Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Environmental Sociology
John Hannigan
Environmentalism and Cultural Theory
Kay Milton
CITIZEN SCIENCE
A study of people, expertise and
sustainable development
Alan Irwin
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP 9
2 SCIENCE, CITIZENS AND ENVIRONMENTAL
THREAT 37
3 SCIENCE AND THE POLICY PROCESS 62
4 WITNESSES, PARTICIPANTS AND MAJOR
ACCIDENT HAZARDS 81
5 FREEING THE VOICES: A SCIENCE OF THE
PEOPLE? 105
6 BUILDING SUSTAINABLE FUTURES: SCIENCE
SHOPS AND SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS 135
7 SCIENCE, CITIZENSHIP AND TROUBLED
MODERNITY 168
Notes 183
Index 196
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courses in this area but also those who through their employment or
personal concerns operate in this field (which just about covers all of
us). Second and given the strong risk/environmental flavour of what
follows, this is a book for those concerned with environmental
matters – it will push them particularly towards questions of
expertise, citizenship and social sustainability. Third, I hope scientists
themselves will engage with this book if only to be provoked out of
‘deficit’ (or ‘enlightenment’) models of an irrational and passively
ignorant public for science. Finally, this is a book for social scientists
and especially sociologists – I hope to convince them that this is a
field where they can make a useful and timely contribution but also
where they have a lot to learn.
In aiming to communicate with such diverse audiences I am of
course taking the r isk that I will actually connect with none.
However, and if I can be allowed to push the marketing metaphor
just a little further, it seems to me that there is a substantial ‘niche’
between these audiences – and one which is currently neglected.
Thus, rather than participating in the demonization of either
scientists or social scientists, I want to suggest that something
substantial can be gained by bringing these groups together. Equally,
environmental debates can benefit from an awareness of underlying
questions of citizenship and expertise. If criticism of what follows
leads any of these audiences to construct more adequate accounts of
their own – then a major goal of Citizen Science will have been
achieved.
It follows from this diversity of audiences that I have a diversity of
acknowledgements to offer. Var ious parts of this research were
supported by external bodies – and I am particularly grateful to the
Science Policy Support Group, the Economic and Social Research
Council, the Nuffield Foundation and the Commission of the
European Communities (Research in social and economic aspects of
the environment, DGXII/D/5) for their support. The Science Policy
Support Group deserves special thanks for establishing a network of
British researchers in this broad field and I am grateful for the
assistance provided within that network by colleagues working on
related projects.
This book was also written across various institutional locations. I
would like to thank the for mer Department of Science and
Technology Policy and the current Department of Sociology at the
University of Manchester for their help and encouragement. More
recently, the Department of Human Sciences and the Centre for
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INTRODUCTION
Science and technology are major forces in our everyday lives. They
help structure our personal and working relationships. They offer new
possibilities – but also new threats. They allow opposite ends of the
globe to speak to one another – simultaneously, they are linked to
the possible despoliation of that globe through industrial pollution
and environmental damage. Science and technology also offer new
ways of understanding everyday reality – they exist both as a body of
‘facts’ about the world and as a framework for rational thought.
Meanwhile, that form of rationality may blind us to alternative ways
of valuing ourselves and the world around us.
This book is written at a time when the relationship between public
groups, science and environmental challenges appears more pressing
than ever. However, it is also written in the belief that an emerging
body of scholarship and practical initiative is well-placed to address
these challenges.
Of course, given the social significance of science and technology,
it is hardly surprising that these themes have already emerged as a
major concern within everyday life and social theory. Max Weber is
particularly associated with the notion of the ‘disenchantment of the
world’ through spreading bureaucracy and rationalization. Above all,
Weber captured the possible contribution of science and technology
both to human progress and to the undermining of human values.1
From this perspective, the citizen both gains and loses through the
spread of scientific rationality. A similar sense of gain and loss through
science can be found in the writing of Marx and various social
commentators since the Industrial Revolution – from Dickens and
Wordsworth through to Habermas and Marcuse.
This book follows (albeit with considerable humility) in this critical
tradition of examining the relationship between ‘science, technology
and progress’. More particularly, it will be argued that this relationship
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This reworking and radicalizing of the ‘science for the people’ theme
will take place especially in the latter half of this book.
The final theme represents in many ways the emerging context in
which the previous three will be tested out – the socio-scientific
challenges of achieving ‘sustainable development’. Once again, this is
a term that has been in currency for some time (at least since the
early 1980s). However, it gained popular attention in 1987 with the
publication of Our Common Future, the report of the United Nations
World Commission on Environment and Development. ‘Sustainable
development’ is defined by this report as: ‘development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’.11
At first consideration, ‘sustainable development’ seems very far from
the issues of technology, culture and democracy which have been
presented so far in this Introduction. However, it will be argued that
issues of environmental threat and world development cannot be
successfully tackled without a full consideration of local as well as global
initiatives and of citizen-oriented as well as stateled programmes.
These issues are inseparable from questions of knowledge and the
status of science within competing notions of social progress. There is
a danger at present that the international debate over sustainability
will be conducted without a critical account of science itself – and
indeed that a global scientific discourse will prevent the expression
of more localized understandings and expertises. A particular form of
science will ‘frame’ the issues in a manner which may not be open
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