I.1. What’s behind the “E”?

I will dare open the serious and difficult theme of the challenges facing the drive for responsibilization of the research and innovation realm in the context of contemporary market societies in an anecdotal style. Introducing the problem in such a way aims to provide a simple illustration of the normative grip that economic thinking has over ethics and societal issues when it comes to science and technology. While referring to materials for the preparation of this book, I encountered a very innocent but telling mistake in a background note aimed at informing potential applicants for Horizon 2020 funding and promoting a responsible approach to Horizon 2020 ICT-related research and innovation (R&I). The document itself was arguing the need for deeper involvement of social sciences and humanities (SSH) in R&I activities, one way being by ELSIfication. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so much), the latter was described as monitoring “economic, legal and social issues related to technological developments” [EUR 15a, p. 2]. Fortunately, the expansion for that four-letter abbreviation was accurately put in a footnote – “Ethical, Legal and Social Implications”. Nevertheless, this very benign mistake led me to think about the power of the reflex to consider “E” first and foremost as the importance of economic expediency and most often, if not always, to find ethics as a rear concern, in a footnote, figuratively speaking. Why has the impetus to assume the primacy of the economic realm become so strong that we make such unconscious but very revealing mistakes?

We cannot answer this question without exploring the strong grip that market-centered normativity has over the institutional discourse, organizational practices and the imagination of various societal actors involved in the research and innovation process. Of course, focusing on the domination of economic and market thinking is not a conceptual breakthrough that deserves much recognition for originality; however, in our case, it is a good vantage point for a deeper exploration of the reasons for something we might consider to be an “implementation impasse” in the efforts towards responsibilization of the research and innovation process, manifested in the case of the recently promoted European Union (EU) concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).

In this book, I will try to dismantle the different policy and theoretical discourses that, in their peculiar interaction, interweave the problematic idea of the possible reconciliation between the two “E”s: research and innovation can be both profitable and ethically acceptable; marketization and responsibilization are compatible; ethics can “function” in the current competitive market context. At face value, these contentions and governance ambitions do not seem completely impossible. Indeed, early incorporation of ethical and societal considerations in the research and technological development (RTD) process is economy-wise in terms of ensuring a broader uptake of the end-products of this process, having been marked with the “responsibility stamp”. This seems to be a sound, doable solution, which requires institutional support for advancing and incorporating responsibility. Promoting RRI and its procedural integration in EU-funded RTD is a significant step in that direction. It does not, however, unravel the problematic relationships between economy and ethics proper in terms of how they should be accommodated together in the science and technology (S&T) governance process without instrumentalizing the latter for the smooth functioning of the former.

By ethics proper, I very tentatively denote an engagement with reflexive examination entailing the exercise of critique, emancipation from dominant discourses and empowerment by challenging social structures that are deemed “unacceptable”. How is this possible, if the claim for responsibilization does not question the premises of the current economic system and the imperative for market regulation (i.e. the contention that the market mechanism is the most adequate and neutral normative regulator producing acceptable social order)? How is it possible for ethics proper to exist at all if it is subjugated through institutional integration to policy considerations that by all means prioritize economic growth? Is it plausible to expect that ethics reflexivity can be productively translated into institutional environment and procedures without being distorted and its critical capacity being diminished? Is it not the quest for responsibilization that is doomed to failure vis-à-vis the promises it holds for re-socializing the S&T process and ethicizing the private knowledge-production realm? How can we ensure that Ethics will not fade away while reconciling with Economics? These are some of the questions this book will attempt to consider.

I.2. The imperative for responsible innovation

It has been several years since the European Commission embraced the notion of Responsible Research and Innovation and started exploring ways to promote its implementation within the field of European governance of RTD. It should be acknowledged that its integration is going well and relatively quickly given the usual clumsiness of institutional and procedural change of an administrative apparatus such as that of the European Union. It has been given an institutional definition [EUR 18h]; it has been operationalized into six “key” areas of implementation; it has been a subject matter of FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects, which explore its conceptual grounds and application challenges; it has been popularized through various conferences; and ultimately it is turning into a realm of theoretical exploration that is at the heart of recently formed research networks and alliances for further development and promotion of the idea, including through a special journal (The Journal of Responsible Innovation).

