Much bioethical scholarship is concerned with the social, legal and philosophical implications of new and emerging science and medicine, as well as with the processes of research that under-gird these innovations. Science and technology studies (STS), and the related and interpenetrating disciplines of anthropology and sociology, have also explored what novel technoscience might imply for society, and how the social is constitutive of scientific knowledge and technological artefacts. More recently, social scientists have interrogated the emergence of ethical issues: they have (...) documented how particular matters come to be regarded as in some way to do with ‘ethics’, and how this in turn enjoins particular types of social action. In this paper, I will discuss some of this and other STS (and STS-inflected) literature and reflect on how it might complement more ‘traditional’ modes of bioethical enquiry. I argue that STS might (1) cast new light on current bioethical issues, (2) direct the gaze of bioethicists towards matters that may previously have escaped their attention, and (3) indicate the import not only of the ethical implications of biomedical innovation, but also how these innovative and other processes feature ethics as a dimension of everyday laboratory and clinical work. In sum, engagements between STS and bioethics are increasingly important in order to understand and manage the complex dynamics between science, medicine and ethics in society. (shrink)

The national-level scenarios project NanoFutures focuses on the social, political, economic, and ethical implications of nanotechnology, and is initiated by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU). The project involves novel methods for the development of plausible visions of nanotechnology-enabled futures, elucidates public preferences for various alternatives, and, using such preferences, helps refine future visions for research and outreach. In doing so, the NanoFutures project aims to address a central question: how to deliberate the social implications (...) of an emergent technology whose outcomes are not known. The solution pursued by the NanoFutures project is twofold. First, NanoFutures limits speculation about the technology to plausible visions. This ambition introduces a host of concerns about the limits of prediction, the nature of plausibility, and how to establish plausibility. Second, it subjects these visions to democratic assessment by a range of stakeholders, thus raising methodological questions as to who are relevant stakeholders and how to activate different communities so as to engage the far future. This article makes the dilemmas posed by decisions about such methodological issues transparent and therefore articulates the role of plausibility in anticipatory governance. (shrink)

There is growing need for hybrid curricula that integrate constructivist methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS) into both engineering and policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, institutional and disciplinary barriers have made implementing such curricula difficult at many institutions. While several programs have recently been launched that mix technical training with consideration of “societal” or “ethical issues,” these programs often lack a constructivist element, leaving newly-minted practitioners entering practical fields ill-equipped to unpack the politics of knowledge (...) and technology or engage with skeptical publics. This paper presents a novel format for designing interdisciplinary coursework that combines conceptual content from STS with training in engineering and policy. Courses following this format would ideally be team taught by instructors with advanced training in diverse fields, and hence co-learning between instructors and disciplines is a key element of the format. Several instruments for facilitating both student and instructor collaborative learning are introduced. The format is also designed for versatility: in addition to being adaptable to both technical and policy training environments, topics are modularized around a conceptual core so that issues ranging from biotech to nuclear security can be incorporated to fit programmatic needs and resources. (shrink)

