The technological culture has important implications for European citizens. As the mad cow disease has shown, science and technological innovation can profoundly disturb society in all its aspects and at all levels. The way science, technology, and innovation upset the present democratic institutions and relationships in Europe, and at the same time may create opportunities for novel forms of democracy, is one of the issues studied and discussed at many STI centres mentioned in this guide. The wish to empower people and prevent them from being alienated from their own lives is a strong motive in science, technology, and innovation studies. Special attention is thereby paid to the global communication and information networks which are increasingly the dominant networks through which power flows. How do they enable citizens to participate and influence their own future? In what way do they create new barriers for true social and political democracy? Why does technology so often appear to be uncontrollable and alien?
At the STI centre in Munich, for example, ecology and politics is taught in a seminar for advanced students. In groups of 25 to 50 students, four hours a week, the explicit and implicit politics contained in environmental claims, environmental knowledge and regulation measures are discussed. The students are expected to critically challenge both realist and constructionist approaches. The current debates in environmental sociology are highlighted via case studies of global climate change, deforestation, ozone depletion and local mobility. Ideas about ``subpolitics'', ``cultural politics'' and ``le parlement des choses'' are confronted with deep ecological issues as well as with classical political problem solutions. Students conclude this course with writing a 25 to 30 page paper discusing special aspect of these issues.