Bøker i The Earthscan Science in Society Series-serien

This book challenges and critques human development as practiced since the end of World War II. Nepal can be viewed as a kind of laboratory for studying the effectiveness and success of global human developments, with nearly all theories and practices attempted here since 1945. As such, it constitutes a rich grounded database allowing the editors and contributors to theorize about aid, development and technology in the 20th century and beyond.

First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2007

Since the mid 1990s, agricultural biotechnology - GM crops and foods - has been the focus of debate and conflict in many European countries. This title presents a series of comparative perspectives on the social, ethical and legal implications of genomics. It intends to capture lessons from the controversies of the 1990s.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged rapidly as a crucial technological option for decarbonising electricity supply and mitigating climate change. Great hopes are being pinned on this new technology but it is also facing growing scepticism and criticism. This book is the first to bring together the full range of social and policy issues surrounding CCS shedding new light on this potentially vital technology and its future.  The book covers many crucial topics including the roles and positions that different publics, NGOs, industry, political parties and media are taking up; the way CCS is organised, supported and regulated; how CCS is being debated and judged; how innovation, demonstration and learning are occurring and being conceptualised and promoted; and the role of CCS in the transition to a low carbon energy future.  The authors draw on a variety of approaches, concepts, methods and themes and provide a new understanding of innovation in the energy and climate change fields. It tackles the many issues in a way that speaks to those concerned not only to understand these developments, but to those who are involved in the scientific and technological work itself, as well as those charged with evaluating and making decisions relevant to the future of the technology.

Disasters are the result of complex interactions between social and natural forces, acting at multiple scales from the individual and community to the organisational, national and international level. This book focuses on these dynamics, and gives disaster scholars and practitioners useful lessons for management and planning in practice.

Scarcity is considered a ubiquitous feature of the human condition. It underpins much of modern economics and is widely used as an explanation for social organisation, social conflict and the resource crunch confronting humanity's survival on the planet. This title questions scarcity's taken-for-granted nature.

As progress towards a greater knowledge in sustainability science continues, the question of how better to integrate scientific progress with actual decisions made by practitioners remains paramount. This book aims to help close the gap between science and practice.

Major influenza pandemics pose a constant threat. This book explores several pandemics over the past century, from the infamous 1918 Spanish Influenza, the avian flu epidemic of 2003, and the novel H1N1 pandemic of 2009, to lesser-known outbreaks such as the 1889-90 influenza pandemic and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968.

Places the question of human/animal relations at the heart of sustainability and climate change debates. This book focuses on ethics, examining critically the dominant paradigms of bioethics and power relations between human and non-human. It also considers animal biotechnology and political economy, examining commercialisation and regulation.

Explores how uncertainty is interpreted and used by policy makers, experts and politicians. This title argues that conventional notions of rational, evidence-based policy making - hailed by governments and organisations across the world as the only way to make good policy - is an impossible aim in highly complex and uncertain environments.

Examines the range of technological innovations offering lives that purport to be longer, stronger, smarter and happier, and asks whether their introduction is likely to lead to more fulfilled individuals and a fairer world.

Worldwide, over 75 million people are involuntarily childless. This work argues that more equitable access to culturally competent assisted conception services should be an essential component of a transformatory politics of infertility. It also offers a corrective to the dominance of the narratives of hegemonic groups in infertility research.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book explains how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions.

This book examines the tensions between political authority and expert authority in the formation of public policy in liberal democracies. It aims to illustrate and better understand the nature of these tensions rather than argue specific ways of resolving them. Each chapter explores the complexity of interaction between the two forms of authority in different policy domains in order to reveal and clarify some common elements in the various ways political and expert authority interact in modern liberal democracies. The policy domains covered include climate geoengineering discourses; environmental health; biotechnology; nuclear power; whaling; and the use of force.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and contentious voices fill the air, the question gains urgency: How can people with widely varying viewpoints agree to address climate change? This title sorts through the tangle of arguments surrounding climate change to find paths to unexpected sites of agreement.

Explores how parents understand and engage with childhood vaccination in contrasting global contexts. This book examines anxieties emerging as highly globalized vaccine technologies and technocracies that encounter the deeply intimate personal and social worlds of parenting and childcare.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged rapidly as a crucial technological option for decarbonising electricity supply and mitigating climate change. Great hopes are being pinned on this new technology but it is also facing growing scepticism and criticism. This book is the first to bring together the full range of social and policy issues surrounding CCS shedding new light on this potentially vital technology and its future.  The book covers many crucial topics including the roles and positions that different publics, NGOs, industry, political parties and media are taking up; the way CCS is organised, supported and regulated; how CCS is being debated and judged; how innovation, demonstration and learning are occurring and being conceptualised and promoted; and the role of CCS in the transition to a low carbon energy future.  The authors draw on a variety of approaches, concepts, methods and themes and provide a new understanding of innovation in the energy and climate change fields. It tackles the many issues in a way that speaks to those concerned not only to understand these developments, but to those who are involved in the scientific and technological work itself, as well as those charged with evaluating and making decisions relevant to the future of the technology.

Offers a profound analysis of science and technology policymaking. By focusing on an episode of major importance in Britain's nuclear history - the Windscale Inquiry, a public hearing about the future of fuel reprocessing - this title offers a critique of such judicial procedures and the underlying assumptions of the rationalist approach.

Focuses on the intractable conflict that characterises policy debate about messy issues. The author first develops a framework for analysing these conflicts and then applies the conceptual framework to four very different policy issues: the environment - focussing on climate change - as well as transport, ageing and health.

Offers a global overview of the state of nanotech and society in Europe, the USA, Japan and Canada, examining the ethics, the environmental and public health risks, and the governance and regulation of this most promising, and potentially most dangerous, of the various technologies.

Since September 11, 2001 in many countries renewed attention has been given to how research in the life sciences might inadvertently or intentionally facilitate the development of biological or chemical weapons. This book examines the extent of the issues and debates. It also examines the security-inspired governance regimes for the life sciences.

What is technology? How do humans use it to build and modify the world? What are the relationships between technology, science, economics and democratic governance? What, if any, are our ethical and political responsibilities and choices in how we develop, deploy and control technology in democratic states? This title answers these questions.

Nanotechnology - technology at the molecular level - is held out by many as the Holy Grail for creating a trillion dollar economy and solving problems from curing cancer to reprocessing waste into products and building super fast computers. This title presents an overview of the state of nanotech and society in Europe, the USA, Japan and Canada.