Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy (Inside Technology) - Softcover

Callon, Michel; Lascoumes, Pierre; Barthe, Yannick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262515962 ISBN 13: 9780262515962

Publisher: MIT Press, 2011

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"This lucid and engaging book not only breathes new life into science and technology studies, but also reinvents and re-enchants politics. It traces a new democratic politics of the unknown."--Ash Amin, Department of Geography, Durham University

"In this provocative book, Michel Callon analyses the hybrid forums taking shape in the controversial sites where science overflows into the everyday world, where specialist knowledge is being challenged, new kinds of dialogic democracy are being born, and new styles of measured action are coming into being that enable human beings to reach decisions despite endemic uncertainty. Such a democratization of democracy could have implications far beyond the public understanding of science. The crucial contribution of this book is to suggest that this 'philosophy in the wild' could provide the basis for all who have to act in an uncertain world."--Nikolas Rose, Martin White Professor of Sociology, and Director, BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society, London School of Economics

"This book is a path breaking contribution to the study of democracy. Its novel approach to understanding technical and ethical controversies shows how the uncertainties people share about the world and its future can become the source of new forms of democratic life."--Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University

"This book will become a vital point of reference for activists and scientists, citizens and critics. The arguments developed here are of central importance for the democratic future of modern science."--Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science, University of Cambridge

About the Author:

Michel Callon, developer (with Bruno Latour and others) of Actor Network Theory, is Professor at the Ecole des mines de Paris and a Researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'innovation there. Pierre Lascoumes is Director of Research at CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientfique). Yannick Barthe is a Researcher at CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and a member of the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0262515962
• ISBN 13: 9780262515962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 287