The Making of Responsible Innovation (Elements in Earth System Governance)

Science and technological innovation wield unfathomable power in the shaping of social life and the environment. Yet, the democratic control and shaping of technology remains at best an unfinished project, not least due to dominant paradigms of governance implicitly that have historically delegated the good to market forces. This Element explores responsible innovation as an emergent discourse in governing science and society relations. Specifically, it explores the making of responsible innovation through three lenses: first, as a way of reconfiguring the concept of responsibility in science governance with far-reaching implications for scientific culture and practice; second, as a way of injecting agency through deliberative methods aimed at anticipating and deliberating upon the kinds of possible worlds that science and technology bring into being; and third, as a framework for governing innovation sensitive to the dynamics of specific technologies and to the particular socio-political context in which innovation develops.