This article is a contribution to the critical sociology of science perspective introduced and developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The paper proposes a transversalist theory of science and technology production and diffusion. It is here argued that science and technology are comprised of multiple regimes where each regime is historically grounded, possesses its own division of labour, modes of cognitive and artifact production and has specific audiences. The major regimes include the disciplinary regime, utilitarian regime, transitory (...) regime and research-technology regime. Though each regime is autonomous, they are simultaneously closely interlaced. In science and technology, autonomy is not antithetical to interdependence and reciprocity. This study demonstrates for the four specified regimes of production and diffusion that differentiation is not contrary to interaction. In science, differentiation and interaction comprise two sides of the same coin. All regimes exhibit a measure of transversality. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 237-240.

During the Second Industrial revolution, consulting professor bridged higher education institutions with industry and government. A concept like the utilitarian research regime by Terry Shinn can explain their material and intellectual production by allowing for a reconstruction of their social networks. Pierre‐Paul LeCointe and Louis Bourgoin , associates in an engineering consultancy office, institutionalised a consultation service at the Laboratory of Industrial Chemistry of the École Polytechnique of Montreal . The two industrial chemists were thereby able to obtain (...) financial, material and human resources through exchanges with industrialists, business men and civil servants; consequently, their material and intellectual production is marked by the preoccupations of the industries and government with whom they exchanged. Industrial development in Canada was, in part, based on the work of these consultants who helped private companies analyse primary resources, standardize fabrication procedures and adapt the production to regulations. The government also offered technological assistance to businesses thanks to consultants, while regulating the markets and producing industrial standards. The inception of a utilitarian research regime results from the conjunction of these different factors. Finally, on Bourgoin's initiative, the École Polytechnique created a research centre based on the model of consulting laboratories. (shrink)

During the Second Industrial revolution, consulting professor bridged higher education institutions with industry and government. A concept like the utilitarian research regime by Terry Shinn can explain their material and intellectual production by allowing for a reconstruction of their social networks. Pierre‐Paul LeCointe (d. 1948) and Louis Bourgoin (1891–1951), associates in an engineering consultancy office, institutionalised a consultation service at the Laboratory of Industrial Chemistry of the École Polytechnique of Montreal (1917). The two industrial chemists were thereby able (...) to obtain financial, material and human resources through exchanges with industrialists, business men and civil servants; consequently, their material and intellectual production is marked by the preoccupations of the industries and government with whom they exchanged. Industrial development in Canada was, in part, based on the work of these consultants who helped private companies analyse primary resources, standardize fabrication procedures and adapt the production to regulations. The government also offered technological assistance to businesses thanks to consultants, while regulating the markets and producing industrial standards. The inception of a utilitarian research regime results from the conjunction of these different factors. Finally, on Bourgoin's initiative, the École Polytechnique created a research centre (1946) based on the model of consulting laboratories. (shrink)

This study looks at some of the traits that characterized Argentina’s scientific and university policies under the military regime that spanned from 1976 through 1983. To this end, it delves into a rarely explored empirical observation: financial resource transfers from national universities to the National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET, for its Spanish acronym) during that period. The intention is to show how, by reallocating funds geared to Science and Technology, CONICET was made to expand and (...) decentralize to the detriment of universities. This was the primary tool used by the military regime to thwart higher education’s research development, bolstering research efforts at other realms. Thus, CONICET grew in budget, number of researchers, and staff size, creating new research institutes, while national universities struggled with reduced funding and were forced to shut down their institutes and programs. As a result, CONICET virtually concentrated all scientific research, foregoing the knowledge accumulated at universities, which drove a wedge between both institutions. This military approach to science and technology policy-making is discussed, bearing in mind the notion of dependence—both in terms of the state’s intervention in the inner workings of the scientific-university field as well as regarding the role played by international financial support in scientific research development. (shrink)

The rapidly changing field of genetics affects society through advances in health-care and through implications of genetic research. This study addresses the impacts of new genetic discoveries and technologies on different segments of today's society. The book begins with a chapter on genetic complexity, and subsequent chapters discuss moral and ethical questions arising from today's genetics from the perspectives of health care professionals, the media, the general public, special interest groups and commercial interests.

