring, practically does not happen. The popularizers cannot exclaim, like El Cid, 'and the battle ceased for want of warriors!' (Corneille, 1636), because there is no face-to-face confrontation! It is no use popularizers optimizing their weapons or developing spectacular gimmicks in so far as the other person, i.e. the mass of lay people, is not there, and all they are doing is speaking to an elite public that can get its information elsewhere!
Popularisers find themselves in the same situation as Napoleon going ever deeper into the steppes of Holy Russia seeking the decisive battle that will ensure him total political victory, except that the Cossacks-those who were meant to be vanquished or convinced-don't turn up (Fayard 1990a). Why on Earth should they, if it means being exposed to the tire of an aggressor who is at the height of his power and reputedly invincible? The same goes for the lay people who, when summoned to the cathedrals of public science, vote with their feet, preferring a football match, an evening at the pub or in front of the television rather than celebrating the glories of the past, present and future power of science, industry and governments.
Far from home base the popularizing offensive' gets out of breath, and once the 'culmination' (Clausewitz) is reached, the tide starts to ebb. The effort expended and forces deployed have merely modified representations that were ready to be modified before an audience that was already won over.
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Judging the forces involved
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The strategy error made by scientific popularization arises from a faulty diagnosis of the forces involved. The direct method is only viable if the forces of the aggressor are clearly superior. When popularizers venture into the do main of communicating with the public, far from their base and on a terrain that they do not control, they make the mistake of behaving like a superpower! They are labouring under the illusion that lay people have the same attitude to science as they do. Yet even if the layperson is willing to recognize the effective power of science to explain and influence the mechanics of reality, they are Dot necessarily willing to have is shoved clown their throats. This is why we claim that the ivory towers in which research shuts itself away are also built of social bricks that circumscribe it as if it were something strange and powerful (Fayard 1990b).
Among lay people, it is not the exploits of scientific explanation that serve as a reference point, but the memory of science in the classroom - a rigid, dogmatic science, spreading foregone conclusions and, what's more, serving as a means of selection and a justification of authority. Despite the enthusiasm of popularizers convinced of the fundamentally curious and creative nature of science and swept off their feet by this intellectual adventure, methodical doubt is hardly voiced in secondary teaching. Freed from the constraints of the classroom, the non-captive layperson is in a position to say 'No thanks, we've already clone our bit!'
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Toward an alternative strategy
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Paradoxical logic, absence of interaction and superpower mania are at the source of the strategy miscalculation of traditional popularization. The time has now come to sketch out an alternative which will enable us to get to grips with the policy objectives alluded to at the beginning of this paper.
If popularization is to avoid becoming a victim of paradoxical logic, it would become attuned to the daily preoccupations of the layperson with a view to injecting them with a homeopathic dose of scientific literacy. 'Within its element' (Mao Tse Tung), in a medium it blends into, it would avoid any risk of conflictual popularization. It would thus abandon the trench warfare of 'science versus common knowledge', and act no longer as a superpower but as a force for progress, mindful of the regular contribution it can bring to the well-being of lay people in their daily lives. If the interests of the latter are taken into consideration, interaction becomes natural since popularization follows the tide. This strategy of the invisible is based on the indirect model of strategy which 'strives to limit the battle to its simplest expression' (Liddel Hart quoted by Beauffre 1985), using indirect approaches in secondary theatres of operation, avoiding issues that might crystallize opposition.
The communication of scientific and technical information has everything to gain by a discrete approach. We should remember the precepts of Maréchal Foch (Beauffre 1985) - economize your forces (low input/high output); the security principle (avoid vulnerability resulting from over-exposing yourself); and freedom of action (avoid constraints and act with as much latitude as possible).
Scientific popularization being weak in the public domain, it must avoid any risk of setting of an 'arms race', which would put it at a disadvantage. As in the game of Go, it must keep the initiative, play where there is space and not attack the opponent where he is strongest, not try to condemn astrology or homoeopathy which are respectively rooted in an immovable need of the imaginary and a rejection of chemical medicine. Such a strategy alternative is opposed to the mass-media logic which guarantees maximum public exposure for governmental, scientific or economics spokespeople. The cultural return on such media hype is often in inverse proportion to the outlay involved.
In this way, scientific popularization will contribute to reverse progressively the spontaneous rejection of science communication by the layperson. It must prefer synergy to antagonism. But whatever it does, horoscopes will remain well established in the press!
Pierre Fayard. International Journal of Science Education, 1991, VOL. 13, NO. 5, 597-601. CONCLUDING COMMENT
References
ALBERTINI, J.-M. 1985, Les confessions d'un vulgarisateur devenu chercheur. ln Vulgariser: un défi ou un mythe (Ed. La Chronique Sociale, Lyon). /// BEAUFFRE, A. 1985, Introduction a la stratégie (Economica, Paris) /// CORNEILLE, P. 1636, Le Cid (Paris). /// EARLE, E. M. 1943, Makers of modern strategy (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ). FAYARD, P. 1988, La communication scientifique publique, de la vulgarisation a la médiatisation (Ed. La Chronique Sociale, Lyon). /// FAYARD, P. 1990a, Pensée stratégique et vulgarisation, in Alliage (Nice, September, No. 5). /// FAYARD, P. 1990b, Los cosacos no acuden nunca a la cita. Supplemento Ciencia y Techologia, La Vanguardia (Barcelona), April. /// JURDANT, B. 1974, L'idéologie de la vulgarisation scientifique. Ph.D dissertation, University Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg, France. /// LEVY-LEBLOND, J .-M. 1984, in La Recherche (Paris) June. /// LUTTWAK, E. 1987, Strategy. The Logic of War and Peace (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). /// MAO TSE-TUNG, Ecrits militaires (Les Amitiés Franco-Chinoises, Pekin). /// MIEGE, B. 1989, La société conquise par la communication (Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, Grenoble, France). /// NELKIN, D. 1987, Selling Science, How the Press Cover Science (Freeman, New York).
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Russia
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Rédigé par : Arrangeur | 18 février 2008 à 19:27
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Rédigé par : Arrangeur | 22 juillet 2008 à 11:39
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Rédigé par : berlin | 27 février 2009 à 09:53
Gut!
Rédigé par : berlin | 27 février 2009 à 09:53