Matching Items (13)
Description
This project develops the "socio-technical contract" concept, a notion that signifies the kinds of socio-technological assumptions and arrangements that characterize a particular domain of policy or practice. Socio-technical contracts, unlike their social contract counterparts in political theory, represent active negotiation and renegotiation of social contracts around emerging technologies, as opposed to the tacit social contracts of thinkers such as Locke. I use the socio-technical contract concept to analyze the governance of assisted reproductive technologies in the United Kingdom. For increasing numbers of people, reproduction is happening in a fundamentally different way. Conception outside of the womb became a reality with the 1978 birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born via in-vitro fertilization. Alongside Louise Brown's birth emerged new social and governance configurations around reproductive technologies, including, in the United Kingdom, the establishment of a national regulatory agency, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The project applies the socio-technical contract concept in order to examine how distributed governance and socio-cultural processes in the British context worked over time to renegotiate fundamental ideas about families and kinship, the boundaries of "ethical" science, rules governing release of information, the "right to an identity," the role of the state in the reproductive choices of individuals, and general approaches to how to think about the roles and relationships of the child, parents, and the state in and around the introduction of these technologies. As these changes have occurred, policies, social understandings, and legal rights have been renegotiated and new governance capacities, what I call "anticipatory capacities," have come into existence to manage and coordinate change across complex social systems. In illuminating anticipatory capacities in each context, I explore the tools deployed by government actors, scientists, stakeholders, and citizens in negotiating evolving socio-technical contracts around reproductive technologies.
ContributorsConley, Shannon (Author) / Miller, Clark A. (Thesis advisor) / Guston, David H. (Committee member) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
DescriptionThis research evaluates the national HIV/AIDS policy of Ghana and compares it to the policies of other countries in the Economic Community of West African States.
ContributorsAlcaraz, Hailey Elizabeth (Author) / Alozie, Nicholas (Thesis director) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / Rothenberg, Daniel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The resilience of infrastructure essential to public health, safety, and well-being remains a priority among Federal agencies and institutions. National policies and guidelines enacted by these entities call for a holistic approach to resilience and effectively acknowledge the complex, multi-organizational, and socio-technical integration of critical infrastructure. However, the concept of holism is seldom discussed in literature. As a result, resilience knowledge among disciplines resides in near isolation, inhibiting opportunities for collaboration and offering partial solutions to complex problems. Furthermore, there is limited knowledge about how human resilience and the capacity to develop and comprehend increasing levels of complexity can influence, or be influenced by, the resilience of complex systems like infrastructure. The above gaps are addressed in this thesis by 1) applying an Integral map as a holistic framework for organizing resilience knowledge across disciplines and applications, 2) examining the relationships between human and technical system resilience capacities via four socio-technical processes: sensing, anticipating, adapting, and learning (SAAL), and 3) identifying an ontological framework for anticipating human resilience and adaptive capacity by applying a developmental perspective to the dynamic relationships between humans interacting with infrastructure. The results of applying an Integral heuristic suggest the importance of factors representing the social interior like organizational values and group intentionality may be under appreciated in the resilience literature from a holistic perspective. The analysis indicates that many of the human and technical resilience capacities reviewed are interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent in relation to the SAAL socio-technical processes. This work contributes a socio-technical perspective that incorporates the affective dimension of human resilience. This work presents an ontological approach to critical infrastructure resilience that draws upon the human resilience, human psychological development, and resilience engineering literatures with an integrated model to guide future research. Human mean-making offers a dimensional perspective of resilient socio-technical systems by identifying how and why the SAAL processes change across stages of development. This research suggest that knowledge of resilient human development can improve technical system resilience by aligning roles and responsibilities with the developmental capacities of individuals and groups responsible for the design, operation and management of critical infrastructures.
