Dr Christopher Lawless c.j.lawless@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Biometric technology encompasses a proliferating array of data forms, applications, and stakeholders but has raised numerous social and ethical concerns. This article examines contending perceptions of biometrics by developing a three-way framework of science–society orderings, drawn from social studies of biometrics and wider science studies literature. By analysing documentary sources and participant observation data through this framework, the article identifies a series of distinct normative interpretations or imaginaries of biometrics. It is argued that these imaginaries, described, respectively, as ‘public good’, ‘collective control’, and ‘societal risks’, project contending normative framings of science–society relations. These imaginaries were also however found to reflexively encompass perceived challenges, giving rise to practices that I term imaginative politics. These findings raise the need for science policy studies to consider the distinction between imagining and realizing in greater depth and to consider more profoundly the politics of science–society co-production.
Lawless, C. (2024). Biometrics, presents, futures: the imaginative politics of science–society orderings. Science and Public Policy, 51(2), 274-284. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scad071
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 9, 2023 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 4, 2023 |
Publication Date | 2024-04 |
Deposit Date | Nov 7, 2023 |
Publicly Available Date | Nov 7, 2023 |
Journal | Science and Public Policy |
Print ISSN | 0302-3427 |
Electronic ISSN | 1471-5430 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 51 |
Issue | 2 |
Pages | 274-284 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scad071 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1899454 |
Published Journal Article
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version)
(484 Kb)
PDF
Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The evolution, devolution and distribution of UK Biometric Imaginaries
(2021)
Journal Article
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