Introduction to Case-Studies

Abstract

The view that science is not a positivistic sphere of enquiry where the enquirer can stand apart from what is being studied is now widely accepted (though not always within science itself). Science is shaped by social, political and cultural forces, and as such, it is infused with subjective and normative judgements on the part of those involved in its shaping. Thus, as Biggs (1990, 1489–90) notes in discussing the ‘second generation problems’ of the Green Revolution, closer examination, ‘often reveals that there were also “non-center” scientists who had, at the time of the original decision, correctly predicted the outcomes of the proposed actions of the center’. The significance of lock-in lies precisely in the existence of ‘non-centre scientists’, doing things in ‘non-centre ways’. Typically, there exist alternative ways of understanding and approaching a given problem, and these throw open the plausibility of counterfactual worlds. I have sought to highlight in the following case studies the two questions of greatest importance; first, the obvious one, why was it that things were done as they were done?; and second, the often ignored one, why, and how, was it that alternative approaches were marginalised or ignored? The answers to these two questions inevitably overlap, but they are not one and the same.