As Jameson Wetmore and
Mark Brown were recently in France and evoked the Débat Public initiative, I
would like to make a very short historic of Grenoble, using Brice Laurent’s
work as a model of perspective but going back further in this town's history.
Works of Brice Laurent
already discussed the ‘Grenoble Model’ as a local laboratory showing high
tensions between scientists, local politicians and activists. His work ‘Diverging Convergences’ explained
the historical context of the ‘Grenoble Model’ from the scientific institutions
point of view, especially the role of the Commissariat
à l’Energie atomique.
Grenoble is now an
example for many citizens of a political failure to link innovation with a
politician technique. Activists are famous there for the riots they provoked in,
for example, and the city mountain that some of them customized with big
capital letters on it for everyone in the town to see: “NO NANO!”
More recently, with
respect to the evoked Débat Public, activists impeached the government to hold
the dialogue and this was delayed to another day with more security.
Grenoble can be seen as a
failure case of politician implementation of nanotechnology because the recent
mayors of this town tried to link the technological special background of
Grenoble (often called French Silicon Valley) with their practices or parties,
which is a part of the political game. But in the Grenoble’s case, activists
are an historical element that neither right nor left wing politicians could
really deal with hand-in-hand.
Grenoble has always been
special for contestation; revolution occurred in Grenoble before it reached
France, so that some works speak about it as the cradle of the French
revolution. During the French Revolution, Grenoble was rebaptized Grelibre. The
left versus right dichotomy that prevails now in French and international
politics comes also from this mountain area : Montagnards during the French
Revolution were at the left side of the legislative Assembly in Paris to
express their willingness for a Republic, while Girondins moved to the right
side of the hemicycle as support of the King.
In the recent period,
after a unique right-wing leadership during the 80’s and the 90’s (that became
a political-financial scandal because of the corruption of the mayor), the
socialist party took the power back. This did not help to calm the activists’ worries
about nanotechnologies. It even became more tense as the current mayor made of
nanotechnology and innovation a motto of his political activity.
It is in this context
that the most important city for nanotechnology research and development became
the city where activists acquired a certain echo.
Brice Laurent’s work is
of course much more detailed regarding recent elements of activism and
nanotechnology R&D in the Grenoble ‘Model.’
This was just a reaction to the ‘blogging from France’ Soapbox rubrique.
