Idols of Progress

Technoscience Between Ethics and Trust

Welcome to the Fourth Annual Conference on Graduate Research in Science and Technology Studies (GRiSTS)

GRiSTS 2023 took place October 12-14 at Harvard Kennedy School.

The program and poster are available at the links below!

The GRiSTS Conference invites students from any discipline to discuss the relations of S&T to policy, politics and governance in modern societies. By sharing their work, students from universities across the Northeast connect to a growing network of STS research and mentoring in areas of shared intellectual interest and practical concern. Fostering these connections will allow young researchers to better appreciate their own academic contributions and professional roles, as well as build inclusive, yet critical, understandings of S&T in global society.

Program

Poster

2023 Call for Proposals

Idols of Progress: Technoscience Between Ethics and Trust

Science and technology have long been portrayed, and still are widely regarded, as drivers of progress in advanced modern societies. Inventors from Thomas Edison, Fritz Haber and Norman Borlaug all the way to Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk have come to symbolize the dependence of human betterment on an expanded understanding and mastery of nature. In the 19th century, electricity, railways and fertilizers provided humanity with increasing control over its own destiny. In the 20th century, air transport, pharmaceutical development, genetic engineering and information technology reinforced the narrative of science and technology as essential allies in the quest for freedom from illness, hunger and despair. In the 21st century, artificial intelligence, gene editing, immersive technologies, nanomaterials, and renewable energy come packaged with similar promises of salvation and release. 

Yet over time, the easy alignment of technoscientific advances with the notion of progress has come under greater scrutiny. Where scientific discoveries and technological products were once unproblematically associated with social betterment, today ‘ethics’ and ‘trust’ are recognized as obligatory passage points for science and technology to gain public legitimacy. These terms have proliferated in the past decade in institutions, laws, and policies: the 2019 OECD Recommendation on Responsible Innovation in Neurotechnology dedicates one of its nine principles to the promotion of “cultures of stewardship and trust across the public and private sector”; the three International Summits on Genome Editing dedicated aspects of their programs to “ethical and governance issues”; and the 2023 EU AI Act makes no fewer than 48 references to trust. Through such initiatives, technological innovations seek to get coded as ethical and trustworthy, thereby gaining standing as markers of human progress. Processes of ethics certification and trust acquisition help reconstitute the products of technoscience as “idols of progress,” capable of doing the work of virtuous governance even though certification occurs through often invisible processes that replace democratic oversight with designer-encoded norms and values lying outside of public control.

GRiSTS 2023: “Idols of Progress: Technoscience Between Ethics and Trust” calls for papers exploring the place of human values in the production of technoscientific idols of progress and the contested human futures at stake in this process. The conference will take place October 12-14, 2023 at Harvard Kennedy School. Interested presenters should submit (up to 350 word) abstracts of work in STS and neighboring fields. We welcome proposals from a range of technoscientific and historical domains that explore questions such as: What is at stake for democracy when science and technology are seen as sine qua non conditions of progress? How do science and technology stand in for – or get in the way of – broader notions of human flourishing and enlightenment? How are democratic values envisaged when institutions and policies of governance are designed to accompany and legitimize rather than interrogate technoscientific products? We especially welcome papers that investigate the emergence of ‘ethics’ and ‘trust’ as essential companions of technoscience in advanced modern societies and reflect on ways that we, as junior STS scholars, can fashion more critical and cosmopolitan understandings of the place of science and technology in the world.

About GRiSTS

The Conference for Graduate Research in STS (GRiSTS) is coordinated by students in the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at Harvard with help from students across the GRiSTS network.

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Please contact the conference organizers with questions at gristsconference@gmail.com.

GRiSTS is institutionally supported by the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School and with financial support from the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics.

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