Participation and Exclusion in Nuclear Decision-making
Second Edition
Brian Wynne
Lancaster University
240 pages, 234 x 156 mm
Publisher:
Earthscan from Routledge
In Rationality and Ritual, internationally-renowned expert Brian Wynne offers a profound analysis of science and technology policy-making. 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 in Britain – he offers a powerful critique of such judicial procedures and the underlying assumptions of the rationalist approach.
This second edition makes available again this classic and still very relevant work. Nearly 30 years on from its original publication, debates about nuclear power are coming to the fore once again. Yet we still do not have adequate ways to make decisions on these big issues, involving true public debate, rather than ritualistic processes in which the rules and scope of the debate are proscribed by those in authority. The perspectives in this book are as significant and original as they were when it was written.
The new edition contains a substantial introduction by the author reflecting on changes (and lack of) in the intervening years and introducing new themes, relevant to today's world of big science and technology, that can be drawn out of the original text. It also offers a new Foreword by Gordon MacKerron, an expert on energy and nuclear policy, who sets this classic work in the context of contemporary nuclear debates.
Foreword by Gordon MacKerron.
Foreword by Gordon MacKerron
Rationality and Ritual: A Quarter-Century Retrospect
Preface to Original Edition
Introduction
The Decision-making Legacy
Oxide Reprocessing: The Background
The Public Inquiry Tradition: A Comparative Perspective
The Emergence of THORP from a Private to a Public Issue
The Process and Impact of the Inquiry
Judicial Rationality, Expert Conflict and Political Authority
The Rationality and Politics of Analysis
Conclusion
Brian Wynne is Associate Director of CESAGen, Lancaster University. He is a Professor of Science Studies and Research Director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) at Lancaster University. He was an Inaugural Member of the Management Board and Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency, (EEA), and a Special Adviser to the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry into Science and Society. He is also a member of the London Royal Society's Committee on Science in Society.
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