Engaging Across Boundaries—Emerging Practices in 'Technical Democracy'

Engaging Across Boundaries—Emerging Practices in ‘Technical Democracy’ Rosemary Du Plessis & Richard Hindmarsh & Karen Cronin Received: 2 November 2010 /Accepted: 2 November 2010 /Published online: 24 November 2010 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2010 This special issue examines strategies for public engagement in science and technology issues in Australia, Japan and Aotearoa/New Zealand. It traverses issues relating to new energy technologies, food nanotechnology, the environmental impacts of dioxins, toxic waste disposal, genetic modification and the way scientists engage with the social dimensions of new biotechnologies. The papers look critically at engagement across scientist/non-scientist boundaries and explore how these boundaries are confounded and reworked in particular contexts. This is an increasingly popular theme in Science, Technology and Society studies. So what distinguishes these six papers from Australia, Japan and New Zealand? First, they are situated in the Asia-Pacific, a region that has not traditionally featured in international STS knowledge production and where theoretical perspectives and methods have until recently been clearly dominated by North American and European thinking. It is a research community in which STS scholarship and cross-national linkages are rapidly developing. Second, the papers are the outcome of the Towards STS Networking in the AsiaPacific Workshop, held in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand on 3–5 December East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2010) 4:475–482 DOI 10.1007/s12280-010-9157-7 R. Du Plessis (*) Sociology Programme, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand e-mail: rosemary.duplessis@canterbury.ac.nz R. Hindmarsh (*) Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University, Kessels Rd, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia e-mail: R.Hindmarsh@griffith.edu.au K. Cronin (*) Science, Technology and Society, Social Systems Group, Environmental Science and Research (ESR), PO Box 50 348, Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: karen.cronin@esr.cri.nz R. Hindmarsh Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, Kessels Rd, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia 2008 and organised by the editors of this special issue. This provided an important new opportunity for cross-country comparisons of STS research and offered a unique perspective on the growth of STS in different locations. The workshop led to the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Science, Technology and Society (STS) Network (APSTSN), which has a budding membership of over 130 members, and which held its first annual conference in Brisbane, Australia in 2009. The APSTSN complements more formal STS organisations at the national level in the Asia-Pacific, such as the East Asian STS Network. Its aim is to develop collegial relationships among STS scholars in the Asia-Pacific region, which (following UN conventions) encompasses STS communities in Australasia, South-East and East Asia and Oceania. Third, the research presented in this special issue adds a new dimension to global STS knowledge. The papers indicate the diverse cultural, environmental and sociopolitical conditions under which science and technology is being developed in this region. This reinforces STS scholarship in the Asia-Pacific and the growing number of STS practitioners undertaking a wide variety of innovative research in this part of the world. With the APSTSN special sessions at the 4S/Japan Society for Science and Technology Studies (JSSTS) conference in Tokyo in 2010 and the next annual APSTSN conference planned in China (Northeastern University, Shenyang) in 2011, the scene is set for the development of a distinctive regional form of STS. This offers the exciting prospect of an engagement across the boundaries of conventional and emergent STS research—both among scholars in the Asia-Pacific and between regional and international scholars. Through collaboration with our regional colleagues we are becoming more reflective about our own practice and contributing to a distinctive regional STS that may stimulate new thinking in the global STS community. This publication represents the first coherent body of work from APSTSN members on a specific theme. While only three countries (Japan, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand) are represented in this issue, the 2008 workshop was attended by participants from throughout the region and other publications are currently in train that more fully reflect the diversity of the APSTSN membership. The six papers address an important contemporary theme in STS: practices and processes for the...