Abstract
Graphene is a material consisting of ideally one layer of carbon atoms that has been claimed to enable a new wave of disruptive technological innovation. Similar to other techno-scientific fields, graphene research has been populated with far-reaching promises and expectations, and claimed to be subject to over-promising and hype. This article builds on a practice-based approach to understand how expectations contribute to the emergence of the techno-scientific field of graphene. We follow the anticipatory practices that constituted different arenas where expectations on graphene have been voiced, spread and assessed. These arenas relate to scientific, policy and market actors, and anticipatory practices reach from the circulation of promises in high-profile journals, via roadmapping to calculative practices that shape emergent markets. We investigate the specific forms of performativity that different practices create, and how these practices have contributed to the emergence and governance of the graphene field.
Highlights
On January 28th, 2013 the European Commission announced two large-scale research projects, each an initiative of 1 billion euros, with the Graphene Flagship being one of them
This paper has described the emergence of graphene as a techno-scientific field, by focusing on specific instances during its development across three connected arenas of expectations: high-profile science publishing, the European public funding arena and the emerging technologies market arena
We have followed how this field has been configured through different anticipatory practices that are performed at different times and in different arenas, shaping graphene expectations and thereby mobilizing different actors, and creating various governance effects, such as the formation of networks or the channeling of funding
Summary
On January 28th, 2013 the European Commission announced two large-scale research projects, each an initiative of 1 billion euros, with the Graphene Flagship being one of them. Organized around the promise of graphene, a new type of material consisting of only one or a few layers of carbon atoms with exceptional properties, this project - presented as “the EU’s biggest research initiative ever”- is aimed at taking “graphene from the realm of academic laboratories into European society” within 10 years, with high prospects for economic growth and innovation (GrapheneFlagship, 2014). This outstanding project is only one of the many initiatives that have been taken in the name of the promises of graphene. Various commercial consultancies have scrutinized and further spread the promises of graphene, partly concluding that the degree of enthusiasm was not fully warranted and graphene should be considered as ‘hyped’ (Kozarsky, 2013), a state of over-promising observed recurrently for many new technologies (van Lente, Spitters, & Peine, 2013)
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