`Fluid, readable and accessible ... I found the overall quality of the book to be excellent. It provides an overview of major (and preceding) developments in the field of science studies. It examines landmark works, authors, concepts and approaches ... I will certainly use this book as one of the course texts' Eileen Crist, Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society, Virginia Tech Science is at the heart of contemporary society and is therefore central to the social sciences. Yet science (...) studies has often encountered resistance from social scientists. This book attempts to remedy this by giving the most extensive, thorough and best argued account of the field and explaining to social scientists why science matters to them. This is a landmark book that demystifies science studies and successfully bridges the divide between social theory and the sociology of science. Illustrated with relevant, illuminating examples, it provides the ideal guide to science studies and social theory. (shrink)

What are the forces shaping the future of international green politics? This book provides an objective account of the basis of green arguments and their social and political implications. It offers a clear overview of the most pressing environmental threats.

This article addresses issues of regulatory convergence and Europeanization as they have developed within the agrochemicals sector. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, the article considers the continuing importance of local and national factors within systems that are ostensibly international and standardized. In particular, the article shows how the embedded social relations of regulatory science in the United Kingdom, including institutional practices, judgments of expertise, and established relationships of trust, result in a “nation centeredness” and divergence of regulatory (...) cultures despite the putative development of a harmonized European framework. It is argued that, as a consequence, the claimed universalism of scientific culture in this area is in tension with the local conditions of its practice and enactment. (shrink)

The literature on the politics of science and on science policy is dominated by information about large and highly industrialized countries. For example, models of the different forms of science policy administration and management tend to derive from French, U.S., and British exemplars. Yet in the mid-1990s there is a growing number of small nations, all of which are seeking to harness research communities to the cause of socioeconomic development, while still extracting "value for money" from science budgets. This article (...) uses the case study approach—focusing on the political economy of the politics of science in the Irish Republic, chiefly since the 1950s-to analyze the problems faced by science policy agencies and the scientific community in small nations. The study offers analogies and possible insights into the politics of research policy in other small nations ; it also aims to throw light on emerging research policy trends even in bigger countries as the "bargain" between the funders and the performers of research becomes more and more explicit and increasingly subject to economic justifications. (shrink)