Democracy, rights and technological change

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Democracy, rights and technological change

• Rob Hagendijk
• International School for Humanities and Social
  Sciences/Universiteit van Amsterdam
• PO Box 26, 1000 AA Amsterdam
• The Netherlands
• 31 525 3774 - R.P.Hagendijk_at_uva.nl
• www.ishss.uva.nl
• STAGE www.stage-research.net

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Video Sections

• Introduction
• The sustainable tomato
• To protect the potato against fungi
• Pesticide-resistant corn
• Cholesterol-reducing milk
• Safe food with biotech?
• Rice against blindness

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The video Visuals and narrative format

• Formats
• Everyday life and GM
• The voice over
• Pop-up windows
• Experts
• Turn-taking

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The video Inbuilt citizenship

• Priorities
• Blind spots Playing God, Trade agreements
• Consumer freedom, labeling, transparency
• Risk, uncertainty, and safety
• Environmental consequences
• Economic consequences
• Third World Starvation

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Background and context

• Parliament initiates debate July 1999
• Exploratory phase Late 1999- Autumn 2000
• Framing Autumn 2000-September 2001
• Debate Autumn 2001
• Final report January 2002
• Parliamentary debate Februari 2002

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Conflicts

• Exploratory phase
• Design and governance
• Elaboration Negotiated framing
• The start and the video
• The walk-out

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Open debate !?

• I would like to keep it out of the sphere of
  the believers. On the one hand there are those
  who are convinced it will be beneficial to people
  and on the other hand there is Greenpeace,
  certain that it will lead us to the worlds
  destruction. Such people never convince one
  another. (Chair Committee)

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Dutch pragmatism

• Dont grow it!
• Allow it, if labelled
• Freedom of choice transparency
• Avoid farmers dependency
• More research on risk
• TWCs need regulatory science
• More information and deliberation

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Aftermath

• Public opinion
• Parliamentary debate
• Newspapers/media
• Delegitimation of NGOs

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Against NGO-arrogance

• our goal was not to chase them away, but to put
  them in offside position. I am a member of
  almost all of these organizations, but I never
  received a letter at home in which we were asked
  for our opinion. This raises questions about
  their functioning Their high-pitched ethical
  statements and moralizing is much more detached
  from what people think than they are willing to
  acknowledge. They are a bunch of diehard
  idealists

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A crises of representation

• Parliaments
• Social movements
• Mass media and civil society
• Opinion surveys
• Focus groups, consensus conferences etc.

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Liberalism, democracy and agony

• it is vital for democratic politics to
  understand that liberal democracy results from
  the articulation of two logics which are
  incompatible in the last instance and that there
  is no way in which they could be perfectly
  reconciled. (C. Mouffe)
• Democracy and market capitalism are like two
  persons bound in a tempestuous marriage that is
  riven by conflict, and yet endures because
  neither partner wishes to separate from the
  other. The two exist in a kind of antagonistic
  symbiosis. (R.Dahl)

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Liberal democracy, technological change, and
globalization

• Reconfiguring citizenship
• science and technological change
• rights, entitlements and participation
• nation states and representation
• market liberalism
• Public debates as political machines