Biodiversity initiatives have traditionally operated within a 'science-first' model of environmental decision - making. The model assumes a hierarchical relationship in which scientific knowledge is elevated above other knowledge systems. Consequently, other types of knowledge held by the public, such as traditional or lay knowledges, are undervalued and under -represented in biodiversity projects. Drawing upon two case studies of biodiversity initiatives in Canada, this paper looks at the role that constructivist conceptions of education play in the integration of alternative knowledge (...) systems in environmental decision - making. In so doing, it argues that the conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing goals outlined by the Convention on Biological Diversity demand new models of governance which embrace the adaptive management qualities of learning organisations. (shrink)

In science and environmental studies, there is a general concern for the democratization of the expert-lay interplay. However, the democratization of expertise does not necessarily lead to more sustainable decisions. If citizens do not take the sustainable choice, what should experts and decision makers do? Should the expert-lay interplay be dissolved? In thinking about how to shape the expert-lay interplay in a better way in agro-biodiversity conservation, I take the case of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People’s Movement), possibly the (...) largest rural movement in Latin America. The MST is in a process of turning towards environmentalism. It has adopted agroecology, a democratically oriented knowledge field. However, not all of the farmers were willing to adopt new environmentalist ideas and practices. Through ethnographic research, I analyze how expertise was recognized and redistributed within the MST, attending particularly to the role of MST coordinators and technicians. I explore how participation was framed and put into action. The adoption of agroecology brought to the MST a new and more inclusive map of expertise, but it also influenced new social distinctions within the communities. In part, farmers’ knowledge was labeled as ignorance. This may close down possibilities for dialogue as well as for sustainability. The paper suggests that experts’ power for discriminating among lay knowledges should come together with a responsibility for opening spaces for dialogue and action. One way of doing so could be by adding “interactional reflexivity” to experts’ expertise. (shrink)

Some vaccine-hesitant people lack epistemic trust in the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation that because vaccines have been shown to be medically safe and effective, one ought to get vaccinated. Citing what I call exception information, they claim that whatever the general safety and efficacy of vaccines, the vaccines may not be safe and effective for them. Examples include parents citing information about their children's health, pregnant women's concerns about the potential adverse effects of treatment on pregnant women, young people citing their (...) relative invulnerability to extreme COVID-19 symptoms, or members of vulnerable racial groups citing epistemic injustice, such as a lack of representation in COVID-19 vaccine trials. This paper examines the extent to which a lack of epistemic trust in vaccine recommendations, based on such exemption information, is rational. (shrink)

This article critiques the `dominant view' of the popularization of science that takes it as a one-way process of simplification, one in which scientific articles are the originals of knowledge that is then debased by translation for a public that is ignorant of such matters, a blank slate. Recent work is surveyed in several disciplines that questions the boundaries of scientific discourse and genres of popularization: who the actors are, how the discourses interact, what modes are involved, and what is (...) communicated. Implications are drawn from these studies for discourse analysis. (shrink)

The idea of public or stakeholder engagement in governance of science and technology is widely accepted in many policy and academic research settings. However, this enthusiasm for stakeholder engagement has not necessarily resulted in changes of attitudes toward the role of stakeholders in the dialogue nor to the value of public knowledge, practical experience, and other inputs (like salient questions) vis-à-vis expert knowledge. The formal systems of evaluation of the stakeholder engagement activities are often focused on showing that the method (...) is efficient and works. In this article, we argue that every stakeholder engagement process should be evaluated beyond a simple assessment of the methodology and that the wider context of the stakeholder engagement activity should also be addressed. We evaluate two different stakeholder engagement activities against the existing method evaluation criteria and demonstrate their limitations for assessing the quality of a stakeholder engagement. We argue that these criteria need to be extended so that engagement processes will have a chance to improve not only policies but also their democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

There are now several proposals for introducing random elements into the process of funding allocation for research, and some initial implementation of this policy by funding bodies. The proposals have been supported on efficiency grounds, with models, including social epistemology models, showing random allocation could increase the generation of significant truths in a community of scientists when compared to funding by peer review. The models in the literature are, however, fairly abstract. This paper introduces some of the considerations that are (...) required to build on the modelling work towards a fully-fledged policy proposal, including issues of cost and fairness. (shrink)

The public rejection of scientific claims is widely recognized by scientific and governmental institutions to be threatening to modern democratic societies. Intense conflict between science and the public over diverse health and environmental issues have invited speculation by concerned officials regarding both the source of and the solution to the problem of public resistance towards scientific and policy positions on such hot-button issues as global warming, genetically modified crops, environmental toxins, and nuclear waste disposal. The London Royal Society’s influential report (...) “Public Understanding of Science”, which spearheaded the now-thriving area of science... (shrink)

