ABSTRACT
Nanotechnology is often framed as revolutionary, both within science and in the effects it will have on lives. Increasingly, the relationship between nanotechnology and society is cast as a hallmark of this distinctiveness. The advent of interest in nanotechnology, then, has brought with it an intense debate about public participation and the nature of ‘responsibility’. Survey research on public attitudes, then, runs the risk of slipping back into understanding how publics should relate to nanotechnology in terms of a deficit model, whether of knowledge or of trust: the tacit implication of this research is that the key challenge for public policy on nanotechnology is one of improving public knowledge about, and thereby trust in, nanotechnological development. Qualitative research, and that derived from dialogic or deliberative processes, then, has certainly broadened understanding of the ways in which lay publics relate to and negotiate nanotechnologies beyond a framing of ‘risks and benefits’.
