http://www.managingforimpact.org/sites/default/files/case/stilgoe_owen_macnaghten_2013_developing_a_framework_for_responsible_innovation.pdf

Developing a framework for responsible innovation

How to address empirically the calculative character of markets without dissolving it? In our paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without suspending their calculative properties. In the first section, we construct a broad definition of calculation, grounded on the anthropology of science and techniques. In the next sections, we apply this definition to three constitutive elements of markets: economic goods, economic agents and economic exchanges. First, we examine the question of the calculability of goods: in order to be calculated, goods must be calculable. In the following section, we introduce the notion of calculative distributed agencies to understand how these calculable goods are actually calculated. Thirdly, we consider the rules and material devices that organize the encounter between (and aggregation of) individual supplies and demands, i.e. the specific organizations that allow for a calculated exchange and a market output. Those three elements define conc...

Peripheral Vision Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices

This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studies, on the one hand, and by their worldly involvements in the politically charged climate of relations between science and society on the other It argues that these efforts centre on new ways of approaching the vital nexus between the bio (life) and the geo (earth), or the ‘livingness’ of the world, in a context in which the modality of life is politically and technologically molten It identifies some of the major innovations in theory, style and application associated with this work and some of the key challenges that it poses for the practice of cultural geographyThinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other Rather thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and earth involving a gradual but thorough displacement from text to territory1

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Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world

Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty

Presented in two parts, this article proposes a research programme devoted to examining ‘processes of economization’. In the first instalment, published in Economy and Society 38(3) (2009), we introduced the notion of ‘economization’. The term refers to the assembly and qualification of actions, devices and analytical/practical descriptions as ‘economic’ by social scientists and market actors. Through an analysis of selected works in anthropology, economics and sociology, we discussed the importance, meaning and framing of economization, unravelling its trace within a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This second instalment of the article explores what it would mean to move this research programme forward by taking processes of economization as a topic of empirical investigation. Given the vast terrain of relationships that produce its numerous trajectories, to illustrate what such a project would entail we have limited ourselves to the examination of processes we call ‘marketization’. These p...

/pdf/economization-part-2-a-research-programme-for-the-study-of-1lwi8duu4r.pdf

Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets

Et s'il fallait enfin tirer les consequences des crises a repetition que nos societes traversent lorsqu'elles sont confrontees aux debordements inattendus des sciences et des techniques ? S'il fallait en finir une bonne fois pour toutes avec la vision heroique des decisions tranchantes et tranchees que le souverain prend en situation d'incertitude et en toute meconnaissance de cause ? Si Alexandre rengainait son epee, le monde s'effondrerait-il ? Non, mais la democratie, elle, en ressortirait fortifiee. Tel est le propos des auteurs de ce livre. Ces derniers refusent les traditionnelles oppositions entre specialistes et profanes, professionnels de la politique et citoyens ordinaires. Ils concentrent plutot leur attention sur les nouvelles relations entre savoir et pouvoir qui emergent des controverses sociotechniques et sur les procedures inventees pour les traiter. L'enjeu est de taille : faire apparaitre les conditions dans lesquelles les societes democratiques vont se rendre capables d'affronter les defis des sciences et des techniques, redefinir un espace public reunissant non pas des individus desincarnes mais des femmes et des hommes pris dans des histoires singulieres. Apres l'âge de la democratie delegative, celui de la democratie dialogique ?

Agir dans un monde incertain : essai sur la démocratie technique

Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about "technical democracy." They show how "hybrid forums"in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come togetherreveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Mad Cow Disease in the United Kingdom. They discuss the implications for political decision making in general, and they describe a "dialogic" democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy. Inside Technology series

Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy

Des dechets radioactifs aux ondes electromagnetiques en passant par les OGM, les inquietudes et les controverses se multiplient qui mettent en cause le monopole des experts sur l’orientation des decisions politiques relatives aux questions technologiques. Loin de deplorer une crise de confiance, les auteurs de ce livre analysent les nouvelles relations entre savoir et pouvoir qui emergent de ces debats. Refusant les traditionnelles oppositions entre specialistes et profanes, professionnels de la politique et citoyens ordinaires, ils tirent profit des experiences existantes pour tracer les contours d'une democratie technique et imaginer des dispositifs de decision capables de repondre a ces nouveaux defis. (Resume editeur)

Agir dans un monde incertain

Rendre discutable. Le traitement politique d'un heritage technologique Yannick Barthe Les procedures de consultation qui fleurissent depuis quelques annees dans le domaine des sciences et des techniques sont generalement denoncees comme etant de simples techniques de manipulation des gouvernes visant a legitimer des decisions deja prises. Une telle vision ne rend toutefois pas compte du caractere souvent ambivalent de ce type de procedures qui, tout en permettant de canaliser les controverses, ont pour resultat d'augmenter la « discutabilite » des problemes et d'ouvrir concretement l'eventail des choix possibles. Ainsi, a partir du cas des auditions publiques organisees en 1990 par le Parlement francais sur la question du stockage des dechets nucleaires, cet article montre comment un dispositif de consultation peut tout a la fois contribuer a encadrer une controverse et avoir pour effet d'ouvrir la « boite noire » de decisions techniques pourtant considerees comme irreversibles.

Rendre discutable. Le traitement politique d'un héritage technologique

Les risques collectifs sous le regard des sciences du politique. Nouveaux chantiers, vieilles questions. Cyril Lemieux avec Yannick Barthe [7-28], En France comme d'autres nations occidentales, l'emergence depuis une vingtaine d'annees de la notion de «risques» dans le champ de preoccupation des pouvoirs publics, des industriels et des chercheurs correspond a l'impossibilite grandissante de maintenir les «profanes», de plus en plus nombreux a se mobiliser sur ces questions, a l'ecart des prises de decision et des schemas d'action publique. Cette crise de la gestion technocratique des choix et des activites technologiques, et les tentatives de reponses institutionnelles qui y sont apportees, constituent pour les sciences sociales du politique l'occasion de revisiter a nouveaux frais trois questions canoniques : celle du fonctionnement de l'Etat, celle des mecanismes d'acces a l'espace public, celle, enfin, des processus de legitimation et de delegitimation.

Yannick Barthe

Papers

Agir dans un monde incertain : essai sur la démocratie technique

Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy

Agir dans un monde incertain

Rendre discutable. Le traitement politique d'un héritage technologique

Les risques collectifs sous le regard des sciences du politique. Nouveaux chantiers, vieilles questions