This essay focuses on the "cultural dope," an ironic reference in Harold Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology to the rule-following actor in conventional sociological theories. In the nearly half-century since the publication of that book, the "cultural dope" has been incorporated into numerous criticisms of "models of man" in the human sciences. Garfinkel's account appeals to many writers because it seems to present an alternative picture of the actor: an individual who is self-aware, reflective, and skilled in the conduct of daily (...) affairs. A problem with such a generalized picture of the actor is that it may seem to encourage uncritical acceptance of whatever "the public" (or a broad segment of the public) happens to believe or support. This paper revisits Garfinkel's account of the cultural dope, and contrasts "conservative" and "radical" readings of what Garfinkel does with that figure. The "conservative" reading leaves the edifice of a social-structural model largely intact, and provides an alternative, more complex, picture of individual action than that of a cultural dope. The "radical" reading places relevant social structures in a dependent relation to the contingencies of action, and thus destabilizes the very theoretical edifice that sets up the problem of how to integrate individual actions with stable social structures. In line with the "radical" reading, this paper suggests that Garfinkel creates serious difficulty for any generalized "model of man," regardless of whether it portrays the individual as active or passive, well-informed or ignorant, or reflexive or not. (shrink)

The Australian moratorium on human clinical trials of xenotransplantation was lifted in December 2009. This decision follows public consultations on whether xenotransplantation should or should not proceed in Australia, which occurred in 2002 and 2004. However, the public consultation, in its design and process, did not facilitate meaningful public engagement and involvement, thus marginalising the public and devaluing their social experiences and diverse knowledges. This brief article questions what constitutes adequate public consultation, and suggests that consensus conferences or citizen juries (...) should be explored as a mechanism for meaningful public engagement for future public consultation exercises in Australia. (shrink)

The promise of scientific and technological innovation – particularly in fields such as nanotechnology – is increasingly set against what has been articulated as a deficit in public trust in both the new technologies and regulatory mechanisms. Whilst the development of new technology is cast as providing contributions to both quality of life and national competitiveness, what has been termed a ‘legitimacy crisis’ is seen as threatening the vitality of this process. However in contrast to the risk debates that dominated (...) the technological controversies of the late 1990s the vitality of technological innovation is now cast as vulnerable to lack of public confidence and trust in the regulatory and governance structures upon which such innovation depends. In order to address this deficit in public trust, science policy has increasingly turned to the social sciences, suggesting that public values might be incorporated into the development of nanotechnology at an early stage. Public ambivalence therefore constitutes the problem addressed by the increasingly central role that public engagement and participation play in contemporary science policy. Although the recent proliferation of public engagement activities is premised on the need to address this ambivalence through direct engagement, we re-interpret ambivalence as an engaged – rather than passive – mode of relating to technological determinism. Whilst the move toward forms of direct public engagement might be regarded as symptomatic of the emergence of affective mode of governance we interpret public ambivalence as a nested set of enthusiasms and anxieties. Accordingly we suggest that public engagement might be re-thought, utilising ambivalence as a creative resource, rather than as the problem. (shrink)

This paper considers the implications of precautionary restrictions against technologies, in the context of the potential for creating and sustaining rumours. It focuses on the restriction against mobile phone use at petrol stations, based on the rumour that a spark might cause an explosion. Rumours have been substantiated by precautionary usage warnings from mobile phone manufacturers, petrol station usage restrictions, and a general lack of technical understanding. Petrol station employees have themselves spread the rumour about alleged incidents, filling the information (...) gap about the basis for the restriction. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of traditional understandings of risk, responsibility and the division of labour between science and politics build on the idea of the co-produced character of the natural and social orders, making a case for less ambitious and more inclusive policy processes, where questions of values and goals may be addressed together with questions of facts and means, causal liabilities and principled responsibilities. Within the neo-liberal political economy, however, the contingency of the world is depicted as a source of unprecedented (...) opportunities for human craftsmanship, rather than of possibly unmanageable surprises. Gene technologies offer a vantage point for reflecting on the consequences of the drift from discovery to invention as a master frame in the appraisal of human intermingling with the world. Biotech patenting regulations carve out a sovereign agency which, by crafting nature, also crafts the distinction between the manufactured and non-manufactured world. Difficulties in ascribing responsibility stem as a consequence. It is likely that politics and economy can be democratized and responsibilities rearranged not by ‘democratizing’ knowledge production, but rather the reverse. (shrink)

The article combines a criticism of public understanding of science with the sociology of expectations to examine how particular expectations toward scientific progress have performative effects for the construction of publics as citizens of science. By analyzing a particular controversy about gene therapy in Denmark, the article demonstrates how different sets of expectations can be used to discriminate among three different assemblages: the assemblage of consumption, the assemblage of comportment, and the assemblage of heroic action. Each of these assemblages makes (...) medical science, scientific citizenship, politics, patients, doctors, and expectations toward the future emerge in particular ways. By their radically different expectations toward science and their different constructions of what it means to be a scientific citizen, the assemblages construct the objectives of the governance of science in three very different ways. (shrink)

