Science, Society and Democracy: A Reconsideration

• In Event: 540 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Science in Political Debate

Abstract

Studies on the democratic management of technoscience focus heavily on citizens’ participation in techno-scientific decision-making at the expense of analyzing the institutional ways in which science/society relation is structured. This paper reviews the development of the scholarship pertaining to this issue, and reconsiders Merton’s model of science to develop a fresh outlook on the relations between science and the politico-economic forces in the contemporary era. Drawing on my work on a controversial university-industry partnership, I show how universities are becoming a terrain for political struggles around new technologies, and how these struggles are waged with unequal resources.

Author

• Elif Kale-Lostuvali, University of California-Berkeley