John Grin

Technology Assessment as Learning

This article addresses the question of how policymakers could deliberately influence processes of technology development. Using the development of wind turbines in Denmark as an example, the article describes the frames of meaning guiding the actions of those involved in the three subprocesses of policymaking, the generation of new technologies, and the management of the firms that bring new artifacts to the market. The three types of actors share an interest in one notion: the meaning of a technological artifact. This notion, however, plays a different role in the respective frames of meaning of the actors. For policymakers and managers, it is an instrumental notion. For technologists, it provides guidance to their activities. The shared interest affords the possibility of reaching common action with only congruent (not necessarily shared) meanings. Interactive forms of technology assessment can play a central role in bringing about such congruent meanings and thus in influencing the generation of new technologies.

Contextualizing Reflexive Governance: the Politics of Dutch Transitions to Sustainability

Abstract How does steering for sustainability work within the world of contemporary politics, where roles are increasingly ambiguous and power dispersed? This paper explores this question empirically by studying the practice of reflexive governance—a mode of steering that encourages actors to scrutinize and reconsider their underlying assumptions, institutional arrangements and practices. The practice of reflexive governance has been conceptualized in various ways: as a strategic process of opening up and closing down, as a state-led activity of facilitating socio-technological transitions, and as a mode of network co-ordination to promote system innovation. What all these accounts underplay is the political context of reflexive processes, and the politics that they generate. This paper offers an alternative conceptualization of reflexive governance that situates sites of reflexivity within a broader discursive system composed of multiple arenas, actors and forms of political communication. Applying this framework to a Dutch case study reveals a host of struggles involved in enacting reflexive governance, particularly as actors try to reconcile the demands of reflexivity (being open, self-critical and creative) with the demands of their existing political world (closed preferences, agenda driven, control). The analysis sheds light on the work—and indeed politics—involved in legitimizing more reflexive modes of governing for sustainability.

Vision Assessment: Shaping Technology in 21st Century Society

Outline.- I Introduction.- Vision Assessment to Support Shaping 21st Century Society? Technology Assessment as a Tool for Political Judgement.- II Case Studies. Technology Assessment and the Role of Visions.- Technology Assessment as Metaphor Assessment. Visions Guiding the Development of Information and Communications.- Technology Assessment in the Health Care Area: A Matter of Uncovering or of Covering Up?.- Bloodless War or Bloody Non-Sense? Technology Assessments Role in Uncovering Old Propositions behind New Airpower Concepts.- III Visions and Societal Rationality.- Technology Policy between Long-Term Planning Requirements and Short-Ranged Acceptance Problems. New Challenges for Technology Assessment.- Replacing Human Beings by Robots. How to Tackle that Perspective by Technology Assessment?.- IV Conclusions.- The Lessons we Learnt: First Outline of Strategy and a Methodical Repertoire for Vision Assessment.- List of Authors.

Doing reflexive modernization in pig husbandry: the hard work of changing the course of a river

The Dutch animal production sector faces significant pressure for change. We discuss a project for the design of a sustainable husbandry system for pigs. Named after the Greek hero Hercules, the project aimed for structural changes in both animal and crop production. However, instead of changing the course of the river, the project ended up merely adapting its flow. The Hercules project ran into difficulties typical for projects aiming at reflexive modernization. It relapsed from an effort for reflexive modernization to ecological modernization, by ultimately leaving the structural features of the sociotechnical regime intact. We show how this resulted from the biases and limitations implied by existing institutions, in which the project was unavoidably embedded. We introduce the idea of reflexive design, as “doing” reflexive modernization, which implies working on action and structure at the same time. A number of recommendations are given for reflexive design projects like this.

