Ciencia, política y sociedad en la frontera: el caso del eucalipto en el Principado de Asturias

Abstract

The loosening of demarcation criteria between science and politics promoted by Science and Technology Studies has given rise to the development of a research field based on the notion of «boundary». Especially, literature on «boundary organizations» has pointed out some conditions for a fruitful relationship between the domains of science and politics aiming at the management of the problems confronted by contemporary «post-normal » or «regulatory» science. However, it is easily forgotten that these boundary regions are also inhabited by lay people. In this paper, terminology derived from the notion of «boundary work» is used in order to state its applicability to the analysis of public participation, and, at the same time, it is argued for the incorporation of society as one of the domains, together with science and politics, that interacts in the boundaries.