ABSTRACT
This chapter recognizes the difficulty in attempting to provide a complete overview of any sub-discipline in a restricted space, given the problems of boundary maintenance and politics inherent in such an enterprise. Instead, the chapter focuses on the issue of genetic modification and shows how the resources of science and technology studies can be brought to bear on illuminating what, for many, is very much a technological 'black box'. In doing so, it begins by discussing how the area has become framed by the debate about risks and hazards in late modernity, and follows this with an exploration of the effects of policy developments, the role of scientific experts, and the involvement of the ordinary citizen in decision making. Using the example of genetically modified foods, this chapter illustrates the extent to which, in comparison with the great factories of sociology, this 'cottage industry', as Law described it, can seriously be described as 'environmentally friendly'.