As the distance between science and society is collapsed with the growth of contemporary knowledge societies, so a range of different approaches to the democratic governance of science superseding its Enlightenment government is emerging. In light of these different approaches, this article focuses on the figure of the scientific citizen and the variable dimensions of a new scientific citizenship. Three models of democracy - advanced consumer, deliberative and radical/pluralist - are put forward as both partly competing and partly complementary frameworks (...) within which the new rights and responsibilities of the scientific citizen can be articulated and discussed. In each case the theory and practice of scientific citizenship are viewed against the background of contemporary developments within the field of science communication; the rise of the public understanding of science movement; the new enthusiasm for advancing public engagements with science, and the legitimate place of different forms of public protest and dissent within new designs for democratic governance. (shrink)

Many commentators today lament the politicization of bioethics, but some suggest distinguishing among different kinds of politicization. This essay pursues that idea with reference to three traditions of political thought: liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism. After briefly discussing the concept of politicization itself, the essay examines how each of these political traditions manifests itself in recent bioethics scholarship, focusing on the implications of each tradition for the design of government bioethics councils. The liberal emphasis on the irreducible plurality of values and (...) interests in modern societies, and the communitarian concern with the social dimensions of biotechnology, offer important insights for bioethics councils. The essay finds the most promise in the republican tradition, however, which emphasizes institutional mechanisms that allow bioethics councils to enrich but not dominate public deliberation, while ensuring that government decisions on bioethical issues are publicly accountable and contestable. (shrink)

Despite the amount of public investment in nanotechnology ventures in the developed world, research shows that there is little public awareness about nanotechnology, and public knowledge is very limited. This is concerning given that nanotechnology has been heralded as ‘revolutionising’ the way we live. In this paper, we articulate why public engagement in debates about nanotechnology is important, drawing on literature on public engagement and science policy debate and deliberation about public policy development. We also explore the significance of timing (...) in engaging the public, and we make some suggestions concerning how to effectively engage publics. Our conclusions indicate the significance of scientific researchers, policy makers and representative consumer groupings in public reasoning towards a better public policy framework for debate about technological development. (shrink)

Over the past few years, a number of authors in the new field of neuroethics have claimed that there is an ethical challenge presented by the likelihood that the findings of neuroscience will undermine many common assumptions about human agency and selfhood. These authors claim that neuroscience shows that human agents have no free will, and that our sense of being a “self” is an illusory construction of our brains. Furthermore, some commentators predict that our ethical practices of assigning moral (...) blame, or of recognizing others as persons rather than as objects, will change as a result of neuroscientific discoveries that debunk free will and the concept of the self. I contest suggestions that neuroscience’s conclusions about the illusory nature of free will and the self will cause significant change in our practices. I argue that we have self-interested reasons to resist allowing neuroscience to determine core beliefs about ourselves. (shrink)

Via a historical reconstruction, this paper primarily demonstrates how the societal debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gradually extended in terms of actors involved and concerns reflected. It is argued that the implementation of recombinant DNA technology out of the laboratory and into civil society entailed a “complex of concerns.” In this complex, distinctions between environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and ethical issues proved to be blurred. This fueled the confusion between the wider debate on genetic modification and the risk assessment of (...) transgenic crops in the European Union. In this paper, the lasting skeptical and/or ambivalent attitude of Europeans towards agro-food biotechnology is interpreted as signaling an ongoing social request – and even a quest – for an evaluation of biotechnology with Sense and Sensibility. In this (re)quest, a broader-than-scientific dimension is sought for that allows addressing the GMO debate in a more “sensible” way, whilst making “sense” of the different stances taken in it. Here, the restyling of the European regulatory frame on transgenic agro-food products and of science communication models are discussed and taken to be indicative of the (re)quest to move from a merely scientific evaluation and risk-based policy towards a socially more robust evaluation that takes the “non-scientific” concerns at stake in the GMO debate seriously. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge has not stabilized in the current, early, phase of research and development of nanotechnologies creating a challenge to ‘upstream’ public engagement. Nevertheless, the idea that the public should be involved in deliberative discussions and assessments of emerging technologies at this early stage is widely shared among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Many forums for public debate including focus groups, and citizen juries, have thus been organized to explore public opinions on nanotechnologies in a variety of countries over the past (...) few years. In Switzerland the Centre for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss) organized such a citizen panel in fall 2006. Drawing from an ethnographic study of this panel called ‘publifocus on nanotechnologies, health, and environment’ this paper looks at the ways members of a stakeholder group deal with the epistemic uncertainty in their deliberation of nanotechnologies. By exploring the statements of the participants in the stakeholder discussion group, this paper reconstructs the narratives that constitute the epistemic foundations of the participants’ evaluations of nanotechnologies. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of the relationships between IVF and therapeutic cloning, as they played out in the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority consultation of 2006: Donating Eggs for Research: Safeguarding Donors. We develop an account of current developments in IVF and cloning which foregrounds the role of mediation in structuring the discursive context in which they are constituted. We foreground the imperative of choice and the promise of cures as key features of this context. We also argue (...) that the intercorporeal exchanges of IVF are materially restructured in relation to cloning research, despite their represented similitude in the consultation document. The discourse of choice in relation to reproductive technologies has become entrenched over the last twenty years. In relation to therapeutic cloning, it has been coupled with, and strengthened by, the discourse of cures. In examining relations between IVF and cloning with specific attention to both mediating imaginaries, and intercorporeal exchanges, we develop an analysis that displaces the rhetoric of choice and cures. This makes visible the limited subject positions available, and the limited possibilities for responding critically to the consultation. Identifying women as the gendered subjects of this consultation and placing intercorporeality at the centre of our analysis illuminates the interdependency of women undergoing IVF, cloning science and the governance of embryo research in the UK. (shrink)

