CONDUCT

Given that I have framed the object of research as ‘government rationalities’ and

‘modes of orderings’, I have also chosen a way of understanding agency that at once recognises that there are patterns in the various ways we act, albeit with the understanding that these patterns are acquired and sustained through very specific processes of learning, mimicking and repetition. Thereby, our actions are not a mindless expression of an inevitable macro-structure (McFall, Du Gay, and Carter 2008: 29). The concept of ‘conduct’ has been of much interest for sociologists since the ‘founding’ fathers Emile Durkheim and Max Weber first wrote about it. The notion itself refers to the manner in which people behave in particular circumstances, occasions or contexts. The concept thus emphasises the roles that individuals assume in different circumstances, for instance, a policeman acts differently in a situation at work than he does in his spare time.

There is an expectation of different forms of conduct, depending on different situations and, at the same time, different expectations of different and recognisable roles in society, such as the police, mothers, fathers, and bosses or – as is the case in this dissertation – scientists. In that way, studying conduct is both about paying attention to the specific acts of people in specific contexts and, at the same time, how these acts are learned and sustained through rituals, organisation and categorisations (McFall, Du Gay, and Carter 2008: 51).

With this understanding of conduct also follows the fact that the concept is not used to explain individual behaviour based on structural, ‘macro-social’

explanations, nor is too much faith put in the individual’s ability to act freely and determine his or her own actions. ‘Conduct’ is used to assist the researcher in gaining insight into a third position on agency: One where agency is of a distributed nature. Rather than having the individual or a structure as the focus of study, certain forms of conduct are in focus, as well as the fact that these conducts are learned abilities and have developed into special capacities and deportments (Mcfall, du Gay and Carter 2008: 6). Agency is thus looked upon as something that constitutes people in different situations, rather than something the individual possesses and which is expressed in actions. Several authors that are central to this dissertation have been interested in studying conduct. Max Weber, both in his ‘Vocation Lectures’ on science and politics (Weber 2004) and his study of the ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ (Weber 1956), shows how particular spheres of society (e.g. puritan Lutheran, the political and scientific professions) during specific periods of time use particular techniques and practices to connect the ideal behaviour – the norm – with an inner consciousness (du Gay 2000). In that way, he underlines how certain practices – such as that of hard labour and ascetic lifestyle among pietistic Lutherans – constitute and sustain specific ways of thinking about the meaning of life and consciousness, rather than the other way around. This basic view about the relations between practice and individuality is also the basis for this dissertation: Conduct is looked upon as recognisable patterns of practices, which appear in certain circumstances and spaces and which make up people and groups in particular contexts.

Foucault was also interested in conduct in relation to his studies of power and was in fact, in his later works, inspired by Weber, but he focused more explicitly on the elements of power inherent in the concept of conduct. In relation to modern ruling, which we touched upon above, he claimed that ‘the exercise of power is a “conduct of conducts” and a management of possibilities’ (Foucault 2003b: 138). His argument is that the exercise of modern government is characterised by the structuring of possible fields of action. Fields of action shape the freedom of actors to act by rendering some choices of behaviour and thinking (conduct) legitimate and right rather than others. For Foucault, conduct then becomes significant as the way that socialisation itself is constructed and how it takes particular forms according to time and context (Dean 1996: 217).

He studies socialisation by looking at the mundane assemblages of moral, physical and administrative elements that make up the organising of space, time, good and bad (Hunter 1996: 147).

