Responsible innovation (RI) is founded on the idea that present modes of innovating with science and technology fail because they insufficiently take into account societal needs and values. Hence, proponents of RI solicit society's opinions in an attempt to render science and technology developments, institutions, and policies more socially responsive. This article asks how the RI concept is taken up and elaborated, based on accounts developed on the European Union policy level and on a Flemish, technology assessment level. It finds that, notwithstanding important differences between these two deliberative frameworks, neither one leaves much room for politics, understood as the constitution and contestation of power. Rather, these frameworks largely ignore questions about the politics in and of deliberation, the authoritative allocation of values, and the institutional uptake of deliberative engagements. The article's aim is to provide constructive criticism of the RI paradigm by rendering these political issues explicit and proposing ways of taking them into account.
This study illustrates how citizen-driven radiation monitoring has emerged in post-Fukushima Japan, where citizens generate their own radiation data and measurement devices to provide public with actionable data about their environments. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in and around Fukushima Prefecture, it highlights the multifaceted character of these bottom-up, citizen-led efforts, contrasting these initiatives with the emergence of "citizen participatory" science policy discourses in Japan. Recognizing the contested nature of citizenship in Japan and in the nuclear arena, the article considers how terms and definitions shape the participation of citizens and other stakeholders (local communities, public authorities, regulators, and professional scientists) in science and technology in culturally and historically specific ways. It builds on these observations to open up new spaces of expertise, which engage all stakeholders through social-scientific intervention.
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