Beginning farmer initiatives like the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, farm incubators, and small-scale marketing innovations offer new entrant farmers agricultural training, marketing and business assistance, and farmland loans. These programs align with alternative food movement goals to revitalize the anemic U.S. small farm sector and repopulate landscapes with socially and environmentally diversified farms. Yet even as these initiatives seek to support prospective farmers with tools for success through a knowledge dissemination model, they remain mostly individualistic and entrepreneurial (...) measures that overlook structural barriers to productive and economic success within U.S. agriculture. Analysis of the BFRDP’s funding history and discourse reveals a “knowledge deficit” based program focused on the technical rather than the structural aspects of beginning farming. This is contrasted with qualitative analysis of beginning farmer experiences in California’s Central Coast region. The discrepancies between the farmer experiences and national structure of the BFRDP program ultimately reveal a policy mismatch between the needs of some beginning farmers and the programs intended to support them. (shrink)

Recent science and technology studies have analyzed questions of nonexpert participation in science, technology, and science policy from an empirically grounded perspective. The introduction to this special issue offers a double contribution to this debate. First, it presents a summary of the state of the art and an outline of the historical emergence of the participatory question. The argument distinguishes four periods since the late nineteenth century, each with a specific relationship between expert and nonexpert knowledge ranging from a hybrid, (...) to a politicized, to an autonomous, to a participatory relationship. Second, the introduction summarizes the contributions to this issue. Their common concern is to take the debate one step further by critically reflecting the problems and limitations of participatory practices. The contributions point out the need for contextualizing the participatory question within the wider social, economic, and political circumstances in which participatory science and technology is set. (shrink)

Research on the public understanding of science has measured knowledge as acquaintance with scientific facts and methods and attitudes as evaluations of societal consequences of science and technology. The authors propose alternative concepts and measures: knowledge of the workings of scientific institutions and attitudes to the nature of science. The viability, reliability, and validity of the new measures are demonstrated on British and Bulgarian data. The instrument consists of twenty items and takes ten to fifteen minutes to apply. Differences in (...) the representation of science are reported between the British and Bulgarian young elite, between the elite and the public in Bulgaria, between natural and social science students, and between beginners and advanced students in Britain. The use of these measures will extend the scope of science indicator measures used by the European Commission and the National Science Foundation, help the assessment of the socialization in university training, and may even contribute to the peace process in the “science wars.”. (shrink)

