Communicating Science and Technology in Society: Issues of Public Accountability and Engagement [1st ed.] 9783030528843, 9783030528850

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-ix
Introduction: How the Sociology of Science and Technology Addresses Science and Society Relations (Ana Delicado)....Pages 1-14
Front Matter ....Pages 15-15
Norms, Competition, and Visibility in Contemporary Science: The Legacy of Robert K. Merton (Massimiano Bucchi)....Pages 17-37
Re-distributing Responsibility in Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production and Circulation (Thomas Völker)....Pages 39-57
How Do Scientists Doing Animal Experimentation View the Co-evolution Between Science and Society? The Swiss Case (Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten)....Pages 59-77
Science-Society Relations in a Context of Technological Change: How Scientists Working on Renewable Energy Technologies Perceive Their Role in the Energy Transition (Luís Junqueira)....Pages 79-94
Front Matter ....Pages 95-95
Bringing Science to the Public: Is It a Matter for Scientific Associations? (Cristina Palma Conceição)....Pages 97-116
Turning the Gaze on Ourselves: Public Communication of Sociology (Ana Delicado)....Pages 117-136
Technologies of Participation in Water Plans in Portugal: What Kind of Science–Society Relationship Are We Talking About? (Sofia Bento, Oriana Rainho Brás)....Pages 137-159
Material Trajectories: How Issues Come to Matter in a Citizen Conference (Guillem Pal`, Miquel Domènech)....Pages 161-177
Two Turtles: Children and Autonomy in Participatory Technological Design (Núria Vallès-Peris, Miquel Domènech)....Pages 179-195
Back Matter ....Pages 197-199

Citation preview

Ana Delicado Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten Katarina Prpić  Editors

Communicating Science and Technology in Society Issues of Public Accountability and Engagement

Communicating Science and Technology in Society

Ana Delicado • Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten • Katarina Prpić Editors

Communicating Science and Technology in Society Issues of Public Accountability and Engagement

Editors Ana Delicado Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa Lisbon, Portugal

Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten University of Lausanne Lausanne, Switzerland

Katarina Prpić Institute for Social Research Zagreb, Croatia

ISBN 978-3-030-52884-3 ISBN 978-3-030-52885-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0

(eBook)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1

Introduction: How the Sociology of Science and Technology Addresses Science and Society Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ana Delicado

1

Part I Scientists’ Research Practices and Responses to Societal Demands 2

3

4

5

Norms, Competition, and Visibility in Contemporary Science: The Legacy of Robert K. Merton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Massimiano Bucchi

17

Re-distributing Responsibility in Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production and Circulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Völker

39

How Do Scientists Doing Animal Experimentation View the Co-evolution Between Science and Society? The Swiss Case . . . . . . Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten

59

Science-Society Relations in a Context of Technological Change: How Scientists Working on Renewable Energy Technologies Perceive Their Role in the Energy Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luís Junqueira

Part II 6

7

79

Science Communication and Citizen Participation in Science

Bringing Science to the Public: Is It a Matter for Scientific Associations? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cristina Palma Conceição

97

Turning the Gaze on Ourselves: Public Communication of Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Ana Delicado

v

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Contents

8

Technologies of Participation in Water Plans in Portugal: What Kind of Science–Society Relationship Are We Talking About? . . . . . . . . 137 Sofia Bento and Oriana Rainho Brás

9

Material Trajectories: How Issues Come to Matter in a Citizen Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Guillem Palà and Miquel Domènech

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Two Turtles: Children and Autonomy in Participatory Technological Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Núria Vallès-Peris and Miquel Domènech

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Distribution of the number of constraints accepted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two-dimensional correspondence analysis map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fig. 6.1

Scientific associations in Portugal by year of foundation. Source: census of scientific associations in Portugal, 2012. Data not available for 60 associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Researchers’ motivations for belonging to a Portuguese scientific association, by type of association (%). Source: survey of researchers working in Portugal, 2012; N ¼ 462 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proportion of “non-scientists” among the Portuguese scientific associations’ members (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frequency of public communication of science activities (in the last 5 years), for young people and the general public, by type of scientific association (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 105 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collaboration with other institutions for the sake of public communication of science, by type of scientific association (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 77 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ciência Viva’s national summer campaign: number of institutions participating, by year (2003–2014) and type of institution (%). Source: Conceição (2011); updated with data from the Ciência Viva website .. . . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . Ciência Viva’s national summer campaign: average number of events per institution every year (2003–2014), by type of institution. Source: Conceição (2011); updated with data from the Ciência Viva website. Note: “Associations” includes a small number of events promoted by non-scientific associations (such as cultural or local development associations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7

72 73

102

104

105

106

107

112

113

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List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2

Modes of governance (based on Hagendijk et al. 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Water plans, second cycle (source: APA 2015b) . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . 144

Fig. 9.1

Trajectory followed by the issue . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . 171

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2

Full life-cycle of the participatory process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Turtle-design prototype. Note: Virtual design of the turtle robot made by the roboticists involved in the project after the children’s participative process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The posting episode. Note: Pictures of children doing the activity of phase 1 for sharing a workflow with roboticists and social scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prototypes kept in trays . . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . ..

Fig. 10.3

Fig. 10.4

185

188

190 191

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5

Socio-historic analysis of the issue of animal experimentation in Switzerland from the 1950s until today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Demographics of respondents . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . General assessment of the course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attitudes toward the 3Rs principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frequency of POE activities in the last 12 months . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

62 68 70 70 71

Table 5.1

Profile of researchers interviewed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

Table 7.1

Data on sociology research in Portugal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Table 10.1

Phases of the participative process for designing a social robot with children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

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Chapter 1

Introduction: How the Sociology of Science and Technology Addresses Science and Society Relations Ana Delicado

An Overview The sociology of science and technology has been gradually broadening its scope of study. Early works paid particular attention to the functioning of the scientific system, such as the values and norms that regulate it, the rewards and the reputation of individual scientists, the competition and collaboration within the scientific community, the accumulation of scientific capital, and the strategies of reproduction or subversion (see, for instance, Hagstrom 1965, Merton 1973, Bourdieu 1975). It then moved toward an examination of scientific practices, how science is produced in the laboratories and in the field, how scientific claims are built and contested, and how scientific knowledge is set apart and raises boundaries with other forms of knowledge (see, for instance, Bloor 1976, Gieryn 1983, Latour and Woolgar 1986, Knorr-Cetina 2009).1 A third and more recent strand of research in the sociology of science concerns how the scientific field connects with other spheres of society. This strand derives partially from changes in science itself. Increasingly pushed to leave their “ivory tower”, to become accountable to taxpayers, to generate useful, marketable products, to take responsibility for negative impacts, to engage with the concerns of citizens and stakeholders and regain their trust, scientists are forced to establish ties with non-academic actors. Sociology of science and technology has generated many theoretical frameworks to understand these changes. For example, Actor-Network Theory connects experts and non-experts, humans, and non-humans, and examines the translations that 1 For a more in-depth analysis of the mutations in Science and Technology Studies, see Edge (1995), Martin et al. (2012) or Felt et al. (2016).

A. Delicado (*) Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_1

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necessarily occur in their interactions (e.g. Callon 1984). Gibbons et al. (1994) put forward the Mode 2 of knowledge production, characterized by being socially distributed (with a strong orientation toward application and commercialization), transdisciplinary, and subjected to multiple accountabilities and instances of evaluation (see also Nowotny et al. 2003). Another example is the conceptualization of ‘Post-Normal Science’ by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993), which postulates that when ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ (mainly in relation to environmental crisis) science has to rely on extended peer communities and embrace the plurality of legitimate perspectives. The New Political Sociology of Science framework acknowledges that ‘the social structure of modern science is highly dependent upon the social, economic, and political organization of society, and extremely sensitive to changes in this environment’ (Blume 1974: 279) and thus focuses on ‘the intersection of rules and routines, meanings, organizations, and resource distributions that shape knowledge production systems’, by producing ‘research explaining why science works better or more often for some groups than for others, and the ways in which social attributes such as race, gender, class, and profession interact with and condition those particular outcomes’ (Frickel and Moore 2006: 7). More recently, this concern with openness to society has become enshrined in science policies, such as the RRI Responsible Research and Innovation framework promoted by the European Commission (Grunwald 2011). According to the definition proposed by Schomberg, Responsible Research and Innovation is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society (Schomberg 2012, 47).

Among other issues, RRI encompasses ethics, governance, and public engagement and has become a mandatory issue in research carried out with European funding. Conversely, science funding is increasingly dependent on demonstrating the societal impact of research, showing its economic and social value and usefulness, with significant consequences over assessment practices (Whitley 2010; Bornmann 2013). These trends have greatly multiplied the objects of study addressed by sociologists of science and technology and led to increasingly porous borders with other sub-disciplines of sociology (environmental sociology, political sociology, sociology of social movements, sociology of health, sociology of communication, to name just a few). One such object may the relations between science and the policy sphere. Some sociological research has been focusing on scientific advice for policy, in the sense of ‘the use of knowledge to facilitate or improve decision-making’ (Pielke 2007: 79). This has been frequent in environmental issues and climate change in particular (Shackley and Wynne 1996; van der Sluijs et al. 1998; Hulme 2009). While some

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studies examine the use of scientific expertise by policy actors (Jasanoff 1990; Renn 1995; Weingart 1999), others address the theme of governance and participation of non-experts in decisions of a scientific-technological nature (Jasanoff 2003; Renn 2004; Felt et al. 2008; Lovbrand et al. 2010). Technology assessment, ‘a scientific, interactive, and communicative process which aims to contribute to the formation of public and political opinion on societal aspects of science and technology’ (Decker and Ladikas 2004: 14), is another often-examined policy making practice. Notable for adding reflexivity to governance ‘by integrating any available knowledge on possible side effects, by supporting the evaluation of technologies according to societal values and ethical principles, by elaborating strategies to deal with inevitable uncertainties, and by contributing to constructive solutions of societal conflicts around science and technology’ (Grunwald 2011: 14), it has been routinely applied in many European countries on diverse new technologies such as nanotechnology (Guston and Sarewitz 2002; Fiedeler 2008; Rip and te Kulve 2008), genetically modified organisms (Marris et al. 2008; Tavella 2016), and synthetic biology (Schmidt 2016). Sociological interest in these forms of participatory decision-making and consensus building stems also from its reverse. In the past few decades there have been a multitude of scientific controversies spilling out to the public sphere and embroiling citizens, and attracting the attention of sociologists. From mad-cow disease (Miller 1999) to the management of radioactive waste (Bickerstaff et al. 2008), from stemcell research (Prainsack et al. 2008) to the Climategate (Jasanoff 2010), public controversies on scientific developments with environmental or health impacts are among the most-often researched subjects in science and society. Bauer (2015: 2) states that through controversies ‘public opinion has reasserted itself as a factor in the development of techno-science’ and ‘the level and scope of public controversy is an index of public resistance’. The study of controversies sheds light on public attitudes toward science, going beyond answers to closed-ended questions in questionnaires (more on that below), allows following different actors, their actions, and their pronouncements, highlights power relations, and demolishes a monolithic view of the scientific community, by underlining the roles of experts and counter-experts. Controversies are also closely linked to the issue of risk, inescapable in contemporary societies (Beck 1992), and a matter for a wealth of sociological research (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2012). The study of controversies has also promoted the emergence of new methodological tools, such as digital mapping (Venturini 2010, 2012; Beck and Kropp 2011). Less contentious but no less bountiful for sociological research is another kind of encounter between scientists and citizens, namely in the co-production of knowledge. Callon (1999) names co-production as Model 3 in the participation of non-specialists in scientific and technological debates, after Public Education Model (Model 1) and Public Debate model (Model 2). In the Model 3 ‘the dynamics of knowledge is the result of a constantly renewed tension between the production of standardised and universal knowledge on one hand, and the production of knowledge that takes into account the complexity of singular local situations, on the other hand’ (Callon 1999: 89). The generalized public becomes ‘concerned groups’, who

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play a relevant role in producing, orienting, and evaluating knowledge. Within these ‘hybrid collectives’ of scientists and citizens, ‘collective learning’ occurs. Early studies focused on the biomedical sciences, such as collaborations between patients and scientists in muscular dystrophy research (Rabeharisoa and Callon 2004) or lay involvement in research about the environmental causes of breast cancer (Brown 2006). But co-production studies have spilled over to other areas such as management and mitigation of environmental problems (Bäckstrand 2003; Hetland 2011; Cornwell and Campbell 2012; Hegger et al. 2012) or co-design of technological artefacts (Knot and Luiten 2006; Simonsen and Robertson 2012; Wherton et al. 2015). The public’s collaboration in research is also studied under a different label, citizen science, although here the participation dimension is usually questionable. From counting butterflies to identifying planets, from locating invading plants to catching stalled brain vessels, from measuring pollution to deciphering ancient manuscripts, there are plenty of ways citizens are currently contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge (Cohn 2008; Silvertown 2009; Raddick et al. 2010; Nurmikko et al. 2012; Crall et al. 2013; Curtis 2015). However, in most cases, the citizens’ contribution is reduced to collecting data (crowdsourcing), under protocols and research questions devised by scientists, who will also be the ones analysing and producing results and outputs (Shirk et al. 2012; Irwin 2015). Nevertheless, there is an abundance of studies on motivations of citizens (Raddick et al. 2010; Edwards 2014; Nov et al. 2014), knowledge acquisition, and attitude change (Jordan et al. 2011; Crall et al. 2013), or how scientists envision citizen collaboration (Riesch and Potter 2014; Burgess et al. 2017). It should also be noted that most of these studies are authored not by social researchers but by natural scientists involved in citizen science projects and few are published in social sciences journals. Citizen science studies belong in the wider area of public engagement with science studies. This concept encompasses a wide array of practices studied by the sociology of science. Among these are different kinds of science communication, such as science museums (Durant 1996; Stocklmayer 2005; Schiele 2014), science festivals (Jensen and Buckley 2014; Riise and Alfonsi 2014), or, more recently, through the internet and online social media (Trench 2008; Brossard and Scheufele 2013; Peters et al. 2014). Another topic of study is scientific literacy, or knowledge of science by the public, usually measured through surveys (Miller 1998; Sturgis and Allum 2004; Miller and Pardo 2005; Allum et al. 2008). Scientific literacy has been heavily criticized for its narrow understanding of science and for equating knowledge with trust in science, in what is generally called the deficit model of public understanding of science (Irwin and Wynne 1996; Irwin and Michael 2003; Gregory and Lock 2008; Bucchi 2008). Surveys are also the most common method of assessing public attitudes toward science (Bauer et al. 2000, 2007; Bauer 2008), with the added-value of allowing cross-national and longitudinal comparisons (Mejlgaard and Stares 2009; Reyes 2015). One other prolific area of studies is the representation of science in the news (Suleski and Ibaraki 2010; Schäfer 2012) and in popular media, such as film and television (Lehmkuhl et al. 2012; Kirby 2014).

