Devices of Responsibility: Over a Decade of Responsible Research and Innovation Initiatives for Nanotechnologies

Abstract

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has come to represent a change in the relationship between science, technology and society. With origins in the democratisation of science, and the inclusion of ethical and societal aspects in research and development activities, RRI offers a means of integrating society and the research and innovation communities. In this article, we frame RRI activities through the lens of layers of science and technology governance as a means of characterising the context in which the RRI activity is positioned and the goal of those actors promoting the RRI activities in shaping overall governance patterns. RRI began to emerge during a time of considerable deliberation about the societal and governance challenges around nanotechnology, in which stakeholders were looking for new ways of integrating notions of responsibility in nanotechnology research and development. For this reason, this article focuses on nanotechnology as the site for exploring the evolution and growth of RRI.

Consolidating RRI and Open Science: understanding the potential for transformative change

“…Funding was mobilised to support ELSA research into large scale publicly funded research programmes within post-genomics (Nydal et.al 2015 ). Another important precedent for RRI was the notion of “responsible development” which emerged – again, primarily in the European Union - as a science and innovation policy response to concerns about nanotechnologies (Rip 2014 , Grunwald, 2014 , Shelley-Egan et al 2018 ). Concerns about the potential negative impacts of nanotechnology on human health and the environment (NFR 2005 , NSF 2001 , Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering 2004 ) and the felt need to get the development of nanotechnology “right from the very beginning” led to the coupling of nanotechnologies and responsibility.…”

Deliberation on the risks of nanoscale materials: learning from the partnership between environmental NGO EDF and chemical company DuPont

“…The aim of this paper is not to review the content and validity of the risk framework (for more information see Linkov et al 2009;Bowman 2008), nor to examine (international) stakeholder debates on the legitimacy of self-regulation as a way to contain uncertainties and unknowns pertaining to nanotechnology (for more information see Bowman (2017) and Shelley-Egan, Bowman, and Robinson 2018). Instead, the aim of this paper is to describe and interpret the deliberation processes that took place within the deliberative space that EDF and DuPont created.…”

“…Fourthly, a lack of trust might also hinder a collaboration between companies and NGOs (Ansell 2011b). As Shelley-Egan (2011) and Shelley-Egan, Bowman, and Robinson (2018) noted, in the case of nanotechnology a discourse emerged within the chemical industry, in which companies differentiate between "good" and "bad" NGOs. Good NGOs know about the science involved and are considered trustworthy.…”

Connect and affect

“…Although insights and knowledge have been collected on public engagement exercises in the field of nanotechnology (e.g., Delgado et al, 2011;Dijkstra & Critchley, 2016;Rip, 2014;Wickson et al, 2010), little attention has been paid to understanding the outcomes of these initiatives for the research and development of specific nanotechnologies (Shelley-Egan et al, 2018). Various studies have provided lessons learned regarding the organization of public engagement initiatives about nanotechnology.…”

“…Therefore, they argued that engagement with citizens should be initiated by actors involved in nanotechnology (e.g., government, research, civil society organizations) and that citizens should be informed through visions or scenarios about future applications of nanotechnology (Delgado et al, 2011). While these findings provide relevant input for the setup of engagement exercises, there is a need to focus on the outcomes of public engagement and their (potential) effects on the development and implementation of the science or technology at hand (Jasanoff, 2014;Shelley-Egan et al, 2018).…”