I Norge har vi hatt kontroverser omkring regulering avhumanmedisinsk bioteknologi siden 1980-tallet. Denneartikkelen analyserer et lite utsnitt av disse reguleringsdebattene,nærmere bestemt kontroversen omkring forskningpå befruktede egg. Med utgangspunkt i skriftlig materialeknyttet til tre reguleringsrunder undersøker vi her hvordan ulike aktører arbeidet forå ramme inn denne kontroversen, bl.a. ved hjelp av ulikevitenskapelige og politiske representasjoner av det befruktedeegget.Vi finner at det i perioden 1987–2007 ble arbeidet medulike innramminger som utgangspunkt for retoriske ogpolitiske strategier: På den ene siden ser vi forsøk på (...) å innrammekontroversen i et risikorammeverk som først ogfremst fokuserte på de potensielle negative sidene vedhumanmedisinsk bioteknologi, og som spesielt vektlarespekten for det ufødte liv. På den andre siden ser vi atman arbeidet med en forventningsinnramming som lahovedvekten på håpet om nye behandlingsregimer foralvorlig syke mennesker.Forbudet mot forskning på befruktede egg som ble vedtatti 1987, ble opprettholdt i 1994 og 2003. Med lovendringeni 2008 fikk vi imidlertid et markant brudd i dennorske lovgivningspraksisen, da forskning på befruktedeegg ble tillatt på visse premisser. Vi argumenterer for at den viktigste årsaken til denne lovendringen var Mehmet-saken, en sak som medførtesåkalte «oversvømmelser» i begge innrammingsforsøkenesom er omtalt ovenfor. Mehmet-saken eksponerte samtidig et generelt demokratiskdilemma. Saken illustrerte hvor sårbare lovregler og etiske prinsippkan være for det som for allmennheten fremstår som helt urimelig, og dennesaken etterspør slik sett mer hybride måter å tenke forholdet mellom det universelleog det partikulære, mellom prinsipiell etikk og lekmannsskjønn, mellomfakta og verdier som utgangspunkt for politikkutforming.Nøkkelord: humanmedisinsk bioteknologi, forskning på befruktede egg,kontrovers, representasjoner, Mehmet-sakenEnglish abstract: Effective representations? Concerns and expectationsregarding research on fertilized eggsSince the 1980s, there have been several debates and controversies concerningthe regulation of medical biotechnology. In this article, we analyze three suchinstances in Norway, mainly the debates concerning research on fertilizedeggs. Analyzing the debates surrounding the regulations of 1994, 2003/2004and 2008, we investigate how different stakeholders strived to mobilize whatwe call different framings of the controversy, utilizing the different scientificand political representations of the fertilized egg.Framing involves creating baselines for rhetorical and political stratagems.Two framings appear more pronounced than others in the Norwegian debate.On one hand, we find attempts of framing the controversy in a risk centricframework, which mostly emphasizes the potential negative effects of medicalbiotechnology as it focuses on the universal reverence for the unborn life. Onthe other hand, we see attempts to mobilize a positive frame of expectationthat emphasizes on the hope of finding new and effective treatment options forthe severely ill.The ban against research on fertilized eggs that was passed in Norway in1987 was repeated in 1994 and 2003. However, with the changes introducedto the law in 2008, there was a noticeable shift in Norwegian legislation, asresearch on fertilized eggs became permissible if specific conditions were met.We argue that the turning point in this regulative change was the Mehmentcase, a particular case that entailed the so-called «overflowing» in both the negative and the positive frame. The Mehmet case exposed a moregeneral democratic and political dilemma. In our opinion, it illustrates howvulnerable can regulation that is based on general ethical principles be in theface of what appears to the laity as unreasonable. Thus, we argue that thisactualizes the need for more hybridized ways to view the relationship betweenthe universal and the particular, between principle-based ethics and theunderstandings of lay people, between facts, and values and actual cases inpolicy shaping and practice. (shrink)

This paper spells out and discusses four assumptions of the deficit model type of thinking. The assumptions are: First, the public is ignorant of science. Second, the public has negative attitudes towards (specific instances of) science and technology. Third, ignorance is at the root of these negative attitudes. Fourth, the public’s knowledge deficit can be remedied by one-way science communication from scientists to citizens. It is argued that there is nothing wrong with ignorance-based explanations per se. Ignorance accounts at least (...) partially for many cases of opposition to specific instances of science and technology. Furthermore, more attention needs to be paid to the issue of relevance. In regard to the evaluation of a scientific experiment, a technology, or a product, the question is not only who knows best?, but also what knowledge is relevant and to what extent?. Examples are drawn primarily from the debate on genetic engineering in agriculture. (shrink)

Science communication has traditionally been seen as a means of crossing the boundary of science: moving scientific knowledge into the public. This paper presents an alternative understanding. Drawing upon a particular case of social science communication in the form of an interactive installation about the social responsibility of science, it develops the concept of boundary space where phenomena can simultaneously belong to science and nonscience. In addition, the paper describes how the installation functions as a space for interaction between knowledge (...) communication and knowledge production. The paper argues that we should understand science communication as a social practice, which allows scientists and nonscientists to cooperate in performing science as an important part of society. The aim is to add a new kind of analysis to traditional criticisms of deficit-thinking and popularization by asking what can we say more about science communication if we understand it as part of science as a social activity. (shrink)

