Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer, Raymund Werle, Johannes Weyer
Editorial
The new role(s) of social sciences
Science, Technology & Innovation Studies, Vol. 5 (2009), No. 1, p. 3
Since the very beginning, social sciences have been dedicated to shaping or even changing society. In recent decades, many social scientists were engaged in societal
and political matters, e.g. in the debates on nuclear energy, genetics, or climate
change. They acted as experts, as consultants, as analysts, as concerned scientists,
and sometimes even as interpreters of time or as prophets.
However, social scientists have become practical in other respect: they organize and
manage participatory processes, in which experts and laypeople – and social scientists,
too – negotiate contestable issues, such as the release of genetically modified
organisms, or develop scenarios of future technologies, e.g. in the case of nanotechnology.
The current issue has been prepared by the guest editors Priska Gisler and Silke
Schicktanz. It focuses on the roles social scientists should, might or do assume in
science policy making processes. In their introduction to the issue, Priska Gisler
and Silke Schicktanz give an overview over case studies and analyses concerning
the question of how social scientists are involved in science policy making. They point to several emerging roles such as the organizer of participatory procedures,
the moderator, the translator, the expert, the evaluator, or the commentator.
Gabriele Abels provides in her contribution “Organizer, observer and participant.
What role for social scientists in different pTA models?” an overview of seven different
types of participatory technology assessment, depending on the number and
heterogeneity of participants.
Maud Radstake, Annemiek Nelis, Eefje van den Heuvel-Vromans, and Koen Dortmans
(“Mediating online DNA-Dialogues. From public engagement to interventionist
research”) present their experiences with novel forms of dialogues between laypeople
and experts via online discussion boards.
Finally, in his article “A helping hand or a servant discipline? Interpreting nonacademic
perspectives on the roles of social science in participatory policy-making”,
Kevin Burchell points to the fact that the perception of the role(s) of social scientists
differs considerably, if the academic self-perception is contrasted with the nonacademic
perspective.
We wish to thank Priska Gisler and Silke Schicktanz for initiating and organizing
this issue on a topic of considerable interest to social scientists working in the field
of science, technology, and innovation studies.
