ISBN:
9781136288418
Language:
English
Pages:
1 online resource (305 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
Series Statement:
The Earthscan Science in Society Ser.
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
DDC:
303.48/3
Keywords:
Science -- Social aspects
;
Technology -- Social aspects
;
Science and state
;
Technology and state
;
Public interest
;
Public interest
;
Science ; Social aspects
;
Science and state
;
Technology ; Social aspects
;
Technology and state
;
Electronic books
Abstract:
This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens. The term public reason as used here is not simply a matter of deploying principled arguments that respect the norms of democratic deliberation. Jasanoff investigates what states do in practice when they claim to be reasoning in the public interest. Reason, from this perspective, comprises the institutional practices, discourses, techniques and instruments through which governments claim legitimacy in an era of potentially unbounded risks-physical, political, and moral. Those legitimating efforts, in turn, depend on citizens' acceptance of the forms of reasoning that governments offer. Included here therefore is an inquiry into the conditions that lead citizens of democratic societies to accept policy justification as being reasonable. These modes of public knowing, or "civic epistemologies," are integral to the constitution of contemporary political cultures. Methodologically, the book is grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It uses in-depth qualitative studies of legal and political practices to shed light on divergent cross-cultural constructions of public reason and the reasoning political subject. The collection as a whole contributes to democratic theory, legal studies, comparative politics, geography, and ethnographies of modernity, as well as STS.
Abstract:
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface by David Winickoff -- Acknowledgements -- Credits -- 1 Reason in practice -- 2 Product, process, or programme: three cultures and the regulation of biotechnology -- 3 In the democracies of DNA: ontological uncertainty and political order in three states -- 4 Restoring reason: causal narratives and political culture -- 5 Image and imagination: the formation of global environmental consciousness -- 6 Contested boundaries in policy-relevant science -- 7 The songlines of risk -- 8 Judgment under siege: the three-body problem of expert legitimacy -- 9 Technologies of humility: citizen participation in governing science -- 10 What judges should know about the sociology of science -- 11 Expert games in silicone gel breast implant litigation -- 12 The eye of everyman: witnessing DNA in the Simpson trial -- 13 In a constitutional moment: science and social order at the millennium -- 14 Afterword -- Index.
Note:
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
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