quinta-feira, 29 de julho de 2010

Manifesto

A New
Manifesto

We live in a time of unprecedented advances in science and technology. The world is ever more globalised and interconnected. Yet poverty is deepening, the environment is in crisis and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals has stalled.

Global annual spending on research and development exceeds a trillion dollars. Military and security-related applications are the single largest area of expenditure. Yet every day in poorer parts of the world, thousands of children die from waterborne diseases, more than a billion people go hungry and more than a thousand die in pregnancy and childbirth. At the same time, future generations face huge social, environmental and economic challenges from threats such as climate change. Yet global governance, economics and politics frequently work against the interests of poorer countries and people, worsening inequalities.

Meeting these interlinked global challenges of poverty reduction, social justice and environmental sustainability is the great moral and political imperative of our age. Science, technology and innovation of many kinds have essential roles to play in this. But along with many others, the STEPS Centre believes that this imperative can only be fulfilled if there is a radical shift in how we think about and perform innovation. By innovation, we mean new ways of doing things. This includes not only science and technology, but – crucially – the related array of new ideas, institutions, practices, behaviours and social relations that shape scientific and technological patterns, purposes, applications and outcomes. Central to this, is a move away from progress defined simply by the scale or rate of change – about who is 'ahead’ or 'behind’ in some presumed one-track race. Instead, attention must focus on the many alternative directions for scientific, technological and associated institutional change. In short, we need a new politics of innovation. This is not about being 'pro’ or 'anti’ science or technology, but about addressing real questions of choice: 'which science?’, 'what technology?’ and, especially, 'whose innovation?’ and 'what kinds of change?’ In other words, we need to foster more diverse and far more fairly distributed forms of – and directions for – innovation, towards greater social justice.

At the heart of this shift in the global innovation agenda is a greater respect for cultural variety, regional diversity and democratic accountability. Such a shift is possible. Indeed, in inspirational initiatives in many places around the world, it is already happening. But these efforts are often fragmented, poorly supported and resisted by unequal power relations. To challenge these forces means promoting innovation that really works for currently marginalised people and jeopardised environments. This requires the opening up of new political spaces, drawing in social movements, smaller businesses and excluded voices. The result will be more vigorous deliberation and argument over the many possible styles and directions for research and innovation. It also means radically changing the ways in which innovation is shaped, through: agenda setting, funding, capacity building, organisational arrangements and monitoring, evaluation and accountability. We take up each of these specific challenges in our final recommendations.

This New Manifesto lays out a political position, as seen from the particular vantage point of a single research centre concerned with these challenges. Yet our purpose is not to assert a single view. Most importantly, we hope to help catalyse and provoke more vibrant and explicitly political debate over global patterns and directions of innovation. In this spirit, we provide a host of links to more detailed examples and analysis on the associated New Manifesto website, www.anewmanifesto.org.

While not pretending to achieve a representative synthesis, the production of this Manifesto has also learned much from – and owes much to – many colleagues, collaborators and critics. Most valuably, this includes the hundreds of participants in 20 roundtables in countries from China to Venezuela, India to Zimbabwe, Nigeria to Sri Lanka. As part of our wider New Manifesto initiative, the STEPS Centre is committed to assisting further processes of dialogue and argument about innovation, using our own website as a platform for divergent voices – including those critical of our own stance. Our aim is not only to foster debate, but to catalyse action. This will inevitably take contrasting forms in diverse places. Our hope is that – together with many other parallel initiatives worldwide – this will help result in more diverse and equitably distributed forms and outcomes of innovation.