This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Slayton, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Discursive Choices

Boycotting Star Wars Between Science and Politics

Stanford University, USA, rslayton{at}stanford.edu

Few presidential initiatives have attracted more public ridicule from scientists and engineers than ‘Star Wars’, Ronald Reagan’s 1983 proposal to build a missile defense system that would render the Soviet nuclear arsenal ‘impotent and obsolete’. Scientists found multiple ways of critiquing what Reagan’s vision became: not a working weapons system, but a dramatically escalated research and development program known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which stalled arms-control negotiations near the end of the Cold War. This paper examines how scientists crossed discursive boundaries between science and politics as they staged a social movement against SDI: a nationwide boycott of Star Wars research funds. It argues that scientists made discursive choices that furthered their immediate challenge to practices of military-academic research, while still shaping emergent identities in line with existing institutions. Significantly, this account cannot be simply incorporated into existing traditions of research in lay-expert communication. Whereas these traditions suggest that communicative practices either enable or constrain actors, this account shows they simultaneously did both. It advances the notion of ‘discursive choices’ as a concept that may help mediate between structure and agency in studies of public communication with technical experts. This account suggests that an examination of discursive choices may contribute to understanding how expertise is maintained and reconfigured within a particular political culture.

Key Words: discourse • identity politics • professional responsibility • public communication of science • public interest science • science policy • scientists and the media • Star Wars • Strategic Defense Initiative

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 1, 27-66 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706063787


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?