This article investigates the ways in which individuals assume two distinct viewpoints in both speech and gesture - both simultaneously and sequentially - when they represent the uncertain knowledge that characterizes risk. In the mimetic viewpoint, individuals represent events as characters in their own narrative or mimic the character viewpoint of an Other. In the analytic viewpoint, individuals move outside of embodied experience to analyze events from a distance. As part of a larger study investigating viewpoint in discourses of risk, (...) this study suggests the important role of viewpoint in understanding individual accounts of risk. Together, speech and gesture provide a richer representation of risk than either speech or gesture alone. But viewpoints represented in gesture may be rendered invisible in written accident reports and investigations. This study suggests that individual accounts of risk ultimately reflect highly local sensory experiences that are situated - literally and physically - by an individual's position in institutional and material sites. Within these institutions, individuals can access a range of analytic and mimetic viewpoints in both speech and gesture in order to represent their experiences. This research has important implications for rhetorical theory and risk and decision science. (shrink)

Trust has become an important aspect of evaluating the relationship between lay public and technology implementation. Experiences have shown that a focus on trust provides a richer understanding of reasons for backlashes of technology in society than a mere focus of public understanding of risks and science communication. Therefore, trust is also widely used as a key concept for understanding and predicting trust or distrust in emerging technologies. But whereas trust broadens the scope for understanding established technologies with well-defined questions (...) and controversies, it easily fails to do so with emerging technologies, where there are no shared questions, a lack of public familiarity with the technology in question, and a restricted understanding amongst social researchers as to where distrust is likely to arise and how and under which form the technology will actually be implemented. Rather contrary, ‘trust’ might sometimes even direct social research into fixed structures that makes it even more difficult for social research to provide socially robust knowledge. This article therefore suggests that if trust is to maintain its important role in evaluating emerging technologies, the approach has to be widened and initially focus not on people’s motivations for trust, but rather the object of trust it self, as to predicting how and where distrust might appear, how the object is established as an object of trust, and how it is established in relation with the public. (shrink)

Andrew Webster proposes that science and technology studies align itself more thoroughly with practical policy contexts, actors and issues, so as to become more useful, and thus more a regular actor in such worlds. This commentary raises some questions about this approach. First, I note that manifest influence in science or policy or both should not become-by default, or deliberately-a criterion of intellectual quality for STS research work. I distinguish between reflective historical work, which delineates the contingent ways in which (...) existing policy and technoscientific cultures have become entrenched as such inscribed and perhaps dysfunctional institutional habit; and, work of the kind that Webster's three case studies exemplify, that is, geared to influence policy-decision outcomes. I suggest that many of the important issues facing STS-and "policy"-are not explicit "policy-decision issues" as such, but implicit "policy syndromes" that need naming, diagnosing and open, if enforced, institutional reflection. (shrink)

The idea of conducting “upstream public engagement,” using nanotechnology as a test case, has been subject to criticism for its lack of any link to the political system. Drawing on the theoretical tools provided by Habermas, this article seeks to explore such a “link”, focusing specifically on the capacity of civil society organizations to distil, raise and transmit societal concerns in an amplified form to the public spheres at the European Union level. Based on content analysis and semi-structured interviews with (...) relevant actors, this article examines the evolution of CSO approaches towards nanotechnology over the past decade and investigates whether and how upstream public engagement could contribute to more vibrant public spheres and facilitate the formation of communicative power. The answer to these questions is twofold: on the one hand, moving public engagement “upstream” enables CSOs to be better informed and to become part of the debates more quickly. A “green alliance” is taking shape, which calls for more stringent regulation on nanomaterials. On the other hand, upstream public engagement has turned out to be unsuccessful in generating substantial and sustained interest. A number of CSOs have quit this field in frustration at the tokenistic engagement and out of fatigue after the intense lobbying battle for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. (shrink)

The integration of nanotechnology’s ‘social and ethical issues’ (SEI) at the research and development stage is one of the defining features of nanotechnology governance in the United States. Mandated by law, integration extends the field of nanotechnology to include a role for the “social”, the “public” and the social sciences and humanities in research and development (R&D) practices and agendas. Drawing from interviews with scientists, engineers and policymakers who took part in an oral history of the “Future of Nanotechnology” symposium (...) at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, this article examines how nanotechnology’s ‘social and ethical issues’ are brought to life by these practitioners. From our analysis, three modes of enactment emerge: enacting SEI as obligations and problems-to-be-solved, enacting SEI by ‘not doing it’ in the laboratory, and enacting SEI as part of scientific practice. Together they paint a complex picture where SEI are variously defined, made visible or invisible, included and excluded, with participants showing their skill at both boundary-work (Gieryn Am Sociol Rev 48:781–795, 1983, 1999) and at integration. We conclude by reflecting on what this may mean for the design and implementation of SEI integration policies, suggesting that we need to transform SEI from obligations into ‘matters of care’ (Puig de la Bellacasa Soc Stud Sci 41(1):85–106, 2011) that tend to existing relationalities between science and society and implicate practitioners themselves. (shrink)