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The preceding paragraphs are just a cursory overview of how the sociology of science and technology has been addressing the issue of science and society relations. Since this is a rapidly expanding field, new topics are bound to keep emerging, just as science continues transforming and engendering new connections, new tensions, and new challenges with the social environments in which it is situated. Sociology’s attention to these dynamics is undoubtedly pertinent for policy-making, but also for advising on scientists’ engagements with citizens and for enhancing more democratic, participatory, and socially equitable ways of producing science.

About This Book This book is the result of a workshop held in Lisbon in the spring of 2016 under the aegis of the Research Network 24 Science and Technology (SSTNET) of the ESA European Sociological Association. Sociologists across Europe came together to discuss the latest research on science and society relations, presenting work on issues as diverse as biobanking, renewable energies, research evaluation, and citizen conferences. Methodological diversity also abounded, with papers based on quantitative surveys, in-depth qualitative interviews, ethnographic observation, and media analysis. Over the course of 2 days, 19 papers by authors from eight European countries (Portugal, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, and Poland) and Canada, were presented, organized into six 2-h sessions, with never more than four papers each, giving ample time for discussion. The event also had two keynote speakers, Massimiano Bucchi, professor at the University of Trento and at the time editor of the journal Public Understanding of Science (2016–2019), on the first day, and Maja Horst, at the time Head of the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication at the University of Copenhagen (currently Professor of Responsible Technology at the Danish Technical University) on the second. Massimiano Bucchi delivered a lecture on the legacy of Robert K. Merton, addressing the role of Mertonian norms in contemporary post-academic science and the different meanings of reputation. Maja Horst talked about engaging publics in the discussion of scientific social responsibility, by drawing from the project Breaking & Entering (Glerup and Horst 2014). This book comprises nine articles expanding on papers presented at the workshop and one of the keynote lectures. Albeit there is an over-representation of Southern European countries (six out of the nine chapters address case studies in Portugal or Spain), this somewhat compensates the dearth of representation of these countries in other STS works. Also, all chapters include discussions that place each case study against the wider background of international literature and research. The work is divided into two parts. The first part addresses research practices and scientists’ responses to societal demands. These four chapters depart from the point of view of scientists and seek to assess how they respond to societal demands, be it pressures to restrict animal experimentation, incentives to pursue interdisciplinary work to deal with sustainability challenges, or requests from companies or civil society to set the path to energy transitions.

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In the first chapter of the book, Massimiano Bucchi seeks to identify useful insights in Robert K. Merton’s work in the sociology of science to understand key features, trends, and challenges of science in contemporary societies. The chapter first analyses the issue of values and norms in science to understand the organizational changes that science has undergone in recent decades, as well as the persistence of the concept of ‘scientific community’. Bucchi then examines the issue of competition in science, in particular the dynamics of reputation and visibility of scientists, based on Merton’s classic study of the ‘Matthew effect’. The author ends by reflecting on the legacy of Merton on current social studies of science, namely how concepts coined by him are still useful tools for describing scientific endeavours. The third chapter is authored by Thomas Völker and addresses transdisciplinarity as a form of re-ordering of science-society relations in political decision-making and in the production and circulation of knowledge. By examining the case of an Austrian research funding programme in the area of sustainability research that explicitly required the application of transdisciplinary research methods, the author illustrates the move toward a ‘new science culture’ of ‘responsible care’ and of re-distribution of responsibility. The chapter focuses on concrete practices of producing and circulating anticipatory knowledge in transdisciplinary collaborations and how the programme’s vision is ‘translated’ by researchers through their actual projects and research practices. Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten’s chapter presents a socio-historical analysis of the co-evolution between animal science and society in Switzerland. The analysis highlights three constraints imposed on scientists of this field from 1950 until today: constraints placed on their training, on their scientific practice, and on their relationship with society. The chapter continues with the results of a survey of scientists who carry out laboratory animal experimentation in Switzerland, regarding how they view and cope with these constraints. The analyses examine the effect of socio-demographic and professional variables on acceptance of each constraint and the number of constraints accepted. This part of the book ends with the chapter by Luis Junqueira, which focuses on renewable energy researchers in Portugal and how they perceive the role of science in the key societal challenge of energy transition. Research plays a vital part in that transition effort since the ability to foster renewable energy adoption depends on developing more efficient and less expensive technology. Research communities working on renewable energy technologies and related fields of research are at the crossroads between public policies, powerful private interests, and social concerns often discussed in civil society and the media. Renewable energy research is seen mainly as a response to an economic challenge and public outreach as an effort to persuade the public about the inevitability of the transition to new energy technologies. The second part comprises five chapters addressing science communication and citizen participation in science, all concerning case studies in Portugal and Spain. Whereas the first of these chapters focus on the activities scientific institutions and researchers develop in order to communicate science to their publics, the last three

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chapters concern higher levels of public engagement in technoscientific issues, be it in the governance of water management, consultations on information and communication technologies or the design of robots in medical contexts. Cristina Palma Conceição discusses the roles played by scientific associations in public communication and public engagement with science. ‘Older’ scientific societies, mostly of a disciplinary nature, include science communication, often through one-way, top-down formats, as part of a wider array of actions and functions largely targeting their own members (mostly research professionals), although attributing them increased importance. ‘Newer’ associations focus exclusively on science dissemination (such as astronomy clubs and nature groups), having a more diverse range of members and opting for more diversified and innovative formats (e.g. ‘hands-on’, ‘citizen science’, etc.). This later kind is on the rise, signalling the upsurge of ‘scientific culture’, both as scientists’ concern and as a policy priority. Ana Delicado’s chapter focuses on the public communication of the social sciences. It examines how sociology in Portugal is finding novel ways to respond to this ‘new’ demand from policy and practice in the scientific field. It discusses how sociology can overcome the twin hurdles of familiarity with social issues (making sociology difficult to differentiate from lay knowledge) and distance from common science communication tools (museums and science coverage in the media, laboratory and hands-on activities, and open days at research institutions). It addresses the response of research centres and researchers to science communication policies, the translation of sociological results to stakeholders and decision-makers, and actions geared toward youth in order to stimulate vocations, and reaching out to the wider public. Sofia Bento and Oriana Rainho Brás explore the concept of participation in Portuguese Water Planning to analyse the nature of the science-society relationship involved in the participatory process. The authors combine a multidimensional approach with non-causal perspectives on participation and typologies in the relationship between science and society, through science governance, as well as on linguistic lenses to follow the links between institutions and society. The empirical work focuses on the process of public participation undertaken for the elaboration of the water plans of hydrological regions. The chapter examines the role of material elements, namely the framing of Significant Issues in Water Management, the implementation of actors’ roles by material configuration, and the affordance of counter discourses. Chapter 9, by Guillem Palà and Miquel Domènech, draws from the case of the Barcelona ICT Citizen Conference for Older People to discuss public engagement with science. The authors describe the complex process of determining concrete political recommendations for a given issue through successive translations, not all having to do with the discursive realm. Public concerns surrounding electromagnetic waves and proposals for addressing those concerns emerge from a precarious translation trajectory, and different assemblages (consisting not only of humans) are needed to sustain a specific issue. The chapter highlights how the specificity of each matter needs careful consideration.

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The final chapter of the book is authored by Núria Vallès-Peris and Miquel Domènech and explores a participatory process of technological design that brought together roboticists and children in the creation of social-robot prototypes for a hospital. The chapter introduces some critical theories concerning the ethics of care that emphasize responsibilities over rights and conceive care as a ground for conferring citizenship. Notions such as children’s citizenship and children’s autonomy to decide and choose their “user” needs and desires are problematized. The chapter puts forward a political proposal for rethinking the debate on the responsibilities of technological design toward society and the role that participation plays, by reflecting on autonomy as an emergent quality and as a sustained network of intangibles and materiality.

Concluding Remarks Overall, the chapters in this volume show that scientists are increasingly responsive to societal demands. Either working with children in designing care robots or publicizing the virtues of renewable energies, either collaborating with astronomy clubs or accepting the legal constraints placed on animal experimentation, the scientific community is routinely engaging with social actors outside the scientific sphere. Multiple factors underlie this outward-looking drive, and include funding rules, evolving social values and norms, the search for recognition and impact, regulatory frameworks that enforce public participation, and awareness of social concerns. What the book also shows is that citizens both drive and respond to this overture from the scientific community. Against a backdrop of generalized decline in public interest and trust in science, pockets of active engagement can be found. When given the opportunity to participate, citizens mobilize and take part in discussions about issues that concern them, be them the management of water resources, the unknown risks of electric magnetic fields, or how animals are treated in laboratories. The public here is far from a homogenous mass. Hospitalized children, businesses, environmental activists, farmers, amateur scientists, senior citizens, researchers from other scientific fields, they all have different expectations, needs, concerns, and abilities that bring them into their dealings with science. However, the chapters reveal that the terms of engagement are still very much dictated from above. Policy-makers, funding agencies, scientists, research institutions, and scientific societies are the ones building the frames for public participation, setting boundaries, defining the acceptable language, and determining what the legitimate inputs from citizen and stakeholders are. These remain in a subordinate position, with little room for negotiation or transgression. In some cases social scientists find themselves in the middle, playing the role of mediators and translators between science and society. Methodologically, the book also makes the case for the value of suiting the approaches to the object. Whereas surveys and extensive analyses bring breadth

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and the reliability of statistical proof, uncovering connections between diverse variables, interviews allow the opportunity of representing (and deconstructing) the actor’s own words, and ethnographic immersion provides depth and the peeling away of the multiple layers of social reality. This book thus offers multiple perspectives on science and society relations, seen through a sociological lens, in a number of European countries. It aims not only to contribute to an academic discussion of science’s entanglements with different social spheres and societal actors, but also to provide critical insights for improving science policies and other public policies, enhancing research and innovation engagement with stakeholders and publics and incorporating citizen concerns and contributions in scientific knowledge production. Acknowledgements The editors are grateful to the European Sociological Association for funding the SSTNET 2016 workshop and the language revision of the book, and to the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon for hosting the workshop. The author also wishes to thank Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten and Katarina Prpić for their useful comments to this Introduction. We are also grateful for the useful comments of reviewers.

