Elitist, technical, and positivist models of scientific governance have been subject to much scrutiny and criticism by science and technology studies (STS) for many years. Seminal work in STS has exposed the boundary work through which the distinctions between science and nonscience, science and politics, and experts and lay people are constructed and maintained (to mention only a few: Gieryn 1999; Latour 1993; Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). A more specific tradition in STS has focused on the relations between science, technology, public policy, government and civil society, and has articulated demands for the acknowledgment of uncertainty and a self-critical stance toward scientific truth claims (Wynne 1993; Collins and Evans 2007), for a broader participation of citizens or lay people

The paper provides a deeper insight into institutionally given opportunities for and limitations to reflexive, dialogue-centered, and risk-sensitive knowledge exchange between scientific experts and agro-political decision makers, especially under the conditions of a significant degree of complexity, far-reaching uncertainties and potential impacts. It focuses on the practical orientations, guiding expectations and selection criteria shaping expertise in processes of science policy consulting. In doing so, two perspectives will be discussed: first the orientation of the knowledge production process by different concepts of ‘‘usable knowledge.’’ Second, the influence of specific constellations on different stages of the political process, which shape the institutional conditions for the transfer and the use of scientific knowledge within the policy consulting process. Both perspectives help to come to a closer understanding of the demanding and very heterogeneous process of science policy consulting, which - if successful - leads to the interactive production of a very special form of ‘‘orientational knowledge.’’

Anyone concerned about food risks related, for example, to acrylamide, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or food supplements is confronted with vast and complex landscapes of political debates, with various uncertainties, contested responsibilities, competing knowledge and ambivalent value-making. In risk assessment procedures, these fluid complexities often get simplified to come to any evaluation at all. A retrospective review of risk scandals, however, highlights that most risks arise just from those connections in production, usage and disposal which remained unseen or were even blinded out during previous risk assessment. To better deal with these 'unknown unknowns', society at large and decisionmakers in particular need not only new strategies to avoid manufactured uncertainties but also more comprehensive knowledge tools and concepts to fully explore potential sources and connections of hazards, risks and uncertainties. Facing this challenge of risk governance, the paper discusses the potential of the visualisation ('mapping') of risk controversies and introduces the concept of 'risk infrastructures'. The aim is to equip stakeholders, laypersons and decision-makers with risk mappings which make visible how competing knowledge claims, protagonists, institutional settings, facts and values are related to each other. It will do so in referring to a prototype software application of such a 're-assembling strategy' (Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)) called 'Risk Cartography'.

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag diskutiert die neuen urbanen Ernährungsbewegungen und ihre räumlichen Wirkungen, ästhetischen Inszenierungen und wirtschaftlichen Konzepte. Auf der Basis qualitativer Einzelfallstudien in Deutschland wird gezeigt, wie die ‚Wiedereinbettung’ von Ernährungsarrangements in lebensweltliche und regionalökonomische Kontexte praktisch erprobt wird. Dafür schlagen wir ein Verständnis von „transformativem Wirtschaften“ vor und beleuchten, inwiefern transformative Vorstellungen von Urbanität, Wohlstand und kollektivem Handeln entstehen. Im Vergleich zu älteren öko-sozialen Bewegungen zeigt sich, dass die neuen Akteure immer zugleich auf mehreren Ebenen agieren und dadurch die Komplexitätsanforderungen von sozialem Wandel mit Bezug zu globalen Diskurs- und Problemzusammenhängen aufgreifen.

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