In 2000 Bill Joy proposed that the best way to prevent technological apocalypse was to "relinquish" emerging bio-, info- and nanotechnologies. His essay introduced many watchdog groups to the dangers that futurists had been warning of for decades. One such group, ETC, has called for a moratorium on all nanotechnological research until all safety issues can be investigated and social impacts ameliorated. In this essay I discuss the differences and similarities of regulating bio- and nanotechnological innovation to the efforts (...) to regulate nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. I then suggest the creation of a global technology regulatory regime to ensure the safe and equitable diffusion of genetic, molecular and information technologies, and point out the principal political obstacles to implementing such a regime. (shrink)

The Mexico-U.S. border is a space considered `smart´ due to the amount of surveillance technology used for national security purposes. The technological ecology consists of integrated fixed towers, remote video surveillance systems, mobile video surveillance systems, Predator B surveillance drones, mobile X-ray units, automated license plate readers, cell phone tracking towers, implanted motion sensors, biometric data collection, and DNA sampling (Aizeki et al. Citation2021). Whilst these instruments are usually linked to irregular border crossers, transborder commuters, who physically cross the (...) border every day, also experience the same surveillance regime. This paper discusses the technological ‘self-defense’ protocol I developed in 2019 when conducting transborder research for my doctoral thesis, which required intense border crossings across Mexico and the U.S. During the ten months of fieldwork, U.S. CBP had the capacity to search my personal device and belongings without a warrant, raising ethical concerns about data protection. As a result, the protocol developed to protect data and participants considered the ‘smart’ border as part of the methods designed that included encrypting information. In hyper-surveilled spaces, data protection represents a challenge for border researchers and the people involved in such a project. (shrink)

One of the key roles of the English National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is technology appraisal. This essentially involves evaluating the cost effectiveness of pharmaceutical products and other technologies for use within the National Health Service. Based on a content analysis of key documents which shed light on the nature of appraisals, this paper draws attention to the multiple layers of uncertainty and complexity which are latent within the appraisal process, and the often socially constructed mechanisms (...) for tackling these. Epistemic assumptions, bounded rationality and more explicitly relational forms of managing knowledge are applied to this end. These findings are discussed in the context of the literature highlighting the inherently social process of regulation. A framework is developed which posits the various forms of uncertainty, and responses to these, as potential conduits of regulatory bias—in need of further research. That NICE’s authority is itself regulated by other actors within the regulatory regime, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, exposes it to the threat of regulatory capture. Following Lehoux, it is concluded that a more transparent and reflexive format for technological appraisals is necessary. This would enable a more robust, defensible form of decision-making and moreover enable NICE to preserve its legitimacy in the midst of pressures which threaten this. (shrink)

