Beyond Technocracy Science, Politics and Citizens [Paperback]

Will the ordinary man become a scientist?...Bucchi exposes the inadequacy of the technochratic model but also the weaknesses of contemporary bioethics when facing the increasing dilemmas posed by science and technology to contemporary society.

-Il Corriere della Sera [Italian leading newspaper]

Bucchi provides a clear, rigorous and accessible discussion  often enriched by a subtle irony  of complex and ambiguous issues, showing that science and innovation are not neutral terrains, but rather among the key conflictual contexts in which contemporary social and political changes take place.

-Italian Review of Sociology

A dense but accessible book...Bucchi acutely describes the shortcomings of the technocratic and ethical responses to the contemporary dilemmas of science and technology.

-Italian Edition of the New York Review of Books

 
Nuclear energy, stem cell technology, GMOs: the more science advances, the more society seems to resist. But are we really watching a death struggle between opposing forces, as so many would have it? Can todays complex technical policy decisions coincide with the needs of a participatory democracy? Are the two sides even equipped to talk to each other?

Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens answers these questions with clarity and vision. Drawing upon a broad range of data and events from the United States and Europe, and noting the blurring of the expert/lay divide in the knowledge base, the book argues that these conflicts should not be dismissed as episodic, or the outbursts of irrationality and ignorance, but recognized as a critical olC8