Rationality and Ritual

In Rationality and Ritual, internationally-renowned expert Brian Wynne offers a profound analysis of science and technology policy-making. By focussing on an episode of major importance in Britain's nuclear history'”the Windscale Inquiry, a public hearing about the future of fuel reprocessing in Britain'”he offers a powerful critique of such judicial procedures and the underlying assumptions of the rationalist approach. This second edition re-introduces this classic and still very relevant work. Nearly 30 years since original publication, debates about nuclear power are coming to the fore once again. Yet we still do not have adequate ways to make decisions on these big issues, involving true public debate, rather than ritualistic processes in which the rules and scope of the debate are proscribed by those in authority. The perspectives in this book are as significant and original as they were when it was written. The new edition contains a substantial introduction by the author reflecting on changes (and lack there of) in the intervening years and introducing new themes, relevant to today's world of big science and technology, that can be drawn out of the original text. It also offers a new Foreword by Gordon Mackerron, an expert on energy and nuclear policy, who sets this classic work in the context of contemporary nuclear debates.

Brian Wynne is Professor of Science Studies, Associate Director of the ESRC Research Center CESAGen at Lancaster University and recipient of the J.D. Bernal Prize, 2010. He was an Inaugural Member of the Management Board and Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and a Special Adviser to the 2000 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry into Science and Society.