Public Engagement and Emerging Technologies
New technologies and the science that created them have transformed our lives, posing challenges as to how technological change can be better integrated into society. Over the last few decades, recognition of these issues has led to different ways of engaging the public in the assessment and regulation of emerging technologies. However, diverse factors such as existing regulatory frameworks specific to jurisdictions, local cultural contexts, and the nature of particular technologies have ensured that there is no single approach.
This book puts the subject of publics and their engagement with emerging technologies on a robust footing. With a strong, though not exclusive, focus on genomic technologies, leading theorists and practitioners in the field provide overviews of methods and approaches and theoretical accounts of the processes underlying public engagement. They also offer precise and clear insights into the key issues of public participation studies, including ethics, process, and principles of knowledge distribution in democratic societies. The discussion is particularly pertinent and central to current concerns in health, technology, and public participation at a time when the reform of public and private sector health and social care services are being debated globally.
This book will be of interest to academics, policy makers, and practitioners working in the fields of public engagement, emerging technologies, bioethics, and technology assessment.
Kieran O’Doherty is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Guelph. Edna Einsiedel is a professor of communication studies in the Department of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary.
Introduction
Kieran O’Doherty and Edna Einsiedel
Part 1: The Purpose and Function of Public Participation
1 Giving Power to Public Voice: A Critical Review of Alternative Means of Infusing Citizen Deliberation with Legal Authority or Influence / John Gastil
2 Parliamentary Technology Assessment in Europe and the Role of Public Participation / Leonhard Hennen
3 Democracy, Governance, and Public Engagement: A Critical Assessment / Peter W.B. Phillips
Part 2: External Conditions for Legitimate Public Engagement: Ethics, Society, and Democracy
4 Trust, Accountability, and Participation: Conditions for and Constraints on “New” Democratic Models / Susan Dodds
5 Public Voices or Private Choices? The Role of Public Consultation in the Regulation of Reproductive Technologies / Colin Gavaghan
6 Challenges to Deliberations on Genomics / Michiel Korthals
Part 3: Internal Conditions for Legitimate Public Engagement: Lessons for the Practitioner
7 Deliberative Fears: Citizen Deliberation about Science in a National Consensus Conference / Michael D. Cobb
8 Theorizing Deliberative Discourse / Kieran O’Doherty
Part 4: Institutional Contexts of Public Participation
9 Public Engagement and Knowledge Mobilization in Public and Private Policy / David Castle
10 From Public Engagement to Public Policy: Competing Stakeholders and the Path to Law Reform / David Weisbrot
11 Participation in the Canadian Biotechnology Regulatory Regime é Andrea Riccardo Migone and Michael Howlett
Part 5: Modes of and Experiments in Participation
12 Swimming with Salmon: The Use of Journalism to Public Engagement Initiatives on Emerging Biotechnologies é David M. Secko
13 Science Media and Public Participation: The Potential of Drama-Documentaries / Grace Reid
14 N-Reasons: Computer-Mediated Ethical Decision Support for Public Participation / Peter Danielson
15 Contentious New Technology Introductions and e-Participation / Keith Culver
Part 6: Understanding Stakeholders and Publics
16 Rethinking “Publics” and “Participation” in New Governance Contexts: Stakeholder Publics and Extended Forms of Participation / Edna Einsiedel
17 Public Engagement with Human Genetics: A Social Movement Approach / Alexandra Plows
18 The Limits of Liberal Values in the Moral Assessment of Genomic and Technological Innovation / Chloë G.K. Atkins
Contributors
Index
Genetically Modified Diplomacy
The Global Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment
By Peter Andrée
The Intellectual Property–Regulatory Complex
Overcoming Barriers to Innovation in Agricultural Genomics
Edited by Emily Marden, R. Nelson Godfrey, and Rachael Manion
