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Science, Technology & Human Values
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Dazzled by the Mirage of Influence?

STS-SSK in Multivalent Registers of Relevance

Brian Wynne

Lancaster University

Andrew Webster proposes that science and technology studies (STS) align itself more thoroughly with practical policy contexts, actors and issues, so as to become more useful, and thus more a regular actor in such worlds. This commentary raises some questions about this approach. First, I note that manifest influence in science or policy or both should not become-by default, or deliberately-a criterion of intellectual quality for STS research work. I distinguish between (1) reflective historical work, which delineates the contingent ways in which existing policy and technoscientific cultures have become entrenched as such inscribed and perhaps dysfunctional institutional habit; and (2), work of the kind that Webster's three case studies exemplify, that is, geared to influence policy-decision outcomes. I suggest that many of the important issues facing STS-and "policy"-are not explicit "policy-decision issues" as such, but implicit "policy syndromes" that need naming, diagnosing and open, if enforced, institutional reflection.

Key Words: institutional reflexivity • instrumental influence as epistemic criterion • imagined users • policy cultural syndrome • policy engagement as fieldwork and theory development

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 32, No. 4, 491-503 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243907301086
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