“Science for the people” slogan is cute, but can be misleading, at least how it’s mostly used right now. It’s akin to advocating for “agriculture for the people” without recognizing the exploitative and oppressive structures built within the agriculture industry. Without genuine land reform, the products may be redirected to the “people,” but the profits will remain in the hands of big landowners, hacienderos, and corporations, not to the farmers who work and till the land.
What the “science for the people” narrative, as it has been used by most people, really say is that the products of scientific activities must be redirected to the greater population, not just to those who can afford it. While it is justified and agreeable, very rarely — if at all — has anyone elevated the discourse into how science is produced, who controls the financial and intellectual capital necessary for its production, and the conditions at which those products are produced. Much of these capital is in the public sector, but the public has very little control to where research and development activities are directed. It is mostly controlled by technocrats and bureaucrat-capitalists, through research grants and projects. There is very little private sector investment in science and technology production here in the Philippines. One just has to scroll through job postings for research scientists and engineers to get a sense of how scarce stable jobs and careers here are for those who produce and create knowledge through science. The scientific research enterprise in the Philippines is for the the elite and privileged.
Where are the daughters and sons of farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, and workers in science? How many have made it and established careers for themselves as research scientists? We must continue to ask these questions. We may already know the answers, but most of us aren’t comfortable with facing the truth. Those who’ve gone through the challenge of working in the research enterprise will know that to get a job and keep that job, you’d need privilege or support to overcome the innumerable barriers that’ll come your way. Delayed paychecks or stipends is just one, but this already excludes a great many potential scientists.
We need to recognize that “science” is not just some abstract or metaphysical “thing” that is handed over to the people. Science is a social labor process. It is collective work from many individuals across time and space, and we need to recognize who’ve done the actual labor in producing the knowledge products of science.
To truly begin this painful and uncomfortable process, we need to be honest with ourselves. Those who do the work in science, take off your rose-tinted glasses and ask yourselves: why are you there? Is it because you have a benevolent mentor who wishes to pass on their knowledge to you for your own benefit? Or do they need you because they can get work out of you?
Take out the veneer of science as a benevolent vocation and you will see that to science is to labor.
Presently, pursuing a career in science as an inherently privileged endeavor, whether they realize it or not. A vast majority of Filipinos are from the peasant and working class, who are as capable of critical, logical, and creative thinking as any PhD holder. The difference is access to education. The day education becomes universally accessible and degrees cease to become indicators of social class is the day science becomes truly for the people.
We must accept that science is just one way to produce knowledge, and that production is subject to the material conditions created by the owner of capital — be it financial, intellectual, or social — and their relationship to labor. The way forward is dismantling and decolonizing these structures in the institutions of science, otherwise it will remain in the hands of the elite and privileged. If so, even with more funding, the people’s access to science and its products will remain to be dictated by that few. To have a science for the people, it must also be of the people and by the people.