230153 SE Understanding scientific and technological controversies (2011S)

Both within science but also in contemporary democracies controversies emerging around scientific and technological issues have become of key-importance: they are not only becoming increasingly frequent but also more consequential for policymaking as well as for broader public consciousness. They are moments when common ground does no longer hold together alignments of support among different actors, when questions of implicit values and beliefs at work in science and technology get posed and when routine procedures suddenly are in need of explanation. In that sense they are privileged moments for analysts of science-technology-society relations as they render visible and allow the scrutiny of many of the routine technoscientific practices and assumptions as well as of the tacit cultural imaginaries and value structures which are part and parcel of any technoscientific developments.

In this seminar we will follow a number of historical and contemporary technoscientific controversies (19th and 20th century) ranging from the struggle between Pasteur and Pouchet, over nuclear energy, evolution vs creationism, climate change to embryonic stem cells, to name but a few examples. For each case we will analyse how controversies emerge, what role specific cultural and social settings play and how a particular kind of knowledge, a specific "solution", takes shape, gets stabilised (or not) and becomes largely unquestioned. In doing so we will also engage with recent efforts to map different kinds of technoscientific controversies and present these outcomes in form of exhibits or web resources (e.g. www.mappingcontroversies.net) to wider publics. We will thus also address the question what such controversies and their public staging might mean for the relation of technoscience and society.