Vulnerability in Technological Cultures: New Directions in Research and Governance

234 Pages·2014·4.539 MB·English

by  Anique Hommels, Jessica Mesman, Wiebe E. Bijker (eds.)

Inside Technology
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch
For a complete list of books published in this series, please see the back of the book.
Vulnerability Technological Cultures
New Directions in Research and Governance
Edited by Anique Homme!s, jessica Mesman, and Wiebe E. Bijker
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
london, England
© 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales
promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].
This book was set in Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited, Hong
Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vulnerability in technological cultures : new directions in research and
governance I edited by Anique Hommels, jessica Mesman, Wiebe E. Bijker.
pages em - (Inside technology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02710-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) -ISBN 978-0-262-52580-0
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Technology-Social aspects. I. Hommels, Anique.
II. Mesman, Jessica, 1962- III. Bijker, Wiebe E.
T14.5.V85 2014
303.48'3-dc23
2013027454
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Contributing Authors vii
Studying Vulnerability in Technological Cultures
Wiebe Bijker, Anique Hommels, and jessica Mesman
Part I Framing the Vulnerability Issue 27
2 Agricultural Change in a South Indian Village: An Account of the
Multiplicity of Vulnerable livelihoods 33
julia Quartz
3 Cultural Politics of Vulnerability: Historical-Ethnography of Dearth and
Debt, and Farmers' Suicides in India 51
Esha Shah
4 Relocation of Vulnerability in Neonatal Intensive Care Medicine 71
jessica Mesman
5 Vulnerability and Development-Bhopal's Lasting Legacy 89
Sheila jasanoff
6 Narratives of Vulnerability and Violence: Retelling the Gujarat
Riots 109
Shiv Visvanathan and Teesta Setelvad
Part II Exploring the Ambiguity of Vulnerability 131
7 Creative Dissent: linking Vulnerability and Knowledge in India 135
C. Shambu Prasad
8 Resilience: Contingency, Complexity, and Practice 155
Stephen Healy and jessica Mesman
vi Contents
9 Entrainment, Imagination, and Vulnerability-lessons from large­
Scale Accidents in the Offshore Industry 179
Ger Wackers
10 Vulnerable Practices: Organizing through Bricolage in Railroad
Maintenance 199
johan M. Sanne
Part Ill The Governance of Vulnerability 217
11 Governing a Vulnerable Society: Toward a Precaution-Based
Approach 223
Gerard de Vries, lmrat Verhoeven, and Martin Boeckhout
12 Regulating Risks by Rules: Compliance and Negotiated Drift in the
Dutch Chemical industry under the Seveso Regime 243
Anique Hommels, Esther Versluis, Tessa Fox, and Marjolein van Asselt
13 Dealing with Vulnerability: Balancing Prevention with Resilience as a
Method of Governance 267
Ger Palmboom and Dick Willems
14 A Pragmatist Approach to the Governance of Vulnerability 285
]ozef Keulartz and Maartje Schermer
15 From Sustainability to Transformation: Dynamics and Diversity in
Reflexive Governance of Vulnerability 305
Andy Stirling
References 333
Index 373
Contributing Authors
Marjolein van Asselt is a professor of risk governance at Maastricht Univer­
sity. Her research interest and expertise focuses on the interplay between
science, society, and politics. She has specialized in topics dealing with un­
certainty/ uncertain risks and foresight. She is appointed as a member of the
Scientific Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor
het Regeringsbeleid; WRR) in The Hague for the period 2008-2017.
Wiebe Bijker is a professor of technology and society and a research leader
of the Maastricht University Science, Technology, and Society (MUSTS)
center, The Netherlands. His research focuses on the history and sociology
of the relations between technology and society, with special attention to
issues of democracy and development.
Martin Boeckhout is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Health
Evidence at Radboud University Medical Center Nijmegen. His research
focuses on science and technology governance, with special attention to
issues of public engagement and accountability in biobank governance.
Previously, Boeckhout was a junior staff member of the Wetenschappelijke
Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR), the Scientific Council for Govern­
ment Policy in The Hague.
Tessa Fox is a Ph.D. researcher at the Maastricht University Science,
Technology, and Society (MUSTS) center. Her research focuses on risk
governance. She studies how the European Union deals with risks and
uncertainties in chemical policy. Studying how chemical risks are regulated
in the European Union will offer a better understanding of complex regula­
tory processes dealing with risk and can inform discussions on the respon­
sible governance of risks.
Stephen Healy teaches environmental humanities at the School of Hu­
manities, University of New South Wales. His research interests include
X Contributing Authors
Andy Stirling is the research director for the Science and Technology Policy
Research (SPRU) department at the University of Sussex, and co-director of the
ESRC STEPS Centre (on social, technological and environmental pathways to
sustainability). He is an interdisciplinary researcher, focusing on challenges
around "opening up" more democratic governance of knowledge and inno;
vation and has served as a UK and EU policy advisor on many related issues. :
"
lmrat Verhoeven is an assistant professor at the Department of Political '
Science of the University of Amsterdam. From 2009 to 2012, he worked,
as a postdoc researcher at the Department of Sociology at the same uni­
versity. Before moving to the university, Verhoeven was a staff member at
the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR}, the Scien­
tific Council for Government Policy, in The Hague. His current research
examines the processes of contentious politics, the impact of institutions
on active citizenship, developments in volunteering within the changing
welfare state, and the role of emotions in politics and democracy.
Esther Versluis is an associate professor of European regulatory governance
at the Department of Political Science, Maastricht University. Her research
concentrates on questions related to European regulatory governance. She
specializes in the European policy process, and, among other pursuits, she
analyzes the implementation of European risk regulations on the national
level. In 2011, she worked as a Fulbright visiting scholar at Cornell Univer­
sity to further explore the role of experts and expertise in EU risk regula­
tion.
Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat,
Haryana, India. He was a professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of In­
formation and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, India, and has
held the position of senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Develop­
ing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi. He has held visiting professorships at Smith
College, Stanford, Goldsmiths, Arizona State University, and Maastricht
University. He is the author of Organizing for Science (1985) and A Carnival
for Science (1997), and co-edited Foul Play: Chronicles of Corruption (1999).
Gerard de Vries is a member of the Council at the Scientific Council for
Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid;
WRR) in The Hague, The Netherlands; a professor of philosophy of sci­
ence at the University of Amsterdam; and a fellow of Wolfson College (at
Cambridge, England). De Vries's academic work is concerned with the so­
cial, political, and ethical aspects of contemporary science and technology.
De Vries was chairman of the WRR project team that prepared the report
Contributing Authors xi
Uncertain Safety that acts as the basis for chapter 11, "Governing a Vulner­
able Society: Toward a Precaution-Based Approach."
Ger Wackers received a Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Maas­
tricht University. While he held a position at the Maastricht University
Science, Technology, and Society (MUSTS) center, much of the empirical
research on large-scale accidents in the offshore industry was conducted
in collaboration with the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Culture
at the University of Oslo. Currently, he is an associate professor at Narvik
University College in Norway.
Dick Willems is a professor of medical ethics at the Amsterdam Medical
Center (AMC) at the Department of General Practice in the Division of
Public Health.