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Mejlgaard, N., & Stares, S. (2009). Participation and competence as joint components in a crossnational analysis of scientific citizenship. Public Understanding of Science, 19(5), 545–561. Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, J. D. (1998). The measurement of scientific literacy. Public Understanding of Science, 7, 203–223. Miller, D. (1999). Risk, science and policy: Definitional struggles, information management, the media and BSE. Social Science and Medicine, 49(9), 1239–1255. Miller, J. D., & Pardo, R. (2005). Civic scientific literacy and attitude to science and technology: A comparative analysis of the European Union, the United States, Japan, and Canada. In M. Dierkes & C. von Grote (Eds.), Between understanding and trust: The public, science and technology (pp. 54–88). London: Routledge. Nov, O., Arazy, O., & Anderson, D. (2014). Scientists@Home: What drives the quantity and quality of online citizen science participation? PLoS One, 9(4), e90375. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2003). ‘Mode 2’ revisited: The new production of knowledge. Minerva, 41, 179–194. Nurmikko, T., Dahl, J., Gibbins, N., & Earl, G. (2012). Citizen science for cuneiform studies. In WebSci 2012 (pp. 1–6). Evanston. Peters, H. P., Dunwoody, S., Allgaier, J., Lo, Y. Y., & Brossard, D. (2014). Public communication of science 2.0: Is the communication of science via the “new media” online a genuine transformation or old wine in new bottles? EMBO Reports, e201438979. Pielke, R. A. (2007). The honest broker: Making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prainsack, B., Geesink, I., & Franklin, S. (2008). Stem cell technologies 1998–2008: Controversies and silences. Science as Culture, 17(4), 351–362. Rabeharisoa, V., & Callon, M. (2004). Patients and scientists in French muscular dystrophy research. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge. The co-production of science and social order (pp. 142–160). London: Routledge. Raddick, M. J., Gay, P. L., Lintott, C. J., Haven, N., & Szalay, A. S. (2010). Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the motivations of citizen science volunteers. Astronomy Education Review, 9. Renn, O. (1995). Style of using scientific expertise: A comparative framework. Science and Public Policy, 22(3), 147–156. Renn, O. (2004). The challenge of integrating deliberation and expertise. In T. Macdaniels & M. J. Small (Eds.), Risk analysis and society: An interdisciplinary characterisation of the field (pp. 289–366). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reyes, J. A. L. (2015). Cross-section analyses of attitudes towards science and nature from the International Social Survey surveys. Public Understanding of Science, 24, 338–357. Riesch, H., & Potter, C. (2014). Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions. Public Understanding of Science, 23(1), 107–120. Riise, J., & Alfonsi, L. (2014). From liquid nitrogen to public engagement and city planning: The changing role of science events. Journal of Science Communication, 13(04), C03. Rip, A., & Te Kulve, H. (2008). Constructive technology assessment and socio-technical scenarios. In E. Fisher, C. Selin, & J. M. Wetmore (Eds.), Yearbook of nanotechnology in society: Presenting futures (pp. 49–70). Dordrecht: Springer. Schäfer, M. S. (2012). Taking stock: A meta-analysis of studies on the media’s coverage of science. Public Understanding of Science, 21(6), 650–663. Schiele, B. (2014). Science museums and science centres: Evolution and contemporary trends. In M. Bucchi & B. Trench (Eds.), Handbook of public communication of science and technology (2nd ed., pp. 40–57). London: Routledge. Schmidt, J. C. (2016). Prospective technology assessment of synthetic biology: Fundamental and propaedeutic reflections in order to enable an early assessment. Science and Engineering Ethics, 22(4), 1151–1170.

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Ana Delicado is a Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. She has a PhD in Sociology (University of Lisbon, 2006) and specializes in social studies of science and technology. She has conducted research on science museums and exhibitions, public understanding of science activities, environmental risks, international mobility of researchers, scientific associations, climate change, social acceptance of energy technologies, and disaster risk. She is vice-coordinator of ICS’s Observa Observatory of Environment, Territory, and Society. She currently coordinates the Executive Board of SSTNET (RN24) of the European Sociological Association (ESA) and is a member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).

Part I

Scientists’ Research Practices and Responses to Societal Demands

Chapter 2

Norms, Competition, and Visibility in Contemporary Science: The Legacy of Robert K. Merton Massimiano Bucchi

Introduction While numerous scholars have long recognized Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) as one of the key figures of twentieth century sociology,1 his specific influence upon sociological reflections concerning science has not always received equal recognition. Nevertheless, an interest in the analysis of scientific institutions and their relationship with society lasted throughout Merton’s entire career, from his doctoral studies to his last published work, the long afterword to The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity (Merton and Barber 2004). One of his earliest publications, in fact, was a review of Usher’s History of Mechanical Invention, published by the historian of science George Sarton in Isis, the journal which he edited. Besides Merton’s relationship with his tutor Sorokin, his intellectual maturation at Harvard was marked by his attendance at Whitehead’s course of lectures on the philosophy of science and those by the entomologist Morton Wheeler, who taught a curious course on ‘comparative animal sociology’ (Storer 1973: xiv). It would be myopic to dismiss this strand of ‘studies in science’ as a minor part of Merton’s oeuvre. Merton’s sociological investigations into science repeatedly intersected with some of his most central and best-known analyses: from those on influence processes to those on deviance, from his concern with ‘unintentional effects’ (which related to his specific interest in scientific serendipity2), to his 1

Among the most recent works devoted to Merton’s oeuvre see, for example, the volume edited by Calhoun (2010). 2 Merton co-authored, with Elinor Barber, an entire book devoted to the historical vicissitudes of the concept of serendipity: [. . .] if serendipity was originally coined to mean a quality of the actor in a M. Bucchi (*) Università di Trento, Trento, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_2

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reflections ‘on the relationship between knowledge and reality’ (Storer 1973: xxii) characteristic of concepts like that of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. In this chapter I shall concentrate on two topics in particular. Addressing the general theme of values and norms in science (and the latter’s relationship with society) will enable me to explore some of the main organizational changes that have marked science in recent decades, as well as the resilience of the concept of ‘scientific community’ to those changes. Subsequently, using Merton’s historical study of the ‘Matthew effect’ as my premise, I shall analyse the theme of competition in science, with particular regard to the dynamics that characterize the reputation and visibility of scientists.

Universalist Sceptics or Particularist Dogmatists? Values and Norms Within and Beyond Science According to Merton and His Critics The first theme which I shall address concerns what Merton termed, in perhaps his most celebrated (and most criticized) essay on science, the normative structure of science, which he framed within a broader context of those social values that are able, according to the circumstances, to either facilitate or hinder the development of science. In his doctoral thesis, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, Merton (1938) connected the institutional development of science with the spread of particular religious values, just as Max Weber (1905) had done for the birth of capitalism. Drawing on a large body of historical data concerning, for example, the activities of the members of the Royal Society in the first decades since its foundation, Merton showed not only that a large number of individuals from the elite of British society devoted themselves to science, but also that a significant proportion of their work bore no particular practical fruit. Their scientific inquiries, therefore, must have been driven by something else. A systematic and methodical mentality; rationalism; diligence in the empirical and individualized study of nature as testimony to the greatness of God; concrete engagement in practical activities as a sign of personal salvation: all these virtues extolled by Puritanism encouraged the practice of science. Addressing fellow members of the Royal Society, in his will Robert Boyle wrote, Wishing them also a happy success in their laudable Attempts, to discover the true Nature of the Works of God; and praying that they and all other Searchers into Physical Truths, may

happy accidental discovery, it has with use become coterminous with the whole event of accidental discovery, and even with the object of such a discovery (Merton and Barber 2004: 102).

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Cordially refer their Attainments to the glory of the Great Author of Nature, and to the Comfort of Mankind (quot. in Merton 1938, repr. 1973: 234).3

Besides examination of the specific linkage between Puritanism and science, Merton’s concern was to show that the institutionalization of science and the social codification of the scientist’s role presupposed not only a series of distinct methods and activities but also a set of social factors: that is, values and norms that configured science as a social subsystem related to the rest of society but at the same time endowed with its own autonomy. According to Merton, the study of these factors, and therefore of the relationship between science and society, required a specific branch of sociology: namely the sociology of science. This stance found its most significant—or at least best known—expression in the description of the ‘normative structure of science’. What values and norms of behaviour, enquired Merton, ensure the functioning of science? His answer to this question centred on four ‘institutional imperatives’ (Merton 1973b [1942]): 1. Universalism. Scientific claims and results are to be judged regardless of the characteristics, such as class, race, or religion, of their proponents. Scientists are to be rewarded solely on the basis of their results. 2. Communism. Results and discoveries are not the property of the individual researcher. Rather, they belong to the scientific community and society as a whole. This imperative is grounded on the assumption that knowledge is the product of a collective and cumulative effort by the scientific community. Scientists do not gain recognition for their work unless they render it public and thus make it available to others. 3. Disinterestedness. Every researcher pursues the primary goal of the advancement of knowledge, indirectly gaining personal recognition. 4. Organized scepticism. Researchers must be willing to subject all findings, including their own, to critical appraisal, suspending definitive judgement until the necessary proof has been obtained. In enunciating these principles, Merton repeatedly emphasized the fact that they should be considered valid from the institutional point of view, not from that of the scientist’s individual motivations. In other words, he did not ingenuously assume that scientists possess a moral stature superior to that of other professionals merely because they are scientists. However, he believed that the functionality of these norms with respect to the subsystem ‘science’ was demonstrated by the criticisms and sanctions that the scientific community applied to those who breach them. The existence of ‘deviant’ behaviour does not argue against those imperatives as such, just as a theft does not question the recognized value of private property. After all, if everybody complied with the norms, they would not be necessary. Numerous criticisms have been brought against this aspect of Merton’s analysis of science. His critics consider it paradigmatic of a traditionalist stance that the

3 Merton quotes this passage from G. Burnet, A Funeral Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Honourable Robert Boyle London, 1692, p. 25.

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sociological analysis of science must supersede, and they claim that Merton’s description of the normative structure of science is an idealization more prescriptive than descriptive. Like certain philosophers of science, it is alleged, Merton described how science should work, rather than how it actually does.4 A series of case studies have subsequently sought to show, for example, the discrepancy between Merton’s theory and the genuine behaviour of scientists (Barnes and Dolby 1970). Yet, Merton himself subsequently revised his original formulation. He did this by developing the concept of ‘sociological ambivalence’ to describe the situation of particular social actors, including scientists, when called upon to handle conflicts among different values, norms, and roles (Merton 1973c [1963]). In the early 1970s, various studies sought to show that this ambivalence engendered a ‘dynamic alternation of norms and counter-norms’ (Merton and Barber 1963: 104). The institutional imperatives enunciated by Merton, in fact, were matched by counter-norms such as ‘particularism, interestedness and organized dogmatism’ (Mitroff 1974). The scientists interviewed by Mitroff attributed to themselves and their colleagues a reluctance to make certain aspects of their research public: attachment to their own hypotheses and an unwillingness to abandon them in the presence of contrary data and a tendency to judge results or claims on the basis of the social characteristics (nationality, academic position) of the scientists propounding them. However, as the interviewees themselves recognized, these counter-norms may fulfil functions that are beneficial to science. Taking into account the personal characteristics of researchers, for example, may save time by focusing attention on the work of scientists who offer greater guarantees of reliability. Adherence to one’s own hypotheses may prevent the premature abandonment of lines of inquiry that may prove fruitful—however indirectly—in the long term. Finally, the counter-norm of ‘secrecy’ may prevent the scientific community from being constantly paralyzed by disputes over priority, or by pressures applied by the state and public opinion. Of course, it is difficult to claim that either Merton’s imperatives or the specular counter-norms identified by Mitroff accurately describe the concrete behaviour of every scientist. Ben-David (1991) put the question in terms of the context of scientific debate, arguing that disruptive situations such as controversies may lead to detachment from the scientific ethos, with scientists ‘willing to transgress practically all the norms enumerated by Merton’ (p. 480). A further possibility is to consider both norms and counter-norms as flexible ‘ideological-rhetorical’ repertoires that scientists can draw upon according to the situation in order to give sense to their actions and justify them to colleagues, policy-makers, and public opinion (Mulkay 1979). For instance, in certain circumstances, secrecy may be condemned as misconduct toward one’s colleagues; in others, it may be justified by the need to verify one’s results more carefully before making them public. The presentation of a 4

To understand this insistence upon norms as functional imperatives and, therefore, on science’s capacity for self-regulation, one should remember that Merton first dealt with this topic during the Second World War, at a time when the crucial attributes of science in a democratic society seemed to be its autonomy and its capacity to resist political, economic, or religious pressures. This point is also acknowledged by some of Merton’s critics, including Bourdieu (2004 [2001]).

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discovery at a press conference, before publication of the official article in a scientific journal, may be applauded—as happened when ‘wrinkles’ in cosmic background radiation were discovered by a team of astronomers in 1992 (Miller 1994)—or harshly criticized as reprehensible—as in the case of the alleged discovery of ‘cold fusion’ in 1989 (Lewenstein 1992).

Knowledge as Property or a Gift, Between Academic Science and ‘Science 2.0’ The functional imperative of communism refers to a distinctive feature of science as it was defined upon its institutionalization and thereafter with its full development as ‘academic science’ and then ‘big science’ in the past two centuries. In this view, the dissemination of one’s work among scientists is regulated by what sociologists and anthropologists of science have called an economy of ‘giftgiving’ (Hagstrom 1982). Thus, researchers give (rather than sell) their papers to the journals in which they are published; they give copies of their articles to colleagues; more generally, they offer their findings to the scientific community, which acknowledges their value by accepting them. This free donation of one’s work is symbolized, according to Hagstrom, by the rich mythology which describes how scientists are often unable to profit from their success during their lifetimes, but are subsequently recompensed by their donations to posterity. The case of Copernicus is emblematic in this regard. The astronomer received a printed copy of his De Revolutionibus only in 1543 when he was on his deathbed. Since the scientific revolution, the importance attributed to communication and sharing—a research finding acquires value only if it is made public—has been starkly opposed to forms of knowledge valuation that emphasize secrecy and esotericism. We should note, however, that communism, like the other institutional imperatives, does not impose a moral obligation in terms of altruism or generosity on the scientific community’s individual members; nor does it necessarily compel them to fully share their research results. As pointed out by the historian de Solla Price, the exchange of information with colleagues is only ‘incidental’ to the main forms of results dissemination—like publication in journals or books, whose essential purpose is to claim priority for one’s results.5 In substance, as an institution engaged in the production of original knowledge and its reward and recognition, science forces researchers to circulate their results. This circulation has a series of virtuous ‘unintentional effects’ such as the possibility of drawing on the results of others, or of receiving criticism useful for the development of one’s own beliefs, which contribute to the pursuit of both individual and institutional goals.