ContributorsThomas, John E. (Author) / Seager, Thomas P (Thesis advisor) / Clark, Susan (Committee member) / Cloutier, Scott (Committee member) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This document builds a model, the Resilience Engine, of how a given sociotechnical innovation contributes to the resilience of its society, where the failure points of that process might be, and what outcomes, resilient or entropic, can be generated by the uptake of a particular innovation. Closed systems, which tend towards stagnation and collapse, are distinguished from open systems, which through ongoing encounters with external novelty, tend towards enduring resilience. Heterotopia, a space bounded from the dominant order in which novelty is generated and defended, is put forth as the locus of innovation for systemic resilience, defined as the capacity to adapt to environmental changes. The generative aspect of the Resilience Engine lies in a dialectic between a heterotopia and the dominant system across a membrane which permits interaction while maintaining the autonomy of the new space. With a model of how innovation, taken up by agents seeking power outside the dominant order, leads to resilience, and of what generates failures of the Resilience Engine as well as successes, the model is tested against cases drawn from two key virtual worlds of the mid-2000s. The cases presented largely validate the model, but generate a crucial surprise. Within those worlds, 2008-2010 saw an abrupt cultural transformation as the dialectic stage of the Resilience Engine's operation generated victories for the dominant order over promising emergent attributes of virtual heterotopia. At least one emergent practice has been assimilated, generating systemic resilience, that of the conference backchannel. A surprise, however, comes from extensive evidence that one element never problematized in thinking about innovation, the discontent agent, was largely absent from virtual worlds. Rather, what users sought was not greater agency but the comfort of submission over the burdens of self-governance. Thus, aside from minor cases, the outcome of the operation of the Resilience Engine within the virtual worlds studied was the colonization of the heterotopic space for the metropolis along with attempts by agents both external and internal to generate maximum order. Pursuant to the Resilience Engine model, this outcome is a recipe for entropic collapse and for preventing new heterotopias from arising under the current dominant means of production.
ContributorsMcKnight, John Carter (Author) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Daer, Alice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Science fiction themed video games, specifically Role Playing Games (RPGs) like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX:HR), that focus on an emerging technology, contain features that help to better inform anticipatory governance. In a game like DX:HR, players vicariously experience human-enhancement technology and its societal effects through their in-game character. Acting as the character, the player explores the topic of human-enhancement technology in various ways, including dialogue with non-player characters (NPCs) and decisions that directly affect the game's world. Because Deus Ex: Human Revolution and games similar to it, allow players to explore and think about the technology itself, the stances on it, and its potential societal effects, they facilitate the anticipatory governance process. In this paper I postulate a theory of anticipatory gaming, which asserts that video games inform the anticipatory governance process for an emerging technology. To demonstrate this theory I examine the parts of the anticipatory governance process and demonstrate RPG's ability to inform it, through a case study of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
ContributorsShedd, Jesse Bernard (Author) / Wetmore, Jameson (Thesis director) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / McKnight, John Carter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Solar energy is a disruptive technology within the electricity industry, and rooftop solar is particularly disruptive as it changes the relationship between the industry and its customers as the latter generate their own power, sell power to the grid, and reduce their dependence on the industry as the sole source provider of electric power. Hundreds of thousands of people in the western United States have made the decision to adopt residential rooftop solar photovoltaic technologies (solar PV) for their homes, with some areas of western cities now having 50% or more of homes with solar installed. This dissertation seeks to understand how rooftop solar energy is altering the fabric of urban life, drawing on three distinct lenses and a mixed suite of methods to examine how homeowners, electric utilities, financial lenders, regulators, solar installers, realtors, and professional trade organizations have responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by rooftop solar energy. First, using a novel solar installation data set, it systematically examines the temporal, geographic, and socio-economic dynamics of the adoption of rooftop solar technologies across the Phoenix metropolitan area over the decade of the 2010s. This study examines the broad social, economic, and urban environmental contexts within which solar adoption has occurred and how these have impacted differential rates of solar uptake. Second, using survey and real estate data from the Phoenix metropolitan area, it explores how solar energy has begun to shape important social and market dynamics, illuminating how decision-making in real estate transactions, including by buyers, sellers, agents, lenders, and appraisers is shifting to accommodate houses with installed solar systems. Lastly, the study explores patterns of rooftop solar adoption across major electric utilities and what those can tell us about the extent to which corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting have affected the practices of investor-owned electric utilities (IOU) within the western US.
ContributorsO'Leary, Jason (Author) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Dirks, Gary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
ABSTRACT
Despite a recognized need for corporations to take greater social responsibility, such responsibility is often lacking in the decisions of corporate America. This lack of attention to social responsibility has numerous implications, not least for the US workforce. Additionally, the workforce itself has a potential role to play in implementing social responsibility. Workers are partly responsible for actions causing negative effects; however, organizations tend to avoid addressing the negative effects as a form of organized irresponsibility. This dissertation examines decisions and actions related to the worker, their work roles, and within their organization. It aims to understand to what extent workers can function as change agents in aligning their organizations with social responsibility as it relates to organizational missions. The methodological approach used to gather data for this dissertation is Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR), and the framework used to analyze the data is Midstream Modulation. The dissertation advances the STIR methodology in several respects as a result of studying technology startups with a focus towards organizational effects. These advances include measuring how modulations within individual workers’ decisions have outcomes at the organizational level or across multiple departments. Examples of such “organizational modulations” can be seen in two of the three studies at the core of this dissertation. Additionally, I demonstrate that multiple reflexive modulations can be involved in modulation sequences and that modulation sequences can be nested in relation to one another.