The following article offers a brief overview of current nanotechnology policy, regulation and ethics in Europe and The People’s Republic of China with the intent of noting (dis)similarities in approach, before focusing on the involvement of the public in science and technology policy (i.e. participatory Technology Assessment). The conclusions of this article are, that (a) in terms of nanosafety as expressed through policy and regulation, China PR and the EU have similar approaches towards, and concerns about, nanotoxicity—the official debate on (...) benefits and risks is not markedly different in the two regions; (b) that there is a similar economic drive behind both regions’ approach to nanodevelopment, the difference being the degree of public concern admitted; and (c) participation in decision-making is fundamentally different in the two regions. Thus in China PR, the focus is on the responsibility of the scientist; in the EU, it is about government accountability to the public. The formulation of a Code of Conduct for scientists in both regions (China PR’s predicted for 2012) reveals both similarity and difference in approach to nanotechnology development. This may change, since individual responsibility alone cannot guide S&T development, and as public participation is increasingly seen globally as integral to governmental decision-making. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between innovation and resources that are governed as commons by looking at the governance of potato genetic resources, especially in the context of the emergence ofhybrid diploid potato breedingthat will enable potato propagation through true seeds. As a new breeding tool, hybrid diploid potato breeding may not only revolutionize traditional potato breeding practices, it may also strongly affect current governance modes of potato genetic resources as a commons. Contrary to conventional accounts of the commons that (...) treat technological innovation mainly as an exogenous factor, we argue that technological innovation can better be understood as an endogenous factor. In particular, we develop aco-production frameworkof innovation and the commons that draws attention to the different ways in which innovation, commons and its governance interact. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the constitution of potato genetic resources as a commons cannot be understood without considering the various ways in which technological innovation affects resources and mediate how these are governed. While reversely, technological innovations themselves are also enabled and constrained by users who govern potato genetic resources as a shared resource. We argue that changes in the governance of genetic resources can be understood as a change from one socio-technical constellation to another, whereby innovations, resources, and institutions are continuously co-produced. (shrink)

This study investigates how uncertainty works in science policy debates by considering an unusual case: one in which uncertainty-based arguments for delay come from the scientific community, rather than industry actors. The case I present is the central use of value-added modeling in the evaluation of individual teachers, a controversial trend in education reform. In order to understand how policy actors might counter inconvenient statements of uncertainty from experts, I analyze speeches from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a committed and influential (...) advocate of VAM. I identify a three-part rhetorical tactic, the “Overcaution Allegation,” and describe its persuasive potential to legitimize policies that elicit caution from the scientific community because they are built on uncertain science. (shrink)

Regulating technologies, innovations and risks is an activity that, as much as scientific research needs proofs and evidence. It is the site of development of a distinct kind of science, regulatory science. This special issue addresses the question of the standards of knowledge governing how we test, assess and monitor technologies and their effects. This topic is relevant and timely in the light of problematics of regulation of innovation, regulatory failure and capture. Given the enormous decisions and stakes regulatory science (...) commends, it becomes crucial to ask where its standards come from and gain credibility, but also what valuations of technology and appreciations of their risks or benefits do they embed, and who controls them? This paper introduces the four contributions comprising the special issue, and outlines a perspective from which to question the construction of regulatory science or, in the terminology adopted here, the authorization and standardization of regulatory knowledge, particularly the role of networks of scientific experts therein. (shrink)

Scholars have argued that transnational networks of right-wing economists and activists caused the worldwide embrace of neoliberalism. Using the case of an Italian think tank, CESES, associated with these networks, the author shows that the origins of neoliberalism were not in hegemony but in liminality. At CESES, the Italian and American right sought to convert Italians to free market values by showing them how Soviet socialism worked. However, CESES was created in liminal spaces that opened up within and between Soviet (...) socialism and Western capitalism after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Scholars from East and West at CESES developed new knowledge about actually existing socialism, which, due to the shifting context of the Cold War, seemed to provoke left-wing sympathies among the scholars and the students involved. CESES in fact required left-wing scholars, who had necessary skills and a fascination with a common project of democratic or market socialism, to create this new knowledge. The new knowledge that developed out of an East–West dialogue not only helped right-wing transnational networks to reorient their hegemonic projects, but also helped those on the left to understand actually existing socialism and what socialism might become. This knowledge could not be obtained without this dialogue and had to travel through liminal spaces. (shrink)

