This accessible book introduces students to perspectives from the field of science and technology studies. Putting forward the thesis that science and democracy share important characteristics, it shows how authority cannot be taken for granted and must continuously be reproduced and confirmed by others. At a time when fundamental scientific and democratic values are being threatened by sceptics and populist arguments, an understanding of the relationship between them is much needed. This is an invaluable resource for all who are interested in the role of scientific knowledge in governance, societal developments and the implications for democracy, concerned publics and citizen engagement.

This paper explores the river landscapes and concomitant values resulting from tensions between floodmanagement and visions of a River City. The aim is to contribute to an understanding of the management of urbanwaters as valuation practices. We regard valuation practices as co-constitutive of current and future riverlandscapes. Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg, is located next to the sea, and the Göta River, Sweden’slargest water system, runs through it. Our empirical focus is on how this city approaches increasing risks of flooding.We explore three approaches that have been formulated in relation to flood management: defend, retreat andattack. We ask how these approaches are applied in the management of Göta River flooding and in the city’s visionof a future Gothenburg that embraces the river as a genuinely positive aspect of urban life. We present the case asa journey that takes us upstream from the river’s sea inlet port and through Gothenburg. During our kilometre bykilometre journey, the river’s appearance shifts. The varied river landscape mirrors the diversity in how its watersare valuated, both historically and in present times. The perception of urban waters is shaped by practices ofvaluation. These valuations are generative. They connect the value of water to other entities, actors, plans, activitiesand buildings, and they are thus key to the river landscapes that will eventually be realised. By way of conclusion,we identify a number of governance challenges that are particularly relevant to urban rivers.

As in many other policy areas, there is a rising concern about how to involve the general public in heritage management and preservation. We analyse attempts made by Swedish cultural heritage authorities to initiate new participatory devices. We ask: How is storytelling used as a participatory device? What are the implications of this in terms of how legitimate concerns are reconfigured? Storytelling has a capacity to transform dominant discourses and result in new objects of care. We conclude that even storytelling itself is reconfigured in these practices, resulting in the collection of narratives, with limited transformative effects.

Since the 1970s, the template for Swedish nuclear waste management has been for industry to deliver “nuclear fuel safety” after first demonstrating to government authority how and where it can be achieved. In other words, nuclear fuel safety has been something to be publicly witnessed before it is decided whether or not industry should be allowed to carry on implementing its plans. From the outset, these industry plans encompassed the completion of the Swedish nuclear power programme itself, as this was made contingent upon a demonstrated solution to the waste problem. However, after a national referendum on the future of nuclear power in 1980, industrial progress in nuclear fuel safety became directly connected with a safe phase out of a 12-reactor programme within 25 years of its completion. As plans for such a phase out have in turn grown subject to indefinite postponement, and as opposition to nuclear power has progressively mellowed, so the nuclear industry's highly resilient nuclear fuel safety programme appears set again today to validate nuclear new build both at home and abroad. Drawing on studies of three specific management tools - safety analyses, EIA consultations and alternative “dialogue projects” - this article seeks to chart the unremitting and indomitable Swedish commitment to the mediation of nuclear waste management through industrial demonstration as this has withstood various attempts to introduce a greater element of public dialogue into the policy process in response to both siting conflicts and new environmental legislation.

The aim of this report is to analyse representations of time in a particular social setting: how the nuclear waste issue is presented in the PowerPoint slides that the Swedish Nuclear Waste Management Company (SKB) show at its information and consultation meetings. We have chosen to see ‘time’ and ‘expressions of time dimensions’ as a way of framing the nuclear waste issue. The way in which nuclear waste is discussed in relation to time both enable and limit discussions about possible futures. In this study we ask the following research questions: how is time represented in the PowerPoint slides? In what way is time presented in relation to risk and safety? In what way is time presented in relation to environmental impact?

Our empirical material consists of all PowerPoint slides shown at SKB’s information and consultation meetings. We use the material that is available at SKB’s website between 2003 and 2008. The material consists of around 1500 slides. In addition we have conducted participant observations at ten of these meetings between 2005 and 2008.

We conclude that time is visualised in different forms depending on what it is that is shown: safety, risk or environmental impact. We could identify a variety of visualisations, for example time lines, and tables with dates in connection to figures of pollution levels. Taken together they represent different stories about the future as well as about the past. SKB use certain time perspectives to motivate that their suggested method for a nuclear waste disposal is reasonable and possible to implement while other time perspectives are shown in relation to the potential development of society’s capacity to manage the waste and the future development of transports and the impact related to this, for example.