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- Bridgstock, Ch. 10 -

Introduction

We’ve seen how science and technology have become the primary ‘push’ factors in the economic development of the most advanced nations of the world. We’ve also seen that the hegemony of a scientific and technological society poses serious challenges for national governments that seek to remain competitive. Countries like Canada and Australia may have to stimulate scientific and technological innovation if they want to maintain their economic position and standard of living.

The rise of a technological society, therefore, presents us with a challenge. But who are we? We in the advanced industrial nations constitute only one-third of the globe. The rest of the world - often called the Third World - is a very different place. Largely rural and poor when compared to the advanced countries of the west, the less developed countries of the world face an even more complex challenge if they want to eventually join the ranks of the more developed nations.

The problem of assessing the significance of science and technology for the developing nations is compounded by the fact that they are not all alike. The per capita income of Indonesia, for example, is more than eight times as much as Ethiopia. Moreover, within these countries, there may be classes of people that are relatively well off. This difference between rich and poor can have a considerable influence on the kind of science and technologies that are deemed acceptable to the status quo and their effects when implemented.

A good example is that of biogas - a relatively simple low-end technology that turns vegetable matter, animal manure and otherwise useless waste into a nitrogen rich fertilizer. This same technology had different effects when introduced in India and China. China is a socialist country where the introduction of biogas plants helped raise the standard of living of the entire community. The same technology was developed by private enterprise in India. Here the benefits went primarily to the producers of the fertilizer and the private farmers who used it to increase crop production. The effects on many of the poor, who used to collect dried cow dung for fuel, were disastrous, since the biogas manufacturers made sure that the now valuable dung was all collected.

This is just one example of the inequalities that can occur in a less developed nation when any technology is developed. If one goal of implementing a new technology is to help to eradicate the poverty endemic to the Third World and raise the general standard of living, we always need to know how any new technology is going to be applied, who controls it, and who benefits from it. In other words, science and technology can never be separated from the social and political factors that relate to their application.

Even when we rely on statistical averages with respect to the Third World, there are so many complexities that it is difficult to determine what technological fix is needed. In fact, over time the prevailing wisdom about the role of technology and science in the Third World has changed significantly, as experiments fail to achieve results and as changing relationships between the Developed and Developing World change the fundamental assumptions underlining the adoption of science and technology. This lecture will describe the major approaches that have been canvassed since World War II and their associated problems.

Scientific and Technological Positivism

After the Second World War, countries like Britain and France began to divest themselves of their colonial empire, partly by choice (imperialism was no longer as beneficial as countries began to invest in internal production) and partly by pressure (independence movements in many of the colonies). Many in the developed and developing countries believed that the colonies could thrive and gradually join the advanced world through the application of the kind of industrialization and associated technological development that had made the West so advanced.

The postwar environment also encouraged developing nations to be optimistic about the role that governments could play in industrial development. After all, governments had intervened in the economy very effectively during the war and the power of the Soviet Union showed that growth could be accelerated if the state provided and targeted investment capital for industrialization. The prevailing model was large-scale industry supported by the latest science and technology. The model could be further strengthened by financial aid from the developed nations who had gotten out of the colonial business and could now provide financial support to compensate for any damage done during the colonial period. There could now be a mutually beneficial partnership between the advanced and developing nations.

Such an ideal was given a shape in a United Nations body - the Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology to Development (ACAST). This body believed that science and technology provided the key to eliminating the poverty of the Third World and achieving higher standards of living generally. The optimism surrounding this ideal soon waned as it became clear that the Third World lacked the capital to engage in systematic research and development, and that solutions needed to be more carefully tailored to the marginal conditions prevalent in developing nations, including the lack of a sufficient capital pool and the overwhelmingly rural nature of these societies.

