Research and Scientific Advice in the Second Modernity: Technology Assessment, Responsible Research and Innovation, and Sustainability Research

Armin Grunwald

doi:10.3390/su131810406

Abstract

The scientific and technological advance has been a major driving force of modernization for centuries. However, the 20th century was full of indications and diagnoses of a deep crisis of modernity. Currently, debates on limits to growth, pollution, and climate change indicate the serious and threatening lack of sustainability of the so-called ‘first modernity’. This crisis of modernity has motivated scholars to develop concepts of modernizing modernity, with the approach of a ‘reflexive modernization’ to reach a ‘second modernity’ being prominent. In this paper, Technology Assessment (TA), Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), and Sustainability Research (SR) are regarded as manifestations of this reflexive modernization in the field of problem-oriented and transformative research. The paper aims to (a) unfold the hypothesis regarding TA, RRI, and SR as scientific approaches within reflexive modernization, (b) clarify the respective meaning of ‘reflexive’ in these approaches, (c) identify commonalities as well as differences between the three approaches, and (d) draw conclusions for the relation and further development of TA, RRI, and SR.

Highlights

Enhancing reflexivity over issues of relevance means uncovering the arguments behind propositions of relevance, scrutinizing them, and making them transparent to the actors involved in order to arrive at a legitimate balance between the needs for operability and the wish to enhance reflexivity in anticipation and inclusion
Including the reflexivity issues already discussed in Technology Assessment (TA) and Research and Innovation (RRI), reflexivity in Sustainability Research (SR) means keeping a strong relation with empirical developments, in particular monitoring the consequences of sustainability measures and possible unintended side effects as essential elements of learning cycles
RRI emphasizes the role and responsibility of innovation actors in the economy [39] and in society (e.g., [35]), which are frequently related with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), while SR is confronted with the overwhelming complexity of sustainability governance (e.g., [7,19,41])

Summary

First and Second Modernity

Since the Renaissance, the narrative of modernity has become a dominant pattern of thinking and public communication in the Western world. According to the magnitude of the challenge, this transformation will have to address mindsets, reasoning, institutions, and the organization of society at a deep-lying cultural level, as postulated by the approach of a reflexive modernization to reach second modernity [8]. This diagnosis is based on a wide range of empirical observations in various fields. It seems fair to say that more and more areas of science move toward the model of post-normal science in a second modernity ([6], see above), while other areas rightfully remain in the first modernity approach

Technology Assessment

Comparison along Cross-Cutting Issues

Discussion

Conclusions