ORIGINAL PAPER

Introduction: Engaging with Nanotechnologies – EngagingDifferently?

Tee Rogers-Hayden & Alison Mohr & Nick Pidgeon

Received: 3 July 2007 /Accepted: 3 July 2007 / Published online: 3 August 2007# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract The idea of conducting upstream publicengagement over emerging technologies has beengaining popularity in Europe and North America, withnanotechnologies seen as a test case for this. For manyof its advocates, upstream engagement is about a re-conceptualisation of the science–society relationship inwhich a variety of ‘publics’ are brought together withstakeholders and scientists early in the Research andDevelopment process to co-develop technologicaltrajectories. However, the concept, aims and processesof upstream engagement remain ill-defined, are oftenmisunderstood, and have undergone little criticalanalysis. This special issue of NanoEthics, entitled‘Engaging with Nanotechnologies–Engaging Different-ly?’ takes a multi-nation, multi-case approach toexplore this idea, drawing on work represented byfour articles from the US and Europe, from ethno-graphic work in the nanotechnology lab through toanalysis of a Citizens’ Jury and other attempts to movepublic debate ‘upstream’. An overall message from the

papers is that without adequate critique ‘upstreamengagement’ might end up re-producing out-datedforms of science communication or being rejected asa failed concept before it has even matured.

Keywords Nanotechnologies . Public and stakeholderengagement . Deliberation

Introduction

The idea of conducting ‘upstream’ public engagementover the issue of emerging technologies has beengaining popularity in both Europe and North America,with nanotechnologies seen by many as an importanttest case for this. The beginning of the twenty-firstcentury has seen a burgeoning set of initiatives andevents; from so-called ‘upstream engagement eve-nings’ where individual scientists meet with thepublic, to citizens juries and other structured formsof dialogue, and even major research projects andcentres focussing upon the developing and futurerelationships between nanotechnology and society.To a greater or lesser degree, all of these initiativesstem from an acknowledgment that the top-downapproach to science communication embedded intraditional ‘public understanding of science’ effortshave failed. Simple attempts to transfer knowledgefrom the science community to a passive, recipientpublic not only patronises the various individualsparticipating but more crucially does not, as Bauer et

NanoEthics (2007) 1:123–130DOI 10.1007/s11569-007-0013-8

T. Rogers-Hayden (*) :N. PidgeonSchool of Psychology, Cardiff University,Tower Building, Park Place,Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UKe-mail: T.Rogers-Hayden@uea.ac.uk

A. MohrInstitute for Science and Society,The University of Nottingham,University Park,Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

al. [1] point out, of itself necessarily generate morepositive attitudes towards technologies and science.With this realisation has come a growing appreciationand use of more dialogic analytic-deliberative pro-cesses for genuine two-way engagement betweenscientists and citizens.

The philosophical foundations and methods forpublic engagement with science issues have beendeveloped and debated by a variety of authors for atleast the last 15 years (see [2–4]). Calls for engagingthe public in deliberating about new technologies andrisk controversies rest upon three broad sets ofargument, which according to Fiorino are character-ised as normative, instrumental and substantive [5].The normative argument is that dialogue is a goodthing in and of itself, as one part of the politics ofaddressing controversial questions in a democraticsociety. The idea here is that public participation willopen up technological decision-making, which is sooften too narrowly framed around expert drivendefinitions of ‘risk’ or economic benefit. By makingsuch decisions responsive to wider ethical or valueconcerns, particularly those of directly affectedpeople, a genuinely democratic approach to thegovernance of science and technology can be forged[6]. The instrumental argument, by contrast, invokespublic engagement as a means of improving thelegitimacy of end-state decisions, and through thisenhancing such things as public confidence and trustin the policy-making process [7]. It is significant thatit is precisely this justification that had dominatedmany discussions on fostering public engagementamong the UK science policy community followingthe BSE disaster (see House of Lords [8]) andKearnes (this collection) proposes it also informscurrent government support for upstream engagementwith nanotechnologies in the UK. Substantive argu-ments, finally, stress the role that dialogue can play asone part of a wider process of technology assessment,with the objective of generating a more robustevidence base and through this more socially accept-able outcomes. For example, bringing patient advo-cacy groups into debate with medical researchers canfocus the latter’s attention onto the actual (rather thanimagined) needs and concerns of the end users of aproposed innovation in medical practice. Equally,citizen advisory groups can assist in initial problemdefinition and framing of a risk decision problem, aswell as in providing an expression of a range of

community values, through identifying what actuallymatters to a community when it has to decide about amajor environmental change or a new hazardousfacility being sited in their locale [9].

