EMF Risk and Hesitation in a Polarised World: Towards a Diplomatic Relativism

Abstract

Technology assessments can create highly polarised situations, in which scientific facts are contested. Such polarised situations challenge ethnographers to keep the trust of their research partners while staying true to their research practice and community. This is what the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers characterises as the "dilemma of double betrayal" for social researchers. In this paper, we draw on Stengers's work on science in society, in particular on her concepts of ecologies of practice and diplomacy, to reflect on our research in the context of what we call a "Science War in the Wild" over the question of whether mobile communication creates harmful electromagnetic signals. While risk scientists argue that there is no risk, embodied health movements express their members' experiences of harm and seek to prove it scientifically. In our research, we are moving between the frontlines to engage with both camps always facing the risk of betrayal. In this paper, we focus on our hesitations as a reflexive method to navigate through this ethically challenging battlefield. We conclude by proposing "diplomatic relativism" as a possibility for peace that invites hesitation and allows for the truth of the relative in knowledge practices rather than relativising truth.