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The thesis investigates the social processes involved in the practices of futuring. It addresses the question of how social practices contribute to the production and maintenance of robust versions of the future. It asks how best we should study futurity, including expectations, imaginations, promises and visions. Existing research tells us rather little about how ordinary practices render the future as a particular, publicly available and accountable presence or absence. In what ways do people achieve situated performances of certainty about the future? The thesis addresses these questions by drawing upon recent theoretical themes in Science and Technology Studies (STS), notably accountabil...
This thought-provoking book expands on the notion that Big Science is not the only term to describe and investigate particularly large research projects, scientific collaborations and facilities. It investigates the significant overlap between Big Science and Research Infrastructures (RIs) in a European context since the early twenty-first century. Contributions to this innovative book not only augment the study of Big Science with new perspectives, but also launch the study of RIs as a promising new line of inquiry.
An increasing number of scholars have begun to see science and technology as relevant issues in International Relations (IR), acknowledging the impact of material elements, technical instruments, and scientific practices on international security, statehood, and global governance. This two-volume collection brings the debate about science and technology to the center of International Relations. It shows how integrating science and technology translates into novel analytical frameworks, conceptual approaches and empirical puzzles, and thereby offers a state-of-the-art review of various methodological and theoretical ways in which sciences and technologies matter for the study of international...
This book analyses the emergence of a transformed Big Science in Europe and the United States, using both historical and sociological perspectives. It shows how technology-intensive natural sciences grew to a prominent position in Western societies during the post-World War II era, and how their development cohered with both technological and social developments. At the helm of post-war science are large-scale projects, primarily in physics, which receive substantial funds from the public purse. Big Science Transformed shows how these projects, popularly called 'Big Science', have become symbols of progress. It analyses changes to the political and sociological frameworks surrounding publicly-funding science, and their impact on a number of new accelerator and reactor-based facilities that have come to prominence in materials science and the life sciences. Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be of great interest to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science.
This volume casts a critical gaze on current practices and on the wider relationship of bicycling to other forms of urban mobility, especially within the context of sustainable and livable cities. The book's international contributors provide an interdisciplinary critical analysis of policy and practice.
This book investigates the political history of Big Science in Europe in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, characterised by the founding histories of two collaborative, single-sited facilities namely the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France and the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (European XFEL) in Schenefeld, Germany. Under the heading of the other Europe, this book presents the history and politics of European Big Science as an alternative road to (Western) European integration besides the mainstream political integration process of the European Economic Community and the European Union. It shows that Big Science has a role to play in European politics and policymaking and that the crucial and unavoidable symbiosis between science, technology and politics brings the creation of Big Science projects back to geopolitical realities.
A History of Artillery traces the development of artillery through the ages, providing a thorough study of these weapons. From its earliest recorded use in battle over a millennium ago, up to the recent Gulf War, Balkan, and Afghanistan conflicts, artillery has often been the deciding factor in battle. Black shows that artillery sits within the general history of a war as a means that varied greatly between armies and navies, and also across time.
Information is power. For more than five hundred years the success or failure of nations has been determined by a country’s ability to acquire knowledge and technical skill and transform them into strength and prosperity. Leading historian Jeremy Black approaches global history from a distinctive perspective, focusing on the relationship between information and society and demonstrating how the understanding and use of information have been the primary factors in the development and character of the modern age. Black suggests that the West’s ascension was a direct result of its institutions and social practices for acquiring, employing, and retaining information and the technology that was ultimately produced. His cogent and well-reasoned analysis looks at cartography and the hardware of communication, armaments and sea power, mercantilism and imperialism, science and astronomy, as well as bureaucracy and the management of information, linking the history of technology with the history of global power while providing important indicators for the future of our world.
Public Technology Procurement and Innovation studies public technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. In the past few years, public technology procurement has been a relatively neglected topic in the theoretical and research literature on the economics of innovation. Similarly, preoccupation with `supply-side' measures has led policy-makers to avoid making very extensive use of this important `demand-side' instrument. These trends have been especially pronounced in the European Union. There, as this book will argue, existing legislation governing public procurement presents obstacles to the use of public technology procurement as a means of stimulating and supporting technological innovation. Recently, however, there has been a gradual re-awakening of practical interest in such measures among policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere. For these and other related measures, this volume aims to contribute to a serious reconsideration of public technology procurement from the complementary standpoints of innovation theory and innovation policy.
Concerns about quality mathematics education are often posed in terms of the types of mathematics that are worthwhile and valuable for both the student and society in general, and about how to best support students so that they can develop this mathematics. Concerns about equity are about who is excluded from the opportunity to develop quality mathematics within our current practices and systems, and about how to remove social barriers that systematically disadvantage those students. This collection of chapters summarises our learning about the achievement of both equity and quality agendas in mathematics education and to move forward the debate on their importance for the field.