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Logic of Choice or Logic of Care? Uncertainty, Technological Mediation and Responsible Innovation

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Abstract

The regulation of innovation reflects a specific imaginary of the role of governance that makes it external to the field it governs. It is argued that this decision and rule-based view of regulation is insufficient to deal with the inescapable uncertainties that are produced by innovation. In particular, relying on risk-based knowledge as the basis of regulation fails to deal sufficiently both with the problem that innovation ensures the future will not resemble the past, and with the problem that the social priorities that underlie innovation often remain unquestioned. Recently, rights-based frameworks have been defended as principle-based approaches to innovation governance that address the gaps which trouble an understanding of regulation as guided by risk-based decision procedures. An alternative view of governance is defended, based on a concept of care drawn from feminist ethics and other traditions. Care aims, not at justifying punctual decisions, but at transforming institutions and practices, with the goal of creating specific institutional ‘virtues’, and requires the broad and deep participation of publics in shaping innovation. In this way, governance is made internal to innovation.

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Notes

  1. This assumes, of course, that the predicament described above cannot be resolved simply by trying to avoid Hacking’s ‘interference effects’ by renouncing certain forms of technology entirely.

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Acknowledgments

Research referred to in the text was funded by the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Grant No. CB0417).

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  1. School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, 51a Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK

    Christopher Groves

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Groves, C. Logic of Choice or Logic of Care? Uncertainty, Technological Mediation and Responsible Innovation. Nanoethics 9, 321–333 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-015-0238-x

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