Critique in action: assembling shared matters of concern with corporate R&D

An ethnographic study in Unilever - a large multinational food company – performed an unintended intervention in the assessment of the value of basic science by the management of Unilever R&D. Using accounts by the ethnographer and by a corporate R&D manager, we describe how the ethnographer’s interest in good food design was connected to issues of R&D organization in an interactive research process. The particular setting required regular involvement of key actors in the set-up and design of the research process and in the assessment of its preliminary results. That invited a collaborative critical analysis of health claims on food products by the ethnographer and those who were part of the practices he studied. We use Bruno Latour’s notion of matters of concern and related understandings of critique from science and technology studies to describe intervention as an outcome rather than an intention of their analysis, and reflect on corporate research practices as a field that may invite critique, rather than oppose to it. We use the term ‘critique in action’ (CiA) to describe the interactive research process and discuss its potential for further deployment.