Art and technology: A comparative study of policy legitimation

The legitimation of technology policy is discussed from the point of view of the neoclassical and of the dynamic, Schumpeterian, approach. The results are presented, using the traditional categories of policy legitimation in welfare theory: public goods, externalities, and merit goods. Art policy legitimation is discussed within the same conceptual framework. The application of the dynamic approach to art policy leads to conclusions similar to the general conclusions about technology policy. A review of the postwar development of (Dutch) art policy supports the impression that art policy may be on its way to become a subspecies of technology policy.     

Gender,Science and Technology in Brazil

This essay considers gender in relation toBrazilian science and technology. It reviewsleading studies in the field, and offers briefbiographies of pioneering women in science.While there is still much room for improvement,the essay suggests that the situation of womenin science experienced significant progressduring the closing decades of the twentiethcentury.     

Smooth new world: Agency and Utopia

The New World Embassy was created by Dutch artist and activist Jonas Staal and Tuareg activist Moussa Ag Assarid in 2014 as an art installation to represent the recently established state of Azawad. This new state, currently unrecognised, seceded from Mali in 2012 after a brief armed struggle. An analysis of the spatialities of the New World Embassy, and of the region it represents, enables its interpretation as a critical utopia, a heterotopia, and as an example of smooth space. Such an analysis furthermore clarifies the underlying sociopolitical dynamic in the region, and in its newly established Embassy, as the contestation, by the other, of the oppressive geopolitical practices and institutions of the same. Lastly, the spatialities of the Embassy exemplifies a particular mode of agentic worldmaking.     

A new beginning? German medical and political traditions in the aftermath of the second world war

After 1945, the German medical community underwent a period of self-examination. The profession’s experience during the Nazi period raised profound questions concerning its ethical integrity and political allegiances. This paper considers the advent of medical nationalism, and shows how, in Berlin and in the Soviet zone of Germany, narratives were constructed to show a new and positive picture of German medicine.