Technology assessment (TA) is an important instrument for the regulation of innovation. From the perspective of sociology of knowledge, the regulatory process can be understood as a complex interplay between different forms of knowledge. The prevailing instruments of TA, expertise and participation, are both facing difficulties in dealing with the limits and impasses of regulatory knowledge in the realm of innovation. Nevertheless, as is argued in this article, reflexive forms of TA offer a good, if not the only, answer to (...) the question of how we can deal with the contradictions and paradoxes involved in the regulation of innovation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 18 Heft: 1 Seiten: 281-318.

Participation of a broad variety of actors in decision-making processes has become an important issue in science and technology policy. Many authors claim the involvement of stakeholders and of the general public to be a core condition for legitimate and sustainable decision making. In the last decades, a wide spectrum of procedures has been developed to realize biotechnological citizenship. These procedures, composed of multiactor arenas, are either located in close relation to the system of politics, or, as in the case (...) of administrative decision making, more closely to the system of law. In the latter case, a problematic constellation arises. Here, law and science can build a technoscientific normativity that systematically excludes political discourse. The law, although intending to provide for political freedom and citizenship rights, at the end appears to be an ‘‘iron cage’’ for political communication. (shrink)

Der Produktionsfaktor Wissen produziert nicht nur Wissen, sondern zugleich auch Unwissen. Die Wissensgesellschaft ist auch eine Risikogesellschaft, in der die Normalität von Unfällen ebenso zu akzeptieren ist, wie das Fungieren der Gesellschaft als Labor neuer Technologien. Vor diesem Hintergrund der Gesellschaft als Wissensgesellschaft mit ihren beiden Seiten der Innovation und des Risikos ist die Frage zu sehen, wie die moderne Gesellschaft die ihr spezifische Problematik bearbeitet, mehr denn je von einem nicht auf seine positive Seite festlegbaren Wissen abhängig zu sein.