Science and Technological Innovation in the Re-making of Public Policy and Governance Across Global and Local Space

Abstract

The governance and public policy dimensions of technoscience have long drawn the interest of science and technology studies. The papers in this session contribute to this area of research through case studies from across the world describing novel ways in which actors leverage scientific expertise and technological innovation to address public concerns exacerbated by the operation of unequal political, legal, and market forces. Ranging from groundwater management in Taiwan, medical patents in Brazil, medical information maps in southern California, school buses in Portugal, and urban governance in Latin America, the papers demonstrate the entanglement of global and local dynamics in technoscientific practice and challenge conventional notions of space, place, and location. They also serve to highlight how marginalized, under-served, and/or excluded actors can use scientific knowledge and technological expertise to construct novel practices and institutional arrangements to promote the public good. Finally, the session considers the sustainability of such strategies in contexts defined by authoritarian political pasts and environmentally risk-filled futures.

Chair

• Deborah Lefkowitz

Individual Presentations

• Mapping Information Pathways for Breast Cancer Survivors - Deborah Lefkowitz

• Both a Field Scientific Station and a Working Site: The Field Science and Infrastructure of the Groundwater Monitoring Network - Chun-Yi HO, Institute of building and planning, National Taiwan University

• Brazilian Sofosbuvir: Intersectorial Network Building to Defend Right to Health and the Public Domain - Pedro Henrique Villardi, ABIA - Brazilian AIDS Interdisciplinary Association / Working Group on Intellectual Property; Marilena Corrêa, Institute of Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro

Session Organizer

• Keith Guzik, University of Colorado Denver