Ironically, when some nations began to imitate the Western model, they poured scarce capital into education systems designed to train scientists and technicians. Since these individuals were unable to find relevant work in their own countries, many immigrated to the Western countries to find employment. Thus, they provided the developed countries with trained personnel without any cost of training. The result was a net transfer of wealth from the developing to the developed nations - the exact opposite of the wishes of those who hoped to bridge the gap between advanced and less developed nations.

Selective Technology Transfer

Once it became clear that it was going to be difficult to force capital-intensive development on the Third World, the obvious alternative was to selectively borrow the most relevant technologies from the West. This proved to be much more problematic than anyone could have anticipated.

In the first place, it was difficult for primarily rural nations to make an informed decision as to the most suitable kind of technology to transfer. Second, the transfer of technology came at a significant price, since the best modern equipment was highly patented and sold to the Third World at highly inflated prices. Moreover, this transfer contained many hidden costs in terms of maintenance and repair of the machinery.

Even in the rural sector, the transfer of Western technology could backfire. The so-called Green Revolution was an attempt to increase the output of rice and wheat in countries like India and Pakistan by engaging in large-scale production with the aid of fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery and irrigation. What seemed to be a good idea at first ended up having negative social consequences. Only the large private farmers had the resources to participate in the Green Revolution, which meant that many smaller and tenant farmers ended up falling behind and losing their small properties. Unlike in the Industrial Revolution, there were not many industrial opportunities for these displaced rural farmers, thus increasing poverty and the gap between the rich and poor in many Asian countries.

The Green Revolution increased production overall, but created widespread employment, particularly among women who formerly had supplemented their families’ incomes by harvesting the grain (and also collecting the leavings for their families). Now these things were usually done by machines on the increasingly large farms. For many of the inhabitants of the Third World, western style development meant greater hardship, inequality and exploitation of the poor, not to mention other problems associated with the loss of traditional agriculture and the effects of pesticides like DDT. The profits that were made certainly were not distributed among the population generally.

Dependency Theory and the Appropriate Technology Movement

A related problem with the transfer of technology was that it made the Third World even more dependent on the advanced nations, thereby reinforcing a new and insidious form of economic colonization to replace the political colonization of the past. A number of writers including E.F. Schumacher noted that it was not necessary or desirable to adopt modern western technologies wholesale. Those economic theorists who objected to this power relationship - called dependency theorists - began to advocate the adoption of more intermediate and appropriate technologies, many of which could be developed internally or could serve as low cost adaptations of western technologies.

The idea was to adopt simple, low-cost machinery and processes that were: 1) suited to local conditions; 2) could make use of and support local labour; 3) could provide valuable on-site learning; and 4) build the self-reliance of local communities. Small-scale industries like biogas fertilizer plants or small brickwork operations could allow Third World communities to build their own economy from the ground up, rather than relying unduly on the transfer of technologies form the west. This idea of appropriate technology had a number of successes, and was supported by the proliferation of local development organizations (known as Non-Government Organizations or NGOs) that were supported by information and advice from UN affiliates.

The appropriate technology movement was critical of Western models of development and promoted “autonomy and self-reliance at all levels of society” in the Third World. They also began to incorporate the new environmental views of low impact and sustainable technologies. Finally, their goal was to increase equality and participatory democracy in developing countries.

There were several problems with the appropriate technology movement, despite all the good intentions of the participants. First, it implied the adoption of a ‘second best’ technology that would make the Third World always a resource supplier for the advanced countries rather than a technologically developing society. Second, it was bound to run into difficulties by running against the increasingly consumer mentality of the advanced nations, that was also permeating the developing nations. Third, it could never produce the kind of manufactured goods - such as automobiles - that were necessary for continuing industrialization. In a way, it established the norm of a new stone age for the developing nations. Finally, it failed to address the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the developing nations. As the rich grew richer, they could consume the luxuries that imports from the advanced nations offered, thereby increasing the prevailing economic, social and cultural gaps.

