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The present volume elucidates the scope of responsibility in science and technology governance by way of assimilating insights gleaned from sociological theory and STS and by investigating the ways in which responsibility unfolds in social processes. Drawing on these theoretical perspectives, the volume goes on to review a ´heuristic model´ of responsibility. Such a model provides a simple, tentative, though no less coherent analytical framework for further examining the idea of responsibility, its transformations, configurations and contradictions.

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Introduction.- Responsibility and Social Action.- Expectations, Action Orientation and Implications for Responsibility.- Science, Technology and Society Relationships as the Background of Responsibility.- A Heuristic Framework for Responsibility.- Conclusions.

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Simone Arnaldi is post-doctoral research fellow in sociology at the University of Padua, Italy.

Luca Bianchi is adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Trieste, Italy.

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