Indeed, we witness a rising enthusiasm for the timeliness of a political and institutional recognition that the research and innovation process needs to be aligned with the pressing needs and concerns of society and that it should not blindly follow the logic of its own evolution, which lacks sensitivity to the broader social (and ethical) context. More specifically, the support for RRI within the wider academic community reflects the hopes that certain mechanisms would be finally put in place so that scientific–technological progress is not left to indifferent forces manifested in the perceived neutrality of either the scientific method or the market mechanism alone. The aim is to harness research and innovation activities for politically defined non-neutral effects such as prosperity, sustainability and social cohesion.

In this endeavor, the notion of responsibility is crucial. It is not only useful to re-examine the normative commitments of the various agents in the knowledge-creation process. More generally, it evokes responsiveness to a situation that can be simply depicted as problematic. Furthermore, it makes it imperative to react to the circumstances of what is believed to be a crisis between science and the non-scientific world. So, what is wrong with the current research and innovation field?

The landscape of visions for the matter is intricate. It reflects different domain interests, normative orientations and agendas. EU institutional rationality assumes that the problem lies in the crisis of trust between the scientific community and the general public. Industry interprets this crisis as lack of public confidence in the marketable products of research and innovation. The general public usually swings between awe and complacency with regard to technical advances, and fear and distrust as regards the might of science and its profit-oriented alliances with market forces. The scientific community, for its part, construes the problem as external – it either attributes it to misunderstanding and ignorance on the part of the public, or to misuse of its well-intended studies by politicians or end-users.

What lies behind all these considerations is particular uneasiness about techno-scientific progress – in terms of its effects, “democratic deficits” and overall societal adequacy. It is almost clear that the concern about effects implies the exploration of negative, unintended and surprising repercussions – these are all consequences that could destabilize, harm or damage individual lives and organizational structures. A case in point is the development of dual-use products and technologies. Then, another worry pertains to the perceived democratic insufficiencies in the knowledge-generation process. This triggers initiatives to fill in the gaps of codified knowledge with “external” epistemic perspectives of various stakeholders and disciplines. A common example given in this respect is the contribution made by patient organizations in the design and conduct of biomedical research. While these two main concerns are easily conceived, the notion of societal adequacy might be slightly difficult to elaborate due to normative differences as to what makes something “societally adequate”. Here we will use it to denote and reveal some disturbing moments related to the evolution of the S&T realm. We will point out three of them without indulging in ideologically laden debates on the matter.

First, aiming societal adequacy could be understood as pursuing adequate temporal management of research and innovation. The crisis of the modern narrative of time as linear development causes certain anxieties over how to navigate along with the S&T realm in the face of the assumed multidirectionality of the future. In addition, the increasing uncertainty and the ongoing time–space compression [HAR 90] demand more adequate temporal regimes to govern the innovation process so that different considerations (including ethical and social) are taken into account in a timely manner. This could explain why the notions of foresight and anticipation are crucial within the conceptualizations of RRI and why one of the recurrent themes in promoting prospective and proactive responsibilization (as more adequate than post-factum legal normative regulation) becomes the need for early integration of different societal perspectives in the R&I process so that they could be built-in in its eventual products.

Second, pursuing societal adequacy could be understood as the search for more appropriate strategies to tackle the epistemic challenges before the contemporary knowledge-production process in the context of increasingly complex socio-technical systems. One such strategy is found in the opening of every disciplinary realm for: (1) the perspectives of other disciplines (interdisciplinarity); (2) the input from the non-scientific world (transdisciplinary collaboration with laypersons, stakeholders, civil society organizations, etc.). The assumption is that complex problems demand a concerted effort for consolidating a variety of perspectives that should produce a comprehensive solution. This means breaking the specific occupational closures characteristic of the professional weltanschauung of researchers ‒ their ivory towers, their “blind spots” in the broader context, their professional arrogance due to complacency on the assumed power of the scientific method. Therefore, aiming at societal adequacy entails transgressing the epistemic isolation of the scientific realm along the lines of what some propose to be post-normal, post-academic or Mode-2 research [FUN 93, ZIM 96, NOW 01] so that its activities and products will be complemented, enriched and ultimately “socialized”.

