"Scholarship in the social studies of science has argued convincingly that what demarcates science from nonscience is not some set of essential or transcendent characteristics or methods but rather an array of contingent circumstances and strategic behavior known as “boundary work” (...Read more
The role of the individual scientist as a socialization agent (i.e., an actor who contributes to embedding technology into society) is increasingly emphasized in science policy. This article analyzes offshore wind scientists' narratives about science-technology-society relations and their role...Read more
"Scientific and technological policy issues are not and should not be exempt from the norms of democratic governance. This article examines two major theories of democracy, analyzes their commonalities and differences, and derives criteria for evaluating various forms of public...Read more
"Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is...Read more
"Human embryos produced in labs since the 1970s have generated layers of uncertainty for law and policy: ontological, moral, and administrative. Ontologically, these lab-made entities fall into a gray zone between life and not-yet-life. Should in vitro embryos be treated as inanimate...Read more
When environmental science acts by enlightenment rather than instrumental use, that is, by changing the aims and values of politics rather than its means, adequate communication to the general public is crucially important. Based on the study of two issues, forest death from acid rain and the...Read more
"Quantitative health risk assessment is a procedure for estimating the likelihood that exposure to environmental contaminants will produce certain adverse health effects, most commonly cancer. One instance of its use has been a California air toxics public “right-to-know” law. This...Read more
“This article examines a genetic ancestry testing program called the Living History Project (LHP) that was jointly organized by a nonprofit educational institute and a for-profit genealogy company in South Africa. It charts the precise mechanisms by which the LHP sought...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: Infrastructure management has traditionally been based on a logic of predict and provide in which rising demand was met with an increase in infrastructure capacity. However, recent changes in political, economic, and environmental priorities mean that projects such as new roads...Read more
"Defunct satellites and other technological waste are increasingly occupying Earth’s orbital space, a region designated as one of the global commons. These dilapidated technologies that were commissioned to sustain the production and exchange of data, information, and images are an...Read more
"This article advances recent scholarship on energy security by arguing that the concept is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary, a collective vision for a ‘‘good society’’ realized through technoscientific-oriented policies. Focusing on the 1952 Resources for Freedom report,...Read more
