European animal disease policy seems to find its justification in a “harm to other” principle. Limiting the freedom of animal keepers—e.g., by culling their animals—is justified by the aim to prevent harm, i.e., the spreading of the disease. The picture, however, is more complicated. Both during the control of outbreaks and in the prevention of notifiable, animal diseases the government is confronted with conflicting claims of stakeholders who anticipate running a risk to be harmed by each other, and who ask (...) for government intervention. In this paper, we first argue that in a policy that aims to prevent animal diseases, the focus shifts from limiting “harm” to weighing conflicting claims with respect to “risks of harm.” Therefore, we claim that the harm principle is no longer a sufficient justification for governmental intervention in animal disease prevention. A policy that has to deal with and distribute conflicting risks of harm needs additional value assumptions that guide this process of assessment and distribution. We show that currently, policies are based on assumptions that are mainly economic considerations. In order to show the limitations of these considerations, we use the interests and position of keepers of backyard animals as an example. Based on the problems they faced during and after the recent outbreaks, we defend the thesis that in order to develop a sustainable animal disease policy other than economic assumptions need to be taken into account. (shrink)

The “new” agricultural biotechnologies are presently high-priority items on the national research agenda. The promise of increased efficiency and productivity resulting from products and processes derived from biotech is thought to justify the commitment to R&D. Nevertheless, critics challenge the environmental safety as well as political-economic consequences of particular products of biotech, notably, ice-nucleating bacteria and the bovine growth hormone. In this paper the critics' arguments are analyzed in explicitly ethical terms, and assessed as to their relative merits. In some (...) cases, a principle of “do no foreseeable harm” as well as a clear determination of likely harms would force us to conclude that research, development, and diffusion of a product or process derived from biotechnology is ethically wrong. In all cases, one conclusion that can be reached is that everyone involved in research, development, marketing and adoption of biotech products is responsible for the results of their actions; thus, each individual has a responsibility to consider a broader range of values and goals that effect and are effected by the biotechnology effort. (shrink)

Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, (...) and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point. (shrink)

AbeBooks.com: The Technological Society.

It is widely recognized that our social and moral environments influence our actions and belief formations. We are never fully immune to the effects of cultural membership. What is not clear, however, is whether these influences excuse average moral agents who fail to scrutinize conventional norms. In this paper, I argue that the lack of extensive public debate about factory farming and, its corollary, extreme animal suffering, is probably due, in part, to affected ignorance. Although a complex phenomenon because of (...) its many manifestations, affected ignorance is morally culpable because it involves a choice not to investigate whether some practice in which one participates in might be immoral. I contend further that James Montmarquet’s set of intellectual virtues can provide a positive account of what it means to act as a responsible moral agent while immersed in a meat eating culture; they also represent the moral and epistemic framework for the kind of public discourse that should be taking place. (shrink)

What is the Enlightenment? A period rich with debates on the nature of man, truth and the place of God, with the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. But did the Enlightenment mean the same for men and women, for rich and poor, for Europeans and non-Europeans? In this fourth edition of her acclaimed book, Dorinda Outram addresses these and other questions about the Enlightenment and its place at the foundation of modernity. Studied as a global phenomenon, Outram sets (...) the period against broader social changes, touching on how historical interpretations of the Enlightenment continue to transform in response to contemporary socio-economic trends. Supported by a wide-ranging selection of documents online, this new edition provides an up-to-date overview of the main themes of the period and benefits from an expanded treatment of political economy and imperialism, making it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century history and philosophy. (shrink)

A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man.

