ABSTRACT
The Social Life of Nanotechnology addresses the interconnections and tensions between technological development, the social benefits and risks of technology, and the changing political economy of a global world system as they apply to the emerging field of nanotechnologies. The basic premise, developed throughout the volume, is that nanotechnologies have an under-theorized and often invisible social life that starts with the very concept of “nanotechnology” itself which, as we show in the volume, takes on a wide range of socio-historically specific meanings around the globe, across multiple localities, institutions and collaborations, through diverse industries, research labs, and government agencies, and on into a variety of discussions within the public sphere itself. The volume looks at this process through the lenses of the social and cultural sciences, revealing a surprisingly complicated social milieu where a series of traditionally modernist scientific projects have been (and are continuously being) reassembled into new configurations that are sharply marked by their emergence within a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized, and decidedly postmodern world. As the authors in this volume explain, this results in a series of unique contradictions, tensions, and unexpected developments. We highlight three dimensions of this process in the papers collected here: the early origins of nanotechnologies, questions about the social (and political) organization of the field, and studies concerned with the cultural and subjective meanings ascribed to nanotechnologies in social settings.