John Law, in his book ‘Organizing Modernity’ (1994) on research management, is also preoccupied with something akin to the concept of ‘conduct’, although he prefers to talk about ‘agency’ (e.g. Law 1994: 74). However, my argument here is that his notion of agency is closely related to the ideas of conduct as Weber and Foucault describe them. Law also readily admits that both of them have been inspirational for his book (Law 1994: 66f and 95). Law considers ‘agency’

as local and contingent effects of what he calls ‘modes of orderings’ (e.g. Law 1994: 75). Modes of orderings are patterns of local achievements of order that are made up of networks of material and non-material components, such as machines, talk, ideas and space (Law 1994: 110). The orders are never complete or pure (you will, for instance, never find a pure ‘bureaucracy’; there will always be traces, resistance and other competing orders at play). Related to that

point is that orders are recurrent, that is, they are open-ended processes that are self-generating:

‘The social is a set of processes, of transformations. These are moving, acting, interacting. They are generating themselves. Perhaps we can impute patterns in these movements. But here’s the trick, the crucial and most difficult move that we need to make. We need to say that the patterns, the channels down which they flow, are not different in kind from whatever it is that are channelled by them…The social world is this remarkable emergent phenomenon: in its processes it shapes its own flows. Movement and the organization of movement are not different.’ (Law 1994: 15, original emphasis)

The modes of orderings share some similarities to Foucault’s notion on

‘discourse’, as they also have ordering effects and create differences between right and wrong, hierarchy, boundaries, etc. (Law 1994: 111). But Law claims that his views on how modes of orderings interact and change and his considerations of the role of materiality are more elaborated than those of Foucault (Law 1994: 22f). They also share some similarities with Weber’s different types of ‘Lebenswelt’, as each order generates its own irreducible ideals, justifications, rationales and, indeed, conducts. Another similarity is the relationship between agency and the construction of meaning. Like Weber, Law also sees a close relationship between actions and meaning creation, where grand narratives do not presuppose local action. Rather, the repetition and insistence of certain actions instate certain worldviews and discourses. Law’s focus, however, is not only on the construction of big, historically lasting constructions such as ‘capitalism’, ‘Protestantism’ or ‘science’. He also focuses on the flux and instability of local pools of orders, as they can be studied in, for instance, research organisations. Law calls these contingent pools of order

‘modes of orderings’ to indicate that they are a special way of understanding and organising in the world, depending on the present orientation. In that way, Law tries to balance between explanations that either favour structure or agency by emphasising the relative instability of orderings, but at the same time insisting that it is possible to impute patterns to the networks of the social (Law 1994:

112).

The individual as an explanatory reason for action is rejected in favour of a decentred subject, whose actions are an effect of a particular ordering attempt (Law 1994: 74). By looking at ‘ordering’ attempts, Law also touches upon the notion of authority and power, as the modes have the ability to guide agency in certain directions, while at the same time also re-establish and strengthen the particular order. Above, I present conduct as a way by which persons in particular circumstances take responsibility for behaving according to the expectations dictated by a specific situation. In my interpretation, this is similar to Law’s understanding of his concept ‘agency’.

This dissertation has been inspired by all three authors, and their different areas of interests in relation to ‘conduct’ will be explored in different chapters. In chapter 5, I have used a Foucauldian framework to analyse articulations of responsible conduct of science as they appear in science journals from 1960 to now. Here the notion of conduct has been important in two senses; First it is seen as the proper way of scientists of addressing a precarious subject: by writing about it in scientific journals, because that is how scientists usually communicate; by writing and in journals (or books), so it is a way of conducting their job as they use to do. The other sense in which it gives meaning to talk about conduct is in relation to the journals themselves: Here conduct is seen as the process of assembling and mediate meaning through a range of different

technologies (the tangible papers, the journal databases, the search systems, the letters, etc.). In that way, the papers become a way of managing the conduct of others by inscribe the ideals of how science should relate to society in media, which spread easily both locally and globally.

In the chapters 7, 8 and 9, where I describe how different ‘orders of responsibility’ appeared in the daily work of the two research organisations, I have relied on the ways that Law describes agency. He sees it as being generated by different orders, where irreducible logics and reasons are performed and negotiated. In one of the chapters, 7, I describe a mode of ordering that is quite similar to that which Weber describes as ‘the scientific vocation’ (Weber 1994).

But I have also added two other modes that reflect later developments of the scientific work, namely, that of ‘entrepreneurial science’ (Etzkowitz 2003) and that of ‘Responsible science’ (e.g. Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001; Guston 2000; Owen et al. 2013)