His report Technologie et démocratie came under PMO attacks, who considered Joly as a “mercenary” advocating “acceptability tricks” and the activists interrupted the local public debate organized by the Metro.
#POSER PRO 2012 FRENCH HOW TO#
In 2005, the Metro, a local authority, commissioned a report about how to organize the debate with society to a social scientist Pierre-Benoit Joly.
#POSER PRO 2012 FRENCH CODE#
The activists (with a code name Pièces et main d’oeuvre - parts and labour force - abbreviated PMO) systematically denounced the undemocratic decision process leading to Minatec by criticizing the elite group of policymakers exclusively concerned with the promotion of Grenoble as a competitive innovation centre on the international stage. In Grenoble, the region administration, the municipality, and the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) had invested 193 million of euros for the construction of Minatec between 20, without any debate upstream of the major decisions. The backlash of nanotechnology in Grenoble prompted many initiatives of debates but eventually acted as an obstacle to a public dialogue on nanotechnology in France. In 2004, French citizens heard about nanotechnology for the first time because a small group of activists from Grenoble in the French Alps published polemical pamphlets against the local project Minatec, a big scientific complex dedicated to nanoresearch. From the outset, nanotechnology has been as controversial as nuclear technology. While in official discourses about nanotechnology had a strong inclusive power, in practice it had a dissenting power in France. In the discourse on nanotechnology, this emerging technology was distinguished by its strong inclusive power and potential for social innovation. Various forms of public engagement have been developed in Europe such as citizen juries, consensus conferences, citizen conferences, and stakeholder forums. In this paper, I consider only the second aspect - the integration of the public in nanotechnology. This ideal articulated around two major claims - that research agendas be set in close collaboration with the social and human sciences and that the public be actively engaged in technological choices - has encouraged social innovation in the field of nanotechnology. In Europe, the ideal of co-production of science technology and society promoted by the STS community was expressed in the Converging Technologies European Knowledge Society report. The nightmarish scenario of the grey goo invented by Eric Drexler also drew the public attention to nanotechnology.
In particular, the association between nanoscience and human enhancement in the US program Converging Technologies for Enhancing Human Performances - the so-called NBIC (nano, bio, info, cogno) program - was an important factor behind the recruitment of social scientists on a number of research programs on nanotechnology. The hype surrounding the emergence of nanotechnology proved extremely effective to raise public attention and minor controversies in the early 2000s. On the basis of this case study, I will argue that the STS ideal of co-production of science and society gradually gave way to a more modest co-learning process between stakeholders in the 2010s. Then I will describe the permanent forum NanoRESP opened in 2013 when nano controversies waned out. I will first report, from an insider’s perspective, the public debates conducted by a civil society organization VivAgora, in the national context of fierce controversies (2005–2009). Twenty years later, what happened to the promises of SHS integration and public engagement in nanotechnology? Was it part of the hype, one of the many promises made by the champions of nanotechnology initiatives that never materialized? As a contribution to this broad question, this paper focuses on public engagement initiatives in France and ventures some general reflections on their fate. A proactive attitude prevailed resulting in the integration of social scientists upstream at the research level, research programs on Ethical, Legal and Societal Impacts (ELSI), and various public engagement initiatives such as nanojury and citizen conferences. The hype surrounding the emergence of nanotechnology proved extremely effective to raise public attention and controversies in the early 2000s.