This paper discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the use or non-use of expert-based information in policy-making. Special attention is paid to the Narrative Policy Framework introduced by Jones & McBeth in 2010. This theory of the policy process adopts a quantitative, structuralist and positivist approach to the study of policy narratives. The Narrative Policy Framework is useful for the analysis of the use of expert-based information to resolve so-called wicked problems, which are characterized by intense (...) value-based conflict between policy coalitions. The methodological approach of the Narrative Policy Framework is illustrated using the policy issue of mandatory vaccination. (shrink)

The paper offers a political-philosophical analysis of the state and publics in the age of technoscience to propose three distinct categories of publics: scientific-citizen publics constituted by civil society, quasi-publics that initiate another kind of engagement through the activation of ‘political society,’ and non-publics cast outside these spheres of engagement. This re-categorization is possible when the central role of the state in its citizens’ engagement with technoscience is put upfront and the non-Western empirical contexts are taken seriously by Science, Technology (...) and Policy (STP) studies. The paper argues that in most of the world the state maintains a political contract with technoscience to form a functional coupling as the state-technoscience duo, which shapes public engagement with science through different functional modalities of government. Civil society is the sphere of legitimate engagement and participation in technoscientific issues for the scientific-citizen publics. The quasi-publics choose to be in the shady zone of political society establishing a paralegal relationship with the state-technoscience duo, while the non-publics come into being due to conditions of extra-legality created by the duo. The non-publics are implicated in the political community paradoxically as an excluded category who cannot be included in deliberation because of their status as being expelled from political community in a ‘state of exception.’ The paper proposes that the scientific-citizen publics are mobilized in contrast to the quasi-publics and with reference to the non-publics, helping STP studies to identify the ‘missing masses’ of technoscience. (shrink)

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in (...) the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power. (shrink)

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift ‘from deficit to dialogue’ in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in (...) the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism. (shrink)

The legal view of science has changed throughtime, moving from a positivist and noncriticalposition of law towards science to a criticalview of science – providing the potential formore objective knowledge, but value-laden aswell – and of the role of society. This paperexplores some judicial cases that illustratethese attitudes, suggesting that reference toscience (particularly to EBM) can be rigorouslyand equitably made when it serves the cause oftransparency and democratisation both inscience and in law.

Bijker calls for scholars in science and technology studies to become public intellectuals by actively working toward “democratizing... technological culture.” Many STS scholars have developed practices that support democratic and public activity; yet, these typically require individual commitment with inadequate institutional support. The public work of STS scholars can be better supported through a program that includes using specialist research in nonreproductive educational contexts, redefining and revaluing academic service, developing more accessible ways of writing, and publishing and valuing STS-based texts (...) that circulate among nonacademic audiences. (shrink)

Participative reforms to risk regulation are often argued to enhance the evidence base, improve the representation of the public interest, and build support for policy processes and outcomes. While rationales and mechanisms for participation have received most scholarly attention, less attention has been paid to the actual impact of participation on policy processes and outcomes. This article, therefore, considers the impacts of participation by examining the UK Food Standards Agency's Consumer Committee, which was created in 2002 to institutionalize consumer representation (...) within policy making, but which was disbanded as a failure in 2005. Using three case studies, the article identifies two broad institutional dimensions of regulation that shaped and constrained the committee's impact on the evidence base, policy outcomes and building support for policy, and contributed to its eventual failure. Those dimensions relate to the design and organization of regulatory regimes, and to the understandings and influence of regulatory actors. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project (HGP) brings genetics and genetic knowledge to the point of paradoxical counterproductivity. Population-wide genetic screens, replacing specific tests intended for and useful to those at risk, become counterproductive when the HGP's "normal human " defines everybody as at risk. More over, the knowledge generated by the HGP disables those whom it is meant to serve: We are rendered impotent as a laity, subject to expertise regarding the truth of our being. The standard response here is that (...) we need more science education and easier access to scientific knowledge. But that is simply to beg the question. The question to ask about knowledge is not whether it is true or properly scientific (which it may very well be) but rather whether it is good. The good of knowledge must be demonstrated and not uncritically assumed. Thus, more education can, too, be paradoxically counterproductive. What, then, are our prospects? (shrink)

