Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard

Date: 

Monday, February 29, 2016, 12:15pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

Harvard University Center for the Environment, 24 Oxford Street, 3rd Floor Seminar Room

"Responsible Innovation and Public Values in the Dutch Shale Gas Controversy"

Speaker:

Behnam Taebi, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology; Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.

Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Thursday of the week before the event.

Contact:

Shana Rabinowich
shana_rabinowich@hks.harvard.edu

Chair:

Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.

Abstract:

The introduction of new energy technologies may lead to public resistance and contestation. It is argued that this is caused by an inadequate inclusion of relevant public values in the design of technology. In this presentation I will first conceptualize responsible innovation as the adequate inclusion of public values relevant to technological development. An ideal approach to responsible innovation requires (i) the ethics of technology, to investigate the role of values in design; (ii) institutional theory, to understand the parts played by institutions in realizing values; and (iii) policy, planning and science, technology and society literature, to focus on stakeholder engagement. Arguing that the public debate can form a rich source from which to retrieve the values at stake, I will explain how this approach can be operationalized by focusing on the public debate and controversies regarding the exploration of shale gas in the Netherlands. Since controversies articulate the conflicting values and reveal unanticipated societal and ethical risks, could they be used for the development of new technology in a fair manner?

Biography:

Behnam Taebi is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at Delft University of Technology and a Research Fellow in the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. His research interests are in energy ethics, responsible innovation and nuclear ethics. He studied Material Science and Engineering (2006) and received his PhD in Philosophy of Technology (2010). Taebi is working on a research on ‘ethics and governance of multinational nuclear waste repositories’. He is the coordinating editor of a volume on The Ethics of Nuclear Energy (2015, Cambridge University Press) and a special issue of Journal of Risk Research on “The Socio-technical Challenges of Nuclear Power Production and Waste Management.” Taebi is a member of Task Group 97 of the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP) that is preparing a publication on the protection of the public, the workers and the environment for surface and near surface disposal of radioactive waste.