Nanotechnology: public engagement with health, environment and social issues

This EPA STRIVE research fellowship report presents a literature review and fieldwork data for a project that investigated how the topic of nanotechnology can be engaged with by both experts on the topic and nonexperts. The first objective was to map out what can be said about knowledge of nanotechnology in contemporary Ireland. All perspectives on nanotechnology were taken on board, analysed and synthesised, including deviations from the accepted truths about nanotechnology. While perspectives on environmental and health implications were of particular interest, they were not the primary focus in discussions, unless raised by participants and commentators. Methods used for this study included an awareness survey and media and document analyses. The second objective was to pilot a series of nanotechnology communication events, which would provide the basis of a future communications/ consultation strategy for policy-makers. The types of activities used in these events included focus groups, a ‘citizens’ jury’, online forums and an installation in the Science Gallery in Dublin. The contributions from these activities also added to the first objective of addressing nanotechnology knowledge. The third and final objective was to report to the EPA, in order to aid future environmental research associated with public communication and wider science communication and technology assessment policy by the Irish government. The following was concluded from this project: • Scientists were the most prominent voices in public discourse about nanotechnology, but mostly in the context of commercial exploitation and innovation. • Environment and health risks and benefits were tied to social and ethical considerations very closely and participants in public engagement activities were at least as concerned about governance and equity issues (in terms of how nanotechnology is controlled) as they were about the environmental and health implication • Scientists were the most prominent voices in public discourse about nanotechnology, but mostly in the context of commercial exploitation and innovation. • Environment and health risks and benefits were tied to social and ethical considerations very closely and participants in public engagement activities were at least as concerned about governance and equity issues (in terms of how nanotechnology is controlled) as they were about the environmental and health implication • Where nanotechnology was described in the media, it tended to be either framed in commercial terms, or in basic, scientific, didactic terms for education and outreach, for example, ‘nanotechnology is …’ Both representations reduce the chances for nanotechnology risks, of any kind, to be discussed, and are at odds with policy measures of nanotechnology public engagement in other countries. • Dialogicality (expressing multiple voices and views on a topic) was weak in many official nanotechnology texts, new media approaches provided more opportunities for dialogue. • The concept of nanotechnology as an ‘entity’ was important – for young participants in particular. • Levels of attendance at public engagement events were low for the open-invitation focus group and the citizens’ jury pilot especially. The following recommendations are made: • Establish a Convergence Technologies Forum; • Ensure that dialogue initiatives are included for future nanotechnology; • Use all communication channels, including new Web 2.0 media; • Learn from the public engagement mistakes of other emerging technology debates, such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs); • Link to global networks already involved in nanotechnology and emerging technology public engagement; • Include social sustainability as a criterion in future EPA- and exchequer-funded research and technology assessment. Even though there is little media or public interest, Nano-Innovation discourses are growing. In any future campaign for nanotechnology, media exposure and public relations require considerable investment. In other countries, dialogue is considered as important as promoting the technology itself. This report offers a ‘menu’ of dialogue models for policy-makers to address the many objectives of nanotechnology strategy, from less dialogic information transfer to public-led dialogue and the public imagining of a future with nanotechnology. If only some of the predictions are accurate, nanotechnology will have many social implications. Much work is necessary to ensure nanotechnology public engagement is taken seriously in Ireland if the technology is an economic priority, or indeed if it has some bearing on progress in health, environment and technology. This report confirms what is found in international studies of science and society – public engagement needs to be about what can be accepted, not what can be sold. This report recommends that, for a more inclusive approach to nanotechnology knowledge – and to avoid another ‘GM scenario’ – dialogue must form the basis of the communication strategy with embedded ‘triple bottom line’ values, that is, where society and environment are given the same level of importance currently granted to the economy

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Mapping the integrative field: taking stock of socio-technical collaborations