1 Studying Vulnerability in Technological Cultures
Wiebe Bijker, Anique Hommeis, and jessica Mesman
Vulnerability in technological cultures is all around us.1 Such vulnerabil­
ity may be caused by the techno-scientific character of our societies, as
when a power failure stops all electricity-driven activities. Or it may result
from natural events, such as hurricanes, but then the vulnerability is often
shaped by technological circumstances, such as unexpectedly breaking
levees. Societies also seek to defend against vulnerabilities by using science
and technology, as in the case of high-tech storm surge barriers or innova­
tive forms of non-pesticide crop management. The boundary between the
technical, social, and natural can be fuzzy, though: for instance, was the
breakdown in international business in the spring of 2010 due to the erup­
tion of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull which caused ash to cover
large areas of northern Europe, the high-tech character of air transporta­
tion, or our culture of global mobility?
Vulnerabilities are not usually given in an unambiguous way. Depend­
ing on your perspective, you may deem the neonatology ward of a hospital
a strategic research site to study vulnerability (because so many babies there
hover on the edge between life and death) or a very safe place (considering
that there is a low level of failures given the socio-technical complexities
of the situation).
Vulnerability, finally, is not only or purely negative. A certain degree of
vulnerability is necessary to create space for learning and adaptation in a
society. Vulnerability, in this sense, is equivalent to openness and flexibil­
ity. Once properly addressed, such vulnerability with accompanying cop­
ing mechanisms may yield a more flexible and resilient society than one
that tries to avoid all vulnerabilities. People living in cities that are vulner­
able to frequent power failures have developed flexible ways of coping with
such electricity shutdowns. This means that such cities are probably bet­
ter able to cope with an even bigger blackout, while a less vulnerable city