Whitley, Edgar A. 
ORCID: 0000-0003-1779-0814 and Hosein, Ian R.
(2008)
Doing the politics of technological decision making: due process and the debate about identity cards in the UK.
European Journal of Information Systems, 17 (6).
pp. 668-677.
ISSN 0960-085X
Abstract
The U.K. Government, in presenting its proposals for biometric identity cards, made strong claims about the technology and science underlying the proposed National Identity Scheme. In this paper, we use insights from science and technology studies (STS), particularly Latour’s ‘Politics of Nature’ argument, to analyse the parliamentary debates about the technological and scientific aspects of the proposals. The authors were part of a team that produced a report that raised a series of perplexities about the Scheme in an attempt to counter the short-circuiting of discussion of these perplexities in the parliamentary debate. The paper analyses the government’s attempts at short-circuiting in light of Latour’s argument and the introduction of perplexities by our report. It demonstrates the extent to which this form of STS can enhance political debate about technological decisions.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/index.html |
| Additional Information: | © 2008 Operational Research Society |
| Divisions: | Management |
| Subjects: | J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Sep 2010 13:42 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 22:28 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29042 |
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