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Dear Colleagues,
 
I’m afraid we have had to cancel tomorrow’s (Wednesday 27 January) London PUS seminar, due to unforeseen circumstances.  Our apologies to everyone who was planning to come.
 
The next seminar will be at 4.15pm on Wednesday 24th February 2016, in room QUE3 28/29 at LSE and we are delighted to announce that our speaker will be Professor Martin Bauer from LSE, talking about ‘Atoms, Bytes and Genes – Public Resistance and TechnoScientific responses’.  His abstract is below and more details are on our website.
 
Subsequent seminars will be on 16th March and 25th May 2016. Details of speakers to follow.
 
Hope to see you in February.
 
Best wishes
 
Jane Gregory
Martin Bauer
Simon Lock
Melanie Smallman
 
 
4.15pm, Wednesday 24th February 2016, Room QUE3 28/29, LSE
 
Professor Martin Bauer, LSE: ‘Atoms, Bytes and Genes – Public Resistance and TechnoScientific responses’. 
Martin Bauer will present and discuss the key theoretical ideas of his recent books ‘Resistance – and the Practice of Rationality (Cambridge, Scholars, 2013) and ‘Atoms, Bytes & Genes – public resistance and techno-scientific responses (NY, Routledge, 2015). Tarde (1890) had influentially argued that creativity and invention have none or little regularity, while the diffusion of new ideas and practices follows the ’laws of imitation’. This influential idea of mindless-but-lawful imitation remains influential in the model of diffusion of innovation and the linear model of science -> engineering -> marketing. He will argue that the logistic-sigmoid model of diffusion with the tipping point (maybe at 50%) is a special case, namely when there is no resistance in the process; a very rare case which begs the question: why does the dog not bark (as in Sherlock Holme’s story)? Why is there no resistance? More common are efforts of mobilisation for change processes that encounter resistance, and then we must ask: what does resistance contribute to the process? He will argue that the functions of resistance are analogous to pain in relation to everyday activity: focussing attention where needed; enhancing the ‘bodily self-image’, evaluating on-going mobilisation and urging strategic adaptation and alterations to the plan. His pain model of resistance is a more realistic account of the innovation process.  He will illustrate the points made with observations on the development biotechnology in Brazil, US and Europe since the 1990 and its impact.