Third, technology-induced social change not only creates uncertainty and time acceleration but also destabilizes the normative tenets of societies presenting them with a myriad of moral dilemmas. The breakthroughs in the biotechnological field are a case in point (cloning, eugenics, synthetic organisms, etc.). This invites solutions that need to fill in the normative void and challenge the legitimacy of the perceived amorality¹ of both the market and the research and innovation domain which advance neutrality as sufficient normative guidance in the governance of techno-scientific advancement. This could explain the return to ethics in the 1970s (with the focus on applied ethics) and the thirst for ethically adequate solutions to cope with novelty and unfamiliar social situations precipitated by new and emerging technologies. The need to restore the relevance of moral philosophy against the backdrop of innovation-driven market societies comes once again at the forefront. So, the quest for social relevance of research and innovation concerns filling in the normative gap left by scientism in the midst of ongoing marketization of the knowledge-creation process.

So far I have briefly discussed the parameters of what is deemed to be a problematic situation in order to illustrate the reasons that prompt a responsibilization response, manifested in the promotion of RRI. The need for such a response is often presented as an imperative for responsible innovation (see [OWE 13]). The notion of imperative entails a particularly engaging normative power². Its appeal goes far deeper than the ordinary policy commitments to enable the dialogue between different societal actors involved in the research and innovation process. It reveals a profound need to resort to or evoke a mode of normativity that corresponds not just to the oughtness of going beyond the existing governance logic in thinking about how knowledge and its applications are entangled in contemporary market societies but also to the urgency of the moral call to do so.

I.3. Market societies and the RRI challenge

In the political philosophy realm, it is often claimed that any new politico-philosophical notion comes as a reaction to a situation that has been perceived as problematic. In other words, conceptual novelty in the realm of social life appears as a response to a crisis. Similarly, we might think of RRI as a politico-philosophical and policy reaction to a critical and rather concerning state of affairs as regards contemporary research and innovation. This crisis is related to the normative orientation of the S&T realm. One source of worry is the ongoing commercialization of the scientific domain, which could subjugate the knowledge-generation process to the profit motive. The other danger lies in the so-called technological determinism³ and the assumed neutrality (and social indifference) of the scientific method. This could leave the research and innovation field blind to the effects it could produce, hence the need for more responsible approach which takes into account the possible societal consequences – with regard to health, environment, culture, etc. We already mentioned that these anxieties are accompanied by a certain flavor of urgency or at least inevitability of a reaction that brings forward the “imperative for responsible innovation” about which Owen et al. debate [OWE 13].

Although the idea of RRI is being well developed at the conceptual level, the actual translation of these theoretical insights into the mere practice of research and innovation meets a myriad of impediments. Having to conquer actual policy and practice spaces for advancing the normative appeal of this imperative and its implicit precautionary logic, the RRI field stumbles on the structural limitations (certain institutional arrangements) and cultural pressures (dominant public philosophies) inherent in contemporary market societies. This presents us with what is deemed to be its major problem – the sheer prospects of implementation. The implementation challenge is a manifestation of what I suspect to be the actual RRI challenge, namely the normative incompatibility between the drive for responsibilization and the principles of functioning of market societies. I deliberately chose the term market societies because it has the theoretical merit of focusing on the expansion of market regulation⁴ beyond the economic realm. While a market economy establishes the market mechanism as the main principle for allocation of resources within an economy, the notion of market society implies that the market mechanism is becoming a universal normative regulator, with the ambition to treat non-market entities as commodities suitable for exchange. Market societies make it possible for market regulation to become an axial societal principle and colonize spheres of life previously considered incompatible with it.

This also concerns the research and innovation sphere. The commercialization of the biotechnological field provides rather illustrative cases. For example, innovations and techniques for aiding couples with reproductive problems in the context of market societies (where everything is potential commodity for sale) are turning surrogacy into a commercial activity and a hugely profitable business [TWI 11] thus adding another important dimension when discussing its acceptability. So, my reference to the notion of market societies is not by chance. It aims to direct the attention to the transformations of the normative profile of our contemporaneity, since it also concerns the S&T realm. In this endeavor, I will evoke two quite different but very similar accounts on the colonizing ambitions of the market, those of Karl Polanyi and Michael Sandel [POL 47, POL 01, SAN 98, SAN 12, SAN 13].