This article contributes to the development of a rhetorical approach to the public understanding of science or science literacy. It is argued that rhetoric promises an alternative approach to deficit models that treat people as faulty scientists. Some tensions in the relevant rhetorical literature need resolution. These center on the application to science of an Aristotelian conception of rhetorical reasoning as enthymematic, without breaking from the Platonic/aristotelian division between technical and public spheres. The former opens science to the potential of (...) public critique; the latter closes this, effectively reinstating a deficit model. Gross’s writings are used to bring this point out sharply. A resolution is proposed, building on a view of rhetoric as socially constitutive and leading to a conception of public understanding as witcraft. Here, Billig’s rhetorical psychology provides the basis for reconfiguring the enthymeme in a manner that construes the division between spheres as itself rhetorically constituted. Creationism is used to provide brief illustration. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus that we are experiencing radical change in the way that science is organized and performed. Frequently described as a shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2, this view emphasizes application, transdisciplinarity, collaboration, and accountability. This article examines the ways in which U.K. public sector scientists make sense of scientific endeavor. The data reveal that the extent to which science is being constructed varied both across and between institutions. Data highlight how individual scientists weave their own (...) paths through the changing discourses of science, constructing new understandings that do not fit neatly into any binary framework for understanding. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the institutional negotiation of public engagement in matters of science and technology. We take the example of the Science in Society dialogue program initiated by the UK’s Royal Society, but set this case within the wider experience of the public engagement activities of a range of charities, corporations, governmental departments, and scientific institutions. The novelty of the analysis lies in the linking of an account of the dialogue event and its outcomes to the values, practices, (...) and imperatives—the institutional rationality—of the commissioning organization. We argue that the often tacit institutional construction of scientific citizenship is a critical, and relatively undeveloped, element of analysis—one that offers considerable insight into the practice and democratic implications of engaging publics in science and science policy. We also present evidence indicating that over time the expanding ‘‘capacities’’ associated with dialogue can act in subtle ways to enroll other elements of institutional architectures into more reflexive modes of thinking and acting. In the concluding section of the article, we consider the ways in which research and practice could engage more squarely with facets of institutional context and culture. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of the expert in giving advice to policy makers. It argues that, since biotechnology is an area characterised by value conflicts and fragile public trust in scientific experts and authorities, broader consultation processes which include both ethicists and laypeople should be conducted.“Expertise, it may be argued, sacrifices the insight of common sense to intensity of experience… The expert fails to realise that every judgement he makes not purely factual in nature brings with it a scheme (...) of values which has no special validity about it” (Laski, 1930). (shrink)

Generally, public opinion is measured via polls or survey instruments, with a majority of responses in a particular direction taken to indicate the presence of a given ‘public opinion’. However, discursive psychological and related scholarship has shown that the ontological status of both individual opinion and public opinion is highly suspect. In the first part of this article I draw on this body of work to demonstrate that there is currently no meaningful theoretical foundation for the construct of public opinion (...) as it is typically measured in surveys, polls, or focus groups. I then argue that there is a particular sense in which the construct of public opinion does make sense. In deliberative democratic forums participants engage in dialogue with the aim of coming to collective positions on particular issues. Here I draw on examples of deliberative democratic forums conducted on the social and ethical implications of science and technology. Conversation between participants in deliberative democratic forums is ideally characterized by individuals becoming informed about the issues being discussed, respectful interactions between participants, individuals being open to changing their positions, and a convergence towards collective positions in the interest of formulating civic solutions. The end-product of deliberation on a given issue might thus be termed a deliberative public opinion. ‘Deliberative public opinion’ is neither a cognitive nor an aggregate construct, but rather a socio-historical product. Criteria for its legitimacy rely on the inclusiveness of diversity of perspectives and the degree to which collective positions are defensible to a larger society. (shrink)

The article analyses what we term governmental ethics regimes as forms of scientific governance. Drawing from empirical research on governmental ethics regimes in Germany, Franceand the UK since the early 1980s, it argues that these governmental ethics regimes grew out of the technical model of scientific governance, but have departed from it in crucial ways. It asks whether ethics regimes can be understood as new ‘‘technologies of humility’’ and answers the question with a ‘‘yes, but’’. Yes, governmental ethics regimes have (...) incorporated features that go beyond technologies of prediction and control, but the overcoming of the technical model also bears some ambivalence that needs to be understood. The article argues that governmental ethics regimes can be understood as a form of ‘‘reflexive government’’ in that the commitment to techno-scientific innovation is stabilized not through an elitist, technocratic exclusion of non-scientific actors and knowledges or a depreciation of normative and emotional dimensions, but through their inclusion, involvement and mobilization. (shrink)

A widely touted approach to involving laypeople in science and technology policy-related decisions is the consensus conference. Virtually nothing written on the topic provides detailed discussion of the many steps from citizen recruitment to citizen report. Little attention is paid to how and why the mechanics of the consensus conference process might influence the diversity of the participants in theses fora, the quality of the deliberation in the citizen sessions, the experiences of the participants and organizers, and other outcomes that (...) affect democratic decision making within the conference and more broadly over the long term. As an aid to those interested in utilizing the consensus conference format, the authors outline in detail how they set about organizing their consensus conference on nanotechnology in the spring of 2005. They discuss what specific aspects of their consensus conference worked, and why, and also consider what they learned of relevance to future application. (shrink)