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Nanotechnologies and trust

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Discourses of Trust

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Abstract

The issue of how technologies are discursively represented and how this might impact upon public trust is a key question in the contemporary governance of new and emergent technologies. However, at present there is little consensus among scholars as to what is meant by ‘trust’ and how it might be measured, and relatively little attention has been devoted to examining the discourses through which it is framed. Nanotechnologies, like many other new and emerging technologies, are invested with high expectations. According to many recent science and government reports, nanotechnologies will deliver many new breakthroughs in the years ahead. These include new drug delivery systems, smaller, harder materials in engineering, more energy-efficient storage systems, and ‘zero-waste’ technologies to support environmentally sustainable initiatives. Like a number of other fields, such as stem cell science and personalised medicines, this is a field where the expectations have tended to run ahead of the state of the science. Those who have generated the expectations for this field have been largely from science and policy communities. From the outset of public prominence of this field in the UK (from approximately 2003), proponents of nanotechnology research and development have been concerned about managing public responses to the field. Concerns about a ‘GM style’ backlash have been evident in science communications on nanotechnologies, such as the Royal Society-Royal Academy of Engineering (2004) report, and the Demos report (Wilsdon & Willis 2004).

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Authors
  1. Alison Anderson
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  2. Alan Petersen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher N. Candlin (Senior Research Professor Emeritus) (Senior Research Professor Emeritus)

  2. Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, University of South Australia, Australia

    Jonathan Crichton (Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Research Fellow) (Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Research Fellow)

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© 2013 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Anderson, A., Petersen, A. (2013). Nanotechnologies and trust. In: Candlin, C.N., Crichton, J. (eds) Discourses of Trust. Palgrave Studies in Professional and Organizational Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-29556-9_15

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