Making Industry Sustainable: Green Chemistry in the United States and the European Union

这个博士后奖学金着手调查声称，最近出现的绿色化学构成了一个过渡到可持续发展的工业，在（重新）设计化学生产的环境目的在美国和欧盟。它旨在探索自20世纪90年代初以来绿色和可持续化学形成的方式，并产生化学家，政府，工业和公民认为可信和合法的化学制造，政策制定和消费者决策的科学知识和材料技术。 该项目旨在比较美国和欧盟在绿色/可持续化学方面的发展，以确定可持续性、生产设计和材料技术的概念是否因社会和文化而异。 由于政治需求、生态价值、监管和制度环境以及两个地区的技术条件，美国和欧盟之间（和内部）的配置可能有所不同。 该项目还分析了政府、环保主义者、消费者和行业本身如何知道或证明向可持续发展的过渡正在进行中。它旨在阐明，在隐藏在工厂和实验室中的化学制造领域，行动者如何衡量工业的表现，这一领域在技术上显然是《双城之战》，而且相对难以进入。 该项目的知识价值包括制定一个理论框架，通过知识、材料技术、化学品、决策机构以及行为者在要求、解释和使用科学和技术信息方面的工作来观察化学生产系统的变化。从理论上讲，本研究借鉴了三条科学技术研究的线索。这些措施是：（a）社会稳健知识的概念（诺沃特尼、斯科特和吉本斯）;（B）比克尔关于物质技术的社会塑造的思想;（c）雅萨诺夫关于监管科学、政治文化和公民认识论的著作。 该项目将这些理论链扩展并综合成一个框架，该框架具有共同塑造可持续化学品生产的四个要素：行为者，公民认识论，影响/权力渠道和监管/机构环境。 在研究了绿色/可持续化学的出现之后，该项目评估了绿色化学是否以及如何通过三个方面转化为美国和欧盟的生产系统，以及关于设计师催化剂，更安全的聚合物和邻苯二甲酸酯替代品：可持续性是如何构成的？ 如何将可持续性设计到生产中？如何在生产中实施可持续性并进行评估？ 该项目采用了一种解释性的社会科学方法。 它利用了半结构化的采访行动者在绿色化学竞技场的组合;政府文件;工业，科学和技术文献;技术分析;监管数据库;和环境新闻。它将历史观点与当代发展相结合。实地研究将在美国和欧洲进行。 该研究金对社会产生了广泛的影响。它将加强研究和教育在加州大学伯克利分校的整合，通过帮助创建跨校园的研究人员的新网络。 它将通过为研究生提供导师帮助，在校园内建立环境/STS社区。我没有听力。最重要的是，该项目将使美国和欧盟受益。通过研究如何发展透明度、绩效指标和问责制，可以使绿色化学在世纪初成为监管和可持续工业的知识来源。

This postdoctoral fellowship sets out to investigate the claim that the recent emergence of green chemistry constitutes a transition to sustainable industry, in (re)designing chemical production for environmental purposes in the United States and the European Union. It aims to explore the ways in which green and sustainable chemistry has taken form since the early 1990s, and is generating scientific knowledge and material technologies that chemists, governments, industry, and citizens recognize as credible and legitimate for use in chemical manufacturing, policy-making, and consumer decision-making. The project aims to compare developments in green/sustainable chemistry in the US and the EU to determine whether concepts of sustainability, production design, and material technologies vary between societies and cultures. These may be configured differently across (and within) the US and the EU because of the political demands, ecological values, regulatory and institutional settings, and technical conditions in the two regions. The project also analyzes how governments, environmentalists, consumers, and industry itself can know or prove that the transition to sustainability is underway. It aims to illuminate how actors can gauge the performance of industry in the apparently technically arcane and relatively inaccessible area of chemical manufacturing, hidden inside plants and laboratories. The intellectual merits of the project include the elaboration of a theoretical framework to observe changes in a chemical production system through knowledge, material technologies, chemicals, institutions for policy-making, and the work of actors in demanding, interpreting and using scientific and technical information. Theoretically, the study draws on three threads of science and technology investigations. These are: (a) the concept of socially robust knowledge (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons); (b) the ideas of Bijker regarding the social shaping of material technologies; and (c) the work by Jasanoff on regulatory science, political culture, and civic epistemology. The project expands and synthesizes these theoretical strands into a framework with four elements that jointly shape sustainable chemical production: actors, civic epistemologies, channels of influence/power, and regulatory/institutional settings. After studying the emergence of green/sustainable chemistry, the project evaluates whether and how green chemistry is being translated into production systems in the US and the EU through three facets and with regard to designer catalysts, safer polymers and phthalate substitution: How is sustainability constituted? How is sustainability designed into production? How is sustainability enforced on production and evaluated? The project uses an interpretive social scientific methodology. It draws on a combination of semi-structured interviews with actors in the green chemistry arena; government documents; industry, scientific, and technical literature; technology analysis; regulatory databases; and environmental news. It combines a historical perspective with contemporary developments. Field research will be undertaken in the US and Europe. The fellowship has significant broader impacts for society. It will strengthen the integration of research and education at UC Berkeley, by helping to create new networks of researchers across campus. It will build the environmental/STS community on campus by providing mentor help to graduate students. I am non-hearing. Most important, the project will benefit the US and the EU. By studying how transparency, performance measures, and accountability can be developed, green chemistry may be made more robust as a source of knowledge for regulation and sustainable industry in the early 21st Century.