Responsible innovation requires that scientific and other expert practices be responsive to society. We take stock of a variety of collaborative approaches to socio-technical integration that seek to broaden the societal contexts technical experts take into account during their routine activities. Part of a larger family of engaged scholarship that includes inter- and trans-disciplinarity as well as stakeholder and public engagement, we distinguish collaborative socio-technical integration in terms of its proximity to and transformation of expert practices. We survey a variety of approaches that differ widely in terms of their integrative methods, conceptions of societal context, roles, and aspirations for intervention. Taking a handful of “communities of integration” as exemplars, we then provide a framework for comparing the forms, means, and ends of collaborative integration. We conclude by reflecting on some of the main features of, and tensions within, this developing arena of practical inquiry and engagement and what this suggests for integrative efforts aimed at responsible innovation

Engineering a Better Future

This open access book examines how the social sciences can be integrated into the praxis of engineering and science, presenting unique perspectives on the interplay between engineering and social science. Motivated by the report by the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, which emphasizes the importance of social sciences and Humanities in technical fields, the essays and papers collected in this book were presented at the NSF-funded workshop ‘Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences and Innovation’, which brought together a singular collection of people, topics and disciplines. The book is split into three parts: A. Meeting at the Middle: Challenges to educating at the boundaries covers experiments in combining engineering education and the social sciences; B. Engineers Shaping Human Affairs: Investigating the interaction between social sciences and engineering, including the cult of innovation, politics of engineering, engineering design and future of societies; and C. Engineering the Engineers: Investigates thinking about design with papers on the art and science of science and engineering practice

On Prospective Technology Studies

This volume includes papers to technological foresight, roadmapping and TA from two sources. On the one side it is based on a workshop in Budapest at the end of 2007, that was organized in the framework of the International Forum on Sustainable Technological Development. On the other side selected presentations from the symposium on History of Prospective Technology Studies, in the framework of the XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, July 2009

Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences

This open access edited book provides new thinking on scientific identity formation. It thoroughly interrogates the concepts of community and identity, including both historical and contemporaneous analyses of several scientific fields. Chapters examine whether, and how, today’s scientific identities and communities are subject to fundamental changes, reacting to tangible shifts in research funding as well as more intangible transformations in our society’s understanding and expectations of technoscience. Authors: Karen Kastenhofer, Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Clemens Blümel, Bettina Bock von Wülfingen, Béatrice Cointe, Carlos Cuevas-Garcia, Sarah R Davies, Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez, Juliane Jarke, Pierre-Benoît Joly, Marianne Noël, Benjamin Raimbault, Andrea Schikowitz, Sarah M. Schönbauer, Inga Ulnicane-Ozolina, Caitlin D. WylieDer vorgelegte Open Access Band befasst sich mit Identität und Gemeinschaft in den TechnoWissenschaften. Er widmet sich wesentlichen soziologischen Konzepten und präsentiert sowohl historische, als auch aktuelle Fallbeispiele, darunter Supramolekulare Chemie, Synthetische Biologie, Nanotechnologie und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung. AutorInnen: Karen Kastenhofer, Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Clemens Blümel, Bettina Bock von Wülfingen, Béatrice Cointe, Carlos Cuevas-Garcia, Sarah R Davies, Alexander Degelsegger-Márquez, Juliane Jarke, Pierre-Benoît Joly, Marianne Noël, Benjamin Raimbault, Andrea Schikowitz, Sarah M. Schönbauer, Inga Ulnicane-Ozolina, Caitlin D. Wyli

Exploring the Institutionalization of Nanotechnology in Germany and the U.S. How Structures, Culture, and Self-understandings Impede the Rise of an Academic Community and a Profession in Nanotechnology

