| ‘Le
retour des eponges’
by Jean Paul Simon (1)
"Voici le retour des éponges naguère méprisées."
Michel Serres
However sceptical or pessimistic Nicholas Garnham’s assessment
of twenty years of European public policies and related research
in the communications sector may appear, I do endorse most of its
conclusions, including the final plea to be more humble. But I wonder
if this plea could also be applied to Nicholas Garnham’s critique
and deconstruction of the policy and research under scrutiny?
In some way, Nicholas Garnham’s critique reminds me of the
kind of criticism we heard at the end of the 1970s/beginning of
the 1980s from a group of French philosophers (G. Deleuze, J.F Lyotard
and others) about what they called the end of ‘grand narratives’
(fin des grands récits). The aim of these narratives was
to provide a coherent account of reality, their consistency being
an output of the narrative itself and relying more on the evidence
that was omitted than on the evidence provided. Of course, such
narratives, like the policies described by Nicholas Garnham, did
not expect to be received with scepticism. On the contrary, they
relied on a suspension of disbelief, without which they would be
attacked (2), and as being plain ideology or
a matter of simple faith.
What is interesting though, is that these philosophers had previously
been involved in some kinds of radical political activism (3),
hence their tone of disenchantment, which we can also detect in
Nicholas Garnham’s text. Some of this disenchantment stems
from an initial lack of modesty on the part of both sides: public
policy makers and social researchers. Nicholas Garnham is entirely
right in (re)stating that ‘policy was driven by a range of
different interests with differing definitions of the problem, different
aims and different supporting economic models and theories’
later to be criticised. However, this is precisely what was concealed
beneath the former ‘grand récit’. So it was not
only out of naivety that we (and here I must include myself too)
adhered to the goal of nurturing the dialogue and producing some
sound social research to allow ‘a more rational policy’.
This shared ‘consensual/grand vision’ was bringing together
researchers in search of a lever for action, directed away from
old-style academic research, and European policy makers looking
for new areas to conquer: communications was one such (4).
It was a reciprocal process in which both parties gained from supporting
the basic narrative, mixing politics and policy.
So, where does the lack of modesty fit in relation to this tentative
account of ‘failed’ policies? The mutual agreement between
researchers and policy makers was based on a very crude or mechanical
belief in it being possible to trigger the right output provided
one chose the appropriate approach, another consequence of this
kind of ‘grand récit’, by essence linear. We
believed, or pretended to believe, although without any evidence,
that as Nicholas Garnham states in its conclusion, ‘we had
the policy instruments that could produce the desired results’.
This was a very technologically deterministic view. Eventually,
of course, we were to discover that not only was the reality much
more complex as a result of the interaction between several factors,
but also that the theories, and of course the policies, were not
living up to expectations.
Among the many aspects that were underestimated was the role of
the user/consumer. As Nicholas Garnham rightly points out, this
role was mostly a rhetoric to justify the policies that were to
bring benefits to the consumers and ‘increase the social optimum’.
Of course, in terms of macro-economic public policies this might
seem familiar, especially for those policies related to industry,
where consumer welfare was seen as a byproduct of ‘increased
business efficiency’. In fact, because his focus is mainly
on the internal contradictions of such an approach rather than on
its reduced focus, Nicholas Garnham seems not to question this supply
side approach.
At the EU level, there is an irony in the fact that while some
departments were framing such public policies, others were trying
to take account of this social dimension(5).
Contradictions within large organisations are somewhat familiar
to the social sciences, but not easily acknowledged by policy makers.
During the same period research was being conducted on usage and
usage patterns (6), but feeding the results into
the public policy debate was extremely problematic. Grasping reality
is always a difficult task, especially in the context of social
phenomena that seem to be quite removed from what is on the surface.
What cannot be denied is that we in the communications sector witnessed
tremendous changes. They may not have been the direct result of
the policies in place, but they did happen. Perhaps it was that
it took some time to embody the ‘Daniel Bell vision’
as Nicholas Garnham puts it, or even the much celebrated Galbraith
vision of the late ’60s for the corporate world. I personally
am not convinced of the accuracy of these, also partial, visions.
However, to stay in line with the hypotheses of some of the historians,
(and even though I find this kind of formulation somewhat pompous),
the coming of the communications era may well have coincided with
the waning of the long nineteenth century that ended, according
to French historian Maurice Agulhon, around 1950 (7).