Globalization, technological advances, and changing employment structures have facilitated greater flexibility in how and where many Americans do their paid work. In response, a new work arrangement, coworking, has emerged in the United States. Coworking organizations bring together professionals from different companies to share a common workspace and build community. Despite the prevalence and potential benefits of coworking, little systematic research about coworking contexts exists, let alone research focused on gender inequality therein. Using 78 interviews and more than (...) 700 hours of observation across nine coworking spaces, we examine the organizational logics that shape gender dynamics, as well as intersecting racial and class dynamics, in coworking spaces. Building on Acker’s inequality regimes framework, we uncover organizational logic that either reduces or reproduces inequality for diverse groups of women in coworking contexts. We conclude by discussing important theoretical and empirical implications of these findings. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for the debilitating motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. However, clinicians and commentators have noted that DBS recipients have not necessarily experienced the improvements in quality of life that would be expected, due in large part to what have been described as the ‘psychosocial’ impacts of DBS. The premise of this paper is that, in order to realise the full potential of DBS and similar interventions, clinical services need to (...) be arranged in such a way that these psychosocial dimensions are recognised and managed. Our starting point is that the psychosocial effects of DBS ‘in the field’ present us with analytically-useful disruptions: they disturb and foreground deeply held assumptions relating to the individual, health and its treatment, and which in a crude form manifest as the myth of technological solutionism within health care. Drawing on scholarship in medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS), we argue that DBS brings to the fore the relational dimensions of personhood, and demonstrates the emotional and social turmoil that can result if the relational dimensions of personhood are ignored by clinical services. In light of this, we argue that DBS should be implemented within a regime of care. Drawing on ethnographic research of a paediatric DBS clinical service, we provide an example of a regime of care, and conclude by reflecting on what other DBS services might learn from this paediatric service. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore the potential of mobile assistive technology as a vocational tool for blind workers. Specifically, it investigates: Can MAT-enabled BW to perform better at the workplace and will insight into MAT-enabled capabilities impact employer perception regarding BW employability. Design/methodology/approach Exploratory case study which draws on theories of fit to analyze observational and interview data at an organization familiar with employing, training and referring BW. Findings MAT can increase blind worker job fit, positively impacting their (...) performance, self-reliance and managerial perceptions regarding their employability. Research limitations/implications A conceptual framework is articulated which expands current literature on fit to better account for the assistive potential of mobile technology for differently abled workers. Practical implications The positive impact of MAT on managerial perceptions of BW fit and employability can inform the regimes of employers, job skills trainers, vocational rehabilitation specialists and policy makers. Social implications Insights on the use of MAT as a vocational tool can reduce the systemic workplace disenfranchisement of blind people. Originality/value This paper presents novel theory which accounts for the impact of MAT on the job fit of differently abled workers. (shrink)

What role do science and scientists play in the transition between food regimes? Scientific communities are integral to understanding political struggle during food regime transitions in part due to the broader scientization of politics since the late 1800s. While social movements contest the rules of the game in explicitly value-laden terms, scientific communities make claims to the truth based on boundary work, or efforts to mark some science and scientists as legitimate while marking others as illegitimate. In doing so, (...) scientific communities attempt to establish and maintain the privileged position of science in contests over policy. In this paper, we situate scientific boundary work within its world historical context in order to ask two key questions: (1) how does scientific boundary work vary across food regimes; and, in turn, (2) what role does scientific boundary work play in the political contestation that drives transitions between food regimes? We explore these questions through the case of one scientific community—the AOAC (Association of Official Analytical Communities)—involved in food safety regulation across the British, US, and corporate food regimes. We argue that scientific boundary work is shaped by historically specific patterns of social conflict within food regimes and, in particular, the double-movement dynamics that Polanyi (The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our times. Boston: Beacon, 1957[1944]) theorizes. Moreover, as scientific communities reconstruct their internal rules, norms, and procedures to claim their own legitimacy in relation to prevailing forms of social conflict, they also reshape who sets scientific agendas and thus the knowledge available for making new rules within periods of food regime transition. To elaborate this argument in theoretical terms, we build on recent efforts to integrate a neo-Polanyian perspective into food regime analysis and link this to research on scientific boundary work by scholars in science and technology studies. (shrink)

This article addresses the question how philosophy should be evaluated in a research-grant funding environment. It offers a new conception of philosophy that is inclusive and builds on familiar elements of professional, philosophical practice. Philosophy systematically questions the questions we ask, the concepts we use, and the values we hold. Its product is therefore rarely conclusive but can be embodied in everything we do. This is typical of explorative research and differentiates it from exploitative research, which constitutes (...) the bulk of funded research activity. This article argues that exploratory research is crucial for long-term progress and requires a distinct evaluative regime. (shrink)

In recent years, the publication of the studies on the transmissibility in mammals of the H5N1 influenza virus and synthetic genomes has triggered heated and concerned debate within the community of scientists on biological dual-use research; these papers have raised the awareness that, in some cases, fundamental research could be directed to harmful experiments, with the purpose of developing a weapon that could be used by a bioterrorist. Here is presented an overview regarding the dual-use concept and its (...) related international agreements which underlines the work of the Australia Group Export Control Regime. It is hoped that the principles and activities of the AG, that focuses on export control of chemical and biological dual-use materials, will spread and become well known to academic researchers in different countries, as they exchange biological materials and scientific papers. To this extent, and with the aim of drawing the attention of the scientific community that works with yeast to the so called Dual-Use Research of Concern, this article reports case studies on biological dual-use research and discusses a synthetic biology applied to the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, namely the construction of the first eukaryotic synthetic chromosome of yeast and the use of yeast cells as a factory to produce opiates. Since this organism is considered harmless and is not included in any list of biological agents, yeast researchers should take simple actions in the future to avoid the sharing of strains and advanced technology with suspicious individuals. (shrink)

