Wiebe E. Bijker

In pursuit of responsible research and innovation (RRI), emphasis has been on various forms of inclusion in the governance of science, technology and innovation. Given that much of the ideas on inclusion in fact refer to discursive inclusion, it is surprising that little attention has hitherto been paid to what seems foundational to any discursive space: ontologies (theories of being) and epistemologies (theories of knowing), and notably how these relate to inclusion and exclusion. By means of an action-research case study on responsible innovation on biogasification in rural India, we show that one important mechanism of exclusion exists in a dispossession of epistemological agency and the rendering of ontologies as anomalous, even if this is not directly visible as social exclusion. We argue that RRI should adopt as one of its central values the epistemological empowerment of relevant groups.

It is a special moment in the history of STS. With the young discipline transitioning into a not so-young-field-anymore, there is plenty of reason for celebrations: defining groups are celebrating remarkable anniversaries and individual careers are celebrated when founding figures retire. These celebrations are also excellent moments for reflections on pasts, presents and futures of STS and the place of STS in the wider world. In this conversation, Wiebe Bijker, recently subject of his own retirement celebration in Maastricht (Bijker 2017), shares his views on STS. We travel with him from the Netherlands to India, and briefly stop in Edinburgh at SSU where we find the origin of the SCOT abbreviation. On the way, we discuss Dutch activism, teaching, the institutionalization of STS, the emergence of international networks, and different roads STS can take. We end with an optimistic view towards a global future, while emphasizing the importance of the inclusion of history and the classics.

Handloom weaving is the second most important livelihood in rural India after farming. Improving handloom technologies and practices thus will directly affect the lives of millions of Indians, and this is similar for many other communities in the global South and East. By analyzing hand-loom weaving as a socio-technology, we will show how weaving communities are constantly innovating their technologies, designs, markets, and social organization—often without calling it innovation. This demonstration of innovation in handloom contradicts the received image of handloom as a pre-modern and traditional craft that is unsustainable in current societies and that one should strive to eliminate: by mechanization and/or by putting it into a museum.

Can STS offer a response to “alternative facts” without falling back into naive positivism? Can STS help to make science accountable to society and make it work—make it function in our democracies and let it produce scientific knowledge? In his valedictory lecture, Wiebe Bijker looks back upon three decades of STS research in general, and upon engaging STS with questions of democratization and development in particular. He starts from the question how to study technological cultures and ends with the question how to construct them. The argument moves from the social construction of technology to constructing socio-technical worlds. Finally, when trying to understand this construction work, the analysis zooms in on the constructing worlds: on the institutions in which this construction work takes place.

Controlled human malaria infections are clinical trials in which healthy volunteers are deliberately infected with malaria under controlled conditions. Controlled human malaria infections are complex clinical trials: many different groups and institutions are involved, and several complex technologies are required to function together. This functioning together of technologies, people, and institutions is under special pressure because of potential risks to the volunteers. In this article, the authors use controlled human malaria infections as a strategic research site to study the use of control, the role of trust, and the interactions between trust and control in the construction of scientific knowledge. The authors argue that tandems of trust and control play a central role in the successful execution of clinical trials and the construction of scientific knowledge. More specifically, two aspects of tandems of trust and control will be highlighted: tandems are sites where trust and control coproduce each other, and tandems link the personal, the technical, and the institutional domains. Understanding tandems of trust and control results in setting some agendas for both clinical trial research and science and technology studies.

Wiebe Bijker, in his plenary lecture on the occasion of receiving SHOT's 2012 Leonardo da Vinci Medal, traces the history of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and interweaves this with observations on the development of the history of technology during the last three decades and with some biographical reflections. His collaborations with Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch figure prominently. He concludes with two examples from his current research collaboration with Indian researchers: on the making of the first Scanning Tunnel Microscope in India, and on reinventing a more sustainable socio-technology of handloom weaving.

Recently, the Health Council of the Netherlands (HCN) published a report on the precautionary principle. The key message was that rather than as a decision rule, the principle should be regarded as a strategy for dealing with uncertainty carefully. We applied these views of HCN to the issue of potential health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which is characterised by considerable uncertainty. HCN has published several reports on this issue, thereby influencing governmental policy. We will focus on how HCN dealt with uncertainty in its earlier reports on EMF and to what extent that is in agreement with what HCN now refers to as prudent precaution. For comparison, we include in the examination the reports on EMF of HCN’s counterpart in Belgium, the Superior Health Council (SHC). SHC urged its government to implement exposure reduction measures, whereas HCN deemed such measures unnecessary. Informed by this analysis we try to draw some lessons on the role of advisory bodies. We conclude that scientific advisory bodies should inform decision‐makers rather than guide them towards a particular decision. In case of substantial uncertainty, they should not attempt to offer unequivocal advice on the best policy option. Scientific advisory bodies better present various policy options and describe their potential consequences as well as limits to science. This would stimulate political decision‐makers to decide in consultation with stakeholders how venturous or cautious they want to be, given the stakes involved and to choose matching courses of action.

This article reviews constructivist technology studies, and especially the social construction of technology (SCOT). To investigate how these constructivist studies regard the ontology of technology, I will trace their historical development in units of analysis, methodological approaches and research questions. Constructivist technology studies are relativistic in only one sense: methodological. They are agnostic with respect to the ontology of technology. Constructivist studies of technology thus do not primarily answer the question ‘what is technology?’; they trace the process ‘how to make technology’.