This article explores how the Portuguese legal system’s efforts to determine paternity of children born outside legal marriage, automatically initiated by the Registry Office when a birth registration does not indicate the father, reveal cultural models which reinforce the naturalisation of the differences between mothers and fathers, with significant effects on the social construction of parental roles and on expectations of family organisation and female sexual behaviour. The article relies on ethnographic data drawn from direct observation of court proceedings for (...) the determination of paternity, as well as interviews with judges and prosecuting counsels all over the country. It is argued that judicial practices in the specific context of courtroom investigations of paternity reinforce gender inequalities in two interrelated ways. On the one hand, they are strengthened in the discursive practices performed during the course of the interactions between judges, prosecuting counsels and the mother of the child, as well as the alleged father. On the other hand, the normative model of family life and the dominant ideology of women’s and men’s relationships, which emphasise women’s socially subordinate position, are revealed by the selective use of DNA testing in paternity cases, based on the judge’s evaluation of the mother’s sexual behaviour. The article argues that legal attempts to establish the paternity of children born outside marriage—though based on novel technical and supposedly objective procedures—tend, nevertheless, to reproduce the prevailing patriarchal structures. (shrink)

This article is an analytic register of recent European efforts in the making of ‘autonomous’ robots to address what is imagined as Europe’s societal challenges. The paper describes how an emerging techno-epistemic network stretches across industry, science, policy and law to legitimize and enact a robotics innovation agenda. Roadmap is the main metaphor and organizing tool in working across the disciplines and sectors, and in aligning these heterogeneous actors with a machine-centric vision along a path to make way for ‘new (...) kinds’ of robots. We describe what happens as this industry-dominated project docks in a public–private partnership with pan-European institutions and a legislative initiative on robolaw. Emphasizing the co-production of robotics and European innovation politics, we observe how well-known uncertainties and scholarly debates about machine capabilities and human–machine configurations, are unexpectedly played out in legal scholarship and institutions as a controversy and a significant problem for human-centered legal frameworks. European robotics are indeed driving an increase in speculative ethics and a new-found weight of possible futures in legislative practice. (shrink)

This article examines the cultural practices through which a group of professionals infuse their work and community with charisma. Although previous research has theorized the “charisma of office” (Weber 1978), we know little about how the occupants of such offices sustain it. I focus on a group of psychoanalytically-inclined psychotherapists, whose field, despite its early charismatic beginnings, has been especially embattled in recent decades. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I reveal how they share stories emphasizing their “idealization” by others, (...) draw boundaries between their professional and private lives to manage their work identities, and perform interpersonal affective work that shores up their claims to extraordinary abilities. Together, these cultural practices constitute charisma within the professional group. This article thus makes a case that, as expertise becomes increasingly contested, we must look beyond social organization and the evidentiary bases of knowledge to understand professional authority. (shrink)

This article explores the production and consumption of phrenological knowledge for and by middle-class women in the USA during the early and middle decades of the 19th century. At a time when science itself had few boundaries, women became readers, consumers, proselytizers and practitioners of this knowledge system, outside of a scientific academy. This paper argues that phrenological beliefs about sex differences enabled and encouraged women to be users. Phrenology allowed women to negotiate gender and by encouraging followers to ‘know (...) thyself,’ phrenology blurred the lines of expertise, creating a fluid interplay between users and producers of knowledge. This article then shows how categories of women users–practitioners, consumers and feminists–implemented or rejected elements of phrenology as they sought to affirm or amend prescribed gender roles. As the industrial economy seemed to divide public and private, production and consumption, masculine and feminine, phrenology allowed women and men to stand within and between these binaries. At the same time, some women used phrenology to classify themselves and others in a socio-natural hierarchy and further engrained scientific racism in American culture. (shrink)