La métamorphose numérique des savoirs et de l'enseignement constitue un enjeu majeur du 21e siècle et se place au premier rang des priorités des universités et des organismes de recherche. De nouvelles conditions de publication, de certification et d'éditorialisation se mettent en place. Des règles et des méthodes pédagogiques inédites forment un processus dynamique qui doit pousser les institutions académiques, l'industrie et le monde économique à coopérer au-delà de la modernisation de la pédagogie ou du développement de compétences nouvelles. Mais (...) beaucoup d'initiatives apparaissent comme des tendances en vogue sujettes à tous les vents et contrevents médiatiques, et vite dépassées par la dernière nouveauté, à l'exemple des MOOC déjà remplacés par les SPOC. Bernard Steigler a fait appel aux meilleurs spécialistes mondiaux pour démontrer que ce n'est pas seulement la pédagogie qui est bouleversée mais ce sont les savoirs eux-mêmes, depuis la recherche de pointe jusqu'aux formes les plus élémentaires de l'enseignement. L'ouvrage dresse un panorama complet des technologies réflexives et contributives, analyse en profondeur le principe de gouvernementalité algorithmique considéré désormais comme "régime de vérité" et "tournant computationnel" de la société hyperindustrielle. Il propose une méthodologie novatrice de gestion de débats et de communautés, construite sur un autre modèle que celui des réseaux sociaux actuels. Cet ouvrage de référence pose les bases d'une nouvelle industrie éditoriale numérique et audiovisuelle. (shrink)

Stephen Miller attempts to confute the idea that capitalist accumulation characterised the agriculture of the Île-de-France prior to the Revolution. Instead he tries to assimilate the agriculture of the north into theAnnalesmodel of neo-Malthusian agricultural cycles and Chayanovian subsistence economy which is supposedly characteristic of the Midi. I argue instead that the notion of a northern capitalist agriculture is rooted not only in the extensive modern research of Moriceau but in the political-economic writings of Turgot and Marx which have (...) been largely ignored. Accumulation in the sense of the growth of fixed and variable capital and emerging technological progress characterised northern agriculture. The persistence of small producers which Miller sees as an index of unchanging stasis might better be investigated in terms of the evolution over time of a reservoir of wage labour for larger-scale enterprises as pointed out by Kautsky. (shrink)

Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries (...) and expectations on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science–society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get entangled. This article discusses the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place. (shrink)

For the past half-century, issues relating to the ethical conduct of human research have focused largely on the domain of medical, and more recently social–psychological research. The modern regime of applied ethics, emerging as it has from the Nuremberg trials and certain other historical antecedents, applies the key principles of: autonomy, respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice to human beings who enter trials of experimental drugs and devices :168–175, 2001). Institutions such as Institutional Review Boards and (...) Ethics Committees oversee most governmentally-funded medical research around the world, in more than a hundred nations that are signers of the Declaration of Helsinki. Increasingly, research outside of medicine has been recognized to pose potential risks to human subjects of experiments. Ethics committees now operate in the US, Canada, the U.K. and Australia to oversee all governmental-funded research, and in other jurisdictions, the range of research covered by such committees is expanding. Social science, anthropology, and other fields are falling under more clear directives to conduct a formal ethical review for basic research involving human participants. The legal and institutional response for protecting human subjects in the course of developing non-medical technologies, engineering, and design is currently vague, but some universities are establishing ethics committees to oversee their human subjects research even where the experiments involved are non-medical and not technically covered by the Declaration of Helsinki. In The Netherlands, as in most of Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa, no laws mandate an ethical review of non-medical research. Yet, nearly 2 years ago we launched a pilot ethics committee at our technical university and began soliciting our colleagues to submit their studies for review. In the past year, we have become officially recognized as a human subjects ethics committee for our university and we are beginning the process of requiring all studies using human subjects to apply for our approval. In this article, we consider some of the special problems relating to protecting human participants in a technology context, and discuss some of our experiences and insights about reviewing human subjects research at a technical university, concluding: that not less than in medical studies, human participants used in technology research benefit from ethical committees’ reviews, practical requirements for publications, grants, and avoiding legal liability are also served by such committees, and ethics committees in such contexts have many similarities to, but certain other special foci than medical ethics committees. We believe that this experience, and these observations, are helpful for those seeking to establish such committees in technology research contexts, and for framing the particular issues that may arise in such contexts for the benefit of researchers, and nascent committees seeking to establish their own procedures. (shrink)

