Coproduction (social science)

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The term co-production is used as an idiom to explore the ways in which technical experts and other groups in society generate new knowledge and technologies together. More specifically, some use it to conceptualize the dynamic interaction between technology and society It has a long history, particularly arising out of radical theories of knowledge in the 1960s. It forms part of Mode 2, discussed by Michael Gibbons, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow in their 1994 book The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies (Sage) and by Science and technology studies (S&TS) scholar Sheila Jasanoff.^[1][2] For Jasanoff it signalled S&TS's move from extreme technological determinism and social constructivism to a more systemic understanding of how technology and society ‘co-produce’ each other. Co-production is functionally comparable to the concepts of causality loop, positive feedback, and co-evolution – all of which describe how two or more variables of a system affect and essentially create each other, albeit with respect to different variables operating at different scales. And as with these other concepts, if used too broadly/uncritically, co-production risks noetic flatness – if technology and society co-produce each other equally, the justification for maintaining the boundary between them dissolves (in which case actor-network theory may be invoked). Unless overlapping sets of boundary-work are employed, co-production may also fail to account for power differentials within each variable (in this case, within technology and society).

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