Translation, transduction, and transformation: expanding practices of responsibility across borders

Abstract

This special section addresses Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as an increasingly global concept that is translated and transformed in heterogenous national contexts. Based on seven national perspective articles from the RRI-Practice project, this introduction outlines a framework of transduction through which RRI becomes contextually negotiated and reconfigured. Read together, the national explorations of the special section make visible aspects of responsibility not readily apparent in abstract, European or global scale discussions of RRI. They not only point up important particularities of national contexts, but unexpected points of overlap in national contexts not often thought to have distinct commonalities.

Reinventing responsible innovation

“…Meanwhile, despite the European Commission's failure to renew its support for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), new and related efforts are continuing to build up around the globe, in parallel to the leading UK, Dutch, and Norwegian national policy efforts (cf. Doezema et al 2019 for an overview of seven different national policy cases). To these we can add the following developments, which are only a sample of significant developments around responsible innovation that occurred in 2019:…”

Traditional ecological knowledge in innovation governance: a framework for responsible and just innovation

“…While there is a quickly growing literature on responsible innovation beyond Europe (De Campos et al 2017;Fisher 2016;De Hoop, Pols, and Romijn 2016;Monteiro and Rajão 2017;Vasen 2017;Wong 2016;Doezema et al 2019), it remains far from clear how established frameworks such as AIRR should be adapted in globally heterogeneous cultural and political conditions. Contexts of TEK provide some of the clearest examples of these limitations as they involve negotiations of change that differ strongly from the 'speculative world of emerging technologies' (Hilgartner and Lewenstein 2004) that have dominated debates about responsible innovation in European and North-American contexts.…”

“…Taken together, these three steps lead to a framework for bringing TEK more directly into debates about 'responsible innovation', and into innovation studies more broadly, that have been shaped largely by European priorities and concerns (Van der Molen et al 2019;Von Schomberg 2013), but are being increasingly expanded into the 'Global South' (Doezema et al 2019;Macnaghten et al 2014). We conclude by arguing that such an incorporation of TEK does not only advance theoretical debates in innovation studies but also has substantial implications for the governance of science and technology in contexts that affect traditional communities.…”

Learning from failure

“…This issue of JRI includes a special section of seven perspective articles, each one detailing a particular instantiation of 'the increasingly global concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)' (Doezema et al 2019). Indeed, in comparison with the well-known 'ELSI funding arena' that was introduced in 1994 (Zwart, Landeweerd, and van Rooij 2014), RRI has experienced a remarkably swift and broad-based dissemination that policy makers may wish to take note of at this pivotal and potentially post-European RRI moment.…”