In science studies the laboratory has been positioned as a privileged place for understanding scientific practice. Laboratory studies foregrounded local spaces of knowledge production in the natural sciences, and in doing so made the laboratory key to social science epistemologies. This article explores how laboratory studies and observational methods have been tied up together in the science and technology studies project of making scientific practice visible. The author contrasts powerful rhetorics of witnessing and revelation in some significant STS texts (...) with the negotiated and partial ways in which observing science work is done in social science practice. Drawing on empirical material generated with bioscientists and social scientists, the article explores how researchers may resist the observational gaze and mark aspects of knowledge work as private and solitary. The author concludes by arguing that epistemologies of vision point to some unsettling parallels between the study of knowledge-making in STS and audit regimes in contemporary research, and considers how both might devalue invisible work. This analysis suggests that there is a need to reconsider the significance of thinking in the ensemble of knowledge production practices for methodological, epistemological, and strategic reasons. (shrink)

In the mid-1940s, Argentina was partially isolated and ruled by a military regime. The political confrontation between the military and the scientific community as well as international pressures played a major role in the failure of the first attempts to cope with nuclear development. Only after the relationship between the military and local scientists was readjusted and control of atomic energy was placed in the hands of the Navy, and Argentina's international relations restored, did nuclear development begin to take (...) off. This paper examines the traumatic process of creating the political and institutional conditions for the reception of nuclear technology in a peripheral context. The key to shaping future policies was the decision made by Argentina's Atomic Energy Commission in April 1957 to construct its first research nuclear reactor instead of buying it as other countries such as Spain and Brazil were doing at the time. (shrink)

Modern science, whose methodologies give special privilege to using decontextualizing strategies and downplay the role of context-sensitive strategies, have been extraordinarily successful in producing knowledge whose applications have transformed the shape of the lifeworld. Nevertheless, I argue that how the mainstream of the modern scientific tradition interprets the nature and objectives of science is incoherent; and that today there are two competing interpretations of scientific activities that are coherent and that maintain continuity with the success of the tradition: "commercially-oriented technoscience" (...) and "multi-strategy research" . The greater part of this article is devoted to discussing what is involved in MS, by pointing to its positive research program in three areas , and its critical stance towards the innovations of CT, especially insofar as it makes use of the Precautionary Principle. In this way important dimensions of the agenda of science and technology for social justice, democratic participation and sustainability become clear. (shrink)

The Argumentwhile reconizing that public sector research has long been managed by a wide variety of practices and techniques, this paper concentrates on the increasingly important role that patents are playing in the management and regulation of public sector research. It argues that as a specific form of technology, patents play a significant and growing role in facilitating the management of the scientific object and can also be seen as a particular instance of governmentality. More specifically, it (...) argues that patents have had an important impact on the culture and political ecomomy of science. In this sence patents can be seen not only as a legal regime that provides limited property rights over technical information but also as a sophisticated tool of discipline and control that is used to regulate and manage public sector research. The paper suggests that with the increasing use of patents as a means of governing science, we are witnessing the growing juridification of science, the intervention of the law into an arena it hitherto largely ignored. (shrink)

