BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE - THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC DEBATES ON GOVERNMENT-REGULATION IN THE UNITED-STATES AND DENMARK

This paper discusses the ways in which public discourse about biotechnology has affected policy making. It is the author's contention that attitudes to new technologies are transformed into policy through a "mediating filter" of confrontations, institutional innovations and conceptual debates. We also contend that these filters are different for different countries, that they are manifestations of particular national political and organizational cultures. The cultural dimension of technology is a function both of the implications of the developmental trajectory of a particular technology, as well as the particular context in which the technology develops. In this paper we attempt to delineate the general contours of the historical development of the "new biotechnology." Specifically, we identify and characterize the major phases in the biotechnology debates that have taken place in the United States and Denmark. The biotechnology field in general, as well as the various individual technologies that have been developed within the field, have been going through different stages of the innovation "chain" or product cycle. The authors attempt to show how such stages of "internal" technological development exert a crucial influence on the focus and scope of the national discourses. © 1990.