Nanotechnology has been the subject of extensive 'assessment hype, '
unlike any previous field of research and development. A multiplicity of
stakeholders have started to analyze the implications of nanotechnology:
Technology assessment institutions around the world, non-governmental
organizations, think tanks, re-insurance companies, and academics from
science and technology studies and applied ethics have turned their
attention to this growing field's implications. In the course of these
assessment efforts, a social phenomenon has emerged - a phenomenon the
editors define as assessment regime.
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.
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?
