"Governing Future Technologies: Nanotechnology and the Rise of an Assessment Regime" ed. by M.Kaiser, etc.

The contributions in this book explore and critically analyse nanotechnology’s assessment regime: To what extent is it constitutive for technology in general, for nanotechnology in particular? What social conditions render the regime a phenomenon sui generis? And what are its implications for science and society?

Despite the variety of organizations, methods, and actors involved in the evaluation and regulation of emerging nanotechnologies, the assessment activities comply with an overarching scientific and political imperative: Innovations are only welcome if they are assessed against the criteria of safety, sustainability, desirability, and acceptability. So far, such deliberations and reflections have played only a subordinate role.
This book argues that with the rise of the nanotechnology assessment regime, however, things have changed dramatically: Situated at the crossroads of democratizing science and technology, good governance, and the quest for sustainable innovations, the assessment regime has become constitutive for technological development.

Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: Governing Future Technologies
Part I Going “Nano”: Opportunities and Risks
Introduction
Reinventing a Laboratory: Nanotechnology as a Resource for Organizational Change - Martina Merz
Negotiating Nano: From Assessing Risks to Disciplinary Transformations - Monika Kurath
“Nanoscience is 100 Years Old.” The Defensive Appropriation of the Nanotechnology Discourse within the Disciplinary Boundaries of Crystallography - Christian Kehrt and Peter Schüßler
Part II Making Sense: Visions, Images, and Video Games
Introduction
From Nano-Convergence to NBIC-Convergence: “The Best Way to Predict theFuture is toCreate it” - Joachim Schummer
Deliberating Visions: The Case of Human Enhancement in the Discourse on Nanotechnology and Convergence - Christopher Coenen
Visual Dynamics: The Defuturization of the Popular “Nano-Discourse” as an Effect of Increasing Economization - Andreas Lösch
Digital Matters: Video Games and the Cultural Transcoding of Nanotechnology - Colin Milburn
Part III Assessing “Nano”: Repercussions on Research
Introduction
Emerging De Facto Agendas Surrounding Nanotechnology: Two Cases Full of Contingencies, Lock-outs, and Lock-ins - Arie Rip and Marloes Van Amerom
The Risk Debate on Nanoparticles: Contribution to a Normalisation of the Science/Society Relationship? - Armin Grunwald and Peter Hocke
Futures Assessed: How Technology Assessment, Ethics and Think - Tanks Make Sense of an Unknown Future - Mario Kaiser
Part IV Assessing Dialogue: Governing “Nano” by ELSI
Introduction
Why Enrol Citizens in the Governance of Nanotechnology? - Alain Kaufmann, Claude Joseph, Catherine El-Bez, and Marc Audétat
Toward Anticipatory Governance: The Experience with Nanotechnology - Risto Karinen and David H. Guston
Which Ethics for (of) the Nanotechnologies? - Christoph Rehmann-Sutter and Jackie Leach Scully
Part V Deconstructing the Assessment Regime
Introduction
Lure of the “Yes”: The Seductive Power of Technoscience - Alfred Nordmann and Astrid Schwarz
The Time of Science: Deliberation and the “New Governance” of Nanotechnology - Matthew Kearnes
Converging Technologies – Diverging Reflexivities? Intellectual Work in Knowledge-Risk-Media-Audit Societies - Sabine Maasen
Index