Coming from different perspectives, inhabiting different historical and social contexts, they somehow share a common concern: the logic of the market conquers extraneous spaces and projects its normative principles onto realms other than the economy, thus turning them into part of the economy. Polanyi argues that such a normative stretch could eventually lead to detrimental consequences for the strength and resistance of the social fabric unless an institutional counter-reaction is initiated in order to mitigate the effects of the self-regulated markets [POL 01]. In his anthropological explorations of historical forms of economic life, he renders market economy as recent and peculiar phenomenon, which was impossible without the support of the national state. The latter provided the necessary institutional arrangements to commodify what was previously considered non-commodifiable: land, labor and money, thus opening the door for the exchange logic of the market to spread on realms previously functioning within other modes/regimes of normativity (sharing, reciprocity, etc.). In his account, a market economy can exist only in a market society [POL 01, p. 74]. The market society rests upon economic determinism that has gradually turned into a public philosophy that, as we will later see in the book, has led to the fading distinction between societal well-being and economic performance. As rightly pointed out by Polanyi:

“The market mechanism, moreover, created the delusion of economic determinism as a general law for all human society [emphasis added]. Under a market economy, of course, this law holds good. Indeed, the working of the economic system here not only ‘influences’ the rest of society, but determines it ‒ as in a triangle the sides not merely influence, but determine, the angles…[t]he indirect effect of the market system came very near to determining the whole of society. It was almost impossible to avoid the erroneous conclusion that as ‘economic’ man was ‘real’ man, so the economic system was ‘really’ society” [emphasis added] [POL 47].

The last sentence is very important for us because it reveals the grip that this logic holds over the imagination of academics, politicians and the general public. It produces assumptions that, as we will see, are very delicately underlining different policy discourses on the governance of research and innovation. It also builds in some controversies in the actual policy mechanisms that could explain the implementation impasse and the difficulties in advancing the responsibilization efforts, envisioned in the notion of RRI. When the market mechanism is promoted as an encompassing normative regulator of the whole social realm, this social realm is conceptually diminished to that serving the primacy of the economic logic. Then, how could RRI, which is evoked to correct some of the mischiefs of free markets, emancipate from the considerations of the economic realm, and advance its own responsibilization agenda as a response to the problematic situation that we outlined above?

Michael Sandel, on his turn, contends that allowing the market to become the ultimate social regulator will inevitably produce coercion or corruption of the genuine normative principles behind the functioning of crucial non-market realms. While exploring the moral limits of markets [SAN 98, SAN 12], he insists that there is a vital difference between a market economy and a market society, and that in the last 30 years, our societies have quietly drifted from the former to the latter. Market society is a result of recent transformations. Its peculiarity lies in extending the market’s inclination to commoditize everything and conquer what were previously non-market realms to submit them to its logic. Again, this also concerns human mentalities – the assumption that everything has an exchange value or a monetary equivalent that can turn appreciated objects and practices into market-regulated items is at the heart of these transformations. This could distort the honorable act of organ donation into a business of organ selling, the civic duty of defending the homeland into a profit-driven warfare, the intimate process of childbearing into a paid service of womb renting, etc. Similarly, market societies could introduce certain coercive and corruptive effects into the knowledge-generation process, which would challenge the ethics and participatory orientation of any attempt at responsibilization.

We have to admit that the anxieties accompanying the ever-expanding conquering power of the market over more and more realms of public and private life evoke the imperative for responsible innovation. The need to respond to this situation results from the fact that the grip that market adoration has over the imagination has reached an extent to which the conviction that the market is the ultimate normative regulator and cure for all economic and social ills has reached a point that borders on religious faith. Some employ the term market fundamentalism to address the worry that the encompassing power of market rationality under the premises of the efficiency hypothesis might actually threaten the social fabric⁵. As we saw, for Polanyi, the source of possible devastation lies in imposing the commodity form over the natural world. In the same vein, but a few decades later, Habermas [HAB 87] warned that the undergoing “colonization of the lifeworld” could lead to extreme alienation. More recently, Sandel [SAN 98, SAN 12] pointed out that the marketization of certain social practices is diminishing their authenticity, thereby corrupting traditional civic virtues as fundaments of public life.