Whatever the expressed (or even implicit) motiva-tions for engagement processes, what is clear is that theyhave in the past been used most typically in a‘retrospective’ manner; that is, only at the point atwhich environmental or technological controversies arealready mature, a situation often associated withpolarized opinions and an inability on the part of manycommitted participants to agree to trade-offs or com-promises. What is new with the idea of ‘upstream’public engagement is the call for citizens to be broughttogether with stakeholders and scientists prospectively:that is early in the Research and Development phasesof a potentially controversial technological develop-ment, before major investment decisions are made,wider public attitudes or interest group positions areformed, and well in advance of major social controver-sy about the issue. In stressing this, many advocates ofupstream engagement point to a substantive objectiveof re-conceptualising the science–society relationshipin which citizens and scientists participate in a co-development of visions for this and its various possibletrajectories for the future [10, 11].

However, the notion of upstream engagement has,as yet, undergone little sustained critical analysis. Thepurpose of the current collection of articles is to bringtogether papers from Europe and North America toexplore not only experiments in engaging the public innanoscience but also ways of engaging nanoscientistsin debates about the public value of science. In thisintroductory paper we briefly explore the historybehind the move to upstream engagement with nano-technologies, alongside a consideration of the crucialissue of dialogue timing. We then briefly discussengaging publics and scientists before introducing thefour following papers and the themes within them.

The Nano-Engagement Landscape

Since the mid-1980s, major public engagement pro-cesses have been used extensively as a deliberative toolfor technology assessment in Europe, particularly inDenmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland (see e.g. [2,12, 13]). In the US the move ‘upstream’ was in partanticipated in the pioneering US National Research

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Council report on Understanding Risk [14] whichdeveloped a detailed set of proposals for risk character-isation. The National Research Council define theresultant analytic-deliberative process as combiningsound science and systematic uncertainty analysis withdeliberation by an appropriate representation of affect-ed parties, policy makers and specialists in riskanalysis. According to the authors, dialogue anddeliberation should occur throughout the process ofrisk characterisation, from problem framing through todetailed risk assessment and then on to risk manage-ment and decision implementation. The NationalResearch Council report argues here that failure toattend to dialogue at the early stages of problemframing can be particularly costly, for if a key concernis missed in subsequent analysis the danger is that thewhole process may be invalidated (see also [15]). Theproposals of the National Research Council can also beviewed as the outcome of a growing transition fromtraditional forms of one-way ‘risk communication’, tomore dialogic or discursive fora which have thepotential to empower people in the processes ofdecision-making about risks [2, 16, 17]. However,while such proposals may seem unproblematic asmatters of broad principle, this does not preclude usfrom taking a critical stance on the issues involved, inparticular because we do not yet fully understand theunintended consequences of moves to greater publicparticipation in science and technology debates.

It is the UK – a relative latecomer to the arena ofpublic engagement and new technology – that hasexperienced most recent experimentation with engage-ment and nanotechnologies. A key watershed in thisregard was reached in the UK at the end of the 1990sas the culmination of the Bovine Spongiform Enceph-alopathy (BSE or ‘mad cow’) crisis, as well as thebitter controversy over genetically modified (GM)crops, contributed to rising concerns amongst policymakers that an extensive erosion of public trust inscience and scientists had occurred [8]. This in turnraised an awareness of the need to re-conceptualise theway science policy was managed and viewed, coupledwith a willingness to fund and experiment with publicengagement processes, including the major GM Nation?debate in 2003 on genetically modified agriculture [18].Against this backdrop the UK government approachedthe principal science and technology academies, theRoyal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering(RS/RAEng), to undertake a joint inquiry into the health

and safety, environmental, ethical and societal implica-tions, and associated uncertainties of nanotechnologies in2003. The year long process was conducted by aninterdisciplinary working-group and a secretariat onbehalf of the two academies, and its landmark reportNanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities andUncertainties [19] was subsequently published in July2004.

