SSKS IDENTITY PARADE - SIGNING-UP, OFF-AND-ON

This paper examines the debate over the relationship between SSK and p olitics by exploring the implications of 'the reflexive turn' during t he 1980s. However, it does this by looking outward, at the ways in whi ch a reflexive SSK can potentially help enlighten the culture of polit ical issues, rather than inwards, at the methods and forms of SSK itse lf. The key element of this strategy is to sustain an analytical vocab ulary which problematizes the human subject, whether as author of SSK work, or of public policies and public policy knowledges. I take it fo r granted that this cannot be fully achieved, but it remains a key pri nciple. Reconsidering the 'Capturing' debate, the paper notes several unfortunate features held in common land uncritically reinforced) by b oth 'sides' to that agenda. These include the reification of 'sides' a nd (more generally) of social actors (and thus of the issues at stake) ; and the reproduction of an implicit model of society as constituted exhaustively by active choices and decisions - thus neglecting the cul tural dimensions of social (including cognitive) life. Using examples drawn from environmental opposition to nuclear power; and the construc tion of scientific and policy knowledge about global climate change, I argue that problematizing the identities and interests of actors with in our own sociological knowledge forum, as is achieved through 'the r eflexive turn: and extending this to the construction and deployment o f knowledge in public issues, allows a much richer, more contingent an d more multivalent understanding of what is at stake in any 'given' is sue to come into view. This may appear to undermine the basis of polic y bodies' authority - except that their authority is, I suggest, alrea dy failing precisely because they cannot recognize the contingencies i n the knowledges on which they rely. Refusing to enter public controve rsies with scientific or technical content as either partisans or dise ngaged neutrals, and eschewing false debates about epistemic probity, SSK scholars can nevertheless offer intellectual resources with which to encourage institutional reflexivity, and to rebuild a democratic cu lture of public policy.