On being technically, ethically and politically reasonable: experts, citizens and GM crops

This paper takes issue with a particular conception of public participation operationalised in the ‘GM Nation ’ public debate held across the UK in 2003. The paper proceeds in two parts. In the first, I consider some key conditions of possibility for GM Nation, setting the debate within the social, political, and particularly social scientific developments that created a conceptual space within which an event like GM Nation, and the very idea of public participation in technology decision-making, can be embedded and justified. I then critique that conceptual space by focusing on a tendency to foreground a democratically ideal process whilst shifting attention away from the specificities of any particular decision, its epistemic dimensions, and the quality of decisions taken. In the second part, I suggest the need to return to questions of epistemology and outline two practically separable domains of expertise pertinent to decision making: technical and politico-ethical. Through analysis of data gathered at eleven public debates on GM crop commercialisation, including eight that were part of GM Nation, I develop a more critical and limited approach to public participation in ‘real world ’ decision-making. I argue that technically reasonable and politically and ethically reasonable are not the same thing, concluding that these domains need to be disentangled and treated separately, but concurrently, iteratively and in dialogue according to the particular decision in hand