5

Price recalls that scientists like Kepler or Hooke not infrequently presented their results in encrypted form, so that they could establish their priority but without disclosing too much information to their rivals (De Solla Price 1963: 68).

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We have so far examined the science that emerged from the scientific revolution and subsequently took the form of ‘academic science’. Today, although their interpretations do not always coincide, numerous scholars regard contemporary science as differing significantly, and not only in organizational terms, from the science with which we used to be familiar: that is, ‘academic’ science. Indeed, they speak of a ‘post-academic science’, or a ‘mode-2 science’, thereby contrasting it with ‘mode-1’ academic science. Some have even identified a ‘second scientific revolution’ comparable to the one that engendered modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Etzkowitz and Webster 1995; Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001; Ziman 2000). To draw an analogy with what has become a commonplace definition of the evolution of the Internet, one can refer to this contemporary configuration as ‘Science 2.0’, and therefore to the previous configuration of academic science as ‘Science 1.0’. One of the main discontinuities distinctive of the transition to Science 2.0 has been the change in the way that research findings and technological innovations are circulated. On the one hand, contemporary science is subject to pressures for the privatization and commercialization of results, and even for their transformation into ‘consumption goods’. Drawing on Merton’s work and tradition, Metlay (2006) has described this transformation as a process or ‘renormalization’, through which ‘the norm of communism is replaced by the norm of intellectual property’ (p. 566). In some areas, such as biomedicine and Information Technology (IT), the short-circuit between business and research has become increasingly evident with the advent of new professional opera- tors: for instance, the scientist–businessman–global-media star as personified by Craig Venter, whose private firm challenged the consortium of institutions engaged in map- ping the human genome and is today at the forefront of experiments on the creation of artificial organisms. The spread of patenting, even in such areas as the life sciences, is interwoven with the need for research secrecy. The miniaturization of certain laboratory technologies and the simultaneous diffusion of digital technologies have offered an increasingly large number of ‘final consumers’ access to products (such as genetic tests for potential pathologies, parentage, or even potential talents) in ways that elude the traditional regulatory ‘filters’, and even validation by the scientific community. As John Ziman has argued, ‘the contrast with academic science could scarcely be sharper’ when we are confronted by a science that is ‘Proprietary, Local, Authoritarian, Commissioned and Expert’. This science produces knowledge that is not necessarily made public; science centred more on local technical problems than on general under- standing, controlled by managerial authority, and commissioned with a view to practical goals from experts required to solve concrete problems rather than demonstrate their creativity (Ziman 2000: 78–79).6 On the other hand, strong movements in the opposite direction are also apparent. Also in reaction to the growing cost of scientific publications, groups of scientists

On science as a ‘global public good’ and the factors that prevent it from becoming such, see Gallino (2007, esp. Chap. 9).

6

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have started and maintained significant ‘open publishing’ schemes by creating archives and digital journals for the circulation of research findings free from the limitations and economic constraints imposed by large publishers.7 In sectors like epidemiology, high visibility has been given to the endeavour by some researchers to share results widely and rapidly as a means to combat modern pandemics, as well as in polemics with the caution and reserve that characterize the pharmacological industry and its relations with the international health organizations.8

Can One Still Speak of a ‘Scientific Community’? Whether one can still speak in Science 2.0 of a ‘scientific community’ in the full sense of the term is much too broad a question to address here.9 This is even more so because the expression is now used by commentators and scholars who sometimes employ it simply to refer to scientific experts. However, if we take the term in its strictly sociological meaning, whereby a community is distinguished by internal homogeneity and a shared commitment to specific norms and values, its application to post-academic science seems problematic. What professional ethos, for example, can be identified as the ‘glue’ holding it together? Certainly not the glue that, 60 years ago, Merton identified for Science 1.0 in ‘institutional imperatives’ such as disinterestedness and communism. This is not because today’s scientists are more morally reprehensible than earlier ones were. It is not difficult to document in the past serious breaches of Merton’s norms in individual behaviour that did not cancel out their functionality. Criticisms and sanctions of specific deviant behaviour by the scientific community attested to the value and functionality of the aforesaid norms. The point is that post-academic science institutionalizes, and indeed sets value on practices—as in the case of patents or increasingly common overlaps between research and its commercial exploitation—challenging a principle, that of communism, which underpins the notion of scientific community itself, and according to which ‘Research results do not count as scientific unless they are reported, disseminated, shared, and eventually transformed 7

Of interest is the argument of those who believe that the ethical imperatives of communitarian sharing and disinterestedness set by Merton for scientific activity today increasingly characterize areas like the practice and culture of digital technologies. In these areas—one thinks, for example, of free software or the collaborative online encyclopaedia Wikipedia—sharing and gratuitousness are important to gain recognition (see Paccagnella 2007). It should also be borne in mind that scientific circles played a significant role in the historical development of the Internet (see Castells 2001). 8 On the role of patient organizations in shaping communicative and even experimental practices in contemporary biomedical research, see, for example, Epstein (1995). 9 On the sociological concept of community, see the classic Tönnies (1887). Michael Polanyi (1951) was among the first to thematize the concept of scientific community, which was then resumed by Edward Shils (1954) and definitively introduced into the sociological literature on science by studies such as Hagstrom (1965). See also Ben-David (1971) and Storer (1973).

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into communal property, by being formally published’ (Ziman 2000: 110). The opposition between individual interest and the public ownership of knowledge seems to have disappeared: ‘I can do good science and make money’ was the comment of a molecular biologist interviewed in the first years of this transition (Etzkowitz and Webster 1995). In areas like biomedicine or IT in particular, heterogeneous networks connecting scientific experts with non-experts and quasi-experts (patient organizations, citizen groups, users) are increasingly replacing traditional expert communities (Bucchi and Neresini 2007; Callon 1999; Callon et al. 2001). Nor does the transition to a post-academic Science 2.0 move in only one direction, which further complicates any straightforward identification of a new shared ethos. Pressures for the privatization of research results now eroding the pillar of communism are counteracted by other pressures for the more open dissemination and sharing of results and technological innovations. These challenge the no less crucial principle of individual paternity, and therefore recognition. In the Mertonian ethos, individual paternity provided the necessary counterbalance to communism by pursuing knowledge for the sake of society: scientists obtained resources, prestige, and in some cases even the privilege of giving their name to natural objects or phenomena (the Golgi corpuscle, the Doppler effect, Creutzfeldt– Jacob’s disease). Hence, Science 2.0 is anything but monolithic. It comprises movements and subcultures that sometimes assume the features of outright ‘countercultures’, as in the case of ‘biohackers’ (Wohlsen 2011), or the movement for open access to publications, especially in its initial ‘subversive’ phase. These subcultures often incorporate very different, if not contradictory, views of the social role of scientists and therefore of their professional ethos.10 From this point of view, the characterization of post-academic science as the reverse of academic science would be highly simplistic. In Ziman’s terms, in fact, we should instead conclude that post-academic Science 2.0 is both proprietary and public, concentrated on local problems but embedded in global networks, commissioned for the solution of practical problems, but also somewhat idealistic in its quest for knowledge. This tangle of norms and values not only challenges the all-encompassing notion of the scientific community as internally cohesive; it also highlights its permeability. A specific scientific subculture may in fact be cultivated in close interaction with movements, and normative and organizational cultures in the broader social context: industrial districts or firms’ clusters, environmentalist associations, patients’ groups, or mass media. This inevitably gives rise to what organization scholars have called ‘institutional isomorphism’: that is, the tendency to assimilate practices and institutional models typical of one’s interlocutors (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Overall, therefore, the main discontinuity with respect to the past is not the presence of factors such as commercial interests, but rather their explicit

10

It would be interesting to analyse this process in connection with a long-standing tradition of varieties in cultures and practices across scientific fields and even within the same field (see, for example, Pickering 1992).

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incorporation into the actual identity of scientists and into institutional levels, as well as the capacity of these factors to structure the dynamics of research. While, for example, in Science 1.0 the competition for resources such as prestige or funding took place substantially among experts, to be then straightforwardly transferred to the outside—obtaining in return credibility with the political powers, commissions from the business world, and media interest—in post-academic Science 2.0 the competition for resources in those sectors significantly impacts upon scientific practice itself. Finally, the globalization of research prompts reflection on the extent to which the professional scientific ethos identified by Merton was profoundly rooted in Western civilization and tradition, the institutional development of modern science having been nurtured, for example, by values typical of Protestantism and capitalist individualism.11 It appears that the capacity of this ethos to act as an undisputed ‘glue’ for postacademic science can by no means be taken for granted, now that the industrialized West, in coincidence with the rapid and large-scale growth of research in countries like China and India, seems no longer to be the dominant reference scenario for techno-scientific processes on a global scale.

The ‘Matthew Effect’: Competition and Inequality in Science In 1996 a committee of British experts rejected the application for funding submitted by Harold Kroto for his research. Two hours later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences issued its own verdict: a Nobel prize for chemistry awarded to Robert Curl Jr., Richard Smalley, and Harold Kroto ‘for their discovery of fullerenes’. The British committee hurriedly reconvened and reversed its decision, this time granting the funding to Kroto (Gregory and Miller 1998). The British chemist, in fact, had now entered the narrow circle of so-called ‘visible scientists’, that elite of researchers on whom awards like the Nobel Prize confer almost unassailable prestige and a reputation able to open every door. The role and operation of the mechanisms that assign and distribute resources and rewards—such as research funds, prestigious posts, opportunities to publish, or prizes—were subject to numerous (and among the most interesting) studies by Merton and his pupils. Merton identified in the scientific community a cumulative dynamic in the allocation of resources such as research funds, awards, and opportunities to publish in the most prestigious journals. He termed this the ‘Matthew 11

See above, par. 1; Merton (1938), Barnes (1985). More generally, according to Max Weber’s (1922) well-known statement: ‘The belief in the value of scientific truth is the product of certain cultures and is not a product of man’s original nature’ (p. 110). Merton’s thesis was challenged, especially by historians of science (Hall 1963). As Trevor Pinch (1992) has noted, however, Merton explicitly ‘rejected any simple-minded causal links between Puritanism and science’, accounting for heterogeneity across religious groups (p. 1133).

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effect’, from the passage in Matthew’s Gospel which states, ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’ (Matthew 25:29, King James Version). Those in positions of visibility and prestige will have privileged access to further resources and positions of visibility, and so on.12 It leads us to propose the hypothesis that a scientific contribution will have greater visibility in the community of scientists when it is introduced by a scientist of high rank than when it is introduced by one who has not yet made his mark (Merton 1973a: 473). Or as a Nobel prize-winner for physics put it: ‘The world is peculiar in this matter of how it gives credit. It tends to give the credit to [already] famous people’ (Merton 1973a: 473). On analysing empirical data, Merton discovered, for example, that papers submitted to a scientific journal were accepted more frequently if one of the authors was a Nobel prizewinner or a particularly well-known researcher. Likewise, a scientist’s papers were cited much more frequently after that person had received some highly visible award like the Nobel Prize. Merton considered the Matthew effect to be ‘dysfunctional for the careers of individual scientists, who are penalized in the early stages of their development’ but functional for the system as a whole, in that it allows rapid selection to be made from the huge amount of papers published and submitted to journals. Moreover, the names of highly visible scientists are able to direct the community’s attention to particularly innovative findings that would otherwise be unlikely to be considered. The Matthew effect and other similar dynamics—such as the ‘halo effect’ rewarding those who work at a particularly prestigious university or department, or who occupy an important role within the institution (Crane 1967)—describe the scientific community as a structure characterized by marked inequalities and a heavily pyramidal distribution of resources (especially of rewards: research funds, opportunities to publish, prizes and awards). Moreover, such inequalities and the concentration of rewards tend to perpetuate and reinforce themselves over time.

Science Between the ‘Long Tail’ and the ‘Star System’ We may also ask about the extent to which Merton’s ideas have withstood the test of time, and especially the test of changes in science and its social role. If we restrict consideration to the crucial issue of publications, the question is unavoidable: is the Matthew effect still valid in the age of digital scientific publications and research archives? In 2006 Chris Anderson introduced the concept of the ‘long tail’ with reference to digital markets such as those for books or music. The underlying idea was that the reduction to zero of the cost of ‘stocking’ products, which instead affects physical

12 Margaret Rossiter (1993) has pointed out that the expression ‘Matthew effect’ is rather appropriate: apparently, it was not Matthew who wrote the Gospel that bears his name.

