Reconsidering the Understanding of Technoscientific Knowledge (original) (raw)
Related papers
Technoscientific dialogues: expertise, democracy and technological cultures
The role of experts and their competencies in contemporary society are at the core of current debates in democratising technological cultures and establishing innovative forms of responsible dialogue within society. This section offers a reworking of the materials presented during the seminar hosted by "Giannino Bassetti" Foundation in Milan on May 3, 2010. The first article is part of the keynote speech given by Wiebe Bijker, one of the founding scholars of STS in the European scene. He draws from ethnographic results of his research on the Dutch Health Council and the risk governance of nanotechnologies. Two comments follow. The first one, by Paolo Volonté, focuses on the relationship between democracy and scientific knowledge, as well as the subtle ambivalence of democratisation starting from the intrinsic undemocratic character of scientific authority. The second comment by Cristina Grasseni emphasises the implications of a committed engagement of citizens in shaping forms of responsible innovation, when taking the science governance seriously.
Dialogue: Science, Scientists, and Society, 2020
The scholarly debate on technical expertise in the context of the changing configuration of science is largely informed by the empirical contexts of the west, and a transition of the meanings and practices of expertise towards a more socially distributed and contextdependent form has been identified. In the context of public controversies over technoscientific projects, it is generally argued that expertise becomes more diffused among the citizen-publics who actively participate in the deliberation, and official expert advice is challenged and renegotiated in the process. What crisis does this changed scenario at the ‘deliberative turn’ in public engagement with science and technology create for the governance of technoscientific projects in India? The paper looks at how expertise is understood and employed in two technoscientific controversies — the public debate on the environmental release of Bt brinjal and the commissioning of nuclear power plants at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu. The study contends that there are more democratic and technically and politically robust alternative modes of technoscientific decision making envisaged by social movements. Unfortunately, these alternative democratic imaginations are not taken seriously by the state-technoscience duo in India. The contrasting meanings and distribution of expertise during the public controversies in focus, the paper argues, are to be understood in relation to the political contract between the neoliberal state and technoscience, and the techniques of governmentality employed to manage different publics. KEYWORDS: Bt Brinjal; Kudankulam; Mode II Knowledge; Multiple Publics; People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE); Public Engagement with Science and Technology; Transgenic Crops
Reflections on the changing profile of science and knowledge
This paper constitutes a theoretical reflection on the gradually changing profile of science and knowledge, from a reflexive sociological and epistemological standpoint. The first part draws upon some relevant debates on the university, science, knowledge, and their so-called "reflexive turn". The analytic attention here is mainly focused on the sociological and epistemological significance of "knowledge of knowledge", the "naturalization" or "socialization" of epistemology and the multiple effects of social complexity. The second part seeks to comprehensively describe and critically discuss the two central phases of the radical wave of social scientific studies of science and technology. The first "descriptivist" phase is reflexively reconstructed in terms of a social theory of knowledge (social epistemology). The second "postmodern" phase is reflexively reconstructed in terms of a new sense of "knowledge politics". This new sense eventually gives technoscience the unique historical opportunity to creatively accomplish and boost its autonomy, within an ethics of epistemological weakness.
Technoscientific futures: Public framing of science
Technology in Society, 2015
Using the broader framework of science and technology studies and insights from social research on public understanding of science, this paper discusses specific aspects of the public perception of science. It is accomplished by means of analysing public discourses of ignorance as well as the interrelations between discourses of science-in-general and science-in-particular in lay narratives, thereby advancing the approach originally developed by Mike Michael [24,25]. This study is based on two empirical cases of futureoriented science-related matters, climate change and biomedicine (xenotransplantation). Discourse analysis is applied to two thematic focus groups in Latvia between 2008 and 2009. The analysis introduces a set of more specific rhetorical devices and discursive strategies employed by laypeople in reflecting on the role of science and in providing their assessment of modern technoscientific solutions.
Science, Technology and Democracy: Distinctions and Connections
On March 23, 1989 Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons appeared at a press conference at the University of Utah where they announced the discovery of cold fusion. The President of the university and several other officials were also present and spoke to the press. The unaccustomed involvement of the press and these officials signalled that cold fusion was more than a scientific advance. Soon the University announced the formation of a research institute with funding from the state. Its goal was not only to produce knowledge of the phenomenon but also to prepare large scale commercial applications. It seemed possible at first that cold fusion would revolutionize electricity production and transform the world economy.
Engaging Science, Technology, and Society
Since the critique of science movements emerged in the 1970s, knowledge-power relationships in the technosciences have changed significantly. The mobilizations both of scientists to produce science for the people and of lay producers of knowledge and expertise have helped to remedy the perceived deficits of official science. STS research to date has abundantly and rather enthusiastically examined the forms and conditions of production of this critical, dissident, alternative knowledge, but few studies have looked at how scientific and political elites react to and engage with such knowledge-based mobilizations. Focusing on ways of governing techno-criticism, this article aims to contribute to filling this gap. It investigates the innovative capacity of social movements and public authorities as well as their capacity for renewal and ability to shift power relations in their favor, including in the inevitable crisis and scandal situations. Drawing on empirical evidence from a long-te...
Science Transformed?
Mode-2 research, post-academic science, technoscience, post-normal science, new natural history, entrepreneurial science-all these various labels speak of more or less profound changes in the organization of research. Do these changes amount to an epochal break that transforms scientific knowledge production as a whole? The theories behind each of these designations do not offer straightforward answers to this question. If a new kind of commissioned research enters the scene in the late twentieth century, this might leave most of the sciences unaffected. And if today's research practices defy notions of "pure research" or "basic science" and if they thereby open our eyes to the rich interactions between science, technology, and society, this might lead us to see these rich interactions also in the past. All that has changed, some would argue, is how we appreciate scientific practice, but the business of science is as complex as it has always been.
Science, technology and society: the social representations approach
T he present special issue explores the role that science and technology play in modern common sense and daily practices. The modern techno-sciences introduce new systems of production, regulation, opinion, knowledge and know-how. They propose new dieting rules at the crossroads of private and public health, research and nutrition. Techno-science makes available new technologies of reproduction; in changing ecological practices climate science impacts our lifestyles. Dieting habits, gender relations, bio-medical ethics, our relationship to the natural world, the wish for a child, projection, transmission and identification within the family are redefined , acquire legal acceptance, upset language, and disturb traditions and religious codes, foster political debates and mass fears (Kalampalikis, Haas, Fieulaine, Doumergue, & Deschamps, 2013). We witness the opening of a new era of societal representations. These novelties afford new practices and forge new thinking that invite social sciences-in particular social psychology-to question their theoretical models and approaches with respect to new political, legal, psychological and societal realities. The aim of this special issue RIPS / IRSP, 26 (3), 5-9 © 2013, Presses universitaires de Grenoble Science, technology and society: the social representations approach Science, technologie et société : l'approche des représentations sociales