Technology Blending

During the recession of the 1980s a monumental shift occurred in the thinking of the advanced nations that had profound implications for the Third World. In order to be more competitive, the advanced nations began to shift their energies into value-added technologies and to spin off manufacturing operations to the Third World where labour costs were significantly lower. The result was a much greater blending and complementarities of old and new technologies between the developed and developing world.

This development marked an entirely new shift in the relationship between economics, politics, science and technology. The shift can be encapsulated as a move from national economics with an internal focus for development to production for external markets in a more competitive environment. The new economy of the 1980s was export driven.

Ironically, this new competitive environment provided opportunities for developing nations as the producers of consumer goods for world markets. In some countries, it meant larger scale production that did not involve heavy engineering. The classic example was the textile industry, which began to shift from the developed to the developing nations with their lower labour costs. The GAP and NIKE, for example, now began to get their clothing and running shoes from Third World suppliers, some of which created free trade zones to encourage these developments. But some countries, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong - the so-called tiger economies were able to use their lower labour costs to enter into larger scale manufacturing as the developed economies shifted resources into areas that required new technologies that were value added.

In order to take advantage of these opportunities, Third World nations shifted their focus from alternative and appropriate technologies in order to embrace western style capitalist production. The former critiques of westernization, corporatization, and the inappropriateness of western technologies tended to get erased as Third World nations began to jump on the new economic bandwagon. In particular, nations viewed Singapore as the model and began to look for partnerships with the corporations. The power of the large multinational corporations in the era of blended technology increased dramatically.

The drawbacks of blending were obvious in terms of the erosion of the self-reliance and autonomy that some nations, and some groups within nations, sought during the 1970s. The new opportunities implied an increased reliance on the R & D of the developed nations. Clearly, the wholesale importation of western technologies by the developing nations was inappropriate in many ways. But there were also advantages for those nations who embraced the newer technologies in judicious ways, i.e. 1) to improve traditional industries without displacing them, and 2) to apply innovative technologies to public problems. The classic case here is Cuba, which moved into biomedicine and agricultural technologies specifically in order to improve health care and the sugar cane crop in that country.

An enormous problem with the adoption of the western pattern of development is that it based on constantly increasing demand. It is consumerist development. Already the consumption-based economies of the West are depleting the world’s resources, eradicating the global variety of species, and polluting the atmosphere at a tremendous rate. As Third World countries begin to become part of what President Bush calls the American way of life, one wonders whether the globe can sustain these levels of consumption.

Traditionally, those who espouse technological development have either ignored the issue of sustainability or have assumed that any problems can be dealt with in the form of a technological fix. Global observers, particularly in the United Nations, have argued that these assumptions are not only misleading but also dangerous. Unless we begin to change the patterns of energy and resource use in the globe generally, we appear to be heading for an environmental disaster.

Now, the advanced countries of the West face the issue that Third World countries discussed during the 1970s - the use of appropriate technologies that can result in sustainable development. However, it is doubtful that the developed countries can move quickly enough to prevent serious environmental deterioration, even if they can avoid a major ecological disaster. In the countries of the Third Word, where poverty is endemic and the focus is on sustaining life immediately rather than protecting the environment over the long term, the problem is even more pressing.

Our planet can barely sustain the consumerism of one third of the world’s population. Now we face a situation where more and more of the world’s population will be contributing to global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, soil erosion, and species destruction. Moreover, these conditions are so endemic to the new demand based global economy that nations cannot deal with them in isolation. As we enter a new century, it is clear that our solutions must be global rather than local.

Globalization

The word globalization is on everyone’s lips these days, but usually the definitions people have are very limited and misleading. Some observers, for example, view globalization as a free world capitalistic market. They could point to the fact that the role for governments is diminishing and many countries now look to the private sector to drive the global economy. They could also point to the fact that capital and labour now move more freely across global borders than they did in the past. Finally, they might suggest that non-capitalist forms of government - i.e. the Soviet Union and China - are adopting more market style economic policies.

