Books in the The Earthscan Science in Society Series series

Offers a profound analysis of science and technology policymaking. By focusing on an episode of major importance in Britain's nuclear history - the Windscale Inquiry, a public hearing about the future of fuel reprocessing - this title offers a critique of such judicial procedures and the underlying assumptions of the rationalist approach.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged rapidly as a crucial technological option for decarbonising electricity supply and mitigating climate change. Great hopes are being pinned on this new technology but it is also facing growing scepticism and criticism. This book is the first to bring together the full range of social and policy issues surrounding CCS shedding new light on this potentially vital technology and its future.  The book covers many crucial topics including the roles and positions that different publics, NGOs, industry, political parties and media are taking up; the way CCS is organised, supported and regulated; how CCS is being debated and judged; how innovation, demonstration and learning are occurring and being conceptualised and promoted; and the role of CCS in the transition to a low carbon energy future.  The authors draw on a variety of approaches, concepts, methods and themes and provide a new understanding of innovation in the energy and climate change fields. It tackles the many issues in a way that speaks to those concerned not only to understand these developments, but to those who are involved in the scientific and technological work itself, as well as those charged with evaluating and making decisions relevant to the future of the technology.

Explores how parents understand and engage with childhood vaccination in contrasting global contexts. This book examines anxieties emerging as highly globalized vaccine technologies and technocracies that encounter the deeply intimate personal and social worlds of parenting and childcare.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book explains how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions.

This book examines the tensions between political authority and expert authority in the formation of public policy in liberal democracies. It aims to illustrate and better understand the nature of these tensions rather than argue specific ways of resolving them. Each chapter explores the complexity of interaction between the two forms of authority in different policy domains in order to reveal and clarify some common elements in the various ways political and expert authority interact in modern liberal democracies. The policy domains covered include climate geoengineering discourses; environmental health; biotechnology; nuclear power; whaling; and the use of force.

Worldwide, over 75 million people are involuntarily childless. This work argues that more equitable access to culturally competent assisted conception services should be an essential component of a transformatory politics of infertility. It also offers a corrective to the dominance of the narratives of hegemonic groups in infertility research.

Examines the range of technological innovations offering lives that purport to be longer, stronger, smarter and happier, and asks whether their introduction is likely to lead to more fulfilled individuals and a fairer world.

Explores how uncertainty is interpreted and used by policy makers, experts and politicians. This title argues that conventional notions of rational, evidence-based policy making - hailed by governments and organisations across the world as the only way to make good policy - is an impossible aim in highly complex and uncertain environments.

Places the question of human/animal relations at the heart of sustainability and climate change debates. This book focuses on ethics, examining critically the dominant paradigms of bioethics and power relations between human and non-human. It also considers animal biotechnology and political economy, examining commercialisation and regulation.

Major influenza pandemics pose a constant threat. This book explores several pandemics over the past century, from the infamous 1918 Spanish Influenza, the avian flu epidemic of 2003, and the novel H1N1 pandemic of 2009, to lesser-known outbreaks such as the 1889-90 influenza pandemic and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968.

As progress towards a greater knowledge in sustainability science continues, the question of how better to integrate scientific progress with actual decisions made by practitioners remains paramount. This book aims to help close the gap between science and practice.