The RRI Challenge

The RRI Challenge

by Blagovesta Nikolova
Released July 2019
Publisher(s): Wiley-ISTE
ISBN: 9781786301420

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Book description

This book explores the prospects of innovation governance within the context of the growing uneasiness surrounding the effects, democratic deficits and overall societal adequacy of techno-scientific progress. There is a focus on the recently promoted notion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), and some light is shed on the inevitable impediments of its meaningful implementation with respect to the normative structure of contemporary market societies. A particular matter of concern is the normative interlock between science and the market around the notion of neutrality, and the narrowing room for ethics reflexivity.

The RRI Challenge outlines avenues for further conceptualization so that RRI can fulfil its emancipatory potential as social critique. This involves challenging the current politico-economic framework of the knowledge-creation process, and re-examining key conceptual dyads in innovation governance such as: governance/government, hard law/soft law, risk/fault, uncertainty/indeterminacy and morality/ethics.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Introduction On the Imperative for Responsible Innovation in Contemporary Market Societies
    1. I.1. What’s behind the “E”?
    2. I.2. The imperative for responsible innovation
    3. I.3. Market societies and the RRI challenge
    4. I.4. The challenges before the RRI field
  6. 1 RRI as Social Critique: Achievements and Drawbacks
    1. 1.1. RRI and its “precursors” – what’s new?
    2. 1.2. Addressing the mischiefs of free markets
    3. 1.3. Democracy in distress: the prospects of collective responsibility
  7. 2 Responsibility and the Future
    1. 2.1. The anticipatory aspect of RRI
    2. 2.2. Innovation and manageability of the future: on uncertainty, control and regulation
    3. 2.3. Why responsibility?
  8. 3 EU Governance of RTD and the Market
    1. 3.1. On governance and good governance: order with/out authority?
    2. 3.2. The economic “imprint” on the EU governance of RTD
    3. 3.3. EU governance of RTD: is “Science versus Society” actually the problem?
  9. 4 EU Institutional Rationality on RRI
    1. 4.1. On ends and means: EU institutional discourse on the instrumentality of RRI
    2. 4.2. The RRI “keys”: keys to what?
    3. 4.3. Walking the tightrope between democratization and responsibilization
  10. 5 Ethics and the RRI Promise
    1. 5.1. Ethics in the EU governance of RTD: achievements, problems and challenges
    2. 5.2. RRI and rediscovering the promises of the Nuremberg Code (1947)
    3. 5.3. The future of ethics in the context of RRI: a gatekeeper of an open door?
  11. 6 Responsibilization in Tension with Market Regulation
    1. 6.1. Ethics in the Bermuda Triangle of market mechanisms: innovation, responsibility and the perennial reinvention of capitalism
    2. 6.2. On the traps behind the notion of “responsibilization” in a market-driven context
    3. 6.3. Going beyond New Public Management?
  12. Conclusion
  13. References
  14. Index
  15. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: The RRI Challenge
  • Author(s): Blagovesta Nikolova
  • Release date: July 2019
  • Publisher(s): Wiley-ISTE
  • ISBN: 9781786301420