"Big Science" is a broad epithet that can be associated with research projects that involve huge budgets, big facilities, complex instrumentation, years of planning, and large multidisciplinary teams of researchers. Legitimizing the ESS examines the complexity of the cultural, social, and political processes from which and in which Big Science develops by focusing on the planning and development of the European Spallation Source, ESS, that is to be located in Lund in southern Sweden. Together, the chapters represent a variety of perspectives to highlight the complexity of the processes that are integral to Big Science. Thus, this volume examines the very different roles Big Science may be given in different contexts: locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, as well as historically.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction. The European Spallation Source
  • Big Science in a small Swedish university town
• 1. The ESS from neutron gap to global strategy
  • Plans for an international research facility after the cold war
• 2. Myths and realities of the ESS project
  • A systematic scrutiny of readily accepted ‘truths’
• 3. Mobile spaces of affect
  • A cultural history of the future
• Colour section 1
• 4. The ESS in the local news media
  • Expectations, investigations, and mobilization
• 5. The ESS and the geography of innovation
• 6. Reaching the inside from the outside?
  • Member identification and auto-communication during organizational transition
• 7. Social media and research practices in Big Science
  • The example of MAX-lab
• 8. Designing for the future
  • Scientific instruments as technical objects in experimental systems
• 9. Believing in the ESS
  • Scale, vision, and pioneering
• Colour section 2
• 10. Technoscience comes to Lund
  • The ESS and the Enlightenment vision
• 11. The momentum of maturity
  • What to do with ageing Big Science facilities
• About the authors