TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘You caught me off guard’
T2 - Probing the futures of complex engineered nanomaterials
AU - Sadowski, Jathan
AU - Guston, David
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1235693. We would like to thank Nolan Bidese who provided research support. The other authors in this special issue provided useful resources and comments. We thank the American Chemical Society for hosting a workshop on nanotechnology governance where we presented an earlier version of this paper. We appreciate the workshop participants for engaging in thoughtful discussion. Additionally, two anonymous reviewers provided constructive comments that strengthened our paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - This paper applies principles and methods from the framework of anticipatory governance to the case of what the National Research Council calls “complex engineered nanomaterials” (CENM). This framework does not aim to generate crystal ball visions or definitive answers, but rather provides guidance for uncovering, understanding, and addressing social, ethical, environmental, and policy issues that stem from emerging technologies. Thus, in anticipation of increased CENM research, CENM products, and their different governance challenges, we aim to lay the groundwork for the anticipatory governance of CENMs by mapping out what—according to the engineers and scientists, we interviewed who are working at the research level of these CENMs—will be the main issues and themes that we need to pay attention to in the near future. The structured interviews focused on three groups of questions: (1) potential and/or actual applications and/or products from the participant’s research; (2) environmental health and safety issues pertaining to both the participant’s research and CENMs generally; and (3) the future of CENMs. Without a foundational understanding to build on, social scientists, policymakers, and regulatory agencies will be at a loss about how to govern CENMs before they are widely implemented in society.
AB - This paper applies principles and methods from the framework of anticipatory governance to the case of what the National Research Council calls “complex engineered nanomaterials” (CENM). This framework does not aim to generate crystal ball visions or definitive answers, but rather provides guidance for uncovering, understanding, and addressing social, ethical, environmental, and policy issues that stem from emerging technologies. Thus, in anticipation of increased CENM research, CENM products, and their different governance challenges, we aim to lay the groundwork for the anticipatory governance of CENMs by mapping out what—according to the engineers and scientists, we interviewed who are working at the research level of these CENMs—will be the main issues and themes that we need to pay attention to in the near future. The structured interviews focused on three groups of questions: (1) potential and/or actual applications and/or products from the participant’s research; (2) environmental health and safety issues pertaining to both the participant’s research and CENMs generally; and (3) the future of CENMs. Without a foundational understanding to build on, social scientists, policymakers, and regulatory agencies will be at a loss about how to govern CENMs before they are widely implemented in society.
KW - Anticipatory governance
KW - Complex engineered nanomaterials
KW - Environmental health and safety
KW - Future
KW - Science policy
KW - Technology assessment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84979649677&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84979649677&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11051-016-3485-z
DO - 10.1007/s11051-016-3485-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84979649677
SN - 1388-0764
VL - 18
JO - Journal of Nanoparticle Research
JF - Journal of Nanoparticle Research
IS - 7
M1 - 208
ER -