Abstract

Parliamentary Technology Assessment institutions were first established in the United States (1970s) and in North-Western Europe (several waves of institutionalization from the 1980s) to support decision-making processes in complex science and technology in society issues. Crucially, the rise of Technology Assessment institutions went hand in hand with the increasingly strategic importance of science, technology and innovation policies in practices of state-making. From the outset, however, TA institutions remained very fragile and likely to be abolished in the aftermath of an external event, like a change of political majority.

Today, the growing central importance of STI, and knowledge more generally, maintains a high level of promises and expectations with regard to the outcomes of knowledge-based policies to address global grand challenges. Therefore tools for knowledge-based policy-making are required and TA is often put forward as a possible solution. This is why the European Commission was interested in funding an FP7 Science and Society project called PACITA (Parliaments and Civil society in Technology Assessment) according to which Policy oriented TA activities must be both reinforced in countries already having established TA institutions (so called “PTA countries”) and extended to countries or regions of the world where they did not spontaneously emerge yet (so called "non-PTA countries"). Often, dynamics of further institutionalization of TA will take different pathways because practices of knowledge-making are shaping, as well as being shaped by, local practices of state-making, themselves embedded in different socio-political contexts and political cultures. In short, the production and use of knowledge and governance of STI in society are coproduced (Jasanoff 2004).

The ambition the PhD thesis is to study these processes of coproduction in three contrasted case studies from the European periphery: Wallonia (Belgium), Portugal, and the Czech Republic. These case studies illuminate ongoing examples of European and local efforts of TA institution-building and because they relate to mutual reordering of the science-society nexus, they also speak to coproduction as a framing concern. In the presentation, I'll provide some work in progress on the elements of coproduction of knowledge and social order that surround the efforts to install in PTA body in Wallonia. I will also briefly contrast the situation with my ongoing research fieldwork in Portugal and the planned research ahead in the Czech Republic.

Bio

Benedikt Rosskamp. Graduated in Sociology at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in 2008 and also holds a Master in Information and Communication. After experiences in public participation, adult education and in the field of justice, started working at SPIRAL research center (STS pole) at the University of Liège in 2011. Currently working on the EU FP7 Project PACITA (Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment) and pursuing a PhD in social and political sciences on the institutionalization dynamics of Technology Assessment in European Peripheries.

Activity within the Research Group on Science, Economy and Society