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bookshops or record stores, forcing them to select only titles that are likely to sell in large numbers, fuels a proliferation of supply and enables niche articles to survive (Anderson 2006). The science described by Merton had a short tail—indeed, a very short one! Large parts of the scarce resources, that is, material ones such as funds, but especially immaterial ones like the attention of colleagues, were concentrated among a limited number of scientists. Has something changed, therefore? Has the tail of science grown longer? From a certain point of view, the tail is indeed longer. Sub-specialization, proliferation of mastheads, and diffusion of digital formats have substantially increased opportunities for publication. According to the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, in 2012 there were 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals, for a total of approximately 1.8 million articles published in a year. Both the number of journals and the number of articles have increased steadily in recent years, at a respective rate of 3.5% and 3% per year (Ware and Mabe 2012).13 More journals and more articles also mean greater specialization and the possibility of consulting small-niche scientific publications, as in the digital markets described by Anderson. This increase in opportunities to communicate research results is apparently matched by the greater possibility of monitoring the work of colleagues using the new information tools. Between 1970 and 2005 the average number of articles cited in a scientific work increased from 8.4 to 34.6 (Biglu 2008). In short, from this point of view, the tail of science has lengthened. Nevertheless, while digital formats make it possible to reduce printing and distribution costs almost to zero, the attention of colleagues (and all the more so, of the media and the non-expert public) is increasingly a scarce resource for which scientists must compete. To keep up to date with the literature in a typical medical sub-specialization such as cardiac imaging, it is estimated that an expert should read between 30 and 43 papers per week, meaning that each expert can actually monitor only a tiny fraction of the relevant literature (Fraser and Dunstan 2010). Indeed, the competition seems to grow increasingly fierce, especially for access to the most prestigious journals such as Science and Nature, which guarantee almost undisputed recognition among colleagues but also, as we have seen, may open the way to greater media visibility. According to a recent study, the intense competition to publish in the most prestigious journals—for instance, Science and Nature, which boast of publishing only 10% of the estimated 170 papers that they receive every week, creates what has been called a situation of ‘artificial scarcity’ (a paradox in the age of 13

National Science Foundation (NSF) data also point to considerable increases, estimating that the total of articles published every year in the leading international peer-reviewed technical-scientific journals has almost doubled over the past 20 years. The NSF figure is based on a database of 9,358,420 S&E notes, reviews, and articles published in ‘a core set of internationally recognized peer-reviewed scientific journals’ tracked by Thomson Reuters in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The number of journals in the cited analysis ranges from 4093 in 1988 to 5266 in 2008. For more details, see NSF (2010, Chap. 5: 29ff).

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digital information). In effect, the ‘tail’ of scientific citations is extremely short. On average, around 80 of the 100 articles most cited in recent years in the life sciences have appeared in only six scientific journals (Young et al. 2008). To conclude, the publication and circulation of scientific results apparently exhibit two contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the ‘tail’ lengthens: there is more space for a larger number of articles, even highly specific ones on niche topics. On the other, recognition and visibility are increasingly concentrated among a small group of journals and scientists that are the equivalent of what ‘blockbusters’ are in the music and digital cinema markets. This is a process not extraneous to the increasing proximity between scientific research and the mass media that is one of the distinctive features of post-academic Science 2.0 (see below; Bucchi 2004, 2009). The Matthew effect is accentuated and amplified under the pressure of public relations (PR) offices and the frequent shortcircuits between the research sector and media communications. Thus, science becomes at least partly permeated by a star system not dissimilar to the one increasingly characteristic of the media or sports. Scientists become familiar to the general public (the case of Nobel prize-winners is emblematic) as ‘brands’ marketable in the most disparate sectors. The media are interested not only (or so much) in the research of science superstars like the late Stephen Hawking or Craig Venter, but also in their political opinions and love lives, as they are with other celebrities (Beltrame 2007; Fahy and Lewenstein 2014). The ‘scientific star system’ is partly a consequence of the long tail, just as Google’s monopoly is partly a consequence of the over-abundance of information available online. The visible scientist acts, especially in some situations, as a powerful simplifier of the boundless variety of expertise available in the long tail. The scientific star system allows issues, themes, and subjects to attach themselves to the visibility of a scientific celebrity. The presence of a Nobel prize-winner on the board of a company engaged in genetic or pharmacological research can be a valuable source of legitimacy. A visit by Craig Venter to a research institute may greatly enhance the visibility of institutions or initiatives. By incorporating a power mechanism whereby the weight of positions and institutions depends on the visibility of the scientists with whom they are able to associate themselves, the scientific star system eventually surrogates and bypasses that more fully political dimension that would be required to tackle several challenges of contemporary science and technology. The discussion on the priorities and implications of science in society is reduced to a comparison among voices and figures of public importance (Bucchi 2009, 2010). In this contemporary context, one could certainly reappraise Bourdieu’s (2004 [2001]) critique of Merton’s ‘enchanted’ and ‘justificatory’ vision of the reward system and inequalities of science. To an extent that probably Merton would not have expected, visibility dynamics inside and beyond science become a key dimension through which to understand ‘the way in which scientific conflicts are settled’ (pp. 10–14). In the long tail, the greater availability of expertise furnishes a practically inexhaustible stock of expert opinions that can be deployed to support arguments and to protect interests. This widespread and malleable expertise mimics the engine that most drives its growth and diffusion, namely the Web. Like the Web, it has

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become ubiquitous and all-encompassing, providing space for every kind of ‘niche’ and ‘cult’.

Science Between Reputation and Visibility In an insightful article, Alessandro Pizzorno (2007) distinguishes among three possible meanings of reputation: (1) ‘excellence in the role that a person must perform’, (2) ‘credibility’ [. . .] which relates ‘to interpersonal relations and tends to coincide with trust’, and (3) ‘visibility’ (p. 229ff). By its nature, reputation in science seems to be of type (1): scientists are judged by their peers, ‘experts in the same field’, who evaluate their findings, applications for funding, or papers submitted for publication. However, numerous contributions in Science and Technology Studies have stressed that the personal credibility of researchers is often key in the decisions taken by colleagues concerning the validity of their results, and especially in the resolution of scientific disputes. In the controversy on the existence of gravitational waves, which arose among physicists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, joint uncertainty about results and experimental methods led to a reliance on social criteria: the reputation of the experimenter and his institution, nationality, positioning in terms of key networks in his research area, informal information obtained from his collaborators or other colleagues. Once it had been established what experiments and what researchers were reliable, it became easy to determine whether or not gravitational waves exist (Bucchi 2004; Collins and Pinch 1993).14 Indeed, in numerous situations, the attribution of reputation among scientists seems to resemble what Pizzorno (2007) describes as communitarian reputation, that is, reputation centred less on the specific abilities of the scientist than ‘on his/her behaviour as a member of the community and on his/her capacity to embody its values and to sustain its norms’ (p. 232). In the controversy on cold fusion, some of the most critical judgements on the scientists Pons and Fleischmann concerned not so much their results as their behaviour in breaching the norms of the scientific community. Much stigmatized, for instance, was Pons and Fleischmann’s decision to announce their results at a press conference before publishing them in a specialist journal (Bucchi 1998; Lewenstein 1992). In a certain sense, the Matthew effect studied by Merton can be described as a process by which reputation as excellence turns into reputation as credibility; credibility which in its turn shapes and sustains reputation as excellence. 14 Consensus on the existence of gravitational waves began to resurface in connection with new experiments in the following decades. The experiments culminated in the announcements of gravitational waves detection by LIGO and VIRGO experiments between 2015 and 2017. In October 2017, The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. See Collins (2004, 2017).

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There is, nevertheless, a level at which the reputations of certain scientists are transformed into a visibility that exceeds the esteem of peers and offers the scientist a public celebrity not dissimilar from that of sports or media personalities, an aspect analysed in particular by studies such as Goodell (1977) and Zuckerman (1977). According to Goodell, the phenomenon of ‘visible scientists’ forcefully emerged in the second half of the twentieth century not only in quantitative terms but also in terms of a change in the nature of reputation. Increasingly, scientists became not only visible by virtue of an ‘internal’ reputation that reverberated on the public stage (as in the case of Nobel prize-winners), but also because of their ability to match—and to exploit—the operational logic of the mass media: Circumventing the traditional channels for influencing science policy, they take their message directly to the public. To succeed, they must be knowledgeable, articulate, dramatic, persistent, and sophisticated about press operations. Those who do succeed become known to the public not for their science but for their public involvement (Goodell 1977: 4)

Visibility also tends to have a pyramidal structure similar to—and even more accentuated than—those identified by Merton and other scholars within the scientific community. On top of the pyramid stands an extremely small number of celebrities who are often consulted on topics not relevant to their expertise (when not irrelevant to science itself), while a broad base of scientists is consulted much more sporadically. Thus, visibility is subject to a recursive effect of the type identified by Merton with the Matthew effect, so that previous visibility and media prominence tend to translate into greater visibility and further media presence. Nobel prize-winners perhaps epitomize how internal reputation and public visibility can, under certain conditions, condense, reproduce, overlap, and mutually reinforce each other (see Zuckerman 1977). Today, tendencies at several levels emphasize and in some respects amplify both the importance of ‘visible scientists’ and the relative concentration of their visibility. At a general level, changes in the organization of the information media, due to, among other things, cutbacks in editorial staff and the outsourcing of numerous services, as well as broader cultural changes, render the public discourse in the media increasingly dependent on a small number of visible figures who are public celebrities with enormous influence and appeal. At a more specific level, numerous studies have described the increasing mediatization of science. Academic Science 1.0 snubbed the media, regarding it as bad purveyors of scientific ideas to the general public, ‘dirty mirrors’ that reflected an opaque and distorted image of research. It dismissed communication via non-experts with the scornful epithet of ‘popularization’. After all, why should science bother to talk to public opinion directly when it had such a close relationship with its political representatives in the corridors of power? By contrast, Science 2.0 increasingly views the media as crucial interlocutors. Whether because of a misplaced trust in the capacity of communication to remedy deficits in the public understanding of science, or because of an osmosis of organizational models due to increasing interactions with the business world, or because of

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the realization that enjoying good media visibility is a factor to which political decision-makers and financial investors are increasingly sensitive, the fact is that the press offices, PR strategies, and other activities aimed at achieving media prominence and public visibility have now become a routine (when not a prominent) feature for most research institutions. In 2017 Cambridge University proudly announced that making Hawking’s doctoral dissertation publicly available online resulted in a spectacular server crash due to traffic overload.15 The specialist journals have also become sensitive to the appeal of public visibility and its rules. When interviewed on the ‘Hwang scandal’ around the Korean scientist found guilty of falsifying the results of an experiment in cloning embryonic stem cells published in the prestigious scientific journal Science, a geneticist and member of the editorial board of the journal explained that the first selection among the papers received for publication was made looking for ‘a mixture of novelty, originality and trendiness’ (Couzin 2006: 24, italics mine). The punctiliousness of journals also tends to diminish in the case of audacious papers, or even ones reporting questionable results: ‘Well, if it is right, it is interesting. If it is wrong, it will at least stimulate a lot of discussions’ (Science editors quoted in Vogel 2006). The role of the press and PR offices of universities and research institutes has also grown significantly in importance. In 1999 a press officer at the University of Wisconsin, when discussing with a researcher how to publicize his research on the formation of wings on drosophila fruit flies, suggested that the researcher repeat the experiment with butterflies, on the grounds that this would produce more attractive images likely to grab the attention of both the editors of Science (for which the paper was intended) and the non-specialized press (Peters et al. 2008). Dynamics typical of the scientific community and those of the contemporary media thus overlap in accentuating the personalization of contemporary science. And this is not only in the sense that its protagonists—from Steven Hawking to Craig Venter—are increasingly all-round media stars, featured not only in news and popularization contexts but also in fiction (Hawking, for instance, has been repeatedly portrayed in The Simpsons). At the higher levels, among Nobel prize-winners, experts active in the public domain in particular, visibility is a credential that can be bartered at the tables of decision-making on research policy no less than to gain privileged access to communicative arenas (Bucchi 2010). Moreover, the more that media prominence proves to be an important resource for research institutions, the more it is likely that public visibility of particular scientists will condition decisions concerning recruitment or the definition of research priorities.

15

The Guardian, 27 October 2017, www.theguardian.com. According to a broad survey conducted on British scientists and journalists, already in the early 1990s more than 25% of the articles on science published in newspapers stemmed from an initiative by the researchers themselves or their institutions—press releases, announcements of discoveries, availability for interview (Hansen 1992). Today, it is estimated that around two-thirds of agency items on scientific topics are based on press releases and other materials furnished by press and PR offices (Goepfert 2007). See also Bucchi and Neresini (2011).

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Additional reflections could be made on the relationship between changes in science and the role of visibility-related reputation. A possibility to consider is that the more the communitarian dimension of scientific practice enters into crisis, for the reasons described above, the more the reputation of researchers and scientific institutions comes to depend on visibility mechanisms (one might say ‘external’, except that they are no longer external, as the communitarian dimension and the protective shell of the scientific community have become porous to logics like those of the media). In short, marked inequalities and cumulative, self-reinforcing dynamics such as those identified by Merton with the Matthew effect still appear to be present and influential. However, they should certainly be reappraised, especially in light of increasing interaction with visibility mechanisms and incorporation of different—for example, media—logics. In this respect too, increasing permeability and internal articulation challenge the very notion of science as a self-encompassing institution with distinctive norms and values.

