Conference paper
SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD GENETIC ENGINEERING: FROM DESCRIPTION TO DECONSTRUCTION?
Krešimir Kufrin
; Faculty of Philosphy, Zagreb
Abstract
Although the public interest on genetic engineering and its various applications is a relatively recent phenomenon, there have been so far conducted more than fifty ambitious sociological and neighbouring studies on public attitudes towards genetic engineering. Because of the fact that those studies have been for the most part conducted during the last decade, a “sociology of genetic engineering” seems to be one of the more propulsive areas of sociological research. In spite of valuable results, the research so far has also specific problems. On the methodological level, there is problematic validity and reliability of the used instruments, which results in interpretative crudity. On the theoretical level, there are no inveteracy in the sociological tradition that would result in research design grounded on solid midle range theory, resulting in fragmentary results and weak interpretation of opinion differences.
Although all these problems are for the most part solvable, there is a question of reach of such opinion polls. They can describe and even explain the attitudes towards genetic engineering, but they can not catch the very process of social construction of genetic engineering. Thus, sociological research of genetic engineering should be supplemented by complementary approaches, developed especially within the framework of social constructionist tradition and symbolic interactionism, which enable us to deconstruct attitudes towards genetic engineering by an anlysis of interests, actions, strategies and discourses by various actors in public arenas. The author tries to illustrate a need for such an approach by the referendum on biotechnology held in Switzerland in June 1998.
Keywords
genetic engineering; opinion poll; public opinion; the public; public arenas model; social construction of genetic engineering
Hrčak ID:
141735
URI
Publication date:
15.5.2000.
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