Nanotechnology and the Challenges of Equity, Equality and Development

Nanotechnology is enabling applications in materials, microelectronics, health, and agriculture, which are projected to create the next big shift in production, comparable to the industrial revolution. Such major shifts always co-evolve with social relationships. This book focuses on how nanotechnologies might affect equity/equality in global society. Nanotechnologies are likely to open gaps by gender, ethnicity, race, and ability status, as well as between developed and developing countries, unless steps are taken now to create a different outcome. Organizations need to change their practices, and cultural ideas must be broadened if currently disadvantaged groups are to have a more equal position in nano-society rather than a more disadvantaged one. Economic structures are likely to shift in the nano-revolution, requiring policymakers and participatory processes to invent new institutions for social welfare, better suited to the new economic order than those of the past.

• ableism
• developing countries
• emerging technology/ emerging technologies
• gender
• global South
• nanomedicine
• nanotechnology/ nanotechnologies
• policy making
• race and ethnicity
• social equality
• social equity
• social inequalities
• social inequity
• social justice
• technology assessment

• , School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

  Susan E. Cozzens

• Center for Nanotechnology in Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

  Jameson Wetmore

Policies and ethics