Science policies and science studies largely share an understanding of scientific knowledge and objects as immutable mobiles. This article shows how the analysis of research assessment in a non-Anglophone country and its effects on social sciences can shed new light on this shared notion. The preference for immutable mobiles in assessment regimes pushes social scientists to publish in specialized, usually Anglophone journals, which can result in the attenuation of local relevance of the knowledge they produce and contribute to the (...) performance of globally converging societies. The author argues that the observed consequences for the social sciences in non-Anglophone countries underscore a larger problem with both the policy ideal and the science and technology studies idea of immutable mobiles on two counts: the relation of the social and natural sciences to society and the engagement of sciences with the multiplicity of societies as well as natures. (shrink)

The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus is famous for having turned botany into a systematic discipline, through his classification systems—most notably the sexual system—and his nomenclature. Throughout his life, Linnaeus experimented with various paper technologies designed to display information synoptically. The list took pride of place among these and is also the common element of more complex representations he produced, such as genera descriptions and his “natural system.” Taking clues from the anthropology of writing, this essay seeks to demonstrate that lists (...) can be considered as genuine research technologies. They possess a potential to generate research problems of their own but also pose limitations to inquiries that can be overcome only by the use of new media. (shrink)

Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists and (...) societal actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface, each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance. (shrink)

: This paper seeks to contribute to the development of a sociological understanding of scientific change. It first presents a conceptual framework for defining and understanding the conditions that give rise to episodes of cumulative change (both as the selective reconstruction of events and as the patterned structuring of innovations over time and across different settings). It argues that one of the most powerful structuring mechanisms is the existence of standardized research technologies. Then, the development of electroencephalography (EEG) is (...) presented as an illustrative case study. The EEG supported a dramatic episode of development in brain science, and did so primarily through technological standardization and reliability. The case shows how standard and manipulable technologies provide a framework for orderly change both in retrospective accounts and in specific historical periods of scientific practice. (shrink)

In the age of globalization, economic growth and the welfare of nations decisively depend on basic innovations. Therefore, education and knowledge is an important advantage of competition in highly developed countries with high standards of salaries, but raw material shortage. In the twenty-first century, innovations will arise from problem-oriented research, crossing over traditional faculties and disciplines. Therefore, we need platforms of interdisciplinary dialogue to choose transdisciplinary problems and to cluster new portfolios of technologies. The clusters of research during (...) the excellence initiative at German universities are examples of converging sciences. The integration of natural and engineering sciences as well as medicine can only be realized if the research training programs generate a considerable added value in terms of multidisciplinary experience, international networking, scientific and entrepreneurial know-how, and personality development. The Carl von Linde-Academy is presented as an example of an interdisciplinary center of research and teaching at the Technical University of Munich. (shrink)

This article discusses high-technology development in Indonesia. Focusing on the Indonesian Aircraft Industry (IPTN), it critically examines how nationalism becomes an impetus for technological development and addresses the implications of nationalism in the pursuit of high technology. Situated in the NewOrder regime, influential elements of the regime’s economic and political systems that accommodate the idea of technological leapfrog are traced. It is argued that the failure of the leapfrog idea is because of overreliance on a technological (...) determinist view and the practice of strong technocracy. Furthermore, it is posited that technological nationalism is a rhetorical strategy used by technological elites to legitimate the high-technology policy and to absorb ample economic and political resources that unexpectedly produce farreaching implications in society. (shrink)

We are currently witnessing the emergence of a discourse on responsible research and innovation in the field of quantum technology. Working on the assumption that the initial stage of discourse is of particular importance with regard to the ascription of meaning to an emerging field, our point of departure is a small corpus of prominent policy-oriented reports on quantum technology recently published in Europe. With a view to these publications, the article analyses various approaches to RRI and (...) discusses lessons learned in nanotechnology discourse as these may impact on emerging discourse on quantum technology and its stance towards RRI. On the basis of our analyses, we outline a strategy for fostering RRI in this promising field of science and technology. We propose implementing a “strong” RRI approach which entails linking parliamentary or other core policy processes to stakeholder dialogues, decision-supporting public engagement and a wide variety of other public communication activities. At the same time, taking our cue from lessons learned in nanotechnology discourse, we argue that a strong RRI approach to quantum technology should be modest and focused in terms of thematic and societal scope. (shrink)

What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions, and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things - not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies and ethics each explore a research object (...) in its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch. Together they offer fascinating stories and novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects. With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of the technoscientific world - where, for example, the 'dead matter' of classical physics is becoming the 'smart material' of emerging and converging technologies. (shrink)