Emerging bovine somatotropin (or “bovine growth hormone” [bGH]) technology has become highly controversial even though the technology is one to two years from commercial introduction. The bGH controversy is discussed and placed in the context of the evolution of the American public agricultural research system and farm structural change over the past 15 years. It is argued that while many observers tend to overestimate the degree to which bGH will be representative of other biotechnologies applied to agriculture, the bGH case (...) may well reflect a more general pattern of the changing clientele relations of the land-grant system and of the changing character of technology developed within the public agricultural research system. In particular, these new clientele and technical relations may portend a new era in which farmers begin to scrutinize the land-grant research portfolio, which might in turn lead to diminished political support by state-level farmers' groups for agricultural research appropriations. (shrink)

In 1973, Jim Hightower and his associates at the Agribusiness Accountability Project dropped a bombshell – Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times – on the land-grant college and agricultural science establishments. From the early 1970s until roughly 1990, Hightower-style criticism of and activism toward the public agricultural research system focused on a set of closely interrelated themes: the tendencies for the publicly supported research enterprise to be an unwarranted taxpayer subsidy of agribusiness, for agricultural research and extension to favor large farmers and (...) be disadvantageous for family farmers, for public research to stress mechanization while ignoring the concerns and interests of farm workers, and for the research and extension establishment to ignore rural poverty and other rural social problems. By 1990, however, there had been a quite fundamental restructuring of the agricultural technology opposition movement – one that is not often well recognized. Two overarching changes had occurred. First, agricultural-technology activism had shifted from contesting land-grant/public research priorities and practices to contesting private agribusiness technological priorities and practices. Second, the relatively integrated, overarching Hightower-type opposition had undergone bifurcation into two quite distinct social movements: the agricultural sustainability/local food systems movement on one hand, and the anti-GM food/crop and anti-food-system-globalization movement on the other. In this paper I explore the causes and consequences of these restructurings of the agricultural research and technology opposition movement. Chief among the major factors involved was the fact that “Hightowerism'' involved an ineffectual representational politics. Hightowerist claims – especially the claim that land-grant research was detrimental to family farmers – generated little support among the groups it claimed to represent (particularly “small'' or “family'' farmers). The two successor movements, by contrast, have relatively clear and dependable constituents. Further, the progressive molecularization of agricultural research, which proved to be both an antecedent and consequence of corporate involvement in agricultural research in the US, has decisively changed the issues that are contested by technology activists. Since the age of Hightower, the agricultural technology activist movement has shifted its 1970s and early 1980s emphasis from contesting public sector/land-grant research priorities to contesting private sector activities, particularly genetic engineering, GM crops, and globalization of agricultural technologies and regulatory practices. Even the sustainability/localism wing of the new agricultural technology movement configuration has progressively backed away from contesting public research priorities. The efforts of the sustainable agricultural and localism movement have increasingly focused on quasi-private efforts such as community supported agriculture, green/“value-added'' labeling and marketing strategies, and community food security. Some implications of this increasingly bifurcated, agricultural technology, activist movement configuration in which there is decreased interest in land-grant/public research priorities are discussed. (shrink)

M. Ellul's view of technology is that once it is let out of the laboratory, technology cannot be turned off. Technology begets more technology. The modern world, therefore, is one in which more technology is inevitable. Fixing or remediating the impact of a technology like water pollution requires--you guessed it--more technology.

This article considers the qualitative concept of place – what it means, how it feels, how it is expressed, and how it is managed across time and space as the appropriate context within which to study and promote local agriculture and the locus of relationships, both cultural and political, that prefigure a local civic culture. It argues that civic as a description of local food and farming is conceptually and practically shallow in the absence of our ability to understand and (...) to practice “being” in place. Using three vignettes from field research in northern Michigan, the article illustrates this interdependence by focusing on the ways in which place provides opportunities for learning, for play, for engagement, for identity formation, and for explicit political and policy initiatives – as prerequisites for civic awareness and action. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of The Technological Bluff, the last book on technology by Jacques Ellul. Although this work has attracted little attention, the concept oftechno-logical bluff1 provides a new perspective to understand contemporary technological society. After presenting Ellul’s exposition of the concept of techno-logical bluff, its original contribution to technology studies is emphasized. It is also examined how the analysis of techno-logical bluff is connected with other major Ellulian notions such as autonomous technique and the efficiency principle. (...) This is followed by a suggestion that the analysis of techno-logical bluff could function as a basis for a constructive dialectic relationship between classical and more recent discourses on technology. The last section is devoted to the Ellulian solution for the technological society suggested in this work, namely, the paradox of nonfreedom. (shrink)

Jacques Ellul’s claim that technique became an autonomous phenomenon during the middle of the 20th century, and subsequently a system, means that the influence people have on technique is much less decisive than the influence technique has on people. As a sociohistorical description of the relationship between technique and society, it can be empirically investigated. This article begins by clarifying the concept of an autonomous technique and reviews evidence to support this claim.

