Many Minds, Common Sense and Genetically Modified Food: A Role for Q Methodology

Abstract

Over 15 years, genetically modified (GM) food has gradually reached around the globe. Yet, each new development occasions controversy, and hence, leads to interest in strategies to engage people in searching for durable public bargains. Even-handed treatment of diverse views is crucial to good engagement processes, as is the avoidance of processes that merely reinforce fixed views. Ideally, views develop as people engage with others' reasoning about the merits of different policy responses. Q methodology provides a useful strategy for eliciting views at the start of such engagement processes. It allows individuals to present their views as whole pictures, complete with inherent ambiguities and complexities. Embodied, holistic views stem from mutual understanding of everyday events shared among members of a society. Everyday understanding relies on common sense, a spontaneous application of a distinct form of intelligence to some practical matter. Q methodology can contribute to engaging the publics-science interface by showing how technologies, like GM food, intersect with people's lives and behaviours and by finding commonalities that may be masked in polarised debates. © 2010 National Science Council, Taiwan.