Recent developments in biotechnology allow for the generation of increasingly complex products out of human tissues, for example, human stem cell lines, synthetic embryo-like structures and organoids. These developments are coupled with growing commercial interests. Although commercialisation can spark the scientific and clinical promises, profit-making out of human tissues is ethically contentious and known to raise public concern. The traditional bioethical frames of gift versus market are inapt to capture the resulting practical and ethical complexities. Therefore, we propose an alternative (...) approach to identify, evaluate and deal with the ethical challenges that are raised by the increasing commercialisation of the exchange of sophisticated human tissue products. We use organoid technology, a cutting-edge stem cell technology that enables the cultivation of ‘mini-organs’ in a dish, as an example. First, we examine the moral value of organoids and recognise them as hybrids that relate to persons and their bodies as well as to technologies and markets in ambiguous ways. Second, we show that commercialisation of organoids is legitimised by a detachment of the instrumental and commercial value of organoids from their associations with persons and their bodies. This detachment is enacted in steps of disentanglement, among which consent and commodification. Third, we contend that far-reaching disentanglement is ethically challenging: (1) Societal interests could be put under pressure, because the rationale for commercialising organoid technology, that is, to stimulate biomedical innovation for the good of society, may not be fulfilled; (2) The interests of donors are made subordinate to those of third parties and the relational moral value of organoids may be insufficiently recognised. Fourth, we propose a ‘consent for governance’ model that contributes to responsible innovation and clinical translation in this exciting field. (shrink)

The rapid implementation and continuing expansion of forensic DNA databases around the world has been supported by claims about their effectiveness in criminal investigations and challenged by assertions of the resulting intrusiveness into individual privacy. These two competing perspectives provide the basis for ongoing considerations about the categories of persons who should be subject to non-consensual DNA sampling and profile retention as well as the uses to which such profiles should be put. This paper uses the example of the current (...) arrangements for forensic DNA databasing in England and Wales to discuss the ways in which the legislative and operational basis for police DNA databasing is reliant upon continuous deliberations over these and other matters by a range of key stakeholders. We also assess the effects of the recent innovative use of DNA databasing for “familial searching” in this jurisdiction in order to show how agreed understandings about the appropriate uses of DNA can become unsettled and reformulated even where their investigative effectiveness is uncontested. We conclude by making some observations about the future of what is recognized to be the largest forensic DNA database in the world. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of traditional understandings of risk, responsibility and the division of labour between science and politics build on the idea of the co-produced character of the natural and social orders, making a case for less ambitious and more inclusive policy processes, where questions of values and goals may be addressed together with questions of facts and means, causal liabilities and principled responsibilities. Within the neo-liberal political economy, however, the contingency of the world is depicted as a source of unprecedented (...) opportunities for human craftsmanship, rather than of possibly unmanageable surprises. Gene technologies offer a vantage point for reflecting on the consequences of the drift from discovery to invention as a master frame in the appraisal of human intermingling with the world. Biotech patenting regulations carve out a sovereign agency which, by crafting nature, also crafts the distinction between the manufactured and non-manufactured world. Difficulties in ascribing responsibility stem as a consequence. It is likely that politics and economy can be democratized and responsibilities rearranged not by ‘democratizing’ knowledge production, but rather the reverse. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Artikel widmet sich der Frage, wie Spiele und spielen zur Big-Data-basierten Wissensproduktion in der Hochenergiephysik beitragen. Als Beispiel dienen Detektorkollaborationen am Large Hadron Collider (LHC) der Europäischen Organisation für Kernforschung (CERN), in denen die Autorin seit 2014 kulturanthropologische Feldforschung unternommen hat. Der ludische Aspekt der Wissensproduktion wird hier in drei verschiedenen Dimensionen analysiert: der symbolischen, der ontologischen und der epistemischen. Erstere verweist auf das CERN als Ort, an dem ein kosmologisches Wahrscheinlichkeitsspiel mithilfe von Monte-Carlo-Simulationen durchgeführt wird. Die Zweite (...) wird durch kompetitive Infrastrukturen in der Arbeitspraxis verschiedener Kollaborationsgruppen sichtbar. Die dritte Dimension entfaltet sich durch ludische Plattformen, wie etwa Online Challenges und Citizen Science Games, die zur Entwicklung von machine learning algorithmen beitragen, deren Funktion notwendig ist, um die ungeheuren Mengen an Big Data verarbeiten zu können, die durch die Experimente gesammelt werden. Das CERN wird als Ort des Deep Play beschrieben, einem von Clifford Geertz entwickeltem Konzept, das dazu beiträgt, größere soziale und kulturelle Ordnungen durch die Analyse ludischer Kollektivphänomene zu begreifen. Der Artikel setzt sich darüber hinaus mit Peter Galisons Idee der Trading Zone auseinander und schlägt vor, diese in Zeiten von Big Data als Playground (Spielplatz) zu begreifen. Die Autorin hofft damit zu einer breiteren sozio-historiografischen Diskussion in den Science and Technology Studies (STS, Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung) und nicht zuletzt der Kulturanthropologie beizutragen, indem das Ludische in den Wissenschaften als zentrales Element für das Verständnis kollaborativer Wissensproduktion begriffen wird. (shrink)

