Publics as Threats? Integrating Science and Technology Studies and Social Movement Studies

Abstract

When government and industry elites respond to or anticipate public acceptance issues having to do with industrial innovation, they construct models of the public that have variously been described as imaginaries, discourses, and frames. Because publics are sometimes mobilized in opposition to new technologies, opportunities emerge for bridging science and technology studies and social movement studies. Methodological and conceptual challenges for such syntheses are discussed. First, it is important to disaggregate categories of the public, industrial and political elites, and imaginaries (e.g. as threats, sources of innovation, or legitimate concerns). One solution is to use flexible typologies of the relations, such as industrial opposition movements, justice movements, alternative industrial movements, and regime preservation movements. Second, there is sometimes a tendency for the cultural analysis of imaginaries or discourses to utilize all-encompassing cultural logics and culturalism and to reject nomothetic inquiry, and alternatives are discussed.

Key Words:

• Social movements
• publics
• technology
• science
• cultural

Acknowledgement

I thank the editor Les Levidow for many helpful comments on earlier drafts.