Transposed to the realm of research and innovation, this constitutes the RRI challenge. The clash between the imperative for responsibilization that entails reconsideration of the normative tenets of S&T advancement and the normative profile of contemporary market societies advancing the alleged neutrality of the commodification and exchange mechanisms could explain what is deemed to be the RRI implementation problem. Usually, in the RRI field, there are qualms not about the theoretical development of the idea, but about determining the conditions for its possible application. It is true that the European Commission has introduced several actions on thematic elements in order to advance the implementation of RRI (the so-called “keys” ‒ public engagement, open access, gender, ethics and science education) along with efforts to promote institutional change to accommodate the latter (the sixth “key” – governance). Nevertheless, these six elements of implementation are fraught with their own problems and controversies. They beg for deeper conceptual exploration in view of the context that simultaneously produces the need for responsibilization and the impediments before its realization. That context is what we referred to as “market society”.

I.4. The challenges before the RRI field

The normative conflict we are talking about is also evident in one of the ill-articulated controversies in the RRI realm. On the one hand, RRI has the chance to voice an old-age concern about the creeping commoditization and marketization of the research and innovation realm. It can advance new arguments in favor of the contention that the evolution of the S&T domain should not be left to the mercy of the market mechanism alone since the latter transforms everything into exchange value and monetary equivalent. The mere idea of responsibilization implies the need for retrieving science from the tight normative grip of economic determinism while bringing it back to an enriched notion of human progress inspired by non-economic considerations.

At the same time, as we already noted, driven by the demands of “reality”, the concept needs to make its way within a politico-economic and cultural context which is generally dominated by market-oriented thinking. As a result, RRI proponents have to argue its relevance and defend its compatibility with the market logic. This brings the risks of undermining the normative appeal of the imperative for responsibilization and diminishing the chances of moral philosophy to return into the public debate on S&T. In its attempts to expand its popularity and public recognition beyond EU-funded research, the RRI realm could lose some of its genuine conceptual pathos. In pursuit of alliances with and uptake by business entities, it could resort to various settling strategies with the profit-oriented world that would preclude it from deeply exploring the actual impediments to all endeavors to advance its own promises into reality. One particular danger is that eventually, a theoretical “zone of unease” would emerge, a shadowy conceptual space that would not be explicitly developed because of a justified concern that it represents a slippery slope, which may lead to self-defeating (or at least to radical leftist) inferences about the future of the idea.

Meanwhile, omitting to delve into the conceptual blind spots that problematize the conflict of the drive for responsibilization with the normative infrastructure of contemporary market societies, leads to certain unintended effects, which would misdirect the analytical attention away from the core problem. For example, one way to approach the issue is by focusing mainly on the “ethics myopathy” of the research community and its disregard for the broader socio-cultural context based on assumptions of the inherent neutrality of the scientific realm. Then, similar to this logic, we may unintentionally and unfairly place the blame only on the scientists and their specific ethos while ignoring the politico-economic structures in which they need to operate and to which they need to adjust. Another shortcut strategy in solving the responsibilization problem promotes greater participation in the knowledge-generation process, but leaves aside the fact that such an approach could easily reproduce implicit controversies in contemporary representative democracies. As an effect, it is very likely that efforts for democratizing the research and innovation process through public engagement could indeed introduce the chance for various societal actors to speak up, but do not necessarily ensure that those alternative voices are heard. Then another problematic step would be to unequivocally accept that industry is the interface with society when it comes to innovation, or to assume that stakeholders, end-users and the public as one and the same. As a result, the democratization of the knowledge-generation process could very easily fall into the track of economic expediency that does not serve the responsibilization effort but the needs of the market players. Further problems can arise from making very narrow semantic interpretations of the notion of responsibility, thereby depriving the latter of the specific scope and appeal of RRI, and boiling down the implementation of RRI to known solutions of the science–society–market trilemma such as corporate social responsibility, foresight and professional codes of conduct.

