Stefan Böschen

Die Synthetische Chemie hat ein schillerndes Gesicht. Auf der Basis der Synthetischen Chemie wurden die Stoffumsatzprozesse moderner Gesellschaften weitreichend umgebaut. Welche Fülle von Stoffen – »Better things for better living through Chemistry«, so der in den 1930er Jahren kreierte Slogan von DuPont – wurde erzeugt und veränderte damit die Lebenswelt moderner Menschen grundlegend. Durch die industrielle Organisation der Forschungsergebnisse chemischer Forschung konnte die Synthetische Chemie unmittelbar ökonomisch und kulturell wirksam werden.

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ‘‘risk’’, over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge in technology conflicts results in significant institutional effects and new constellations of actors in public debates. To illustrate and substantiate this political dynamics of nonknowledge we draw upon examples from the areas of agri-biotechnology and mobile phoning. In a first step, we develop in greater detail the concept of scientific cultures of nonknowledge and identify three such cultures involved in the social conflicts within the two areas. Subsequently, we analyze the specific dynamics of the politicisation of nonknowledge looking at the variety of actors involved and the pluralisation of perceptions and evaluations of what is not known. Then, we point out some of the institutional reactions to the political and cultural dynamics of scientific nonknowledge. We argue that the equal recognition of the diverse cultures of nonknowledge is a key prerequisite for socially legitimate and ‘‘robust’’ decision-making under conditions of politicised scientific nonknowledge.