The explorative dissertation gives manifold insights into how complex the delineation and historical development of a new technological field is. Its analysis is based on the academic sector with its own structural and cultural elements where distinct formal and informal rules as well as beliefs are valid. The dissertation derives hypotheses from simulation and narrative interview data. The hypotheses make clear that the process of implementation of an advanced technology cannot be seen as an input-output relationship when trying to foster technological innovations and economic growth. Rather, working cultures based on norms, beliefs, and related meanings are located within institutions, i.e., universities and their research groups. These institutions are exposed to external pressures, such as grant policies. The interactions within the field seem to run counter to external political forces. In the end, the tension which emerges in the field produces the identity of nanotechnology within the scientific community. This identity is marked precisely by the ambiguity and reluctance that nanotechnology evokes in nanoresearchers who develop prolific strategies to deal with public funding on the one hand and to nurture the importance of firmly established academic disciplines on the other. These two strands represent the two sides of the coin of the academic community and the identity of nanotechnology. The results are three-fold: first, the emergence of a research network due to nanotechnology funding and the impact of public funding were simulated by agent-based modeling; second, since the model does not give insights into the organizational life of academic nanotechnology, meanings of German and U.S. nanoscientists and their view on nanotechnology were explored drawing on data from 33 interviews; third, based on these meanings and evaluations of nanotechnology, central organizational characteristics of the academic field of nanotechnology were established. These hypotheses additionally hint to the limits of the Varieties-of-Capitalism (VoC) approach that relates solely to the macro-level and cannot adequately explain the success of nanotechnology in Germany, a coordinated market economy (CME). An analysis of the meso-level reveals the differing national implementations of nanotechnology at universities that show how, in different national contexts, an advanced technology can be successfully incorporated into higher education and research systems. The main finding was that the field of nanotechnology is exposed to forces exerted by political actors and grant policies on the one hand and by reluctance and ambiguity toward nanotechnology within the scientific community on the other. In other words, a political Mode 2 conception of knowledge production concept meets a Mode 1 culture of university knowledge production. The result is tension, which represents the main characteristic of the field and which marks the production of an identity of nanotechnology that takes effect in academe. This tension is positively used by politicians and scientists who manage to pursue their own goals without infringing each other’s responsibilities. Scientists, the main actors interviewed for the study, are involved in both institutional and cultural change. They induce change through strategically handling the external political pressure or, more neutrally speaking, political interests by tapping into third-party funds and by simultaneously nurturing their working cultures. The latter were based on academic disciplines that they were formerly socialized in and that marked the reproduction of new scientists for their research groups. Cultural change becomes visible in the fact that an institutionalization of nanotechnology is possible without restructuring the disciplinary based institutional structure of universities and without turning scientists into mere nanotechnologists. Finally, in addition to structural institutional change in higher education systems, processes of institutionalization have been included: the definition of a scientific community via identity construction and professionalization. The exploration of the field of nanotechnology is important for two reasons. First, nanotechnology is a new advanced technology that is strongly politically pushed and that incites enormous institutional change, both on the structural and on the process-level, as shown by professionalization for instance. Second, in previous studies, an emphasis has been laid primarily on the development of patents and citations in nanotechnology. The study, by contrast, looks at nanotechnology from wholly new perspectives. For countries that stress advanced technologies as drivers for economic growth and measure for international competitiveness, knowledge about the constitution of a field is indispensable if one wants to foster it in a successful and effective way. For now, nanotechnology is not a discipline in the sense that it has a fixed number of actors or a clear profile or linear identity, yet it has been successfully institutionalized in Germany and the U.S. and is characterized by a unique identity. This identity is based on the socially constructed interests of the central actors of the field, interests that meet at the point where these actors agree that public funding is indispensable to advance nanotechnology. Institutional change can be observed without a change of the predominant disciplinary structure of universities that is based on chairs and departments or colleges. This finding runs counter to the Mode 2 argument that interdisciplinarity has become a feature of university knowledge production. The tension that arises from the prevalence of disciplines and the integration of nanotechnology into universities embracing several disciplines is necessary to enable institutional change. The security of discipline-based self-categorization gives researchers the freedom to risk change without giving up the basic research orientation in nanotechnology. As basic research is still the major portion that informants devoted their time to, the Mode 2 conception of nanotechnology is thus only partially valid due to the early stage of nanotechnology research. With these interview and simulation results, implications for higher education policy are derived. With the aforementioned influence of the state, the simulation results demonstrate that the way grants are distributed in scientific communities influences the spread of new disciplines and technological research. The simulation results showed a direct influence of funding schemes, with other possible influential factors, i.e., random sample variances or ‘noise,’ ruled out. Public policy can influence science, however and most importantly, only to a limited degree since, naturally, a number of variables exert pressure and change on the field