Technology Assessment in an STS Context
Review of Armin Grunwald, Technikfolgenabschätzung – eine Einführung, Berlin: edition sigma, 2002, 318 pp.
By and large the discussion on Technology Assessment (TA) has moved out of academia in recent years and mainly resides in parliamentary offices for technology assessment and other specialised institutions. From an STS perspective the emphasis shifted several years ago from impact assessment to design, social shaping and the ‘management of technology in society.’ TA has been extended to active ‘change management’ within Constructive Technology Assessment; it has developed concepts such as Strategic Niche Management, or focused on the transition of broader socio-technical regimes. With his introductory book on TA, Armin Grundwald impressively presents TA concepts, methods and institutions within broader social and political contexts and research fields such as science and technology studies. In doing so Grunwald not only gives a refreshing overview of technology assessment and its background, but also manages to point out how the dilemmas and tensions encountered in TA could still be a provocation and a fruitful source for further research in STS.
The book consists of four main parts. Part one presents the present problems and challenges emanating from the force field of technology and society and TA’s prospects for dealing with these problems. The second part describes the practical implementation of technology assessment (mainly its concepts and institutions). The third deals with methodological challenges and has a typology of TA methods. Finally there is a contextualisation of TA that addresses its critique (voiced from different perspectives), its relation to other research disciplines and its embedding in the discourse of sustainability. As a concise overview and critical discussion of TA topics, the book hardly has a counterpart in the German-speaking arena (and probably internationally), where comprehensive volumes on TA methods and instruments and specific articles in academic journals dominate.
Grunwald embeds TA in the setting of several current societal challenges. A classic issue concerns the ‘unintended side effects’ of technological progress. While an unreflective trust in technology is not possible any more, policy, industry and science have to face new challenges for decision-making and governance in a context of uncertainty. Moreover, decisions on technology in a pluralist society are often characterised by conflict and controversy rather than consensus, and thereby raise questions of legitimation. A further challenge is the management of technical change in society. Grunwald warns of the naïve stance in the manageability of technology. Tendencies towards self-referential system dynamics or economic ‘determinants’ of technical change can hardly be denied. In this context one also has to raise the question of the capacity of policy to significantly influence technological change. The current situation is the ‘expert dilemma,’ where different experts arrive at contradictory results. Value-free expert advice is questioned. Traditional concepts such as TA as scientific policy advice also have their limitations.
A critique of TA’s limitations, such as its focus on the impacts of technology on society, has pushed the concept of TA forward. As Grunwald claims, the perspective on design and change management has been strengthened. Social, cultural and political contexts of technologies have been better integrated. Closer links with ethical questions of technology and with research on the social shaping of technology have been established. Consequently Grunwald presents a broad basic concept of TA:
The preparation and science-based support of political decisions with respect to technical change.
Early warning of technology-induced dangers and at the same time identification of use potentials of technologies.
A means of dealing with technology-related conflicts through mediation, participatory procedures and ‘socially friendly design’ of technology.
Improvement of social learning processes in managing technical change and appropriating technologies.
After providing some background to these general problems, concepts and theories, the book then gives an overview of different TA approaches – the classic expert-oriented scientific policy consulting approach, participative approaches to technology assessment (which alone cover a broad range of instruments and methods), constructive technology assessment and others. An interesting part is the discussion of different types of problems participative TA may face - from the question of non-participants and representativity to questions of power, procedural challenges and the integration of participative procedures into the policy-making process.
In general, an outstanding quality of this book is how it mixes a systematic overview of TA and information on various approaches, institutions and instruments, and still retains a critical and reflective stance. TA’s limitations and dilemmas are discussed. TA also is embedded in current socio-economic contexts without losing sight of the pragmatic requirements of policy consulting. The book constantly shifts from ‘instrumental’ TA topics, such as the design of TA projects and methodological approaches, to a meta-level, inquiring into methodological challenges and problems (e.g., prognosis, foresight, valuation, design options) and relating TA with broader questions and demands such as sustainable development, the ‘rational’ management of technical change or the democratisation of technology.