Science and technology are commonly taken as drivers of social change. Less visibly but quite centrally, as this book argues, they are also crucially important objects and instruments of politics. 1 What happens in the course of knowledge production, and still more plainly in the translation of knowledge into technologies, affects the kinds of lives we lead, the relationships we form, and, increasingly, how we perceive ourselves and what entitlements we therefore claim. All of the traditional categories of social organization – race, class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, economic and professional status, occupation and family – have been profoundly reshaped in modernity’s long march through the scientific, industrial and high-tech revolutions. Whether we see ourselves as enlightened, globalized, networked or knowledge societies, those era-defining terms themselves reflect epistemic and social configurations that would not have been possible without fundamental changes in science and technology. Hence, science and technology are fitting though strangely neglected subjects for political analysis.