Ethnographies of Science: Boundary Organizations in the Agricultural Biotechnology–Policy Interface in India
This paper is based on ethnographies of science to posit science, to study the culture of science, to understand the changing narratives about the nature, methods and ethos of science, and to help science and its publics re/design new research questions, programmes, and science and technology policies. It explores qualitative research that examines how scientists encounter the science–policy boundary in the normal course of doing their research. Grounded in the questions of practical relevance, it relies on an interview-based study that took place between 2017 and 2019 in different institutional settings in India in which interviews with 68 practicing agricultural biotechnologists aimed to encourage scientists to reflect as openly as possible on their own experiences of and engagement in policymaking domains. These institutional settings include institutes of national importance, central universities, state universities, mission-mode organizations, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Indian Council of Agricultural Research. These agricultural biotechnologists sometimes refer to institutions that mediate between policy- or decision-makers and scientists, called boundary organizations. The influence of contract funding brings somewhat volatile and diverse patterns (often referred to as anomalies) in research activity. In other words, the pressure to bring in research funding allied with the demand for policy accountability also presents a kind of diversity within a scientist’s repertoire of projects. Individual scientists often have to negotiate and delineate research relationships with various customers who are simultaneously policymakers and funders of research. Empirical evidence from interviews suggests that there were often occasions when such boundary organizations were absent from the drawing up of contracts, agreements and the negotiation of research boundaries at the science–policy interface.
Keywords: Agricultural Biotechnology–Policy Interface, Boundary Organizations, Contract Funding, Ethnographies of Science