Introduction
Welcome to the Ethics and Politics of Nanotechnology (EPNANO) project at Rice University. EPNANO is a research project on the collaborative investigation of emergent ethical and political issues in nanotechnology and related fields. It is also an experiment in research methodology, collaboration, critique, and new forms of composition and dissemination. It is funded by the Center for Environmental and Biological Nanotechnology and housed at the Rice Department of Anthropology. Material available on this site includes transcripts, audio, video and analysis of ethical, political and philosophical problems raised in this field.
EPNANO is an outgrowth of an earlier experimental project, the Ethics and Politics of Information Technology (EPIT), which was identical in its aim of experimenting with form, but substituted the content of computer science. A draft report on that project is available.
Why ethics and politics? A principle goal of both projects has been a thorough-going commitment to empiricism in terms of identifying emergent and unfamiliar issues of ethical and political importance. On the one hand, the project does not start from textbook ethical and political theory; instead, it seeks to explore such issues through fieldwork, interview, participant-observation, pedagogy and collaboration. On the other hand, it responds uneasily to an increasingly strong demand from scientists, corporations, funding agencies and other actors that social scientists be involved in and respond to emerging sciences. Indeed, the project and its pre-cursor have depended exclusively (to date) on funding from the sciences, not from conventional social science outlets. Thus, a key anxiety in this project is whether or not, and how, the goals of an interpretive social science, with firm roots in anthropology, science studies, philosophy and social theory can adequately respond to the demands of scientists, engineers, funding entities, and corporations, without sacrificing the ability to offer critical and creative analyses.
Why Nanotechnology? Nanotechnology is not so much a field or a science as it is the current label for the funding and policy priorities of a diverse set of interests, from federal governments and corporations to universities and start-ups. Definitions of nanotechnology abound, but the reality is that it covers a huge diversity of research areas. The research conducted in this project begins at Rice University, and maps some of the fields of research which are represented here, as well as some of the institutional efforts to give nanotechnology an identity, a direction, and to control it as well.
Lastly, here are some of the tools we are using.
Why ethics and politics? A principle goal of both projects has been a thorough-going commitment to empiricism in terms of identifying emergent and unfamiliar issues of ethical and political importance. On the one hand, the project does not start from textbook ethical and political theory; instead, it seeks to explore such issues through fieldwork, interview, participant-observation, pedagogy and collaboration. On the other hand, it responds uneasily to an increasingly strong demand from scientists, corporations, funding agencies and other actors that social scientists be involved in and respond to emerging sciences. Indeed, the project and its pre-cursor have depended exclusively (to date) on funding from the sciences, not from conventional social science outlets. Thus, a key anxiety in this project is whether or not, and how, the goals of an interpretive social science, with firm roots in anthropology, science studies, philosophy and social theory can adequately respond to the demands of scientists, engineers, funding entities, and corporations, without sacrificing the ability to offer critical and creative analyses.
Why Nanotechnology? Nanotechnology is not so much a field or a science as it is the current label for the funding and policy priorities of a diverse set of interests, from federal governments and corporations to universities and start-ups. Definitions of nanotechnology abound, but the reality is that it covers a huge diversity of research areas. The research conducted in this project begins at Rice University, and maps some of the fields of research which are represented here, as well as some of the institutional efforts to give nanotechnology an identity, a direction, and to control it as well.
Problems, Inquiries and Analyses
Responsibility, Civil Society, EHSInquiries: Kristen Kulinowski Vicki Colvin Mark Wiesner Analyses "Allotropes of Fieldwork in Nanotechnology" (Kelty) "Making Nano Responsible" (Kelty/McCarthy) (in progress) "The Social as Membrane" (Naficy) |
New Objects: Nanocars, membranes, single pixel camerasInquiries: Kevin Kelly Mark Wiesner Experiments in the Kelly Lab Analyses "Liminal Particles" (Dib) The Experimental Film |
Lastly, here are some of the tools we are using.
All material on this website is Copyright (c) 2004-2007, by the authors and interviewees. Unless otherwise noted,
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.