The current mutations that are putting our societies under strain—the climate crisis, the questioning of capitalism, the digital revolution, and the transformation of our relationship with the living world—are creating a climate of urgency and uncertainty. They confront us with unanswered questions that call into question science and technology, politics and economics, ethics and law.

Building on the contributions of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and pragmatist-inspired approaches, the CSI is exploring these public problems and the investigations carried out into them by different actors. This research examines the knowledge and devices produced by actors to qualify the problems in question and explain how these problems concern them. The CSI’s current approach renews the old slogan of actor-network theory, “follow the actors themselves”, by seeking cooperation with people and collectives striving to make these new realities count and devise new ways of accounting for them: the public, users, public authorities, companies, scientists, activists, associations…

Current research expands upon CSI’s previous work on socio-technical controversies, technical democracy, the making of the economy, and the genesis of individual and collective attachments. Investigations attentively explore the emerging nature of problems and the plurality of positions. CSI’s research explores a wide range of fields, including urban transformation, agriculture, the healthcare industry, mining, development policies, and the energy and environmental transition. Over and above this diversity, four major themes thread through the research carried out at CSI: Experimentation as a modality of collective action, Markets in society, Knowledge policies, Maintenance and sustainability.