Not Available

Not AvailableNot AvailableNot Availabl

Logic of Choice or Logic of Care? Uncertainty, Technological Mediation and Responsible Innovation

The regulation of innovation reflects a specific imaginary of the role of governance that makes it external to the field it governs. It is argued that this decision and rule-based view of regulation is insufficient to deal with the inescapable uncertainties that are produced by innovation. In particular, using risk-based knowledge as the basis of regulation fails to deal sufficiently both with the problem that innovation ensures the future will not resemble the past, and with the problem that the social priorities that underlie innovation often remain unquestioned. Recently, rights-based frameworks have been defended as principle-based approaches to innovation governance that address the gaps which trouble an understanding of regulation as based on risk-based decision procedures. An alternative, care-based view of governance is defended, in which institutional and practice change, aimed at the creation of specific institutional ‘virtues’ and rooted in the broad and deep participation of publics in shaping innovation is seen as an appropriate way of making governance internal to innovation