The RS/RAEng report acknowledges that nano-technologies have the potential to provide a wide rangeof future benefits to society and recommends steps torealise this potential while minimising possible futureuncertainties and risks. The report recognises that‘many of the issues currently surrounding nanotech-nologies are “upstream” in nature’ and calls for ‘aconstructive and proactive debate about the future ofthe technology now, before deeply entrenched orpolarised positions appear’ ([19], p 67). As a part ofthe inquiry process the academies also conductedresearch into public attitudes towards nanotechnolo-gies, which highlighted questions around the controland governance of nanotechnologies as an appropriatearea for early dialogue. In response to the RoyalSociety recommendations, the Cambridge NanoscienceCentre, in collaboration with the environmental NGOGreenpeace and the University of Newcastle organisedNanoJury UK in the summer of 2005, a 6-week longcitizens jury on nanotechnology held in Halifax, WestYorkshire [20, 21]. Following introductions to nano-technologies, and a series of evidence sessions fromexpert witnesses, the jury made a total of 23recommendations. These included that manufacturednanoparticles be tested for safety as if they were newsubstances, set alongside recommendations that theUK government should invest in nanotechnologies inorder to create jobs, and that there should be moredialogue on new technologies and increased interactionbetween citizens and scientists [21].

In its own response to the academies report, the UKgovernment asserted a continuing commitment toinitiating public dialogue, with the stated aim of bothinforming the direction of research and development(upstream) and the progression of appropriate regula-tion (downstream) for nanotechnologies. To this end, inAugust 2005 the government launched its ‘Programmefor Public Engagement on Nanotechnologies’. At thecore of the public engagement programme were twoprojects, modestly funded by Sciencewise, the Officeof Science and Innovation’s grant scheme for fostering

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two way communication about new technologiesbetween policy makers and the public. The first ofthese was Nanodialogues, a collaboration betweensocial scientists at Lancaster University and the thinktank Demos. This used a variety of engagementmethods involving stakeholder, representative andrandomly selected participants to investigate thepracticalities of public engagement for identifying riskand informing regulation, and for shaping researchgoals and identifying its potential uses in corporateinnovation. Second, the Nanotechnologies EngagementGroup (NEG), a network of research organisationswhose role it was to review and report upon theongoing public engagement(s) with nanotechnologiesand through this ‘ensure that the Government’sprogramme builds upon best practice in public engage-ment, supports the development of that practice andensures that public engagement feeds into policy anddecision-making’ [22, p 4]. June of 2007 has seen thepublication of final reports from both the Nano-dialogues [23] and the NEG [24] projects.

In other countries of the EU further experiments indialogue regarding nanotechnologies have now beeninstigated (reviewed in [24]), while in 2005 the USAheld its very first consensus conference on nano-technologies in Madison, Wisconsin [25]. Explorationof the (nano)science and society relationship has alsobeen given strong direction in the USA by theNational Science Foundation’s commissioning oftwo ‘Nanotechnology in Society’ Centres – atArizona State University and at the University ofSanta Barbara California respectively. Significantly,both of these Centres are investigating various meansfor nanotechnology public engagement.

When is Engagement ‘Upstream’?

Upstream engagement – while itself a deceptivelysimple idea – is, in reality, a contested matter in bothconceptual and practical terms, containing significanttensions and dilemmas of its own. Rogers-Haydenand Pidgeon [26] have suggested a working definitionof upstream engagement as follows:

Dialogue and deliberation, that includes thepublics and related interest groups, relevantscience communities and policy makers, aboutpotentially disruptive/controversial technologies

at an early stage of the research and developmentprocess and in advance of significant applica-tions, or widespread public knowledges, in away that has the potential to influence thetechnology trajectories.