The problem with this simplistic definition is that it: 1) ignores the fact that government planning is still a very important component of global economics and was the key to Japan’s success prior to the 1980s; 2) the marketplace is not really free but, rather, dominated by large multinational corporations that are much more interested in controlling supply and limiting risk than they are in free competition; 3) increasing integration of, and cooperation between different economies implies the need for greater regulation rather than unbridled freedom; 4) the increasing homogenization of cultural values and economic patterns of consumption hardly suggests greater freedom or individualism; and 5) science and technology are driving the global economy, and these activities inject a push factor in the economy that is quite beyond the simple laws of the marketplace.

Globalization, therefore, means the closer integration of the world’s economies and the gradual erosion of national distinctions. It implies greater specialization and movement of capital and labour between borders. It places an emphasis on large-scale capitalization. Therefore, it provides a new and powerful role for heavily capitalized multinational corporations, who are able to operate outside national boundaries.

Ironically, while globalization is making national governments more irrelevant, it is also acting as a stimulus to certain forms of regionalism. Previously, provinces, states and regions needed to be part of a national configuration in order to survive and prosper. As the globe replaces nations, and as modern communication and transportation systems, shrink the globe, it is possible for regions to play a greater role in the world. This helps to explain the growth of regional and ethnic movements in all parts of the world.

The question is: who is in charge in this new global environment? Regional movements have used the shift in power to assert their autonomy with respect to national governments. But they have no power to act as leaders or regulatory bodies in the new environment. The United Nations might be such a body, but it has always been hampered by the lack of support from its constituent nations and is becoming even less relevant as these states withdraw from the private and public sector. Multinational corporations have immense power, and one might even envision a world policed by corporations. But global corporations would need to engage in voluntary self-restraint in order to do this. Moreover, despite their monopolistic tendencies, these corporations still speak the language of competition, short-term profitability, and free markets. This is hardly the kind of mental paradigm for dealing with significant long-term problems like sustainability or the gap between the poor and rich between and within nations.

Conclusion

In earlier lectures, we saw how science and technology increasingly have become push factors in the economy. We have argued for a greater understanding of the social embeddedness of science and technology so that they can be applied more effectively to solving human problems. The implication of these arguments is that citizens of nations can have a positive effect on the direction of science and technology if they are more fully informed of the discoveries and possible applications taking place.

On the one hand, globalization complicates such an agenda by effectively decreasing the power of nations and their citizens to direct socio-economic change. On the other hand, the track record of nations with respect to the effects of scientific discovery and technological applications has not exactly been stellar. Globalization actually can empower citizens by allowing those who are concerned about the direction of science and technology to communicate across nations and to lobby the world (and the corporate community) for changes.

The growth of NGOs (non-government organizations) that set themselves the task of working to deal with these problems both locally and globally is a sign that globalization need not be an absolute barrier to social discussion and action. In recent years, the UN has begun to move away from its national focus in order to create bodies that assist NGOs and others to pursue their respective agendas. Increasingly, these NGOs are in contact with one another and working together to pursue similar goals.

Globalization allows different groups to come together relatively easily for strategic purposes and, thereafter, to make new groupings that can deal with issues as they emerge. The wonderful thing about these groups is that they are much better equipped to deal with the local conditions within which science and technological innovations are implemented. Hence the entirely appropriate term, think globally and act locally.

The notes presented here are for the AK NATS 1760.06 “Science, Technology and Society” course offered in the Fall/Winter Semester of 2001/2002 by the Atkinson College of York University, Toronto, Canada and taught by John Dwyer. The lectures are based on the following texts:

1. Martin Bridgstock et al, Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-521-58735-2
2. Kevin Robbins and Frank Webster, Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life (New York, Routledge, 1999), ISBN 0-415-16115-0
3. Albert H. Teich, Technology and the Future (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), ISBN 0-312-01885-1

For more about John Dwyer, visit: http://www.sayitagain.com/ivorytower/