This article describes the LRS lens, a methodology designed to consider technical controversies with reference to a critical realist conceptualization of technology and meaning production. The application of the lens is demonstrated in a qualitative analysis of the biofuel controversy in the United Kingdom. The analysis organizes participants’ positions in terms of the technologies they refer to, their names, and their judgments. They organize biofuels’ variability in different ways, developing the vocabulary to identify and refer to relevant subgroups. The domination of one approach could have a significant impact on technical development.
AckroydS.FleetwoodS. (2004). Critical realist applications in organisation and management studies. London, England: Routledge.
2.
Al-AmoudiI.WilmottH. (2011). Where constructionism and critical realism converge: Interrogating the domain of epistemological relativism. Organization Studies, 32, 27-46.
BloorD. (1976). Knowledge and social imagery. London, England: Routledge.
13.
BloorD. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 30, 81-112.
14.
BoucherP. (2011). What next after determinism in the ontology of technology? Distributing responsibility in the biofuel debate. Science and Engineering Ethics, 17, 525-538.
15.
BoucherP. (2012). The role of controversy, regulation and engineering in UK biofuel development. Energy Policy, 42, 148-154.
16.
CarterB.NewC. (Eds.). (2004). Making realism work: Realist social theory and empirical research. Abingdon, England: Routledge.
17.
DanermarkB.EkstromM.JakobsenL.KarlssonJ. (2002). Explaining society: Critical realism in the social sciences. London, England: Routledge.
18.
DarlingA. (2006, July6). House of Commons debate. c 969.
European Parliament. (2003). Directive 2003/30/EC of the European parliament and of the Council of 8 May 2003 on the promotion of the use of biofuels or other renewable fuels for transport. Official Journal of the European Union, L123, 42-46.
26.
European Parliament. (2009). Directive 2009/28/EC of the European parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and amending and subsequently repealing directives 2001/77/EC and 2003/30/EC. Official Journal of the European Union, 140, 16-62.
27.
FaircloughN.JessopB.SayerA. (2002). Critical realism and semiosis. Alethia, 5, 2-10.
28.
FeenbergA. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
29.
FleetwoodS. (2005). Ontology in organization and management studies: A critical realist perspective. Organization, 12, 197-222.
30.
FoxN. (2011). Boundary objects, social meanings and the success of new technologies. Sociology, 45, 70-85.
31.
GrimmJ. (2009). “Teach the controversy” The relationship between sources and frames in reporting the intelligent design debate. Science Communication, 31, 167-186.
32.
HartwigM. (2007a). Holy trinity. In HartwigM. (Ed.), Dictionary of critical realism (pp. 238-242). London, England: Routledge.
33.
HartwigM. (2007b). Intransitive, transitive and metacritical dimensions. In HartwigM. (Ed.), Dictionary of critical realism (pp. 263-265). London, England: Routledge.
34.
HartwigM. (2007c). Reality. In HartwigM. (Ed.), Dictionary of critical realism (pp. 400-401). London, England: Routledge.
35.
HinchliffeS. (1996). Technology, power, and space: The means and ends of geographies of technology. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 659-682.
36.
LawsonC. (2008). An ontology of technology. Techné, 12(1), 48-64.
37.
LawsonC. (2010). Technology and the extension of human capabilities. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40, 207-233.
National Farmers Union. (2009). RTFO: One year on. Stoneleigh, England: Author.
45.
NellhausT. (1998). Signs, social ontology, and critical realism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 28(1), 1-24.
46.
PerrenL.SapsedJ. (2010, May). Innovation as politics: The startling rise and reshaping of innovation in UK parliamentary discourse 1960-2005. Paper presented at SPRU/DIME: A Conference in Honour of Nick von Tunzelmann. Brighton, England.
PinchT.BijkerW. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14, 399-441.
49.
RaudseppM. (2005). Why is it so difficult to understand the theory of social representations?Culture & Psychology, 11, 455-468.
StarS. L.GriesemerJ. (1989). Institutional ecology, “translations” and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387-420.
VenturiniT. (2010). Diving in magma: How to explore controversies with actor-network theory. Public Understanding of Science, 19, 258-273.
58.
VenturiniT. (2011). Building on faults: How to represent controversies with digital methods. Public Understanding of Science. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0963662510387558
59.
WatkinsE. S. (2011). The social construction of a contraceptive technology: An investigation of the meanings of Norplant. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 36, 33-54.
60.
WinnerL. (1993). Social constructivism: Upon opening the black box and finding it empty. Science as Culture, 3, 427-452.
