‘Democratising’ expertise, ‘expertising’ democracy: what does this mean, and why bother?

Liberatore, Angela; Funtowicz, Silvio

doi:10.3152/147154303781780551

Cited by 170 publications

(81 citation statements)

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“…However, there is a propensity by political decision-makers of asking for expert advice even when knowledge is uncertain, implying a risk of undermining public trust in political expert use (Weingart 1999;Jasanoff 1997). Together with an emphasis on citizen rights, this tendency has contributed to calls for 'democratisation of expertise' as a way of rebuilding trust between science and the public (Liberatore and Funtowicz 2003;Fischer 2009). Indeed, prominent and influential debates within the social and cultural sciences on the question of the role of expertise in complex societies have revolved around the tension between rationality and democratic values (Durant 2011;Jasanoff 2011Jasanoff , 2003Wynne 2003;Collins and Evans 2002).…”

Section: The Role Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics and democracy—what is the issue?

et al. 2012

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Section: The Role Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics and democracy—what is the issue?

et al. 2012

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“…Here we draw on insights about: the non-linearity of policy processes and the necessity of understanding the peculiarities of specific political and sectoral contexts (e.g. Joubert, 2001;Innvaer et al, 2002;Liberatore and Funtowicz, 2003;Manzini, 2003;Court et al, 2005;Herring, 2007;; about the role of researchers' and CSOs' 'intent' to shape policy (e.g. Weingart, 1999;Choi et al, 2005;Maxwell and Stone, 2005;O'Neil, 2005;Carden, 2009); and about the role of those who cross borders between academic, advocacy and policy arenas (e.g.…”

Section: I2 Who Is This Book For?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Child poverty, evidence and policy

Jones¹,

Sumner²

2011

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“…There are also broader quests for a civic epistemology and the setting up of an agora as space for negotiation between scientific and social actors (Nowotny et al, 2001) as well as accounts that strive to enhance inclusive procedures in decision making (Liberatore and Funtowicz, 2003) and deliberation (Davies, 2006). Participatory politics in all their variety and nuance shift the focus from who is an expert or who is a legitimate participant in a region of objectivity to the problem of enhancing inclusion of lay citizens, and in certain cases to the issue of becoming expert.…”

Section: Participatory Politics and The Limits Of Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alter-ontologies: Towards a constituent politics in technoscience

Papadopoulos

2010

Soc Stud Sci

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This paper identifies four recent conceptualisations of politics in relation to technoscience, which focus on expertise, institutional participation, the inclusion of non-human others, and the importance of marginalised experiences. The paper argues that each of these forms of politics is mainly concerned with renegotiating the already constituted terms of inclusion in a specific technoscientific field. While in many cases such a strategy is necessary, the paper aims to open up discussion of alternative forms of politics that act as constituent forces of radical social and material transformation in technoscience: alter-ontologies.Keywords alter-ontology, assembly, constituent politics, expertise, objectivity, participation, situated knowledges, technoscience Attempts to find definite descriptions of the connection between technoscience and politics are usually prone to reductionism and oversimplification. The traditional way in philosophy of science to think of this relation was epistemology, where the content of technoscience and the associated politics were subordinated to ways of knowing and defining truth (Alcoff, 1998). Social studies of science emerging in the 1970s contested this view, but their attempts to question traditional epistemology devolved into a new cycle of epistemological disputes between proponents of rationality and sociality (Longino, 2002). These debates will be briefly discussed later in this paper. My argument here is that epistemology is less useful as a tool for discerning and navigating through the intricacies of scientific knowledge/politics than as a tool for reproducing them by other means. The covert politics of epistemology culminated in provoking the science wars of the 1990s.The response to these heated debates in science and technology studies (STS) was an attempt to exit epistemology altogether. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency to consider science together with technological and other applications --as technoscience or in the words of Jerome Ravetz (2006) post-normal science. These changes led to a new understanding of objectivity; one that limits its validity in time and space to a certain field but nevertheless recognizes that technoscientific knowledge holds objective status within that -2-field. That is, knowledge is shaped by the actual process of technoscientific research and its objects and simultaneously shapes social relations and material arrangements in each particular field. Here, I use the expression 'regions of objectivity' to refer to the ultimate horizon against which any question about politics in technoscience can be discussed. In the sections that follow, I will discuss four current conceptualizations of how politics is considered to be operative in a region of objectivity. I start with a formalist approach to politics, which is mainly concerned with rethinking expertise and creating the appropriate procedures for considering legitimate experts in a debate. A second approach to politics, participatory politics, is concerned with the ex...

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‘Democratising’ expertise, ‘expertising’ democracy: what does this mean, and why bother?

Cited by 170 publications

References 2 publications

Genetics and democracy—what is the issue?

Genetics and democracy—what is the issue?

Child poverty, evidence and policy

Alter-ontologies: Towards a constituent politics in technoscience

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