Paper short abstract:

We follow anticipatory practices and expectations around graphene through different spaces related to science, policy and markets. We show how anticipatory governance patterns evolve over time, and how a graphene hype wave emerged, moving through and linking spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Anticipation in the form of scientific promises and visions, market forecasts, roadmapping and risk assessments is a pervasive element in the governance of new and emerging science and technologies. This holds for dedicated governance tools as foresight or roadmapping processes, just as for more implicit anticipatory practices, such as standards or a Nobel Prize, which contribute to shaping expectations regarding techno-scientific fields. We suggest to understand these anticipatory practices as part of an evolving governance structure, where anticipation in the form of expectations, visions etc. contribute to the governance of science and technology, but may themselves be shaped by these evolving governance structures. We suggest the concept of governance of and by expectations to capture this double relationship and use this lens to investigate how expectations around the new material graphene, up to hype, have been shaped by various anticipatory practices. The impressive development of graphene promises, both scientific and market oriented, of research, policy support and further activities makes it a key example of the regime of techno-scientific promises. We follow the anticipatory practices and expectations through different spaces related to science, policy and markets, which are each characterized by specific sets of anticipatory practices. In so doing, we show, how the (anticipatory) governance patterns evolve over time, and how the graphene hype emerged, along with graphene as a techno-scientific field. We suggest that what we observe may be described as a hype wave moving through time and spaces, rather than as a purely temporally structured hype cycle.