This definition highlights three elements, over andabove public involvement itself, that should bepresent for an engagement exercise to be considered‘upstream’. Firstly, there should be policy communityinvolvement for potential influence. Secondly, sciencecommunities should be involved in a way thatfacilitates mutual learning between citizens andscientists. And finally, there should be at least somepotential to influence technology trajectories.

To influence the technology trajectory the dialoguemust be timed upstream, although when this is so isno simple matter to define in and of itself [26]. Forexample, one could argue that such engagement hasto occur before products reach the market, before‘disruption’ of current product usage and socialsystems has occurred, and early enough in the R&Dphase such that significant development decisions canbe scrutinised and possibly influenced. The RS/RAEng nanotechnologies report [19] argues that mostdevelopments in nanotechnologies are still upstreamwith regard to three aspects; investment decisions,impacts and public awareness. They propose that, asseen from the perspective of 2004, many of thesignificant decisions concerning research and devel-opment funding and infrastructure had yet to be made.However, regarding this first point, we may already bebeyond the point at which many investment decisionsin nanotechnologies can be influenced, as majorresearch programmes in Europe, North America andAsia currently gather momentum, and more and moreproducts reach the market place. Second, many of themore radical impacts of nanotechnologies have yet tobe envisioned, remain hypothetical, or will dependupon its convergence with other technologies (e.g.biotechnology with nanotechnology and cognitivescience). In this respect much nanotechnology researchclearly does remain squarely ‘upstream’, in the sensethat significant applications are 10, 20 or even moreyears into the future. Third, nanotechnologies have notas yet gained a high visibility in public discourse orpopular media representations in Britain as elsewhere.A very low level of public awareness of nanotechnol-ogies was found in the survey conducted for the RS/

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RAEng inquiry in January 2004, where only 29% saidthey were aware of the term nanotechnology, while asfew as 19% could offer any form of definition.Similarly low levels of public awareness have alsobeen reported in other countries of the European Union[27, 28] and the USA [29].

Engaging people in discussion prior to a developedpublic discourse on the subject raises, as Collingridge[30] has noted, a paradox of participation. Publicawareness of an issue and its implications is oftenlowest precisely when the margins for influencingdecision making are widest, while public awarenesstends to be much greater only when those marginsnarrow. In addition to this, a recent study exploringthe issue of nanotechnology engagement with aselection of UK and US stakeholders and academicshighlighted an important point of contestation in thelight of the findings regarding public awareness.Early engagement was seen by some as having theadvantage – or disadvantage, depending on onesviewpoint – of being capable of shaping societaldiscourses about nanotechnologies and through thistheir acceptability. Public opinion about nanotechnol-ogies was thus seen by some interviewees as still openfor formation – the opportunity for science to ‘get infirst’ and ‘set the record straight’ [31]. Seen from acritical perspective then, enthusiasm for upstreamengagement might simply be replacing (but in effectdoes not supplant) the older-styles of one-way sciencecommunication and ‘public understanding of science’.

Although the ‘framing’ of a public nanotechnolo-gies discourse has yet to come, upstream engagementis more than just engaging people in dialogue aboutthe technologies themselves, but also about thepotential relationship between nanotechnologies andsociety. In this way, it opens up a broader discussionabout the interactions between science and society,rather than just the potential impacts of nanotechnol-ogies on society. Such a conceptualisation enablesone to view science–society relationships as mutuallyconstitutive. Nanotechnologies can then be assessedfor their suitability for society rather than assumingthat society passively accepts technologies which arevalue and power neutral and thus ‘given’. What thismight in turn open up is more explicit analysis withinparticipatory processes of the often hidden assump-tions about the power relationships between technol-ogies and society, by acknowledging that there aremultiple paths technologies could take/or could have

taken that are not always visible [32]. Upstreamengagement may even ideally provide a means ofplacing on the table topics which typically remainoutside of traditional discussions of the trajectory andconduct of science: in particular the power relations atechnology embodies, and the balance betweencorporate and civil society interests and control.

