Innovation Outside Markets: Government and/in Technoscientific Innovation

Abstract

Bringing together the sociology of innovation with the sociology of science, this panel asks what we can learn about innovation in technoscience by examining government roles in innovative, future-oriented projects. STS has long catalogued the interplay of governance in technopolitics and the direction of scientific research, especially when it comes to big science, normal science, or infrastructure across industry, environment, and energy sectors. However, a substantial portion of innovation in technoscience is also government-supported, from biotech to space exploration to computing. Sitting at odds with contemporary concepts of innovation -- flexible, private sector, non-bureaucratic, venture-oriented -- the juxtaposition of innovation and governmentality raises new questions for STS scholars, even those well practiced at considering government-industry overlaps. For instance, what are the practices and pitfalls of government supported research in an economy premised upon the power of innovation? What happens to innovation-oriented projects in periods of governmental and fiscal uncertainty? And what do governmental sites reveal about processes of innovation more generally?

Individual Presentations

• If We Can Go to the Moon…: Innovation Traps in Federal Transportation Research & Development, 1965–1986 - David Reinecke, Princeton University

• Governing an Ungovernable Foe: Vaccines and Public Health Policy at the National Cancer Institute - Natalie Aviles, University of California, San Diego

• Shutdown! Big Science in an Era of Crisis - Janet Vertesi, Princeton University

• A Transformation in the Global South: Innovation and Organizations in Kenya - Parijat Chakrabarti, Princeton University

Session Organizer

• Janet Vertesi, Princeton University