Given all this, the current text will cautiously make an attempt to subject the concept of RRI to reflexive scrutiny in terms of its politico-economic context and the conceptual framings that it itself advances. It will try to reveal the controversial ways in which the role and place of the market is assumed within the theoretical and institutional articulations on RRI. That being said, the text does not employ a particular economic framework as a conceptual lens through which the issue of responsibilization of the S&T realm be interpreted. Nor does it promote specific normative economy perspective to clarify the ethics-market problem, although it laments the negligence of the moral philosophy roots of economic knowledge. It does, however, occasionally evoke different accounts from the field of economics in order to illustrate how the economic perspective is being entangled in different theoretical and institutional accounts on the possibility for responsible governance of research and innovation (e.g. the new institutional economics’ imprint on the notion of governance).

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I must emphasize that this book does not have the ambition to solve the problems of innovation-driven capitalism. It will explore the social critique potential of RRI while attempting to reveal the assumptions behind the conceptual and institutional development of the idea, which are an echo of already-explored concerns in the realm of economic and political theory, especially about governance as a mechanism for dealing with the normative fragmentation of contemporary democracies. An important part in this endeavor is the focus on the unarticulated concerns behind the promotion of RRI with regard to the knowledge-creation process in contemporary market societies. The book will neither denounce the idea, nor propose yet another glorifying reconfirmation of its well-known formulae both in the conceptual and the EU institutional world. It will undertake the task of exploring its controversies. It will also investigate how within the justification of RRI, we might find a variety of ambivalent discursive strategies which touch upon the role of the market both as a problem and as a solution to the hardship of integrating ethics reflexivity in the research and innovation process. This will shed some light, I believe, on crucial parameters of the RRI challenge.

One of the difficulties in accomplishing this task is that the key notions employed in our argument (governance, market, coordination, participation, responsibility, openness, networking, etc.) are so intertwined and so mutually reinforcing that it is inevitable that they be treated simultaneously. It is impossible to examine each and every one of them within a sterile conceptual format. Hence, the reader will come across conceptualizations and interpretations that at first glance may seem to belong to other chapters of this book but are nevertheless part of the problem at hand. For example, when we explore the issue of the crisis of contemporary democracy as part of the context precipitating the emergence of RRI, we cannot leave aside debates on governance, participation, responsibilization, etc.; when we outline the link between innovation and uncertainty, we cannot ignore the role of markets in producing ignorance and how this challenges the appeal for responsibilization in terms of openness and transparency, and so on. Another difficulty may come from the fact that there is no clear demarcation line between academic and institutional strands of RRI. Although there can be found significant differences, both are influencing each other by the virtue of the mere dynamics of the field – basic definitions from the theoretical landscape are crafted by people who at one time or another have been affiliated to or consulted European policy structures and have influenced the overall institutional orientation towards responsible innovation (for example, René von Schomberg and Richard Owen); then, many representatives of academia participate in EU-funded research projects where they develop their own elaborations on RRI while abiding by the European Commission’s interpretation on the matter. This could explain why sometimes in the text the distinction between the two is not explicit. That is evident in the use of phrases like “the RRI field”, “the RRI approach” or just “RRI” to denote the general theoretical and institutional reorientation to steering research and innovation towards more societally acceptable paths.

To recap, this book is about RRI self-confrontation. The latter presents me as an author with a particular difficulty that needs to be honestly and explicitly articulated. After getting to know the forming RRI network, its theoretical landscape and its practical manifestations, and working in research projects that are busy advocating its relevance, we tend to naturally develop a certain loyalty to the field and its proponents, thus losing some of the sharpness of the initial critical stance when introduced to the idea. Eventually, we internalize the arguments employed in defense of the field, adopt the specific vocabulary and use main points of reference (as with the Collingridge dilemma, for example, [COL 80]). In other words, we start to speak RRI. But being part of this newly forming approach, which I believe has the features of an intellectual and policy orientation rather than an established research domain, also brings responsibilities to explore the built-in controversies over the idea and the deeper reasons for its implementation impasse. Only then, I think, can the RRI community continue with a frank dialogue about the future.