[Sci-tech-public] REMINDER: STS Circle, April 1 - Brice Laurent (Please RSVP)

[STS]

STS Circle at Harvard
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Brice Laurent
Ecole des Mines, Paris and Harvard, STS

on
A Common European Space? Harmonizing the Sustainability of European Biofuels.


Monday, April 1
12:15-2:00 p.m.
Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Room 100F

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Today, March 27.

Abstract: The challenges that European actors face in building functioning markets and legitimate political institutions are numerous, especially as these objectives relate to calls for responsible innovation, sustainable development and economic stability. This presentation focuses on the making of the economic and political European space, and argues that the construction of technical entities is an entry point for the analysis of the democratic challenges at the heart of the project of European integration. The case of “sustainable biofuels” is particularly considered. Describing initiatives aimed to define a European market of “sustainable” biofuels through certifications, I discuss the practical (and contested) meanings of such terms as “harmonization” and “subsidiarity”. I consider in particular the issue of the calculation of greenhouse gases emissions, and the implementation of a semi-material accounting system expected to ensure the stability of the “sustainable” qualification throughout Europe. Eventually, this perspective is a way of accounting for the fragile construction of a common European identity, and for the democratic issues that it raises.



Biography: Brice Laurent is a researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) of the Ecole des Mines de Paris. Using approaches based on Science and Technology Studies, his work studies the construction of political spaces through the analysis of sites (within regulatory, standardization or expertise arenas) where scientific objectivity and democratic legitimacy are questioned. Brice Laurent graduated from the Ecole des Mines and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and was hired as a State engineer by the French public administration in 2005. He joined CSI in 2008, where he wrote his PhD dissertation on nanotechnology (Democracies on trial. Assembling nanotechnology and its problems).

A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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