Description
Book SynopsisThis timely book takes an insightful look at rethinking innovation and how lessons can be learnt from what is a major turning point in our contemporary societies: the urgent need to reduce the use or consumption of certain substances and technologies due to the dangers they pose to our environments and current way of life. Using theoretical reflection and empirical work in a broad range of sectors including agriculture, food, health, religion, energy, packaging, markets and digital technology, eminent scholars utilise new perspectives to enrich our understanding of innovation processes and how these can be transformed.
New Horizons for Innovation Studies provides a deep dive into what our production and consumption processes are, how they could be innovated differently and how those innovations could interrogate social science concepts and in particular science and technology studies. Chapters explore key case studies and topics for innovation studies, such as the reduced use of antibiotics and pesticides, car-free cities, bans on plastic use and decreasing meat consumption. Further, the book challenges both the partial and complete withdrawal of certain substances and technologies that currently sit at the heart of our contemporary lifestyles, and explores the emergence of alternatives as well as the potential resistance, risks and outcomes.
This engaging book will provide a thought-provoking read for scholars and graduate students in innovation policy, science and technology studies and public policy.
Trade Review‘With social and environmental imperatives for transformation now taken for granted even at the most elite levels of international governance, there could hardly be a more timely and topical subject: the rethinking of innovation to be as much about how to withdraw from technologies as how to grow them. The result is a refreshingly deeply researched, wide-ranging and ambitious collection of accessible chapters both new and old – all highly practical and policy-relevant. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in taking seriously the responsibilities to steer innovation in directions that deliver peace, social justice and ecological flourishing.’ -- Andy Stirling, University of Sussex, UK
‘This is a wonderful and timely contribution to innovation studies, and to science, technology and society studies. Everyone in those fields should read it, and profit from it.’ -- Arie Rip, University of Twente, the Netherlands
Table of ContentsContents: Beyond withdrawal, rethinking innovation in society: introductory considerations 1 Frédéric Goulet and Dominique Vinck PART I FRAMEWORKS 1 Withdrawal in the light of a historical analysis of innovation 18 Benoît Godin 2 Governing the discontinuation of large socio-technical systems 29 Pierre-Benoît Joly, Marc Barbier and Bruno Turnheim 3 How do technologies die? Studies of decline in literature on technological change 47 Zahar Koretsky PART II MECHANISMS FOR DETACHMENT 4 Going gluten-free: individual trajectories of avoidance 71 Grégori Akermann and Paul Coeurquetin 5 Reducing plastic use: from problems and solutions to problematisation 88 Gay Hawkins and Anisah Madden 6 Food without animals: substitution and exclusion 106 Sébastien Mouret and Jocelyne Porcher 7 The value of the Negawatt: load-shifting electricity consumption 120 Thomas Reverdy PART III INTENSITY OF DETACHMENT 8 Preventive moderation: vaccine hesitancy and vaccine selection in Quebec, 1960s–1990s 136 Laurence Monnais 9 Strong withdrawal or weak withdrawal? Problematization of pesticides and categorization of their alternatives in Argentina, Brazil and France 153 Frédéric Goulet, Alexis Aulagnier and Matthieu Hubert 10 Reducing antibiotic use in livestock farming 168 Nicolas Fortané, Florence Hellec, Florence Beaugrand, Nathalie Joly, and Mathilde Paul 11 White paper in a greening world: a journey through struggles over substitutes for chlorine bleaching 182 Nicolas Baya-Laffite PART IV DE-INTERMEDIATION AND REAGENCEMENT 12 Breaking with the assumption of centralization: an attempt to set up a peer-to-peer digital network for sharing agricultural data 201 Léa Stiefel and Dominique Vinck 13 Withdrawing as a matter of re-agencing: the case of bulk sales 216 Franck Cochoy, Alexandre Mallard and Cyrus Eugenio PART V RESISTANCE AND LOCKING 14 When industry holds back the withdrawal of an endocrine disruptor 230 Henri Boullier 15 Pharmaceutical markets and drug withdrawals 245 Nils Kessel 16 Uninventing the bomb 258 Donald MacKenzie 17 Aftercare, or doing less with discontinuation niche governance 268 Peter Stegmaier Conclusion: New Horizons for Innovation Studies 289 Frédéric Goulet and Dominique Vinck Index 300
