Science Policy Briefing of the European Science Foundation. Contextualization of science in society by highlighting three tensions:
1. Major reordering of Science-society relations
The majority of policy measures tend to conceptualize research and innovation and their relation to society in terms of governance by management and control, while – from the perspective of this report – research and innovation are better understood as deeply intertwined with broader societal developments.
2. Changing conditions concerning research and innovation
Tension between society valuing science as public good, and the quite narrow indicator-driven evaluations sometimes employed in research institutions.
3. Explicit practices of addressing science & society issues.
While policy makers frequently stress the need to undertake ‘dialogue’ to address societal concerns, the authors simultaneously observe efforts to keep control over the outcomes of such engagements between science and society: in particular, by insisting upon the speed with which innovation has to happen and by favouring specific forms of science-society interactions.