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B1


Inclusive innovation contesting inequalities and promoting social justice 
Convenors:
Les Levidow (Open University)
Luigi Pellizzoni (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa-Florence)
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Theme:
Collective contestation
Location:
Economy 1
Sessions:
Wednesday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw

Short Abstract:

'Inclusive innovation' has been widely promoted. Questions: i) How do collective projects reshape technoscientific innovation for/by contesting socio-economic inequalities? ii) What specific features make collective projects effective in promoting inclusive innovation for social justice?

Long Abstract:

'Inclusive innovation' has been recently promoted by various state bodies. The EU's Europe 2020 strategy seeks to achieve 'smart, sustainable and inclusive growth' through innovation partnerships addressing major societal challenges. The EU's overall strategy emphasises technoscientific innovation as a crucial means for economic competitiveness and thus inclusiveness. Yet 'inclusion' discourses readily obscure the sources of inequality and exclusion. In dominant portrayals, 'unequal outcomes associated with science and technology are usually interpreted as emerging from patterns of distribution, access, and affordability, not from the structure of the R&D enterprise itself'; by contrast, any socio-economic improvements are attributed to a technology per se (Woodhouse and Sarewitz, 2007); such improvements are rarely attributed to users' collective power. These portrayals obscure how technological design facilitates the dominant power to appropriate labour and natural resources - likewise how such power relations have been contested through collective projects reshaping innovation (Smith et al., 2014). For example, environmental justice movements contest dominant accounts of resources, not simply their inequitable distribution (Martin, 2013; Schlosberg, 2004).

This track will focus on such contestations from theoretical and/or empirical viewpoints. Abstracts should address these two questions:

i) How do collective projects reshape technoscientific innovation for/by contesting socio-economic inequalities?

ii) What specific features make collective projects effective in promoting inclusive innovation for social justice?

Contact convenors for the References.

The papers will be presented in the order shown and within one session

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 17 September, 2014, -