Jacques Ellul’s work on propaganda provides the basis for this analysis of life in technology. Advertising and the mass media rely on temptation and seduction and create a constant flow of propaganda, all of which serve the technological system. Propaganda aims to condition and regulate us so that we participate in and adapt ourselves to a desired pattern, specifically an existence adjusted to and in accord with the technological milieu. Technology tempts and seduces us with its promise and provision of (...) comfort, convenience, and efficiency. Above all, technology tempts and seduces us with power: power over nature and over human beings. Naively and paradoxically, we believe we have power over technology, even though it actually has power over us. Our immersion in a sea of temptation and seduction, of constant and total propaganda, may seem inescapable; however, to criticize and challenge the primacy of technology is to reassert our freedom. (shrink)

This book is an extensive, original and systematic treatment of many important philosophical and ethical aspects of food (consumption and production). May we eat just anything? Can we do everything with animals, even genetic modification? If not, how can we regulate those processes so that they lead to optimum animal welfare while at the same time producing optimum taste? The production of food also causes environmental pollution does the fight against hunger have priority over the care of the environment? The (...) care of the environment, animal welfare, and the quality of food should be in a certain harmony, but that is far from granted and hardly easy to achieve. These factors are often in conflict with each other, and a balance will thus need to be searched for. Other factors to take into consideration are the issue of global famine, the care for a farming class that is able to keep its head above water in a decent way, and a fair trade system that does not throw up unnecessary barriers for newcomers or small market participants and that promotes good nutrition. Famine continues to be a widespread phenomenon that violates human rights, causing nearly a billion people to suffer from hunger or malnutrition. At the same time, deliberate hunger, abundance, and obesity are prevalent in the Western world. Both issues refer to the social and cultural aspects of food. Scientific and technological developments like genetic modification and functional food also play an increasingly important role; almost every bite that we take is determined by scientific developments. An extra difficulty is that scientific information is often contradictory, or that it relies on statistical probabilities that are difficult to translate into everyday certitudes. All of these factors deserve attention, but it is the mix that is most important. In the land of food, either or does not exist, only both and. The adequate measure of both and serves as the starting point for this philosophical reflection. (shrink)

In the beginning, policy debates between critics and advocates of genetically modified (GM) crops focused on scientifically determined risks. Ten years later, the argument between environmentalists or consumers and regulators or industry has changed into a discussion about the implementation of more democratic policymaking about GM farming. A notable omission from the political debate about food biotechnology in the United States, however, is the opinion of farmers who cultivate the GM crops. Policymakers should value practical knowledge based on experiences from (...) farmers, not only scientific industry reports or consumer product opinions. This project uses in-depth interviews to create an original mail survey that uses the practical discourse of farmers in order to explore the relationship of farmer attitudes and GM agriculture. Although national research indicates that larger yields are the most common reason for GM adoption, qualitative information suggest that the potential of GM crops to increase revenue per acre does not truly reflect all the concerns of modern farmers. For example, farmers who use GM seeds indicate that they constantly question the social impacts of their agricultural practices. As such, GM policies should be restructured as a political rationalization of both economic modeling and political theory because this research suggests that farmers’ business decisions are utility calucations that consider economics without ignoring environmental and political contexts. Farmers’ concerns about non-economic risks suggest that they need more information about GM crops and that governmental policies should respond to their interests, as they are more democratic or pluralistic than industry or consumer arguments. (shrink)