Advocates of upstream engagement do indeed seeit’s role as shaping a wide agenda – that of the dynamicof science and technology itself. Hence, Wilsdon andcolleagues [10, 11] argue that for public engagement tobe truly upstream it should invoke a range of questionswhich challenge the agendas and practices of scienceitself, rather than solely the present or future represen-tations that a society might hold about that science. Inthis way science can be seen, like all knowledges, toreflect its social and historical origins: the culture,politics and values of a society. Opening up the ‘blackbox’ of science to expose the values permeating it is acommonplace call within science and technologystudies [33, 34] but less common in the naturalsciences. Upstreaming engagement, and with it apromise of an increase in genuine science–societyinteraction, means that science and scientists learn fromthe publics as much as citizens learn from science. Ineffect this represents a call for greater reflexivity withinscience, in which scientists engage with whatevervalues underlie their work and what values will bereproduced through their work.

The Papers of this Special Collection

Through this collection it is made clear that upstream-ing debate on nanotechnologies will not provide all ofthe answers needed to alleviate many of the fractiousquestions currently surrounding the science–societyrelationship. However, engaging with nanotechnolo-gies at least entails the possibility of doing thingsdifferently. We provide a small contribution to theanalysis of upstream engagement through bringingtogether four papers, two of which debate upstreamengagement from the point of view of being involvedin providing, observing or planning a public forumwhile the final two papers address engagement insidethe nanotechnology laboratory itself.

Matthew Kearnes and Brian Wynne, reflectingupon two successfully executed deliberative researchprojects, question larger governmental motivations

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behind engagement. They propose that in the UKthere has been a move away from the deficit modelwhere the public was seen as lacking understanding inscience to a new deficit model in which members ofthe public are now conceptualised as lacking trust.They expose the assumption that there is a deficit inpublic confidence in the development of new tech-nologies which can be improved with dialogue.Kearnes and Wynne suggest that re-thinking thisambivalence can be a creative resource for upstreamengagement. Otherwise, they conclude, a situation iscreated in which the focus of engagement is on thepublics, science communities and institutions toreflect and respond to public aspirations and concernswithout a route for these to influence the technologydevelopment trajectory.

The second paper is by Regula Burri, who exploresthe upstream potential of one element of a Swisscitizens jury on nanotechnology. Although concentrat-ing primarily on the stakeholders’ involvement in thejury process, she notes that the purpose of the citizensjury was viewed as rather mixed, covering informingthe citizens, involving the public early to avoid another‘GM’ disaster, helping inform decision makers onnanotechnology and informing legislation. This led to amulti-layered approach in which the public forum wasconducted in the form of a citizens jury, several focusgroups and a public meeting between experts and laypeople. Burri writes in particular about Publicfocus, ameeting with stakeholders before their organisationshad created policy on nanotechnology. This initiativeenabled stakeholders to be asked for their opinionsboth professionally and as members of the public.Burri explores the epistemic foundations of theparticipants’ evaluations of nanotechnologies, findingstrong trust in ‘sound science’ without consolidatedlines of argument between, or even within, therepresented organisations.

After Burri’s paper we then leave the public forumas a site of science–society engagement and enter thenanotechnology laboratory. In the first of two paperson the laboratory as a site of knowledge co-production,Erik Fisher questions many approaches to engagement,asking if introducing broad societal considerations nottied to contexts and choices will be sufficient toinfluence the co-development of nanotechnologies.He takes on the challenge of upstream engagementthrough ethnographic work with a researcher on carbonnanotube synthesis from the University of Colorado at

Boulder, and offers an alternative which he terms ‘mid-stream modulation’. He suggests that rather thanengaging the public upstream by early discussions ofbroad but essentially intangible visions, or so late as todiscuss concrete products, there may be a middle-ground for stimulating co-development through dis-cussing values in the nanotechnology lab. He describeshow scientists who are not aware of social valuesembedded in their work can be stimulated intoreflexivity, which can in turn lead to a broadening ofpossible alternative research paths.

