Questioning Interdisciplinarity: What Roles for Laboratory Based Social Science?

Abstract

This chapter begins by describing the lure of interdisciplinarity as a solution to the problem of developing ‘socially responsible’ nano sciences and technologies. It argues that while collaborative engagement of social science with nanotechnology research was understood as unproblematic from a policy stance, little had been written on its actual practice. Since the year 2000, when the National Nanotechnology Initiative was created in the United States of America, nanotechnology has become a priority for many national science and technology policies. Its arrival as a strategically important area of research policy has been accompanied by discussion of how best to ensure its ‘responsible development’. While the term ‘nanotechnology’ remains technically ambiguous, one thing is clear: it has become an important term in science policy. Also damaging to the project of carrying out an ethnography of laboratory practice was the duty placed on us to contribute tangibly and immediately to the ‘responsible development’ of nanotechnology.

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