233032 VO Techno-Science and Society: Communicating and Interacting (2020S)

The aim of this lecture course is to give students an in-depth understanding of the diversity of interaction and engagement processes between techno-science and society, and of challenges relating to these interactions. We will address the multiplicity of settings in which this takes place, investigating the actors involved as well as the processes through which technoscience-society interactions take place. This is a rather broad area of investigation in STS with a long history. Therefore, we will have to select specific areas to cover in more depth.

We start by mapping the central issues at stake and the actors typically involved in technoscience-society interactions. We will then engage with questions of different forms of societal participation in governing technoscientific developments as well as in knowledge making. Next, we will scrutinize the role of values, affect and responsibility when techno-sciences and society engage with each other. This leads us to reflect on the politics of scientific communication and engagement, with a specific focus on governance and future making. It also means looking into issues of who holds expertise and thus power in the public arena when it comes to deciding on techno-scientific orientations, investigating the role science and technologies play in making (national) identities, and studying what responsibilities are involved in science communication and diverse forms of engagement with society. Our journey will then take us to two specific ‘situations’: where science and law come to interact and where data ‘speak for’ society. Finally, we will look at risk and disaster situations and trace how communication and interaction work out there.

Throughout the lecture, students will be introduced to important approaches and concepts that have been developed to address those questions. The lecture course is accompanied by a discussion class (KO 233033).