A. Regulation and Values
In the case studies we have seen a variety of regulatory regimes. The notion of regulation, in broad terms, can be conceived as working from the top down, through the control and protection of populations.[1143] We see this in the health standards of the Food Safety Authority and their application by council inspectors.
We also see instances of regulation working from the bottom up, through the expression and codification of consumer demands. A traditional economic model of consumer action is that of supply and demand: if the consumers want free range eggs they will buy them, even if they cost more. But the consumer movement has become political, and makes demands of regulatory (as well as other) authorities. Consumers become consumer activists, or consum’acteurs in the French version, which emphasises consumption as eating more than buying.[1144] Contemporary consumers - eaters - may no longer have a one-to-one relation of trust with their supplier, but instead group together, conscious of their common interests as consumers. Whether they are environmentalists, animal liberationists, or observant Muslims or Jews, they demand guarantees of the provenance of what they eat. Ethical, health or religious demands can gain political traction through lobbying or organising, or may be expressed in legal terms as rights: the right to informed choice, or animal rights.In these case studies, consumer requirements and demands for particular food standards have led to wide-ranging debates. Those standards may be regulated or enforced by state and local government; the ACCC and the Federal Court; or industry, consumer or religious bodies. They demonstrate a wide range of legal mechanisms, from formal to informal law.
Controversies and debates have been carried out in various public and official forums: a consumer magazine, media, court, and the technical reports of food regulating agencies. They invoke legal, ethical, scientific, cultural and commercial arguments, which are typically intermingled in public debate.
And yet, when the bigger issues of secularism and religion, science and law are discussed in academic terms, they take on the appearance of self-contained universes, rotating in their own self- referential spheres.In concluding this work in progress, I take a step back to the broad terms in which I began, in order to try to understand the interaction of those overarching discourses. Law is characterised by rights and rules. Science invokes reason and evidence. Religion draws on ethics and the traditional ties of community, while there are also important ethical considerations that do not draw on any specific liturgical or scriptural tradition.
Teubner (1989), coming from a German tradition that emphasises the self-referentiality of law, compares it to religion. Both are discourses that are separate from science, but which attempt to make their constructs ‘at least compatible with recent developments in the sciences’.
Obviously, scientific facts collide with legal facts, but we are used to living with this collision, rationalizing it by invoking higher values, like legal certainty, or appealing to the relativism of our cultural provinces.[1145]
This suggests that, while institutional barriers isolate disciplines (in Foucault’s sense) or institutional modes of deliberation, channels of communication may open up between them at other levels, such as that of values. This is a pervasive theme in studies of law, religion and science.
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