Furthermore, I present the Collaborative Change Agent Model, which may possibly be utilized to further discuss decisions and embed concepts such as social responsibility and Responsible Innovation in an individual worker’s decision-making process.
ContributorsZaveri, Shivam Rajeshbhai (Author) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Nadesan, Majia (Committee member) / Maynard, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Crises at Teton Dam in 1976, Roosevelt Dam in 1980, Tempe Town Lake Dam in 2010, Oroville Dam in 2017, and the Edenville and Sanford Dams in 2020 prove the substantial and continuing threats to communities posed by major dams. Sociotechnical systems of dams encompass both social or governance characteristics as well as the technical or architectural characteristics. To reduce or overcome chances of failure, experts traditionally focus on making the architectural characteristics of dams safe from potential modes of failure. However, governance characteristics such as laws, building codes, and emergency actions plans also affect the ability of systems of dams that include downstream communities to sustainably adapt to crises. Increasingly, emerging threats such as climate change, earthquakes, terrorism, cyberattacks, or wildfires worsen known modes of failure such as overtopping.Considering these emerging threats, my research assesses whether the architectural and governance characteristics of the aging population of systems of dams in the United States can sustainably adapt to challenges posed by emerging threats. First, by analyzing architectural characteristics of dams, my research provides a useful definition of infrastructures of dams. Next, to assess the governance characteristics of dams, I review institutional documents to heuristically outline seven sociotechnical imaginaries and assess whether an eighth based on resilience is appearing. Further, by analyzing interview transcripts and professional conference presentations, and by conducting case studies, my research reveals ways that experts and stakeholders assess the safety and resilience of systems of dams.
The combined findings of these studies suggest that experts and stakeholders are not sufficiently informed about or focused upon important aspects of the resilience of dams. Therefore, they may not be able to sustainably adapt to crises caused or worsened by emerging threats such as climate change, earthquakes, terrorism, cyberattacks, or wildfires. I offer explanations of why this is so and formulate recommendations.
ContributorsDwyer, Kevin Thomas (Author) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Maynard, Andrew (Committee member) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The governance of natural resources often gets implicitly or explicitly shaped by the knowledge systems that are invoked for making decisions. These knowledge systems reflect the underlying notions of how human-nature relationships are conceived and operationalized by different stakeholders in the governance system. Conflicts in the science-policy interface in environmental governance arise when specific conceptions of nature dominate over other ways of knowing, when stakeholders with representing different knowledge systems have disproportionate degrees of influence in policymaking spaces, or when certain stakeholders are deracinated from their resources and long-held knowledge traditions. This dissertation examines the epistemic conflicts that exist in the Indian forestry that have led to a situation of policy stalemate in the governance system and continue to perpetuate colonial systems of scientific forestry and marginalize local knowledge traditions. To do so, this dissertation analyzes three datasets to understand the extent and consequences of this conflict in the forestry sciences in Indian academia. First, scientific discourses on the Indian Forest Rights Act are examined to understand the normative and epistemic practices that lead to differences in perspectives and scientific positions on forest governance. Second, the forest policy literature is analyzed using bibliometrics techniques to identify the intellectual and social silos in forestry sciences in India. Third, interview data from Indian forest scientists is analyzed to understand the inequalities within the science-policy interface in Indian forestry and how these perpetuate colonial legacies of forestry science. This dissertation concludes with recommendations and future pathways for knowledge integration and policy deliberations to make more decolonial, inclusive, and sustainable policies in Indian forestry.
ContributorsBisht, Vanya (Author) / Chhetri, Nalini (Thesis advisor) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Planetary Defense is the scientific field of study dedicated to the detection and mitigation of a potential threat posed to Earth by a Near Earth Object (NEO), whether an asteroid or a comet. It is a fairly recent scientific field of study. The first Planetary Defense offices were created in the United States in 2017 and at the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2019. Should an impact occur, the Planetary Defense community, an international network of Planetary scientists, is set to work in coordination with international and national emergency response services to deal with such a natural celestial disaster. This dissertation will revolve around the hypothesis that over the past twenty-five years Planetary Defense has morphed from a scientific field dedicated to asteroid detection to a broad managerial international technocratic infrastructure. Considering that such a disaster could have consequences of potentially globally catastrophic proportions, including possibilities for large-scale tsunamis, firestorms, and stratospheric darkening, it is critical that any NEO disaster management and coordination efforts be informed by proven theoretical principles and best practices. On a theoretical level, however, connections have yet to be made between the literature of the sociology of natural disaster management and this newly organized field of Planetary Defense management. This dissertation aims to address this knowledge gap by extracting lessons learned and guidelines from the Sociology of Disaster Management and link them to the field of Planetary Defense management.
ContributorsHaddaji, Alissa J (Author) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Bell, James (Committee member) / Fellous, Jean-Louis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019