Please join us at MIT on Monday, April 6th:
STS Colloquium
Future Imperfect: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Cultures of Public Policy
Sheila Jasanoff
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
4:00 pm, MIT, E51-095*
Abstract
For more than half a century, governments have channeled a fraction
of their public spending toward the development of science and
technology for peaceful purposes. Underlying those expenditures is a
faith in innovation and its capacity to advance national
interests. The discrepant cross-national uptake and trajectories of
"the same" technologies suggests, however, that the links between
technology's potential and conceptions of the public good differ
among political cultures. In this talk, I will develop the idea of
national sociotechnical imaginaries and show how they operate to
create different logics of possibility for national
investments. Using examples from the US, Europe, and beyond, I will
show how imaginations are conditioned by different founding notions
of state-society relations, the publics to be served, and the futures
that are considered desirable. I will reflect on US imaginaries as
played out in President Obama's early policy pronouncements.
Bio
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology
Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has held academic
positions at Cornell, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, and Kyoto. At Cornell,
she founded and chaired the Department of Science and Technology
Studies. She has been Karl Deutsch Guest Professor at the Science
Center Berlin and Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced
Study. She has authored more than 100 publications on the role of
science and technology in the law, politics, and public policy of
modern democracies, with particular focus on the regulation of
biotechnology and the environment in the US, Europe, and India. Her
books include Controlling Chemicals (1985), The Fifth Branch (1990),
Science at the Bar (1995), and Designs on Nature (2005). Jasanoff has
served on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and as President of the Society for Social
Studies of Science. She holds AB, JD, and PhD degrees from Harvard,
an honorary doctorate from the University of Twente, and an
Ehrenkreuz from the Government of Austria.
*To view this building's location on the MIT campus:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?zoom=level2¢erx=712138¢ery=496004&oldzoom=level3&map.x=320&map.y=192
Debbie Meinbresse
STS Program, MIT
617-452-2390
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