Drawing upon the concepts of civic epistemologies and sociotechnical imaginaries, this article delves into the history of nuclear energy in Portugal, analyzing the ways in which the nuclear endeavor was differently enacted by various sociopolitical collectives – the Fascist State, post-revolutionary governments and the public. Following the 1974 revolution - known as the Carnation Revolution - this paper analyzes how the nuclear project was fiercely contested by a vibrant anti-nuclear movement assembled against the construction of the Ferrel Nuclear Plant, the (...) first sociotechnical controversy in Portugal, paving the way for the emergence of a combative civic epistemology. Supported by semi-structured interviews with scientists, activists and local residents of Ferrel and the analysis of historical material, this article presents the failed Portuguese nuclear endeavor as an emblematic case study to explore the co-production of science and society, in particular the role of revolutionary processes in the unfolding of sociotechnical controversies. (shrink)

Science and technology (S&T) policy studies has explored the relationship between the structure of scientific research and the attainment of desired outcomes. Due to the difficulty of measuring them directly, S&T policy scholars have traditionally equated “outcomes” with several proxies for evaluation, including economic impact, and academic output such as papers published and citations received. More recently, scholars have evaluated science policies through the lens of Public Value Mapping, which assesses scientific programs against societal values. Missing from these approaches is (...) an examination of the social activities within the scientific enterprise that affect research outputs and outcomes. We contend that activities that significantly affect research trajectories take place at the levels of individual researchers and their communities, and that S&T policy scholars must take heed of this activity in their work in order to better inform policy. Based on primary research of two scientific communities—ecologists and sustainability scientists—we demonstrate that research agendas are actively shaped by parochial epistemic and normative concerns of the scientists and their disciplines. S&T policy scholarship that explores how scientists balance these concerns, alongside more formal science policies and incentive structures, will enhance understanding of why certain science policies fail or succeed and how to more effectively link science to beneficial social outcomes. (shrink)

The use of the phrase “basic research” as a term used in science policy discussion dates only to about 1920. At the time the phrase referred to what we today commonly refer to as applied research in support of specific missions or goals, especially agriculture. Upon the publication of Vannevar Bush’s well-known report, Science – The Endless Frontier, the phrase “basic research” became a key political symbol, representing various identifications, expectations and demands related to science policy among scientists and politicians. (...) This paper tracks and evaluates the evolution of “basic research” as a political symbol from early in the 20th century to the present. With considerable attention having been paid to the on-going evolution of post-Cold War science policy, much less attention has focused on the factors which have shaped the dominant narrative of contemporary science policies. (shrink)

A challenge in human genome research is how to describe the populations being studied. The use of improper and/or imprecise terms has the potential to both generate and reinforce prejudices and to diminish the clinical value of the research. The issue of population descriptors has not attracted enough academic attention outside North America and Europe. In January 2012, we held a two-day workshop, the first of its kind in Japan, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars in the humanities, social (...) sciences, medical sciences, and genetics to begin an ongoing discussion of the social and ethical issues associated with population descriptors. (shrink)

