Introduction: S.NET and Nanoethics

Abstract

This special issue is perhaps an unusual one. Rather than focusing on a specific theme or topic, it takes as its inspiration the activities of the Society for the Social Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) and in particular its 2011 Annual Meeting. The papers which comprise this collection therefore pick up on the concepts and themes discussed at this meeting. Rather than having a common focus or question, their key feature is the degree to which they are eclectic: they explore topics from governmentality to ontology; ethics-in-practice to visions and expectations. This special issue therefore seeks to celebrate—as does S.NET itself—the diversity of a field which explores new and emerging technologies from a wide range of methodologies, frameworks and disciplinary positions. S.NET aims to promote intellectual exchange around and understanding of nanotechnologies and other new and emerging technologies. As the Society’s name suggests, its emphasis is firmly on locating such emerging technologies within a social context, and on critically interrogating their development within different national, cultural and technoscientific locations. It is therefore an international organisation, as reflected in the geography of its annual meetings: the 2011 meeting, held in Tempe (USA), was its third, after previous meetings in Seattle (USA) and Darmstadt (Germany). (The 2012 meeting recently took place in Enschede, in the Netherlands.) The Tempe meeting confirmed the vitality of the organisation and of the intellectual streams that meet within it: it saw a continued rise in the number of participants from around the world, increased engagement from non-academic actors (such as research organisations, industry, and policy actors and a number of NGOs), and the representation of new—for S.NET— approaches and perspectives on the relationships between technological development and society. Keynote speakers (who included Geri Augusto, Brown University; Ann Bostrom, University of Washington; Noela Invernizzi, Federal University of Parana; and Nick Pidgeon, Cardiff University) spoke on topics from geoengineering to public perceptions of nanotechnology and the nano industry workforce. One recurring theme was the notion of the future— a concept which is inevitably a constitutive element of discussions of technological development, but which can be too readily ignored or taken for granted (Selin [1]). For instance, two conference sessions, coordinated by Christopher Coenen (Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis) and Simone Arnaldi (University of Padua), were devoted to discussion of the governance of ethically controversial Nanoethics (2012) 6:211–213 DOI 10.1007/s11569-012-0160-4