Merton and Social Studies on Science: A Disputed Legacy? Although a large part of the sociological literature on science has developed in more or less explicit opposition to the institutional approach, we should bear in mind that numerous concepts and terms now widely employed were first introduced in the studies on science conducted by Merton and other authors in his tradition. Let us consider the term ‘gatekeepers’, which denotes those scientists or other individuals who, because they occupy particular positions within scientific institutions, are able to influence the distribution of resources such as research funds, teaching posts, or publishing opportunities.16 Or the term ‘invisible colleges’, coined to indicate the informal communities of researchers that form around a particular research topic, and which often prove to be more influential on the production of knowledge than the formal communities (departments, research institutes, or scientific committees).17 16 The notion of ‘gate keeping’ was first used in the social sciences by Kurt Lewin (1943), who introduced it in a study on household food consumption. Two of the first works to thematize the notion in regard to science were those by De Grazia (1963) and Crane (1967). Merton, however, emphasizes that their use of the term ‘gatekeepers’ to refer only to the editors of science journals was too limited. In his opinion, the role of gatekeeping variously distributed within the organizations and institutions of science involves continuing or intermittent assessment of the performance of scientists at every stage of their career, from the phase of youthful novice to that of ancient veteran and providing or denying access to opportunities. (Merton and Zuckerman 1973 [1972]: 521–522). 17 The term, originally used by Robert Boyle in correspondence between 1646 and 1647 to refer to the original group of scholars from which the Royal Society would arise, was introduced into science studies by De Solla Price (1963) and subsequently subjected to close analysis by Mullins (1968) and Crane (1972). See also Merton and Garfield (1986).

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One feature of the institutional approach that has become rather attenuated in various branches of sociology of science is the connection with general sociological theory and the key concepts of sociology. Many insights afforded by this approach, and by Merton’s work, however, have been obscured by the wide-ranging debate provoked, as mentioned above, by the attribution of ‘institutional imperatives’ to science. The critical attention paid to this aspect is explained by Merton himself— who never officially intervened in the debate—in terms of the contemporary expectations of scholars: It was conceptual, after many descriptive works by historians of science. The key was to analyse science also as a social institution. As an institution, science must have norms – just as political, economic and religious institutions cannot exist without norms.18

It is difficult to deny that Merton’s view of science as a social institution, and of the corresponding functional necessity of norms, was profoundly embedded in theoretical presuppositions that had a much stronger currency at the time compared to contemporary analytical frameworks and research landscapes. In this light, for example, it would be worth exploring how Merton’s original insight of science as a social institution may be revised and enriched today in the face of contemporary science, technology, and society (STS) literature that conceptualizes institutions as emergent configurations, continuously enacted and performed by human and non-human actors (e.g. Mol 2002). This may also lead to a rediscovery and reappraisal of the influence of thinkers such as Whitehead on Merton’s works on science.19 In recent years, however, Merton’s role as a ‘founding father’ and the importance of his research have gained increasing recognition among leading exponents of contemporary science and technology studies. According to Trevor Pinch (1992), Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England ‘may be as relevant now as it was fifty years ago [. . .] Merton single-handedly launched the discipline’ (p. 32).20 Moreover, the antithesis of the institutional approach induced a view of Merton as a ‘naive positivist’ clinging to an idealized image of scientific activity; a Merton who probably never existed, as testified by the following quotation (1968 [1949]), not so distant from the positions subsequently adopted by numerous post-Mertonian STS scholars:21

18

Original interview with Robert K. Merton, 5 April 2001, partly published in Bucchi (2001). See above. A long epigraph from Whitehead’s The Organisation of Thought opens Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure. 20 One feature, only apparently negligible, that Merton shared with many writers in the discipline was his subtle sense of humour and the ironic quality of his style; a quality that some of the sternest critics of science and technology studies instead seem to lack: see the recent paper by Becker (2011). On the role of irony in theory and criticism in this area, see also Hacking (1999). 21 See, for example, works analysing the articulate trajectories between the laboratories and the published paper, for example, Knorr Cetina (1981), Latour (1987). 19

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M. Bucchi [There is a] rock-bound difference between the finished versions of scientific work as they appear in print and the actual course of inquiry followed by the inquirer. The difference is a little like that between textbooks of ‘scientific method’ and the ways in which scientists actually think, feel and go about their work. The books on method present ideal patterns: how scientists ‘ought’ to think, feel and act, but these tidy normative patterns [. . .] do not reproduce the typically untidy, opportunistic adaptations that scientists make in the course of their inquiries. Typically, the scientific paper or monograph presents an immaculate appearance which reproduces little or nothing of the intuitive leaps, false starts, mistakes, loose ends, and happy accidents that actually cluttered up the inquiry (p. 4).

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Domenico Tosini for his comments on earlier versions of this article; Gianfranco Poggi for suggesting a reference that invited me to reflect on the ‘long tail of science’; and Trevor Pinch for stimulating discussions and valuable insights on the themes treated in this work. Part of the research for this article was conducted in the context of a fellowship by CM Lerici Foundation, Stockholm, and of a visiting professorship at the Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. I am also grateful to five anonymous reviewers for their critical remarks and useful suggestions. An earlier version of this chapter was published in the Journal of Classical Sociology 2015, Vol. 15(3) 233–252.

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Bucchi, M., & Neresini, F. (2011). Which indicators for the new public engagement activities? An exploratory study of European research institutions. Public Understanding of Science, 20(1), 64–79. Calhoun, C. (Ed.). (2010). Sociology of science and sociology as science. New York: Columbia University Press. Callon, M. (1999). The role of lay people in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Science, Technology, and Society, 4(1), 81–94. Callon, M., Lascoumes, P., & Barthe, Y. (2001). Agir dans un monde incertain: Essai sur la démocra- tie technique. Paris: Seuil. Castells, M. (2001). Internet galaxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, H. M. (2004). Gravity’s shadow. The search for gravitational waves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Collins, H. M. (2017). Gravity’s kiss. The detection of gravitational waves. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Collins, H. M., & Pinch, T. (1993). The Golem: What everyone should know about science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Couzin, J. (2006). Stem cells. . . . and how the problems eluded peer reviewers and editors. Science, 311, 23–24. Crane, D. (1967). The gatekeepers of science: Some factors affecting the selection of articles of scientific journals. American Sociologist, 2, 195–201. Crane, D. (1972). Invisible colleges: Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. De Grazia, A. (1963). The scientific reception system and Dr. Velikovsky. American Behavioral Scientist, 7, 38–56. De Solla Price, D. J. (1963). Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press. DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160. Epstein, S. (1995). The construction of lay expertise: AIDS activism and the forging of credibility in the reform of clinical trials. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 20(4), 408–437. Etzkowitz, H., & Webster, A. (1995). Science as intellectual property. In S. Jasanoff, G. Markle, J. C. Peterson, et al. (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 480–505). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fahy, D., & Lewenstein, B. (2014). Scientists in popular culture: The making of celebrities. In M. Bucchi & B. Trench (Eds.), Handbook of public communication of science and technology (2nd ed., pp. 83–95). London: Routledge. Fraser, A. G., & Dunstan, F. (2010). On the impossibility of being an expert. British Medical Journal, 341, 1314–1315. Gallino, L. (2007). Tecnologia e democrazia. Conoscenze tecniche e scientifiche come beni pubblici. Torino: Einaudi. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., et al. (Eds.). (1994). The new production of knowledge: Dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage. Goepfert, W. (2007). The strength of PR and the weakness of science journalism. In M. Bauer & M. Bucchi (Eds.), Journalism, science and society. Science communication between news and public relations (pp. 215–226). London: Routledge. Goodell, R. (1977). The visible scientists. Boston, MA: Little Brown. Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in public: Communication, culture, and credibility. London: Plenum. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hagstrom, W. O. (1965). The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. Hagstrom, W. O. (1982). Gift giving as an organizing principle in science. In B. Barnes & D. Edge (Eds.), Science in context (pp. 21–34). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Hall, R. (1963). Merton revisited, or science and society in the seventeenth century. History of Science, II, 1–16.

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Hansen, A. (1992). Journalistic practices and science reporting in the British press. Public Understanding of Science, 3, 111–134. Knorr Cetina, K. (1981). The manufacture of knowledge: An essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewenstein, B. (1992). Cold fusion and hot history. Osiris, 7, 135–163. Lewin, K. (1943). Forces behind food habits and methods of change. Bulletin of the National Research Council, 108, 35–65. Merton RK (1938) Science, technology and society in seventeenth-century England. Bruges: St. Catherine Press (4th edn: with a new introduction. New York: Howard Fertig, 2001). Merton RK (1968 [1949]) Social theory and social structure. New York: The Free Press. Merton, R. K. (1973a). The sociology of science: theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Merton RK (1973b [1942]) The normative structure of science. In: Merton RK (ed.) The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 267–278). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,. Merton, R. K. (1973c [1963]). Multiple discoveries as strategic research site. In R. K. Merton (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 371–382). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Merton, R. K., & Barber, E. G. (1963). Sociological ambivalence. In E. A. Tiryakian (Ed.), Sociological theory, values and sociocultural change (pp. 91–120). Glencoe: The Free Press. Merton, R. K., & Barber, E. G. (2004). Travels and adventures of serendipity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Merton, R. K., & Garfield, E. (1986). Foreword. In D. J. De Solla Price (Ed.), Little science, big science . . . and beyond (pp. vii–xxiii). New York: Columbia University Press. Merton, R. K., & Zuckerman, H. (1973 [1972]). Age, aging and age structure, in science. In R. K. Merton (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Metlay, G. (2006). Reconsidering renormalization: Stability and change in 20th-century views on university patents. Social Studies of Science, 36(4), 565–597. Miller, S. (1994). Wrinkles, ripples and fireballs: Cosmology on the front page. Public Understanding of Science, 3, 445–453. Mitroff, I. (1974). Norms and counter-norms in a select group of the Apollo moon scientists: A case study of the ambivalence of scientists. American Sociological Review, 39, 579–595. Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mulkay, M. (1979). Science and the sociology of knowledge. London: Allen & Unwin. Mullins, N. (1968). The distribution of social and cultural properties in informal communication networks among biological scientists. American Sociological Review, 33, 786–797. National Science Foundation (NSF) (2010) S&E indicators 2010. Available at www.nsf.gov/ statistics Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Paccagnella, L. (2007). Robert K. Merton e il software libero: gli imperativi istituzionali della ricerca scientifica nell’etica hacker. Quaderni di Sociologia, 45(3), 653–680. Peters, H. P., Heinrichs, H., Jung, A., et al. (2008). Medialization of science as a prerequisite for legitimization and political relevance. In D. Cheng, M. Claessens, T. Gascoigne, et al. (Eds.), Communicating science in social contexts (pp. 71–92). New York: Springer. Pickering, A. (Ed.). (1992). Science as practice and culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pinch, T. (1992). Puritanism and the rise of modern science (ed IB Cohen). Social Forces, 70, 1132–1133.

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Pizzorno, A. (2007). Dalla reputazione alla visibilità. In A. Pizzorno (Ed.), Il velo della diversità: Studi su razionalità e riconoscimento (pp. 220–247). Milan: Feltrinelli. Polanyi, M. (1951). The logic of liberty. London: Routledge. Rossiter, M. (1993). The Matthew Matilda effect in science. Social Studies of Science, 23(2), 325–341. Shils, E. (1954). Scientific community: Thoughts after Hamburg. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, X (5), 151–155. Storer, N. (1973). Introduction. In R. K. Merton (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. xi–xxxi). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tönnies, F. (1887). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Leipzig: Reislad. Vogel, C. (2006). Wissenschaft bei einer internationalen Fachzeitschrift II: Journalism at a Magazine-within-a-magazine. In H. Wormer (Ed.), Die Wissensmacher. Profile und Arbeitsfelder von Wissenschaftsredaktionen in Deutschland (pp. 314–329). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Ware, M., & Mabe, M. (2012). The STM report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing. The Hague: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Weber, M. (1905). Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Tübingen: Mohr. Weber, M. (1922). Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tübingen: Mohr. Wohlsen, M. (2011). Biopunk: DIY scientists hack the software of life. New York: Current. Young, N. S., Ioannidis, J. P. A., & Al-Ubaydii, O. (2008). Why current publication practices may distort science. PLoS Medicine, 5, e201. Ziman, J. (2000). Real science: What it is, and what it means. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zuckerman, H. (1977). Scientific elite: Nobel laureates in the United States. New York: The Free Press.

Massimiano Bucchi Professor of Science and Technology in Society and Director of Master SCICOMM, University of Trento, has been visiting professor in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. He is the author of several books (published in more than 20 countries) and papers in journals such as Nature and Science. Among his books in English: Science and the Media (Routledge, 1998); Science in Society (Routledge, 2004); Beyond Technocracy (Springer, 2009); The Public Communication of Science (ed. with B. Trench, Routledge, 2016), Newton’s Chicken; Science in the Kitchen (World Scientific, 2020) From 2016 to 2019 he was editor-in-chief of the international journal Public Understanding of Science (Sage).