This article explores the role of constitutional thought in Latour’s work on cosmopolitics. It will study his non-modern proposal in the Politics of Nature (2004) and argue for a constitutional rather than political understanding. To address criticisms of being too metaphysical or unpractical, we will work out the notion of a “constitutional ecology of practices” to highlight how different practices such as politics, science, organization, but also law, all contribute to the design of the stage and processes for composing a (...) common world. Special focus will here be placed on the role of “epigrams”: practical models for ordering contributions of different practices or modes in hierarchical relationships. This renders them identifiable, mobilizable, and contestable as cross-cutting models for shaping mutual relations in concrete collaborative settings. The case of the legal regulation of robots will be presented as an example of a cosmopolitical attempt to introduce non-human entities in the common collective. We will here observe the role that epigrams play in framing, ordering and contesting the epistemic contributions of the various practices involved in this innovation ecology. This case will be used to discuss Latour’s proposals and to study non-modern constitutionalism in action. (shrink)

Projects to integrate digital technologies into the fabric of city life depend upon specific visions of politics and technology. In the process of their realization, they re-constitute the identities, agencies, and relations of human inhabitants, re-defining what it means to be a citizen. This article draws on the idiom of co-production and framework of constitutionalism from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to analyze the coming into being of a form of citizenship with smartphone technologies in Boston in the 2010s. When (...) the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) used newly available smartphone apps to reconfigure the connection among city residents and government, they brought into being a specific mode of citizenship. I term this mode of citizenship “mechanic” to draw attention to the qualities of passivity, infrastructure, and connectedness that characterized MONUM’s early digital citizenship projects. I argue that recognizing that the constitution of the human, and specifically of citizens, is at stake in smart city projects entails re-thinking ethical analysis in contexts of smart cities. Instead of seeking to perform ethical assessments of technological consequences (“ethics of” approach), scholars might begin with a situated analysis of how humans as citizens are constituted through smart city projects (“ethics in” approach). By identifying the political affordances and commitments of the emergent digital citizenship models, scholars can make visible alternative forms of living and engaging politically in the city. (shrink)

As health care systems have been recast as innovation assets, commercial aims are increasingly prominent within states’ health and medical research policies. Despite this, the reformulation of notions of social and of scientific value and of long-standing relations between science and the state that is occurring in research policies remains comparatively unexamined. Addressing this lacuna, this article investigates the articulation of ‘actually existing neoliberalism' in research policy by examining a major Australian research policy and funding instrument, the Medical Research Future (...) Fund. We identify the MRFF and allied initiatives as a site of state activism: reallocating resources from primary and preventive health care to commercially-oriented biomedical research; privileging commercial objectives in research and casting health as a “flow on effect”; reorganising the publicly funded production of health and medical knowledge; and arrogating for political actors a newly prominent role in research grant assessment and funding allocation. We conclude that rather than the state’s assumption of a more activist role in medical research and innovation straightforwardly serving a ‘public good’, it is a driver of neoliberalisation that erodes commitments to redistributive justice in health care and significantly reconfigures science-state relations in research policy. (shrink)

Many instances of scientific research impose risks, not just on participants and scientists but also on third parties. This class of social risks unifies a range of problems previously treated as distinct phenomena, including so-called bystander risks, biosafety concerns arising from gain-of-function research, the misuse of the results of dual-use research, and the harm caused by inductive risks. The standard approach to these problems has been to extend two familiar principles from human subjects research regulations—a favorable risk-benefit ratio and informed (...) consent. We argue, however, that these moral principles will be difficult to satisfy in the context of widely distributed social risks about which affected parties may reasonably disagree. We propose that framing these risks as political rather than moral problems may offer another way. By borrowing lessons from political philosophy, we propose a framework that unifies our discussion of social risks and the possible solutions to them. (shrink)

Current methods of forensic DNA profiling, based on Polymerase Chain Reaction amplifications of a varying number of Short Tandem Repeat loci found at different locations on the human genome, are regularly described as constituting the “gold standard for identification” in contemporary society. At a time when criminal justice systems in Europe and North America increasingly seek to utilize the epistemic authority of a variety of sciences in support of the apprehension and prosecution of suspects and offenders, genetic science and recombinant (...) DNA technology are often singled out for particular approbation. Indeed, the development and application of DNA profiling has been widely described as the “greatest breakthrough in forensic science since fingerprinting.”. (shrink)

