Technological Citizenship: A Normative Framework for Risk Studies

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of technological citizenship (TC) as a status for individuals consisting of rights and obligations within bounded technological polities enforced by statist structures. The model reconciles freedom to innovate with the affirmation of the autonomy and dignity of laypersons and the assimilation of laypersons with their world. It seeks lay control over the introduction and ongoing management of environmental hazards and self-verification of safety. The rights and obligations of TC compose a "new social contract of complexity. " Even with different values stressed, the name, concept, and terms of TC would streamline studies of peril.This article defines a constitution for technological society and a form of -techn~logieal citizenship (TC) within it It defines a &dquo;new social contract of complexity.&dquo; 1As the term suggest, TC entails a status of persons living wimin a putative polity-the tec~lr~gic~l~~i~-whose boundaries are defined by the impacts of a technology or technology in general. This status within this technological polity is woven of rights and responsibilities and enforced by a state. TC and its new social contract of complexity involves equalizing the possession by all people in all generations within this polity of the political resources they need to protect themselves from and verify their safety amid complex, concealable environmental hazards, such as toxic chemicals and wastes, nuclear power and wastes, and recombinant DNA. This equality in self-protection and self-verification of safety applies to all points in an environmental hazard's advent, siting, use, detection, and remedy.2 TC will democratize, streamline, and popularize risk policy, environmental policy, and technology policy. By specifying a set of concrete rights and responsibilities of membership within a bounded, specified realm -the technological polity -governed by statist agencies, the TC model offers a single, concise, normatively explicit model of how we should govern complex Science, TecbnolW.

Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation

“…The following articles offer a sample of some of the cases: Ireland (1975), Kauffman and Shorett (1977), Godschalk and Stiftel (1981), Plumlee, Starling, and Kramer (1985), Kraft and Kraut (1985), and Desai (1989). For those focusing on the tensions between the democratic ethic and technology, see Fiorino (1990), Frankenfeld (1992), Laird (1993), Zimmerman (1995), and Abel and Stephan (2000).…”

Türkiye’de demokrasiyi yeni bir yurttaşlık anlayışıyla düşünmek: Tekno-bilimsel yurttaşlık

“…Teknolojik ve bilimsel konulara dair asgari bir bilgiye sahip olan, yeni teknolojik iletişim ve etkileşim kanallarını kullanabilen ve bunların etki ve gelişim seyri üzerine politik düşünebilen ve eyleyebilen birey ve toplumu yeni bir yurttaşlık kavrayışıyla düşünmek kaçınılmazdır. Bunun için "teknolojik yurttaşlık" (Andrews, 2006;Feenberg, 2011;Frankenfeld, 1992;Valkenburg, 2012) oldukça somut bir çerçeve çizmektedir ancak bilimsel bilgiye sahip olan birey tipini de içermek üzere "tekno-bilimsel yurttaşlık" olarak genişletilmesi anlamlı olacaktır.…”

Governing Future Technologies

“…For political scientists, in turn, democratization is seen as a cure for the political passivity and distrustfulness of the (non-)voting citizens. By actively involving the latter, more active forms of citizenship and democracy are expected to emerge, such as, for example, "technological" (Frankenfeld 1992) or "ecological citizenship" (Dobson and Bell 2005) and "strong" (Barber 1984) or "deliberative democracy" (Cohen et al 1989). As a consequence, institutionalized technology assessment gradually incorporated democratic instruments into the traditional technocratic tool box, producing new models of technological citizenship.…”