The politics of sustainability transitions

Sustainability transitions are processes of fundamental social change in response to societal challenges (Grin, Rotmans, & Schot, 2010; Markard, Raven, & Truffer, 2012). They reflect a particular diagnosis of persistent social problems, in which persistence is attributed to the path dependency of dominant practices and structures (i.e. ‘regimes’), whose resolution requires structural and long-term change. By their nature, transitions involve politics in the broadest sense of the word, that is, as

Stimulating transitions towards sustainable farming systems

How can the dynamics of the agro-food sector in the long run be addressed? We argue that sustainable agro-food systems cannot be developed through a simple improvement of existing systems, but will require a transition. Therefore, we focus on how transitions to sustainability could be initiated and supported, taking into account renewal initiatives at the farm level, organised projects, heterogeneous actors and differing interests. We argue that a transition will have to come from a range of novelties that initially have various misfits with an existing regime. To tackle these misfits will require a learning process that needs to be of a ‘reflexive’ nature which implies that various taken for granted characteristics of the regime and beliefs of stakeholders can be questioned. Another critical issue is that this learning not only takes place in a protected environment (or niche) but that new links with the existing regime need to be created. Only then can learning about novelties start a transformation process in the regime that may eventually lead to a transition.

The politics of transition governance in Dutch agriculture: conceptual understanding and implications for transition management

There has been scholarly criticism that transition theory has hitherto largely neglected the politics involved in transition governance. This article offers an analytical framework for understanding powering and legitimisation in a way that does not a priori assume that such politics is bound to inhibit transition processes: it seeks to outline how, and under what conditions, strategies to deal with such politics may constructively interfere with transition dynamics towards sustainability. Based on the application of the framework to a historical transition, the modernisation of Dutch agriculture in the decades following World War II, we draw some lessons on transition governance, concerning the need for learning not only during the starting phase of a transition, but also during its acceleration; the opportunities offered by other actors than merely frontrunners; and the need to nurture, and deal with, diversity.

Ethics and HTA: Some lessons and challenges for the future

What have we learned? Is there in the contribution to this special theme a clue as to what is the best way of integrating ethical inquiry into health technology assessment (HTA)? Particularly, what is the significance of the social shaping perspective in this respect? In this concluding paper, we attempt to collect the lessons we have learnt and to answer these questions. Of course, our answer will not be the final one. It is difficult to find an appropriate and widely endorsed model of integrating ethical implications in HTA studies, if there is such a single appropriate model at all. But despite reserves, it is equally fair to claim that it is definitely possible to reach beyond what ethical inquiry in HTA too often concerns, namely to conclude that ‘‘the technology raises serious ethical concerns that must be dealt with.’’ This is truly a death sentence, for both HTA and medical ethics, just when their integration is called for. In the remainder of this paper, we address three questions. First, the main question of this issue is: How could ethical inquiry be integrated into HTA? Or in other words: What methods do we have to address moral aspects of technology in a valid and useful way? This question is addressed by discussing the following aspects: How can ethical issues be identified and addressed, and how could the perspective of social shaping of technology add to this? Second: Who is to face the challenge of ethical inquiry? Under this header, we discuss the role of researchers, policy-makers, laypersons, and ethicists. In addition, we address the issue of moral competence. Poiesis Prax (2004) 2: 247–256 DOI 10.1007/s10202-003-0054-1

Vision assessment to support shaping 21st century society? Technology assessment as a tool for political judgement

This book is about ways to think, as well as on ways to think about thinking, about the future. Specifically, we will focus on the role of technology in the first half of the 2lst Century, as we are supposedly entering the ‘post-industrial,’ ‘trans-national,’ ‘post-modern’ (and so on) society. And we will ask how we can critically assess and construct visions on the ways in which technology and social problems are going to relate to each other.

Reflexive Planning as Design and Work: Lessons from the Port of Amsterdam

In recent years, planning theorists have advanced various interpretations of the notion of reflexivity, inspired by American pragmatism, complexity theory, hermeneutics, discursive and collaborative planning. Scholars agree that “reflexivity” has a strong temporal dimension: it not only aims to solve present planning problems, but to imagine and understand alternative trajectories for future action. This article explores the practical utility of reflexivity for planners, through a case study that focuses on a project to promote sustainable development in the Port of Amsterdam. Reflexivity in planning emerges as a new tool for generating critical knowledge and dialogue that can synthesise the perspectives of multiple actors in a common understanding, existing structural constraints and a collective imagination of alternative future possibilities. Such research highlights the potential of this approach to generate a creative reconfiguration of the present, and to build capacity for meaningful and considered change.