Sociologists have challenged the discipline to account for and incorporate biological factors in their analyses. Heeding this call, this article asks how chimeras, a particularly puzzling biological organism, are being officially classified in the interrelated sites of endangered species preservation and the zoo. Based on a qualitative study of endeavors to clone endangered animals, I contend that biology alone cannot determine the classification of these interspecies organisms. Rather, categorizing chimeras requires metaphoric, schematic references to more familiar entities. Here culture and (...) biology are tools for classification, which has consequences for preservation practices and the materiality of endangered wildlife. Drawing on the sociology of culture, I show that positions on classification represent an intermediary space for interpreting the relationship between meaning and action in discourse elaboration. Building on the sociology of science and technology, I show the epistemological limitations of understanding the biological as an a priori factor. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

This paper offers a moral history of the industrialisation of seaweed harvesting in Norway. Industrialisation is often seen as degrading natural resources. Ironically, we argue, it is precisely the scale and scope of industrial utilisation that may enable non-instrumental valuations of natural resources. We use the history of the Norwegian seaweed industry to make this point. Seaweed became increasingly interesting to harvest as a fruit and then as a crop of the sea in the early twentieth century following biochemical applications (...) for alginates derived from seaweed. When harvesting was mechanised, however, attention turned to the environmental and aesthetic value of kelp forests. Further, the sale of the industry to the American FMC corporation flagged the national value of these plants. In sum epistemic, aesthetic and moral appreciations of natural resources are tangled up and co-evolve with their industrial utilisation, in an ecology of values. Our account uses interview and ethnographic material from key sites in Norway. (shrink)

This paper offers an ethnomethodological exploration of fun in Go, the timely delivery of a ‘Monkey Jump’, and its lingering relevance to science studies. In Go terms, the paper makes a ‘pincer’ move: on the one hand, it explores the analytic potential of ‘fun’ for ethnographic purposes and, on the other hand, it questions its manifest abandonment in some quarters of science studies. In particular, the paper challenges their “curious seriousness” :69–78, 1990) whenever grand ontological claims are mixed up with (...) suspended empirical inquiry. That said, the latter criticism does not take the form of a scholarly exercise in conceptual clarification, but remains part and parcel of the author’s ethnography of playing amateur Go, including his dealing with and delivery of a Monkey Jump and reading of Go literature and replaying of professional games. The key point of the paper, then, is to demonstrate the heuristic interest of adopting a practitioner’s stance, not only for understanding a technical domain such as Go in its own terms, but also for launching a phenomenological critique of analytic discretion in science studies. Therefore, the second part of the paper re-examines, from an amateur Go player’s stance, Latour and Woolgar’s Go analogy in and for Laboratory Life —an early exemplar of science studies’ ontological bent. (shrink)

In the past forty years, Bruno Latour’s claim that Science Is Politics By Other Means (SIPBOM) has been the underlying creed of Science and Technology Studies (STS), most of us simply taking it for granted. In contrast, this special issue is predicated on the observation of an enduring lack of exegesis of this catchphrase so remarkable that is has caused an outcry among natural scientists, echoed in some social science quarters. If SIPBOM has been a resource for decades, by turning (...) it into a topic this special issue revisits one of the most exciting and challenging insights of contemporary thought. (shrink)

New sciences born or developed in the 20th century (information, materials, life science) are based on forms of complementarity that differ from the past. The paper discusses cognitive, or disciplinary, institutional, and technical complementarity. It argues that new sciences apply a reductionist explanatory strategy to complex multi-layered systems. In doing so the reductionist promise is falsified, generating the need for multi-level kinds of explanation (e.g. in post-genomic molecular biology), new forms of complementarity between scientific and non-scientific organizations, and new forms (...) of experimental and informational facilities. The paper develops the argument in theoretical terms, comparing it with the STS literature, and offers preliminary evidence based on the experience of Networks of Excellence. (shrink)

