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Mission
International Nanotechnology and Society Network May 2006
I. Mission
The International Nanotechnology and Society Network (INSN) is a coalition of organizations and individuals involved in advancing knowledge, promoting institutional innovation, engaging policy processes, and improving decisions related to the societal impacts of nanotechnologies and other areas of innovation that nanotechnology may help to enable.
INSN members share a commitment to ensuring the public value of nanotechnology in light of its potential for catalyzing rapid and profound social change. To meet this commitment, INSN fosters connections between the social sciences and natural science and engineering activities related to nanotechnology, with a particular focus on institutional innovation that can improve anticipatory governance, regulatory response, and the just distribution of potential benefits. INSN also develops educational programs and materials that can help build capacity for meeting its commitment.
INSN seeks to establish a framework for equitable participation of a range of stakeholders as partners in the process of enabling the reflexive co-evolution of nanotechnology and society.
INSN:
II. Governance
A. Executive Committee: Governance structure of INSN is determined by an executive committee made up of representatives of key nanotechnology-in-society research centers and other individuals to assure effective geographic and institutional representation. The inaugural Executive Committee is:
Institutional Representatives Barbara Harthorn—CNS-UCSB Arie Rip—Nanoned Daniel Sarewitz—CNS-ASU James Wilsdon—Demos
Geographic Representatives Guillermo Foladori—Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico Julia Guivant—Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil Alfred Nordmann, EU Masahiro Takemura, Japan
Members will serve in staggered terms for two years. The committee will draw up additional INSN governance guidelines as necessary and appropriate. Additional members may be added to the committee as deemed necessary during deliberations at future INSN meetings.
B. Membership: INSN Membership is available to researchers studying societal issues related to nanotechnology. Members may act as representatives of nanotechnology-in-society research programs/centers/etc., or as individuals. Membership means: 1) Inclusion on the INSN list server; 2) Inclusion on the members page of the INSN website with contact information and links; and 3) Open invitation to participate in all INSN meetings and activities.
C. Decision making: INSN exists to pursue the mission and facilitate the activities described above. The main mechanism for developing and initiating activities will be through discussions at periodic meetings, augmented by list server discussions and other informal interactions.
D. Funding: Initial funding has been provided through operating funds of various INSN institutional participants. Future approaches to funding INSN activities should be addressed as soon as possible.
E. Meetings: Ideally, INSN should have one general meeting per year, and one smaller research meeting per year. To minimize expenditures, meetings should, when possible, be piggybacked on other conferences and meetings where INSN members are likely to be in attendance, e.g., 4S and AAAS.
III. Integrated Framework for Activities
The foundational precept for INSN is that the effective governance of nanotechnology depends on the close coupling of inquiry and practice in social science, natural science and engineering, and public policy. INSN aims to enhance collaborations across national and disciplinary boundaries among social scientists whose approaches are consistent with this precept. INSN members will be working in six interdependent areas:
I. Engagement with Nanoscientists and Engineers and the Design of Research Environments II. Societal Governance of Technological Change III. Political Economy and Culture of Nanotechnology IV. S & T Dynamics V. Frames and Claims VI. Learning a. Reflexive social science b. Education and curriculum c. Social learning
The cumulative aim of integrated action in these six areas is to support a capacity for the reflexive co-evolution of nanotechnology and society by expanding the contextual awareness and range of choices available to decision makers who plan, fund, conduct, apply, monitor, regulate, and use nanoscale science and engineering.
These areas of activity are not distinct categories but are instead tightly linked; the interactions among them are represented graphically below. The matrix describes INSN’s activities as a product of focus—factors internal and external to nanotechnology—and agenda—inquiry for understanding (research) and inquiry for change (policy and practice).
The cell for research into the technical nanotechnology enterprise we call “S & T Dynamics.” Investigations into the factors that influence the direction, velocity, synergies and dead ends within the nanotechnology research enterprise are important when attempting to assess technologies. Techniques such as data and text mining, bibliometrics, and interviews, and data on venture and corporate investments, can be used to identify areas of convergence and rapid advance, the nature of commercial activities in firms, and relationships between public research and commercial outcomes. Applied globally, these techniques provide much deeper insights than NSE budget amounts or number of patents, revealing as well which countries are producing ‘quality’ research, which countries are in the best position to capitalize on innovation within NSE, and where the economic and social rewards are going to be found.
The cell for inquiry into policy and practice regarding internal factors in nanotechnology we call “Design of Research Environments and Engagement with Nanoscientists and Engineers.” The term “engagement” encompasses natural and social scientists interacting in a manner that both parties find useful and neither party feels marginalized. Engagement of social scientists with natural scientists aims at two goals: 1) building reflexivity into the R & D enterprise by having NSE researchers engage and consider their work from a societal perspective, and utilizing that perspective to make choices concerning present and future research directions: and 2) making NSE scientists and engineers comfortable with the presence of social scientists so that the research environment can be studied to discern how different environments can lead to different types of research, social relevance, and impacts and how the roles of leadership, types of organization, and levels of funding contribute to these creative environments.
The cell for research on external factors in nanotechnology we call “Political Economy and Culture of NSE.” This involves understanding the relationships among political and social support for nanotechnology, and its economic and social benefits and challenges. Nanotechnology is generally viewed favorably from the perspective of national policy makers around the globe. How did nanotechnology make it into the spotlight of political agendas? What forces maintain the nanotechnology enterprise as a funding priority? How do early nanotech products and other outcomes affect the policy environment?
The cell for inquiry for change regarding external factors in nanotechnology we call “Societal Governance of NSE.” How do society and affected populations within it adapt to the increasing rate of technological change, specifically to outcomes from the NSE research endeavor? The INSN is in a unique position to provide a global perspective on the effects of nanotechnology on the broad spectrum of socio-economic classes and the variety of geo-political positions. Questions of how NSE researchers view the societal response to technological change should also be addressed in the context of increasing reflexive capacity.
Claims about the NSE enterprise, and how they are framed in broader contexts, have enormous effect on system dynamics, defining how nanotechnology is viewed publicly, commercially, and politically. This activity area will explore the ways that benefits and risks (real and predicted) of NSE research outcomes are integrated into all of the other activity areas. For example, the framing of nanotechnology as a technological fix for global poverty can be explored in Societal Governance and S&T Dynamics.
It is impossible to separate cleanly any one of these research areas from the rest. INSN will catalyze work at the interface between them, conducted by researchers whose experience spans geo-political boundaries. This collaborative and synthetic capability is the most important aspect of the network.
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