Ethicists and others who study and teach the social implications of science and technology are faced with a formidable challenge when they seek to address “emerging technologies.” The topic is incredibly important, but difficult to grasp because not only are the precise issues often unclear, what the technology will ultimately look like can be difficult to discern. This paper argues that one particularly useful way to overcome these difficulties is to engage with their natural science and engineering colleagues (...) in laboratories. Through discussions and interactions with these colleagues ethicists can simultaneously achieve three important objectives. First they can get a great deal of assistance in their research into the social implications of future technologies by talking with people that are actively creating those futures. Second their presence in the lab and the discussions that result can be a very powerful method for educating not only students, but faculty about the ramifications of their work. And third, because the education is directly linked to the students’ everyday work it is likely that it will not just be a theoretical exercise, but have direct impact on their practice. (shrink)

New health technologies are rapidly emerging from various areas of bioscience research, such as gene editing, regenerative medicine and synthetic biology. These technologies raise promising medical possibilities but also a range of ethical considerations. Apart from the issues involved in considering whether novel health technologies can or should become part of mainstream medical treatment once established, the process of research translation to develop such therapies itself entails particular ethical concerns. In this paper I use synthetic biology as an (...) example of a new and largely unexplored area of health technology to consider the ways in which novel health technologies are likely to emerge and the ethical challenges these will present. I argue that such developments require us to rethink conventional attitudes towards clinical research, the roles of doctors/researchers and patients/participants with respect to research, and the relationship between science and society; and that a broader framework is required to address the plurality of stakeholder roles and interests involved in the development of treatments based on novel technologies. (shrink)

Focusing on the context of graduate training in educational research in the United States today, this article is organized into two principal parts. The first overviews the state of research training in order to emphasize the preoccupation with, indeed dominance of, study of methodology. This has turned ‘how to do research’ into valuing method as technology for its own sake, and thus into technologization. The second part turns to three critiques of technology that together point (...) to potential totalization in research: technologization that limits research processes and potential results. The writings of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul provide a broad frame; the three specific critiques are found in contributions from Henry Adams, Aldous Huxley, and Donna Haraway. The conclusion calls for a questioning of the current form of graduate training and by implication its hold on current research practice. (shrink)

The abstract found at the beginning of most journal articles has increasingly become an essential part of the article. It tends to be the first part of the article to be read and, to some extent, it `sells' the article. Acquiring the skills of writing an abstract is therefore important to novice writers to enter the discourse community of their discipline. Based on 30 abstracts from three journals, the present study aims at exploring not only the rhetorical moves of abstracts (...) in the fields of applied linguistics and educational technology, but also the linguistic realizations of moves and authorial stance in different abstract moves. The results show that there are three obligatory moves in abstracts in these two disciplines — Presenting the research, Describing the methodology, and Summarizing the results. The results also indicate that a combination of certain linguistic features such as grammatical subjects, verb tense and voice can help distinguish moves in the abstract. The findings of the study have some pedagogical implications for academic writing courses for graduate students, especially students from non-English backgrounds. (shrink)

This essay examines issues involving personal privacy and informed consent that arise at the intersection of information and communication technology and population genomics research. I begin by briefly examining the ethical, legal, and social implications program requirements that were established to guide researchers working on the Human Genome Project. Next I consider a case illustration involving deCODE Genetics, a privately owned genetics company in Iceland, which raises some ethical concerns that are not clearly addressed in the current ELSI (...) guidelines. The deCODE case also illustrates some ways in which an ICT technique known as data mining has both aided and posed special challenges for researchers working in the field of population genomics. On the one hand, data-mining tools have greatly assisted researchers in mapping the human genome and in identifying certain “disease genes” common in specific populations. On the other hand, this technology has significantly threatened the privacy of research subjects participating in population genomics studies, who may, unwittingly, contribute to the construction of new groups that put those subjects at risk for discrimination and stigmatization. In the final section of this paper I examine some ways in which the use of data mining in the context of population genomics research poses a critical challenge for the principle of informed consent, which traditionally has played a central role in protecting the privacy interests of research subjects participating in epidemiological studies. (shrink)