This study investigates the interaction between civil servants and politicians in a planning committee in a Swedish county council. As the committees are venues for preparation of future decision-making, civil servants and others are invited to inform and report to the politicians on different topics. The aim is to explore this local interaction process based on an analysis of requests and responses. It is shown that the communication between civil servants and politicians is pervaded by sociability in the form of (...) conversational routines. The article aims to recognize this sociability as an intrinsic part of knowledge coproduction processes. Civil servants and politicians negotiate different types of professional and common knowledge through routines that dislocate time, responsibility, roles, and protocol order. These lubricants – important but often circumvented in studies of policy-making – are explored as instances of conversational coproduction. (shrink)

The priorities of French policy regarding genetically modified (GM) food shifted in the late 1990s from aggressive promotion to strict regulation based on precaution and separation of GM food. This paradigmatic policy change coincided with a rapid shift in the dominant meanings of GM food in larger French public discourses. Using data from media coverage, organizational documents, and in-depth interviews, the study examines the relationship between policy developments and GM food’s symbolic transformation. I argue that the interpretive dimension interacted with (...) and co-evolved incrementally with formal policy developments, and that it cannot be understood as epiphenomenal to political processes, or as preceding and propelling a policy change. I identify three mechanisms of symbolic transformation: (1) multiplication of meanings; (2) association with other salient issues; and (3) coupling with national identity (boundary work). Conversely, this symbolic transformation influenced the terms of political debates and viable strategies, influencing policy developments. The study also demonstrates how certain longstanding elements of French political culture shaped, and were changed or reproduced through, these processes. (shrink)

This paper reports on an experiment concerning the social construction of statistical definitions, where the first census of Higher Education Institutions in Europe has been developed. It conceptualizes the construction of indicators as a social process of definitions and boundaries’ negotiation, involving value judgments, social and political opinions, as well as practical interests and power strategies of actors. The paper exemplifies this process on three issues, namely the social demand for establishing a census, the controversy concerning the definition of a (...) perimeter as well as the selection of indicators, and the nature of comparability judgments. We first conclude that the socio-political dimension has to be explicitly taken into account when designing statistical systems; second, that social scientists involved in this process need to openly recognize the conflicts around the definition of indicators; third, that the objectified and taken for granted status of indicators makes them a powerful instrument to influence policy decisions and, that indicator designers need to make their own value judgments and interests fully transparent. (shrink)

Using land-use models in deliberative planning is promoted as an example of how environmental decision-making can be subject to both: 1) facts about how the interaction between human action and natural processes; and, 2) local perspectives on how land-use planning processes can incorporate normative concerns. This ‘normative’ input is often shaped and limited by the presentation of the modelled facts. This paper, however, shows that the selection and measurement of indicators, the primary outcomes of modelling exercises, are subject to a (...) highly particular assessment, influenced by social factors, political choices and technical limitations. This revised understanding does not invalidate the use of models in participatory planning. But it does open up considerable space for stakeholders in deliberative contexts to question and challenge the evidence-based policy implications of so-called ‘fact-based’ modelling exercises. (shrink)

This paper offers a moral history of the industrialisation of seaweed harvesting in Norway. Industrialisation is often seen as degrading natural resources. Ironically, we argue, it is precisely the scale and scope of industrial utilisation that may enable non-instrumental valuations of natural resources. We use the history of the Norwegian seaweed industry to make this point. Seaweed became increasingly interesting to harvest as a fruit and then as a crop of the sea in the early twentieth century following biochemical applications (...) for alginates derived from seaweed. When harvesting was mechanised, however, attention turned to the environmental and aesthetic value of kelp forests. Further, the sale of the industry to the American FMC corporation flagged the national value of these plants. In sum epistemic, aesthetic and moral appreciations of natural resources are tangled up and co-evolve with their industrial utilisation, in an ecology of values. Our account uses interview and ethnographic material from key sites in Norway. (shrink)