Suchergebnisse

Innovation is about more than technological invention. It involves change of many kinds: cultural, organisational and behavioural as well as technological. So, in a world crying out for social justice and ecological care, innovation holds enormous progressive potential. Yet there are no guarantees that any particular realised innovation will necessarily be positive. Indeed, powerful forces 'close down' innovation in the directions favoured by the most privileged interests. So harnessing the positive transformative potential for innovation in any given area, is not about optimizing some single self-evidently progressive trajectory in a 'race to the future'. Instead, it is about collaboratively exploring diverse and uncertain pathways – in ways that deliberately balance the spurious effects of incumbent power. In other words, what is needed is a more realistic, rational and vibrant 'innovation democracy'.

This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible 'sustainable energy' transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of 'the transition' itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to 'open up' (rather than 'close down'), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons. ; ESRC

Noting the increasingly unfavourable economic and operational position of nuclear power around the world, this paper reviews evidence for a hitherto neglected connection between international commitments to civil and military nuclear infrastructures. Reviewing well established understandings of interlinkages associated with fissile materials and other nuclear weapons related substances, the paper surveys a distinct – and currently potentially more important – kind of interdependency that has up to now received virtually no policy attention. This relates to the national industrial supply chains necessary for the manufacture and operation of nuclear propelled submarines, that are deemed central to strategic military doctrine in a few states – and to burgeoning ambitions in a number of others. One of the most striking features of these interdependencies, is that evidence is so strong in strategic military literatures, but that the issue is typically so neglected in energy policy analysis. So the repercussions extend beyond specific domains of civil and military nuclear policy making in themselves – significant as these may be. Across a range of countries, arguably the most important implications arise for the rigour and transparency of mainstream academic and energy policy analysis and the quality and accountability of wider democratic processes – that are failing to give due attention to the evident force of these connections. With civil nuclear power now increasingly recognised to be growing obsolescent as a low carbon energy source, but key military capabilities evidently depending so strongly on its maintenance, a potentially important new window of opportunity may be opening up for robust measures to reduce global military nuclear threats.

The paper critically reviews the work of David Collingridge in the light of contemporary concerns about responsibility and accountability in innovation, public engagement with science and technology, and the role of scientific expertise in technology policy. Given continued interest in his thoughts on the 'social control of technology', and the 'dilemma of control', this attention is both timely and overdue. The paper illuminates a mismatch between the prevalence of citations to Collingridge's work on the dilemma of control in the literature on responsible innovation, and the depth of engagement with his arguments. By considering neglected aspects of Collingridge's substantive, methodological and philosophical analysis, important implications can be drawn for theory and practice relating to the governance of innovation and co-evolution between technology and society. The paper helps to improve understandings of wider political contexts for responsible innovation, especially in relation to anticipatory, participatory and institutional aspects of governance.

In this working paper we introduce an area of activity that has flourished for decades in all corners of the globe, namely grassroots innovation for sustainable development. We also argue why innovation in general is a matter for democracy. Combining these two points, we explore how grassroots innovation can contribute to what we call innovation democracy, and help guide innovation so that it supports rather than hinders social justice and environmental resilience. We suggest it does so in four related ways: 1. Processes of grassroots innovation can help in their own right to cultivate the more democratic practice of innovation. 2. Grassroots innovations can support citizens and their activities in more general ways that contribute to wider democracy. 3. Grassroots innovations create empowering 'sociotechnical configurations' that would otherwise be suppressed by existing innovation systems. 4. Grassroots innovations can help nurture general levels of social diversity that are important for democracy in its widest sense. The working paper finishes with a few suggestions for how societies committed to innovation democracy can better support and benefit from grassroots innovation activity. Action for deeper grassroots participation in innovation democracy has to work on culture, infrastructure, training, investment, and openness. An earlier version of this working paper, with lighter referencing, appeared originally in the Big Ideas series of 'thinkpieces' organised by Friends of the Earth.