Karen Kastenhofer

Over past decades, the notion of policy advice in technology assessment (TA) has widened, going beyond traditional advice in the form of expert opinions by adding a broad range of brokerage activities. Concomitantly, the roles of scientific policy advisors have diversified.Based on an empirical study of advisory practices at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, we ask which advisory roles TA practitioners adopt. Our study shows that practitioners take up multiple roles: the decisionist advisor, the deliberative practitioner, the governance facilitator, the engaged academic, and the agenda-setter. These roles vary, inter alia, in the dominant modes of policy advice and the aspired function in politics and society and correlate with specific project and advisory constellations but also with paradigmatic beliefs of TA practitioners. Our analysis further exemplifies how these roles differ in a) the reference to and interpretation of core principles such as scientificity, neutrality and relevance and b) their strategies of managing the boundary between science and politics. Thus, the article goes beyond the mere statement “TA has politics” by illustrating how the politics of TA manifests in distinct ways in different roles of TA practitioners in policy advice.

Systems and synthetic biology both emerged around the turn of this century as labels for new research approaches. Although their disciplinary status as well as their relation to each other is rarely discussed in depth, now and again the idea is invoked that both approaches represent ‘two sides of the same coin’. The following paper focuses on this general notion and compares it with empirical findings concerning the epistemic cultures prevalent in the two contexts. Drawing on interviews with researchers from both fields, on participatory observation in conferences and courses and on documentary analysis, this paper delineates differences and similarities, incompatibilities and blurred boundaries. By reconstructing systems and synthetic biology’s epistemic cultures, this paper argues that they represent two ‘communities of vision’, encompassing heterogeneous practices. Understanding the relation of the respective visions of understanding nature and engineering life is seen as indispensible for the characterisation of (techno)science in more general terms. Depending on the conceptualisation of understanding and construction (or: science and engineering), related practices such as in silico modelling for enhancing understanding or enabling engineering can either be seen as incommensurable or ‘two sides of one coin’.

Systems biology and synthetic biology are said to represent ‘two sides of the same coin,’ with systems biology focussing on understanding and synthetic biology on construction. This notion is based on the implicit assumption that understanding and construction (or science and engineering) are, in themselves, ‘two sides of the same coin.’ Moreover, synthetic biology has been framed as an approach that encompasses understanding as well as control, construction, and creation. In the’ talking’ and ‘doing’ of synthetic biology, one can discern a contemplative, interventionist, constructionist, and creationist stance. It is the aim of this paper to illustrate these stances in detail and to discuss more generally their techno-epistemic and socio-political implications.

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways.

This paper addresses the new (techno-) sciences’ power “to change the world.” It refers to Bacon’s program to combine “light-bearing” and “fruitbearing” in scientific research and traces this program in current scientific contexts, especially nanotechnoscience and synthetic biology. To allow for a more differentiated analysis, three modes of power are discerned: interventionist, constructionist and creationist power. Against this background, the paper describes the emergence of a late-modern technology that relates to a convergence of biology, physics and engineering as well as a distinct (techno-)science-power constellation. The conclusion calls for a technoscience assessment that goes beyond traditional technology assessment.

Kastenhofer, K., 2011, Risk assessment of emerging technologies and post-normal science. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 36(3), 287-306

Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It comprises not only a focus on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. This paper addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ‘wicked problem situation’, i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such challenges include (a) epistemological problems intrinsic to the task of proving the absence of risk, (b) problems related to the multi-sited production of evidence and the multitude of epistemic cultures involved, (c) the incompatibility of the various implicit objectives and (d) the complex actor constellations, that shape not only the way scientific knowledge is translated into action, but also which kind of knowledge is produced and which experts are listened to. To illustrate and discuss these characteristics, the paper draws on an empirical study of risk research in the fields of agri-biotechnology and telecommunication technology in Germany. It concludes that although some aspects of PNS are already part of current epistemic practices in these fields, a state of ‘functional post-normality’ depends upon a meaningful co-evolution between post-normal science and post-normal governance that has not yet been achieved.

The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields such as ecological economics, human ecology or technology assessment can be interpreted as a logical consequence of striving for new sustainability sciences that address current global, multi-dimensional and multi-scale challenges. They set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere, between scientific analysis and societal action. This papers aims at re-assessing the contribution of established inter-disciplines to sustainable development. Journal articles of ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies are analysed and compared along several proposed features of sustainability science. The results converge in two crucial aspects. (1) Concise societal or political recommendations are not part of present day 'normal science', be it a disciplinary or an explicitly interdisciplinary research context. (2) Participatory exercises are rarely applied as a socio-politically embedded practice, despite a high interest in such exercises as an object of study and discussion.