Encouraging reflexivity in scientists and interro-gating the notion of upstream engagement is also thesubject material for our final paper, by RobertDoubleday. He traces the development of upstreamengagement as a phenomenon, proposing that weneed to move beyond the narrow understanding ofupstream engagement currently popular in (UK)science policy which has come to mean publicengagement. Doubleday questions whether upstreamengagement should be restricted to shaping thedevelopment of technologies or if it involves thebroader shaping of science and technologies byholding them to account. If it is this broader aim then‘upstream’ can also be a location (in his case theacademic nano-science lab) rather than just a momentin time. Doubleday then offers reflections on hisexperience as a social scientist employed in theCambridge University Nanoscience Centre in whichhe organised his work into teaching, public engage-ment and facilitating collaborations and research toallow scientists to develop a greater understanding ofthe social dimensions of nanotechnology.

Conclusion

Attempts to conceptualise, refine and gain broaderacceptance for upstream public engagement withnanotechnologies in Europe and the US are nowfacing numerous conceptual and empirical challenges.Upstream engagement emerged in response to suc-cessive socio-technological controversies during thefinal decades of the last century, prompting a re-conceptualisation of the science–society relationshipto address the power imbalance when decidingtechnological agendas. The timing of the simmeringunease surrounding nanotechnologies, in the wake ofthe GM controversy in Europe, means that nano-

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technologies have emerged as the inherent test-casefor upstream engagement. This collection of papersprovides a timely analysis of engaging publics,scientists, stakeholders and policy-makers upstreamof the technological innovation process and addressesan apparent deficit of critique on the efficacy of theseactivities.

Upstream engagement is recognised as an ideal,albeit an imperfect one that requires further andconstant clarification and investigation. It is positedto rest on three broad sets of arguments incorporatingnormative, instrumental and substantive assumptions.Normatively, it is undeniably a good thing in and ofitself, if it enables the incorporation of ethical andvalue concerns in the discussions surrounding anemerging technology. In consequence, it may also beinstrumental in legitimising decision-making processesthat lead to enhanced public trust in the resulting policyoutcomes. Substantively, upstream engagement isperceived as having the ability to restore equilibriumto the science–society relationship also resulting inmore broadly accepted outcomes.

Empirically, however, our case-studies have dem-onstrated that inherent in upstream engagement are anumber of significant tensions and dilemmas thatthreaten its wider acceptance and continuing imple-mentation. The first of these is the type and extent ofengagement itself. It is commonly assumed thatpublic engagement is a dichotomous relationshipinvolving science and society, whereby society isrepresentative of ‘ordinary’ citizens. This misleadingassumption precludes the wider incorporation of otherpublics or interested communities including stake-holders and policy-makers. Additionally, one of themore frequent criticisms levelled at all engagement isits lack of measurable impact on policy, somethingalso noted with the recent nanotechnology engage-ment in the UK [24]. This is perhaps no surprise,given the often tenuous links forged between policy-makers and the innovation process. Equally, while theextent of social learning facilitated by upstreamengagement has been extensively investigated inreflexive and academic literature, the extent to whichscientific communities (and for that matter, policycommunities) have learnt from their mutual deliber-ations with the public over nanotechnologies, as withother issues, has been largely overlooked.

The dichotomous relationship between science andsociety, often recreated during upstream engagement,

signifies not only a difference in power but is moresignificantly a difference in timing that is articulatedby Collingridge [30] who identified the (scientific)knowledge and (public) control dilemma which thissituation creates. Once a nanotechnology has becomesocially embedded downstream of the innovationprocess, the visions and interests of its developers,which were previously negotiable upstream, becomedifficult to change. We would add to this that withoutadequate critique ‘upstream engagement’ might endup re-producing out-dated forms of science commu-nication or being rejected as a failed concept before ithas even matured. That is the real challenge fornanotechnology ‘upstream’ engagement for the latterhalf of this decade and well beyond.

Acknowledgements This paper was supported through grantsfrom the Leverhulme Trust to the Program on UnderstandingRisk, the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant No.0531184) to the Centre for Nanotechnology in Society,University of California, Santa Barbara and through the Schoolof Psychology, Cardiff University. The authors would like tothank Dave Guston, Brian Wynne and the journal editors fortheir support.

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