Experts in a Participatory Experiment: The Austrian Debate on Nuclear Energy

Examples which come readily to mind are the debate surrounding the introduction of public health measures in the US at the beginning of this century; Friedrich Engel's advocacy for the working poor in England; debates on the likely consequences of Haussmann's urban renewal of Paris also at the end of the 19th century and the ongoing debate on race and I.Q

Pollak Michael Nelkin Dorothy , “The Nuclear Establishment and its Ideology,” paper presented at a Round Table Conference on the Social Aspects of the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy at the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences, Vienna, November 1978

In a yet unpublished paper “The Impact of the Nuclear Controversy on Decision-Making Structures,” several collaborators and I have attempted to see what impact, if any, the public controversy on nuclear power had on energy models, on research policy related to alternative energy forms and on the political system. While we found some adaptation on a fairly superficial level, we had to conclude that nothing much has changed

The Austrian debate on nuclear energy has been fully described and analyzed in a forthcoming book, Nowotny Helga , “Kernenergie—Gefahr oder Notwendigkeit,” Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1979; for a short English description see Helmut Hirsch and Helga Nowotny, “Information and Opposition in Austrian Nuclear Energy Policy,” Minerva, Vol. XV, No. 3–4, 1977, pp. 316–334

The reports of the expert groups have been published by the “Bundespressedienst” as “Österreich Dokumentationen Kernenergie,” 4 volumes, Vienna 1977

Mazur Allan , “Societal and Scientific Causes of the Historical Development of Risk Assessment,” paper prepared for the Battelle Workshop on Society, Technology, and Risk Assessment, Wölfersheim, June 1979

Weinberg Alvin , “The Limits of Science and Trans-Science,” Interdisciplinary Science Review, Vol. 2, no. 4, 1977, pp. 337–342

Nowotny Helga , “Scientific Purity and Nuclear Danger,” in: Mendelsohn E. Weingart P. Whitley R. (Eds.): The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge. Sociology of the Sciences, Vol. I, 1977, pp. 243–264