Mark David Webster ABSTRACT: Using qualitative methods, the author sought to better understand how philosophical assumptions about technology affect the thinking, and influence the decision making, of educational technology leaders in their professional practice. One of the research questions focused on examining whether assumptions of technological determinism were present in thinking and influenced the decisions that leaders make. The core category that emerged from data analysis, Keep up with technology (or be left behind), was interpreted to (...) be a manifestation of the technological imperative, an assumption associated with the philosophical perspective of technological determinism. The article presents a literature review and critique of philosophical issues surrounding technological determinism. Data analysis led to the conclusion that technology leaders working in K-12 education place weighted priority on the technological imperative, and there is philosophical tension between Keep up with technology (or be left behind), and a concurrently held perspective based on the logic of the instrumental view of technology. The findings suggest that different accounts of technological determinism, including Bimber’s three accounts of normative, nomological, and unintended consequences, are significant in the thinking of participants. School technology leaders placed priority on embracing technological change, sometimes adopting technology for its own sake. (shrink)

Adoption of technology, a research topic within the Information Systems area, is usually studied at two levels: organizational level and user level. This paper examines the range of methods used for studying technology adoption issues at both these levels. The approaches were selected after conducting a review of 48 articles on technology adoption and usage, published in peer reviewed journals between 1985 and 2003. The journals reviewed include the MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, European Journal (...) of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, and other relevant journals in the IS area. The findings suggest that the survey method was used predominantly when investigating the topics of user adoption and the usage of technology. In contrast, the case study method is the most widely used when examining adoption issues at the organizational level. (shrink)

Science and technology are key to economic and social development, yet the capacity for scientific innovation remains globally unequally distributed. Although a priority for development cooperation, building or developing research capacity is often reduced in practice to promoting knowledge transfers, for example through North–South partnerships. Research capacity building/development tends to focus on developing scientists’ technical competencies through training, without parallel investments to develop and sustain the socioeconomic and political structures that facilitate knowledge creation. This, the paper argues, (...) significantly contributes to the scientific divide between developed and developing countries more than any skills shortage. Using Charles Taylor’s concept of irreducibly social goods, the paper extends Sen’s Capabilities Approach beyond its traditional focus on individual entitlements to present a view of scientific knowledge as a social good and the capability to produce it as a social capability. Expanding this capability requires going beyond current fragmented approaches to research capacity building to holistically strengthen the different social, political and economic structures that make up a nation’s innovation system. This has implications for the interpretation of human rights instruments beyond their current focus on access to knowledge and for focusing science policy and global research partnerships to design approaches to capacity building/development beyond individual training/skills building. (shrink)

In this editorial contribution, two issues relevant to the question, what should be at the top of the research agenda for ethics and technology, are identified and discussed. Firstly: can, and do, engineers make a difference to the degree to which technology leads to morally desirable outcomes? What role does professional autonomy play here, and what are its limits? And secondly, what should be the scope of engineers’ responsibility; that is to say, on which issues are they, (...) as engineers, morally obliged to reflect? The research agendas proposed by the authors contributing to this special section, implicitly, give different answers to these questions. We suggest that an explicit discussion of these issues would greatly help in constructing a common research agenda. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractScience and technology consortia provide a viable solution for the recent unsustainable academic growth in biomedical research.

The lead trade associations of the bio-pharma and semiconductor industries have differed systematically in their roles in facilitating the development of innovation networks between Shanghai and Shenzhen, two prominent high-tech metropolises in China. Divergent associational roles stem from variations in the regional state policy regime that has exerted differential shaping influence on the structure of social cleavages and strength of reciprocity norms among member firms and on their willingness to actively and cooperatively engage in association-led networking activities. The bio-pharma (...) and semiconductor associations whose network-building roles have been structured differently through varied state policy regimes have displayed dissimilar abilities to reduce network failures and promote the innovation competences of their member firms between the two metropolises. The empirical findings of the article carry important implications for understanding the causes and consequences of varied associational roles in the process of technology development in China, other emerging markets, and beyond. (shrink)