Chapter 3

Re-distributing Responsibility in Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production and Circulation Thomas Völker

Introduction Different conceptualizations of re-ordering of science-society relations in political decision-making and in the production and circulation of knowledge have been the topic of numerous debates. Starting from an ideal of informing deficient publics in order to (re)gain trust in and legitimacy of technoscientific endeavours, academic as well as political debates have added several layers of criticism and alteration to this conception (Felt et al. 2013) and in doing so have directed attention to the complexities of such relations (see e.g. Horst and Irwin 2009; Irwin and Wynne 1996). Calls to promote transdisciplinarity research methods is one of the more recent attempts to re-think and re-order science-society relations. Situated within debates about Mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001), post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992, 1993), and the triple helix (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1998), work on transdisciplinary research depicts so-called “traditional” or “mainstream” science as ill-equipped for dealing with contemporary challenges and calls for the integration of heterogeneous actors into knowledge production processes. Extra-scientific actors thus are invited to collaborate with scientists and researchers, and science shall be done with society and not just for society (Julie Thompson Klein 2004; Nowotny 2007). More recently questions of science-society integration have been addressed in discussions about questions of responsibility (see also Luís Junqueira’s contribution in this volume, Chap. 5) under the heading of “responsible research and innovation” (Owen et al. 2012). Against the background of these debates my contribution to this edited volume presents a case study of an Austrian research funding programme called proVISION. This programme has funded research projects in the area of sustainability research

T. Völker (*) Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_3

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and explicitly demanded from its projects to apply transdisciplinary research methods in order to accomplish its mission to “make knowledge available” and to foster a “new science culture” of “responsible care”. With this specific requirement in mind, the question becomes how these imaginaries of re-ordering science-society relations fit into locally specific cultures of doing research, how they get translated, and which obstacles might arise. To address these questions this chapter carves out the programme’s vision of re-ordering science-society relations and focuses especially on collective imaginations (Anderson 1991; Jasanoff and Kim 2009) of re-distributing responsibility; it then addresses concrete practices of producing and circulating anticipatory knowledge in transdisciplinary collaborations and asks how this collectively shared imagination gets “translated” (Law 2003) by researchers and their so-called extrascientific” partners in their projects. Examining particular instances of transdisciplinary collaboration I will show how different forms of participation emerge together with subject positions, collectives, and futures. In its conclusion, the paper directs attention to the systemic tensions that emerge in transdisciplinary knowledge production.1

Responsibility and Participatory Knowledge Production During the past decades we have witnessed an ongoing debate about changing ways of producing and circulating knowledge and about the relation of science, society, politics, and industries. These debates circle around concepts like Mode 2, postnormal science, and triple helix, which address similar issues and themes while focusing on different aspects.2 More recent strands of this ongoing debate emphasize the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI).

Re-thinking Knowledge Production In their book The New Production of Knowledge Gibbons et al. introduce the notion “Mode 2” to describe the emergence of and transition to a new mode of knowledge production. This transition is the consequence of an “increasing desire to ‘steer’ The materials on which the analysis is based were gathered in the project “Transdisciplinarity as Culture and Practice. Analyzing Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research Projects in the Programme proVISION”, led by Ulrike Felt at the University of Vienna. Accessed March 13, 2018: https://sts.univie.ac.at/en/research/completed-research-projects/transdisciplinarity-as-cul ture-and-practice/ 2 These notions have been described and discussed extensively, therefore I will in my discussion focus on only the aspects or themes that are of importance to the analysis presented in this chapter. For a valuable overview and discussion of these debates see for example (Hessels and Lente 2008). 1

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priorities” (Nowotny et al. 2003: 181), a growing commercialization of science and the emergence of new funding structures. The Mode 2 debate emphasizes the increasing importance of extra-scientific rationales for knowledge production and the emergence of different forms of “contextualization” of science and research. As a consequence, more heterogeneous actors like NGOs or think tanks enter knowledge production processes in order to produce knowledge that allows for “society speaking back to science” (Nowotny et al. 2001). While work on Mode 2 science and research is diagnosing a growing importance of the contexts of application, Funtowicz and Ravetz provide a critique of a science mainly concerned with producing increasingly detailed knowledge and removing uncertainties. This, they argue, is no longer possible given the character of contemporary problems. Quantitative risk assessment in their view is especially ill-equipped for cases in which science, politics, and publics are closely entwined. Instead they call for “a new epistemology of science” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992: 252) when “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent” (ibid.: 253). Closely related to these debates about Mode 2 and post-normal science, also the concept of the “triple helix” (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1998) contributed to debates about changing science-society relations. The triple helix is less a diagnosis than a heuristic for analysing changing relations between universities, industries, and governmental agencies in innovation processes. So while they are indeed interested in changing modes of knowledge production, they are applying an institutional perspective, which means that their work “is focused on the organizational context of Mode 2 research” (Hellström and Jacob 2000: 76). Within these discussions collaborative knowledge production plays an important role. Whereas the post-normal science debate tends to focus on an “extended peer community” composed of actors potentially affected by technoscientific developments or policy decisions in order to grant the “quality” of the scientific process, Nowotny stresses the importance of transdisciplinarity knowledge production for creating “socially robust knowledge” (Nowotny 2003). This interest in quality and robustness goes together with a call for “accountability” of science (see e.g. Gibbons 1994; Nowotny 2007). These normative and moral aspects of the discussions briefly outlined above became especially visible in the debate about transdisciplinary modes of knowledge production in which the necessity of including heterogeneous actors into actual practices of problem definition and knowledge production was stressed (Brouwer et al. 2017; Felt et al. 2016; Thompson Klein et al. 2012; Mittelstrass 2011). More recently, this is explicitly emphasized in work on practices of responsibility and care.

Responsibility, RRI, and Care The notion of responsibility gained traction on a policy level around 2011 with a series of high level expert workshops. The “Science with and for society” section in the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme explicitly aims to fund

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“Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) initiatives.3 A basic understanding of how responsibility is framed in this discourse is exemplified in the Rome Declaration: RRI requires that all stakeholders including civil society are responsive to each other and take shared responsibility for the process and outcomes of research and innovation. This means working together in: science education; the definition of research agendas; the conduct of research; the access to research results; and the application of new knowledge in society—in full respect to gender equality, the gender dimension in research and ethics considerations.4

Responsiveness and collaboration across institutional boundaries are core concerns for RRI as presented in this quote. Also it already becomes clear how RRI is intended to re-order science-society relations. Key in these re-orderings are ideas about the distribution of responsibility, or as Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten put it “taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present.” (2013: 1570) Work on responsibility shares a concern with recent literature dealing with the concept of care (Felt et al. 2013; Halpern et al. 2016; Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). Logics of choice, so the argument goes, are replaced with a logic of care that focuses on engaging in long-term collaborations about ‘matters of concern’ (Latour 2004). In these debates on RRI and care we can see a framing of responsibility that can be seen as a continuation of themes already present in the debates outlined above: new forms of scientific and technological governance5 are deemed necessary in regard to particular problems or “ethically problematic” (Owen et al. 2012: 751) areas such as genetically modified organisms or synthetic biology; also concerns about the public legitimacy of science and innovation as well as questions about the role of publics in decision making play a role in the debate. As a consequence, Owen et al. claim that science no longer can be content with being “in” society. Science needs to produce knowledge “for” society “with” society (ibid.). In a similar manner Stilgoe et al. (2013) talk about the importance of anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness. Ideas present in previous discussions outlined above clearly resonate in such principles: work on “anticipation” for example criticizes top down risk assessment and calls for considering the social, ethical, and political stakes related to technoscientific developments, while calls for inclusion and responsiveness stress the necessity of participatory modes of governance and collaborative

3 Of course the roots of this term can be traced back further. For an overview see e.g. Owen et al. (2012) or Felt et al. (2013). 4 Rome Declaration. Accessed March 13, 2018: https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/rome_dec laration_RRI_final_21_November.pdf 5 It’s important to note here that also another strand of debate plays an important role in current debates about responsibility, namely work on the governance of technoscience and on methods and concepts of technology assessment. Different variations of technology assessment or research concerned with the ethical, legal, and social implications of technoscience are probed in order to find ways of dealing with the responsibilities of science toward society in more or less participatory ways (Barben et al. 2007; Guston and Sarewitz 2002; Rip and Kulve 2008).

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modes of knowledge production. This is not surprising since this work is explicitly situated within a long line of scholarly debate and policy discussion that Ulrike Felt has called a “stratigraphy of science-society policies” (Felt et al. 2013: 13) in which different layers of thinking about science-society relations, relevant actors, and modes of engagement get “sedimented” instead of completely replacing each other. In this sense the research funding programme proVISION can be understood as an early attempt to create a space for “collective experimentation” (Felt et al. 2016) in which a re-distribution of responsibility can be probed. Thus, while proVISION is neither linked to Horizon 2020 or current RRI initiatives since it predates both of them, it can be argued that this programme and its focus on a science culture of “responsible care” is a predecessor of current debates in Horizon 2020 and RRI that are part of an ongoing assemblage, stabilization, and contestation of a collectively shared imagination of how science-society relations should be organized.

Theoretical Framing: Imaginaries and Their “Translation” Jasanoff and Kim’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 2015) provides a useful conceptual lens to explore how a particular imaginary of participatory knowledge production was assembled and negotiated in the proVISI ON programme and its projects. Building on work on the role of imagination in stabilizing social orderings (Anderson 1991; Appadurai 2006 [1990]; Taylor 2002) Jasanoff and Kim define sociotechnical imaginaries as [. . .] collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through and supportive of, advances in science and technology (Jasanoff 2015: 4).

In order to go beyond mere fantasies of single individuals, imaginaries need to be collectively held; they additionally tend to become more stable when institutionalized in some form; they need to be publicly performed in order to become stable; and finally imaginaries focus on desirable futures that are entwined with ideas about social order and scientific and technological progress. Put succinctly, analysing imaginaries is about asking how it is that through collectively shared ideas about the future particular scientific and societal orderings are stabilized. This also means that exploring imaginaries sensitizes us to the various collectives that are co-constitutive with them – such as “epistemic communities” (Haas 1992) or “techno-epistemic networks”.6 For the purpose of this contribution I focus especially on the role of conceptualizations of responsibility within this imaginary and explore how responsibility is framed within the discourse of the policy programme. In order to grasp the dynamic nature of imaginaries I complement this analysis with an exploration of how researchers and their extra-scientific partners adopt, 6 Rommetveit et al. (2015): http://www.epinet.no/sites/all/themes/epinet_bootstrap/documents/ wp1_cross_cutting_report.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.

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appropriate, and re-assemble the imaginary visible in the funding scheme’s documents, guidelines, and requirements. This empirical interest resonates with what Pickersgill refers to as “highlighting the role of sociotechnical imaginaries within more micro-social processes” (Pickersgill 2011: 28). For that I will draw on Law’s concept of “translation” as “traduction/trahison”: So that is traduction, a similarity. But trahison, difference, is not far behind. And the difference has to do with the form of ontology being performed (Law 2003: 10).

What makes Law’s understanding of translation interesting for my analysis is that he stresses that translation always entails some sort of betrayal (trahison). Translation is always at the same time similarity and difference, and can never be exactly the same. An additional idea that can be captured with this concept of “translation” is that a funding scheme like proVISION is not a stable and fixed entity. Instead, the funding scheme becomes “real” only in the socio-material practices of its translation, in the ways in which researchers mobilize the ideas of the funding scheme in their research practices. This resonates with a move away from telling grand narratives about science and society. Law argues that [. . .] we need to attend to lots of little stories, and then to the patterns that subsist between those stories, patterns that will often not reduce themselves to the chronology of narrative, patterns that do not form a chronological narrative—because there is no narrative (Law 2003: 8).

For the case of proVISION this means that it is necessary to focus on the “little stories” of researchers and their partners about doing transdisciplinary sustainability research. It is exactly through these stories that particular translations of the imaginary that is guiding proVISION are expressed and re-orderings of science-society relations become visible. This is not a merely discursive matter of course, much rather narrating and telling stories needs to be understood as a way of ordering the world. (Law 1994, 2003; Ricoeur 1991; Watts 2014). In that sense the combination of Jasanoff and Kim’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries and Law’s notion of translation as traduction/trahison enables me to focus on both the (attempted) assembling and stabilization of collectively shared imaginations about the responsible production and circulation of knowledge and on how this imaginary gets translated by a heterogeneous set of actors. Instead of describing the accounts of actors engaged in transdisciplinary projects as wrong or right implementations of the programmes’ rules, these conceptual lenses direct attention to the multiple situated versions of transdisciplinary collaborations and related enactments of responsibility. This brings into view the dynamic nature of imaginaries, how they are being rehearsed and stabilized, but also appropriated and contested by researchers and their Praxispartners7 in their day-to-day research activities.

