2018 Volume 15 Pages 47-65
Democratic control of science and technology has been a central question for science and technology studies. However, in terms of how to understand and practice this question, Japanese STS which started in the 1990s has pronounced tendency toward the break with previous Japanese science studies or technology studies. First, influenced by “social constructionism of social problem/social movements”, it biases power understanding to the power of idea like “framing”, and become hard to see the reality which goods and brutal power greatly affect. Secondly, as a result of not asking for an explanation with the macro social structure, it has lost sight of political solidarity to change the structure under which everyone live together. Thirdly, on instead as a result of aiming for “governance” politics which is democratic self-governance of the network society, and for “governance” of science and technology there, it even breaks solidarity politics. In fact, going along with the “discursive democracy” which is the democracy of the affected people and designed as a governance technique, it has been advocating “engineering ethics” and “social responsibility of scientists” as a responsibility to respond to the voices of all stakeholders, ie all the affected people. This paper points out the bias and narrowness of understanding of such politics, democracy and ethics found in STS in Japan.
