http://www.managingforimpact.org/sites/default/files/case/stilgoe_owen_macnaghten_2013_developing_a_framework_for_responsible_innovation.pdf

Developing a framework for responsible innovation

How to address empirically the calculative character of markets without dissolving it? In our paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without suspending their calculative properties. In the first section, we construct a broad definition of calculation, grounded on the anthropology of science and techniques. In the next sections, we apply this definition to three constitutive elements of markets: economic goods, economic agents and economic exchanges. First, we examine the question of the calculability of goods: in order to be calculated, goods must be calculable. In the following section, we introduce the notion of calculative distributed agencies to understand how these calculable goods are actually calculated. Thirdly, we consider the rules and material devices that organize the encounter between (and aggregation of) individual supplies and demands, i.e. the specific organizations that allow for a calculated exchange and a market output. Those three elements define conc...

Peripheral Vision Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices

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Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Public policy instrumentation and its choice of tools and modes of operation are treated either as a kind of evidence (governing means making regulations, taxing, entering into contracts, communicating, etc.) or as if the questions it raises (the properties of instruments, justifications for choosing them, their applicability, etc.) are part of a rationality of methods without any autonomous meaning. This paper aims to explain the significance of a political sociology approach to public policy instruments in accounting for processes of public policy change: (1) public policy instrumentation is a major issue in public policy, since it reveals a (fairly explicit) theorization of the relationship between the governing and the governed: every instrument constitutes a condensed form of knowledge about social control and ways of exercising it; and (2) instruments at work are not neutral devices: they produce specific effects, independently of the objective pursued (the aims ascribed to them), which structure public policy according to their own logic.

Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments—From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation

This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studies, on the one hand, and by their worldly involvements in the politically charged climate of relations between science and society on the other It argues that these efforts centre on new ways of approaching the vital nexus between the bio (life) and the geo (earth), or the ‘livingness’ of the world, in a context in which the modality of life is politically and technologically molten It identifies some of the major innovations in theory, style and application associated with this work and some of the key challenges that it poses for the practice of cultural geographyThinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other Rather thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and earth involving a gradual but thorough displacement from text to territory1

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Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world

Et s'il fallait enfin tirer les consequences des crises a repetition que nos societes traversent lorsqu'elles sont confrontees aux debordements inattendus des sciences et des techniques ? S'il fallait en finir une bonne fois pour toutes avec la vision heroique des decisions tranchantes et tranchees que le souverain prend en situation d'incertitude et en toute meconnaissance de cause ? Si Alexandre rengainait son epee, le monde s'effondrerait-il ? Non, mais la democratie, elle, en ressortirait fortifiee. Tel est le propos des auteurs de ce livre. Ces derniers refusent les traditionnelles oppositions entre specialistes et profanes, professionnels de la politique et citoyens ordinaires. Ils concentrent plutot leur attention sur les nouvelles relations entre savoir et pouvoir qui emergent des controverses sociotechniques et sur les procedures inventees pour les traiter. L'enjeu est de taille : faire apparaitre les conditions dans lesquelles les societes democratiques vont se rendre capables d'affronter les defis des sciences et des techniques, redefinir un espace public reunissant non pas des individus desincarnes mais des femmes et des hommes pris dans des histoires singulieres. Apres l'âge de la democratie delegative, celui de la democratie dialogique ?

Agir dans un monde incertain : essai sur la démocratie technique

Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about "technical democracy." They show how "hybrid forums"in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come togetherreveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Mad Cow Disease in the United Kingdom. They discuss the implications for political decision making in general, and they describe a "dialogic" democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy. Inside Technology series

Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy

Alors que la plupart des debats autour des politiques publiques se focalisent sur les objectifs annonces et sur les resultats obtenus, l’ouvrage dirige par Pierre Lascoumes et Patrick Le Gales propose de faire porter l’attention sur les instruments de l’action publique. A travers ces etudes de cas europeens, de la rationalisation salariale dans l’administration francaise a la restructuration de l’Etat en Grande-Bretagne, en passant par la reforme de la politique bancaire en Italie, un certain nombre de caracteristiques – des conditions de leur choix, des effets qu’ils produisent, aux rapports gouvernantsgouvernes qu’ils induisent – se dessinent. Au-dela, l’analyse des instruments d’action publique demontre sa capacite a reveler l’evolution des politiques publiques. [Resume editeur]

Gouverner par les instruments

Des dechets radioactifs aux ondes electromagnetiques en passant par les OGM, les inquietudes et les controverses se multiplient qui mettent en cause le monopole des experts sur l’orientation des decisions politiques relatives aux questions technologiques. Loin de deplorer une crise de confiance, les auteurs de ce livre analysent les nouvelles relations entre savoir et pouvoir qui emergent de ces debats. Refusant les traditionnelles oppositions entre specialistes et profanes, professionnels de la politique et citoyens ordinaires, ils tirent profit des experiences existantes pour tracer les contours d'une democratie technique et imaginer des dispositifs de decision capables de repondre a ces nouveaux defis. (Resume editeur)

Pierre Lascoumes

Papers

Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments—From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation

Agir dans un monde incertain : essai sur la démocratie technique

Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy

Gouverner par les instruments

Agir dans un monde incertain