Social Science Research Council

2008 DPDF Research Field:
Critical Studies of Science and Technology Policy

The growing importance of science and technology in modern political life calls for new approaches to policy research. These approaches must take account of recent scholarship on science and technology as social enterprises that not only inform policy but influence the very terms in which policies are conceptualized and implemented. The need to incorporate the social dimensions of science and technology into policy research is especially pronounced in cross-national and transnational settings. Policy challenges that demand such understanding include the identification and assessment of transnational impacts of science and technology; identification of barriers to the cross-cultural uptake and dissemination of new knowledge and technologies; understanding the causes of public skepticism and resistance; and learning from cross-national experiments in the design of risk and technology assessment, public participation, and expert advice.

The research problems of interest for this field involve rapid changes in science and technology that carry different consequences across sectors, cultures, and political systems. The linear causal models frequently adopted by disciplinary frameworks cannot easily explain such variations. Traditional methods assume either that scientific and technological innovation shape social responses, or that particular social factors explain why societies innovate. Instead, this field starts from the observation that science simultaneously shapes and is shaped by social, political, and cultural dynamics. The focus of the field is on comparative and international science, technology, and environmental policy research that illuminates this co-production of science and social order. Such research focuses on key moments of transformation in science and technology (e.g., emergence, stabilization, or controversy), as well as on the causal mechanisms (e.g., discourses, representations, identities, and institutions) that underpin the co-production of science and public policy.

Students interested in this field may come from varied disciplinary backgrounds, such as science and technology studies (STS), political science, public policy, sociology, history, economics, and anthropology. They may choose to work on a variety of policy arenas, including environment, biotechnology, information technology, and security. Preference will be given to students interested in the risks, benefits, and social dislocations associated with the globalization of science and technology; cross-national or global controversies surrounding science, technology, and the environment; international regulation of science and technology (e.g., through intellectual property rights, risk assessment, bioethics); regulatory standard-setting and harmonization; and the role of expertise in international policy making.   Students, deploying methods from their own disciplines, will learn from the other interpretive social sciences, learning to appreciate the value of ethnography, history, or comparative case studies as tools in the construction of the critical study of science and technology.

We expect students to bring their own approaches to bear on their chosen research topic while engaging with and learning from complementary approaches represented in the workshops.