LamprouMemo11

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? 2. What is the main argument of the text? 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing? Kleinman, Daniel Lee and Abby J. Kinchy. 2003. “Why Ban Bovine Growth Hormone?: Science, Social Welfare, and the Divergent Biotech Policy Landscapes in Europe and the United States.” Science as Culture 12 (3): 375-414. 1. ü “The central discourse in shaping ideas about technology and policies concerning those technologies in the United States and Europe is // technological progressivism // .”(378) ü “In many disputes over new technology, especially in the United States, those who oppose the technology because of the expected undesirable social effects or moral/ethical concerns gain legitimate entry into the debate only when they focus on issues, such as the environment, health and safety that are widely understood to be matters for scientific evaluation. A good example of this is the reduction of moral concerns about fetal research into technical debates about the precise point at which life begins.” (380) ü “In the US, particularly in the period since the election of Ronald Reagan, a discourse that challenges free marketism has become increasingly difficult to mount successfully.” (381) ü “Social welfareist concerns, particularly agrarian ones, were a central driving force behind rbGH regulation in the European Union.” (390) 2. They argue that discourses of the market, science, and technology bias discussions of policy away from the use of socio-economic criteria in determining whether to permit commercialization of a technology. 3. The authors provide a brief analysis of US biotechnology regulation to shade light on discourses that shape debates about technology in both the United States and Europe. They analyze the emergence of the fourth criterion-socioeconomic- in the EU policy discussions, a concept that was linked to regulation of the commercialization of rbGH. They analyze the different organizational factors that affect the policy decision making in both the US and EU. 4. The text draws on literature concerning policy making especially the fourth hurdle concept but more importantly on literature concerning comparative studies in policy making, and policy cultures. 5. I will build on literatures of comparative policy studies, and policy cultures like the one of the present paper. I will argue (I think at least) that different organization and the fourth criterion will lead to a more precautionary oriented policy on nanotechnology in the EU than in US. 6. ü European parliament argues that “technology should be judged primarily in qualitative, not quantitative terms. ü The policy procedures in EU committees seem to take under consideration the fourth criteria-not as an official criterion although. ü This unofficial criterion and the multiple policy bodies in EU makes the procedures toward regulation of questionable technologies slower than in the US. Busch, L. (2000). “The Moral Economy of Grades and Standards.” __Journal of Rular Studies__ **16:** 273-283. 1. ü “Grades and standards are ubiquitous. We are surrounded by them. We use them to measure the qualities of things.” (273) ü // “formal // standards for products and processes, always written in legal or technical jargon, are hardly the stu ff that excites the imagination or that yields fruitful theoretical or empirical insights. Despite their ubiquity, we tend to leave their design to experts, to technicians, to regulatory scientists.” (273) ü “A set of fi rst re fl ections on an aspect of social life (meaning grades and standards) and that has received little attention beyond the technical sphere.” (282) 2. The author argues that “g rades and standards are ways of defining a moral economy, for defining what (who) is good and what is bad… [and are introduced] “precisely in order to change the relationships among actors, giving one an advantage over another” (274-275) 3. the author supports his argument by using historical data on standardization and literature as well as examples for each categorization he creates in order to understand the moral economy of standards. 4. The main literature concerning standards analyses either technical, economic, or social/moral. 5. Since my focus on my project will be on nanotechnology policy making with a focus on product standards literature on theories of standards is very important because I can base my research and make assumptions about how the nanotechnology standards will be developed. 6. I find very interesting the argument the definition between what is good and bad. If I translate this to my research I can say that in the same way the nanotechnology standards will define what can be called nano and what cannot. As well in the section of forms of standardization the idea of standardization of things but at the same time consumers, workers, market. Very applicable to nanotechnology where commercialization is the main purpose the nanotechnology standards must achieve. Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” from Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition, NY, Routledge, 1996. 1. ü “the revisionist historiography neither undermines nor vindicates ‘the concept of the public sphere’ simpliciter, but that it calls into question four assumptions that are central to a specific-bourgeois, masculinist, white-supremacist-conception of the public sphere.” (76) ü “social equality is not a necessary condition for participatory parity in public spheres.” (80) ü “we need a critical political sociology of a form of public life in which multiple but unequal publics participate.” (85) 2. By criticizing Haberma’s concept of the ‘public sphere’ the author argues that “some new form of public sphere is required to salvage that arena’s critical function and to institutionalize democracy. 3. She is contested Haberma’s concept of the “public sphere” by criticizing using other literature and by doing discourse analysis to Haberma’s book concerning the historical and conceptual importance of the argument, open access, equality, multiple publics. 4. Fraiser uses literature from revisionist historiography, feminist political literature. 5. The latest creation of governments not-for profit organizations and industry are panels and workshops that create this public sphere like spaces that everyone can participate equally. This is not true although considering power and legitimacy issues in policy discussion and expertise following the same line that Fraiser’s argument does. 6. ü The idea that not everyone can participate equally in the public spheres ü That those public spheres can serve as a mask for domination ü That “multiplicity of publics is preferable to a single public sphere in both stratified societies and egalitarian societies” (92)