Politicizing Science Governance with 'Responsible Research and Innovation'?

Recently, “Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)” policies have been identified as opportunities to counter a general trend towards depoliticisation (Hartley, Pearce, Taylor 2016) in science governance. RRI shall make R&D more accountable, responsible, and inclusive. However, the question is what democratization of science governance can mean against the background of the perceived current crisis of liberal democracies. This paper proposes that RRI-interventions could adopt an ‘issue-oriented’ perspective on public engagement in science that is devoted to the articulation of matters of concern (Stengers 1999, Latour 2004, Marres 2007). Potential publics should have the possibility of becoming aware of potential matters of concern around which they could gather, and mobilize and politicize them. Could an approach to RRI that draws on such a pragmatist perspective, enable public contestation (Glynos and Howarth 2007), foreground antagonistic dimensions (Mouffe 2000), and thus counter depoliticisation? Based on my experience as integrated scholar in a Norwegian biotechnology center, the paper will discuss how such a focus on issue generation could be translated into practice and conclude with reflecting on potential caveats to such an approach. For example, who should be responsible for issue generation and how productive is it to invest time in generating issues, when there exists a general trend towards that citizens turn away from politics and public affairs because political institutions do not encourage citizen participation? The paper throws light on how conditions of knowledge production and the innovation system affect potential translations of a public policy such as RRI.