RRI and Future-Making: Responsibility through Anticipation

Course Directors:

• Stefan Böschen, RWTH Aachen University
• Andoni Ibarra, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
• Bettina-Johanna Krings, Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS-KIT)
• Hannot Rodríguez, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

Summary

The European Commission claims that research and engineering activities under the next R&D Framework Programme, “Horizon 2020” (2014-2020), will be conducted according to a “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) framework, meaning that “societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes, with the values, needs and expectations of European society” (European Commission, 2012, p. ii). RRI can be understood thus as an effort to justify innovation not on grounds of uncritical, or taken for granted macro-economic assumptions, but on the basis of societally-beneficial objectives, or challenges, as openly defined and debated by a plurality of societal actors. As such, RRI-based EU policy aims to introduce “broader foresight and impact assessments for new technologies, beyond their anticipated market-benefits and risks” (von Schomberg 2013, p. 51).

RRI’s radical rhetoric on openness and socialization regarding techno-industrial innovation processes has been claimed to ultimately reflect four fundamental principles of responsible governance: anticipation, reflexivity, deliberation and responsiveness (Stilgoe, Owen and Macnaghten 2013). The summer school is particularly interested in the anticipation dimension—even though the four principles are constitutively interrelated. Far from representing a commitment with prediction and control, “anticipatory governance” (Guston 2014) is related with the expansion of the societal imaginations about future possible socio-technical scenarios, and the willingness and capacities to constitute a more reflexive, participatory and societally responsive innovation governance on that basis.