Dialogue, governance, and biotechnology: acknowledging the context of the conversation

Over the past decade we have seen an increasing emphasis on public engagement or dialogue in relation to controversial aspects of science and technology. This phenomenon is the product of a number of factors, of which I would highlight three: * Unexpected, widespread, and sustained public opposition to some commercial applications of biotechnology (and fears that other emerging technologies would be similarly received); * The intensification of pressure on governments to improve the “international competitiveness” of their economies, and the widespread embrace of the “knowledge economy” as the favoured vehicle for accomplishing this; * The direct and indirect influence of some elements of social science research (namely the discrediting of the “deficit model”)

Creating and delivering engagement for a national, cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary research programme: Lessons for practitioners

In this paper we reflect on our experience as members of a well-funded, well-integrated engagement programme within a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary climate-change research initiative: the Deep South National Science Challenge. After describing the goals, structure, and activities of the programme, we analyse the obstacles we faced, which we classify into two types: 1) definitional and process challenges, including both conflicting assumptions about the meaning of engagement and incompatible timelines of science and engagement; and 2) challenges of political and institutional context. From this we derive lessons for similarly placed practitioners. These include: - High-quality engagement requires a great deal of ‘invisible’ preparatory and maintenance work, including, but not limited to, education of colleagues and managers with little or no knowledge about engagement; - When those with little engagement expertise nonetheless have power over engagement-practitioner activities, education is vital but may not be sufficient to protect the integrity of the engagement effort; - Early work to establish explicit guidelines and processes for how engagement is overseen may (or may not) be protective; - The political and institutional context of the engagement programme will likely precipitate a power structure that shapes the challenges faced and the likelihood of overcoming them

From risk assessment to in-context trajectory evaluation. GMOs and their social implications

Purpose: Over the past twenty years, GMOs have raised enormous expectations, passionate political controversies, and an on-going debate on how should these technologies be assessed. Current risk-assessment procedures generally assess GMOs in terms of their potential risk of negatively affecting human health and the environment. Yet, is this risk-benefit approach appropriate to a deliver a robust assessment of GMOs? In this paper, we question the validity of current risk-assessment from both a social and an ecological perspective, and we elaborate an alternative approach, namely in-context trajectory evaluation. Methods: This paper combines frame analysis, context analysis and eco-social analysis to three different case studies. Results: Applying frame analysis to Syngenta´s recent campaign 'Bring plant potential to life', we first de-construct the techno-social imaginaries driving GMOs innovation, showing how the latter endorses the technological fix of socio-economic problems while reinforcing the neoliberal socio-political paradigm. Applying context analysis to biopharming in New Zealand, we then explore local practices, rules and formal and informal procedures, showing that to assess how safe is a technology it is necessary to address how 'safe' is the context. Finally, drawing from the Italian case, we outline through eco-social analysis how the lack of long-term studies, further aggravated by current methodological deficiencies, prevent risk-assessment from considering not only how GMOs affect the environmental context but also, and most importantly, the way people live in, and interact with, this context. Conclusions: Whilst it emerges that there might be a number of socio-political reasons to support a moratorium on GMOs in Europe even if they come to be considered technically safe, these results suggest that the integration of in-context trajectory evaluation with traditional risk assessment procedures may help promoting social compatibility, political accountability and ecological sustainability.Risk-Assessment, GMOs, social implications, eco-social analysis