J. Le Goff even talks of a long ‘middle age’.
However, this is not an explanation; it is merely another assumption
in need of justification. Without getting caught up in another kind
of deterministic model (or circular explanation) let me just emphasise
that the new models of communication that emerged were, in any case,
more suited to the present social relations (individual interaction),
assuming the vagueness of this expression and remaining agnostic
about its causes, and that they took some time to emerge. Although
remaining neutral about what triggered these models, one of the
clear outputs is proliferation of information and communication
systems, not only in quantitative terms (not so long ago we had
one telecommuncation provider, one broadcaster), but also in qualitative
terms (the drastic changes in the way we communicate with each other).
This observation, however, still leaves aside the question of causality:
are policy makers creating their environment or is it the other
way around? But I will carefully leave aside the structure/agency
issue, which is far too complex for such a short review. Suffice
to say that here, too, we need to get away from mechanical deterministic
models. My own view is that we need to work through the complexity
of the interaction of several layers of parameters, of ‘mediations’
(8) to understand the processes, and that the
path from the structure to the agency (or vice versa) is pretty
winding, and may even move in circles (9).
To sum up, although agreeing with Nicholas Garnham’s conclusions
and being impressed by the subtle deconstruction of some of our
latest myths, this does not mean I share either his disappointment
or his alleged pessimism. Obviously a lot of things have changed
during the last two decades, and although most of the reasons offered
to account for these changes may have been unconvincing, these changes
did occur, and Nicholas Garnham underestimates them.
Also, even if we doubt the capacities of policy makers and scientists,
if we live in a world of disenchantment this should not prevent
us from setting up a modest research programme agenda and avoiding
another fit of ‘historical amnesia’. In other words,
and continuing the historical metaphor, after leaving the ultimate
‘grands récits’ it may be time to start some
‘micro storia’, á la Ginzburg or N. Zemon Davis,
with its intricate focus on micro-processes and the specificity
of the entanglement of parameters. When communications become commonplace,
the ‘grands récits’ are over, blind faith has
been ousted, but this may offer the opportunity for more modesty
and the chance to find new evidence from a different angle.
Finally, I have to acknowledge that ‘reconstructing’
the past, even as some kind of social history of communications,
may not be attractive to policy makers, but nevertheless, would
produce some positive feedback into the public debate and, to end
on an optimistic note, perhaps prevent policy failures.
In his book Le passage du Nord-Ouest M. Serres as an epistemologist,
explained that he was trying to find the north-west passage, that
is the right connection between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
sciences; we may have to follow a similar path to bridge the gap
between critical research and public policies. However, this implies
the taking into account of complexity, hence the metaphor of ‘sponges’.
Footnotes
(1) Senior VP for international
regulatory strategy, France Telecom. Caveat : the views developed
in this paper are purely my own and do not represent the viewpoint
of France Telecom.
(2) For Deleuze it took
the form of a plea for immanence against transcendency, J.F. Lyotard
was heralding the coming of the ‘post-modern society’.
Their critique of the co-extensivity of the ‘rational’
and the ‘real’ is also a critique of the Hegelian linear
teleology.
(3) For instance, J.F.
Lyotard was a member in the 1950s and ‘60s of the radical
left wing group ‘Socialisme et barbarie’ together with
philosophers like C. Castoriadis and C. Lefort.
(4) It must be remembered
that in the 1970s and early ‘80s the Commission was like a
‘sleeping beauty’ waiting to be awakened. Member states
favoured intergovernmental relationships over leaving the field
open to the Commission’s initiatives. The ITT Task Force was
not launched until 1983.
(5) For instance, the
FAST programmes.
(6) See, for instance,
the works of the ‘interactionist’ school, of Steve Woolgar,
Roger Silverstone, and others.
(7) See Histoire vagabonde.
Ethnologie et politique dans la France contemporaine, Paris, Flammarion.
(8) See the seminal
work of C. Castoriadis (1975) L’institution imaginaire de
la société, Paris: Le Seuil. For communications see
‘Les médiations’, Réseaux 60, 1993.
(9) See P. Flichy on
innovation, L’innovation technique. Récents développements
en sciences sociales. Vers une nouvelle théorie de l’innovation,
Paris, La découverte, 1995.
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