Abstract
The “social licence to operate” has been invoked in science policy discussions including the 2007 Universal Ethical Code for scientists issued by the UK Government Office for Science. Drawing from sociological research on social licence and STS interventions in science policy, the authors explore the relevance of expectations of a social licence for scientific research and scientific contributions to public decision-making, and what might be involved in seeking to create one. The process of seeking a social licence is not the same as trying to create public or community acceptance for a project whose boundaries and aims have already been fully defined prior to engagement. Such attempts to “capture” the public might be successful from time to time but their legitimacy is open to question especially where their engagement with alternative research futures is “thin”. Contrasting a national dialogue on stem cells with the early history of research into bioenergy, we argue that social licence activities need to be open to a “thicker” engagement with the social. Co-constructing a licence suggests a reciprocal relationship between the social and the scientific with obligations for public and private institutions that shape and are shaped by science, rather than just science alone.
Highlights
The concept of a ‘social licence to operate’ is largely discussed in the context of corporate behaviour and the relationship of companies to those local communities in which they do business
In 2007, the British Chief Scientific Adviser explicitly invoked the concept of a ‘social licence to operate’ in a newly developed Universal Ethical Code that was billed as a public statement of values and responsibilities in doing science
We focus on what follows for thinking about social licence for scientific research
Summary
The concept of a ‘social licence to operate’ is largely discussed in the context of corporate behaviour and the relationship of companies to those local communities in which they do business. We propose to investigate this question by drawing on recent work in science and technology studies (STS) that is oriented towards ‘making research social’, and engaging with insights from social licence research on environmental behaviour of corporations (Gunningham, Kagan and Thornton 2004) and on the professions (Hughes 1959; Dingwall and Allen 2001).
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