“Praxispartner” is a term that was used in the programme documents and by the researchers to refer to non-academic partners that were supposed to be part of the project through the requirement to

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Case and Material The case for analysing how responsibility is framed in transdisciplinary sustainability research is proVISION,8 a research funding programme of the former Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research.9 This programme published two calls for projects, one in 2004 and one in 2007, had an overall budget of 7.6 million euros, and funded a total of 36 projects.10 At the moment of writing this chapter all pro VISION-funded projects are finished—the last projects ended in 2013—and there will be no more calls for projects within the framework of this funding scheme. Pro VISION was part of the Austrian research strategy “Research for Sustainable Development” (FORNE)11 and was therefore situated within the broader field of sustainability research and sustainable development. This becomes visible in the institutional ties of the funding scheme. One example for such connections is pro VISION’s so-called “partner programme” “Technologies for Sustainable Development” (TSD),12 run by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation, and Technology (BMVIT). What makes this funding scheme interesting from an STS perspective is its explicit agenda to fund transdisciplinary projects. Transdisciplinarity here basically describes the normative demand to create spaces for collaboration between scientific and so-called “extra-scientific” actors throughout different stages of research projects. The funding scheme proVISION therefore is an intriguing possibility to empirically explore one attempt to put into practice the call for new modes of knowledge production and for re-distributing responsibility. This attempt takes place against the background of a more dominant imaginary of science-society relations visible for example in proVISION’s partner programme, but also in the multiple demands that need to be met by researchers and extra-scientific actors engaged in transdisciplinary collaborations. The analysis for this contribution builds on various programme documents such as the two calls for projects, the programme’s research principles, and its website and statements of programme representatives at public events. Additional documents are included in the analysis as far as they are mentioned within the core set of proVISI ON documents. Furthermore, I draw on extensive interview material from

work in transdisciplinary collaborations. I will elaborate on this notion later in the empirical part of this contribution. 8 ProVISION website. Accessed August 8, 2012: http://www.provision-research.at/ 9 The ministry has been re-structured and is now called Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research. Federal Ministry website. Accessed March 13, 2018: https://www.bmbwf.gv.at/english/ home/ 10 These numbers were presented at an event called “Das 3hoch3 der Nachhaltigkeit” by a representative of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy in May 2011. 11 FORNE website. Accessed March 13, 2018: http://www.forne.at/ 12 “Technologies for Sustainable Development” website. Accessed March 13, 2018: http://www. nachhaltigwirtschaften.at/english/index.html

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semi-structured narrative interviews with programme representatives, researchers, and their Praxispartners working in projects funded by the programme. I also use field notes from ethnographic observations of project meetings and project as well as proVISION programme events. Overall, 39 interviews, 2 focus group discussions, and notes from 12 project meetings from 12 different projects funded within the two calls of proVISION were analysed. The interviews were conducted with programme managers, senior and junior researchers, extra-scientific actors working in the projects, and doctoral candidates from a transdisciplinary doctoral programme.13 These materials were analysed using a grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin 1998) and its basic coding principles. Additionally, I draw on more recent versions of the approach that emphasize the importance of concrete situational contexts (Charmaz 2006; Clarke 2005). Especially Clarke’s situational analysis approach provides a sound methodological framework for exploring imaginations of attainable futures together with their social and institutional manifestations.

Imagining and Translating Responsibility To understand what it means to produce and circulate knowledge responsibly in the transdisciplinary sustainability research projects funded with the programme proVI SION, one must first look at the broader imaginary visible in the programme documents.14 Building on this I then explore how these ideas are translated by researchers and their collaborators in their practices and accounts of producing and distributing anticipatory knowledge.

A “New Science Culture” of “Responsible Care” Focusing on sustainability, it is aimed at making knowledge available for solving the most urgent problems in provision for nature and society: adaptation to climate change and its consequences, suitable life and work models, responsible use of natural and industrial resources, and environmental protection.15

13

As mentioned above, data gathering and (partially) data analysis was carried out in a collaborative research project together with my colleagues Judith Igelsböck, Andrea Schikowitz, and Ulrike Felt. Although this paper is not written collectively, working together on this project still influences my writing about issues of transdisciplinary knowledge production. Thus when I use terms like “we” in the empirical parts of this chap. I acknowledge the contribution of my colleagues. Any mistakes are, of course, my own. 14 This imaginary is visible in the discourse of proVISION policy documents and related documents. However, such discursive spaces are not the only place to look for imaginaries. They can also be observed in material practices and institutional arrangements. I have traced the development of this imaginary elsewhere (Völker 2017). 15 ProVISION Website. Accessed August 8, 2013: http://www.provision-research.at

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This quote, taken from the mission statement of the programme’s website, summarizes the main aim of proVISION. Knowledge is at the very centre of this imaginary: it is a particular mode of producing and using knowledge that is considered key in addressing contemporary problems. These problems are understood as novel, increasingly complex, and threatening on a global scale.16 Traditional scientific knowledge is no longer deemed sufficient for solving them. Instead, knowledge needs to be produced and circulated differently than before and science-society relations need to be re-ordered. At the core of re-ordering these relations are ideas about the distribution of re-responsibility. The proVISION narrative starts from the assumption of an anthropogenic causation of contemporary environmental problems: “Internationally the insight is established that humankind causes a global environmental crisis and endangers its livelihoods in the long run”. (BMWF 2007: 3). In a first instance responsibility here takes on a conservationist meaning as a duty to protect Austria’s extraordinarily “green” and natural landscapes in the sense of keeping them from degradation and “de-naturalization”.17 Global developments are framed as an external threat to Austrian landscapes, thus constructing a particular spatiality and temporality of the Anthropocene. In a similar manner the pictures in the programme documents and on the programme website develop a visual narrative that focuses on pristine Austrian landscapes in need of protection. These pictures selectively show a vision of Austria’s present while at the same time laying out what a desirable future might look like18 and asking how to get there: How can we take a responsible approach to tackling climate change and regional development? [...] What kind of science culture does a sustainable society need?19

The interesting thing about these questions is that they relate these desirable futures to particular epistemic, social, and moral re-orderings by calling for responsible approaches to solving contemporary problems and the implicit assumption that a particular science culture is needed. Ideas of changing modes of knowledge production are thus related to responsibility from the very outset of proVISION. What such a science culture might look like is described already in the Austrian Strategy for Research for Sustainable Development: Research and innovation have a central role in supporting a sustainable development. For doing so science needs to strike new paths and e.g. collaborate with actors from outside the science system (Paula, Smoliner, & Tiefenthaler, 2004: 5; transl. TV).

This understanding resonates with the so called “grand challenges of our time” laid out in the Lund Declaration and also in designated parts of Horizon 2020, the so-called “societal challenges” of the European Commission’s research and innovation programme. 17 One of the projects funded by proVISION developed a “naturalness-index”, which sought to map Austria in terms of human interference with otherwise pristine landscapes. 18 This visual narrative was analysed by my colleagues and myself in more detail elsewhere (Felt et al. 2016). See also: Völker 2017. 19 ProVISION Website. Accessed August 8, 2013: http://www.provision-research.at 16

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This call for new paths can be understood as a re-ordering of science-society relations on a socio-epistemic level: scientists need to engage in dialogue with actors from outside. For describing this need to go outside, the imaginative resource of science as an ivory tower is often drawn upon. The ivory tower is a place where objective, universal knowledge is produced independently of societal concerns, needs, or expectations. This is a morally charged imagination of traditional science as detached from society: Sustainability research must go beyond the ivory tower and needs to maintain a dialogue with society. Going from the academic system to social reality however means recognising social actors as equal research partners, adapting scientific habits and scientific language accordingly. The sustainability dialogue also means that researchers have a duty to integrate the social component in scientific action right from the outset.20

In stories about the ivory tower two spheres are distinguished: the academic system on the one side, society or social reality on the other. Scientists are expected to transgress this assumed distinction and engage in a dialogue with society. Responsibility is thus framed as a duty on the side of the researchers to become active and engage and to adapt their habits and language. This idea of overcoming a demarcation is also rehearsed by one of the programme coordinators, who states that “[t]he projects have to go out, enter into a dialogue with people outside of science.” Such framings of responsibility can be observed in different sustainability-related debates. Luís Junqueira (Chap. 5 in this volume) for example describes ideas about changing science-society relations and a “new social contract” between science and society in his analysis of renewable energy and energy transitions. Notions of responsibility and equality are often entangled with ideas of hierarchy between science and society when it comes to mobility. Science is imagined to be the mobile part of the dialogue; it is able and obliged to go out toward society so that it can become useful for society. This overall responsibility or duty to go out and collaborate with societal actors to support sustainability also rehearses the idea of responsibility on a temporal dimension: integration and collaboration need to happen right from the outset of transdisciplinary projects. Here we already see the importance of questions of responsiveness as well as calls for collaboration during the whole research and innovation process that are a central part of RRI. Another way in which the temporality of responsibility plays out can be observed in a statement made by the then minister for science and research, Johannes Hahn, at a proVISION event: I think in our actions as persons with political responsibility we should always think about what this means for the decision-making possibilities of our children and our children’s children.

Producing knowledge in provision for nature and society thus refers to a responsibility for future generations that needs to be considered and incorporated into knowledge production processes.

20

Ibid.

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The imaginary that becomes visible in various documents and public statements related to the funding scheme proVISION lays out both dystopic and more desirable visions for the future of humankind and planet Earth. However, and here the distinctiveness of this imaginary becomes apparent, it is not technoscientific innovation, but a particular mode of producing and using knowledge resting on epistemic, social, and importantly also moral re-orderings of science-society relations. Crucial here are ideas of re-distributing responsibility in which science is ascribed a duty to contribute to efforts of addressing environmental problems to actualize their threatening potential.

Translating Responsibility Actors engaged in transdisciplinary projects for the most part rehearse the idea of distinct parts or spheres of society. This is visible in the common use of notions like “ivory tower”, “social reality”, “life-world”, “Praxis”, and in spatial metaphors about insides and outsides. When it comes to the actual meanings of these terms, however, there seems to be some interpretative flexibility. The overall aim of establishing such an “outwards connection” (Int_19: 847)21 is to intervene in social reality and to “to further something outside, yes?” (Int_07: 45). This can be regarded as a rehearsal of the proVISION idea of an interventionist science in which researchers engage in the so-called “social reality” in order contribute to actualizing desirable futures. In order to successfully intervene, however, intimate knowledge that goes beyond scientific representations is needed: Because there you get to know the land, you get to know the houses, you get to know the ways of behaving, what it is like outside. [. . .] And out of it really implements applications to. . . to make a project conclusive—yes?—then this is something terrific (Int_07: 478).

Social reality here designates a particular region, a set of farms, houses, actors, or particular ways of behaving. It is researchers who go out and learn about social reality in order to initiate transformative change. This idea of a distinction is thus accompanied by the notion of learning something outside in transdisciplinary projects, which is deemed a necessary precondition for successfully conducting a transdisciplinary project; it is crucial to “have knowledge about what’s going on outside all in all” (Int_07: 47). In this sense extra-scientific partners in transdisciplinary projects sometimes tend to be simultaneously collaborator and research subject. This way of framing the distinction between science and social reality is also visible in a rehearsal of the idea of knowledge transfer or transport and science communication, which are used by our interviewees as imaginative resources.

21 The interviews for this study were conducted in German. The quotes throughout this section of the empirical part of this contribution are translations by the author.

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T. Völker For us concretely it was about translating the insights elaborated in the scientific domain to the life praxis (Lebenspraxis) of farmers, but also of other people who are occupied by the issue of biodiversity (Int_15: 235).

What becomes visible here is a diffusion model of knowledge and innovation. Sometimes in models like this the moral obligation to engage outside the ivory tower is accompanied by the figure of the so-called “Landmanager”, a specialized actor responsible for interacting with the local actors and “transporting” knowledge. In this way, it could be argued, the social re-ordering in transdisciplinary collaborations is outsourced to specialized actors. This process is sometimes framed in a more interactive manner, which then can best be understood as an extended diffusion or linear model of knowledge and innovation in which extra-scientific partners provide input to the questions to be asked, as a participant in a focus group discussion points out: And then you can return the whole thing again, you can bring it to the Praxis again, you can give answers to sharpened questions, so I think this can some. . . this is in many cases the process (FG_05: 631).

This quote exemplifies a slightly modified version of knowledge transfer that opens up the issue of problem-framing. There is a mutual shaping of the problems to be tackled in which researchers can sharpen their questions according to inputs from their partners. What we can see here is that through various appropriations of the call for responsible care more traditional models of science-society relations tend to be implicitly stabilized. In such accounts of leaving the ivory tower to intervene in a social reality, researchers partially rehearse the proVISION imaginary while at the same time using additional imaginative resources. A utilitarian ideal of a science that generates useful and applicable knowledge for extra-scientific actors is stabilized together with traditional models of knowledge transfer or science communication. Researchers weave together multiple imaginations of insides and outsides when it comes to the responsibility for the knowledge made available in the projects, which is nicely visible in this quote: This means, with the products of . . . of our . . . so to say the product that goes out, can it, should it happen—it happens—no?—through publications from our side and also through follow-up projects. Those happen. But this is then . . . or can be part. But it is not . . . not . . . at least not . . . not required. There is a . . . a . . . a responsibility there, no? Because there the decisions should find implementation (Int_01: 693).

This distinction corresponds to particular objects and practices: scientific products in the form of publications and follow-up projects opposed to implementations and decisions. Thus we can see how the proVISION imaginary is kept quite stable in regard to the boundaries between the ivory tower and social reality as well as when it comes to researchers’ responsibility of going out. When it comes to the mode of engaging, however, researchers tend to mobilize a range of different imaginative resources which include more traditional models of science-society relations clearly separating actors responsible for delivering products from those responsible for their implementation.

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While researches seem comfortable with translating the spatial elements of the imaginary, they struggle more when it comes to re-thinking the temporal organization of knowledge production, for example when talking about responsible care and the proVISION call for establishing long-term engagements. This creates problems for academic researchers who are usually restricted by the temporal organization of research in terms of (mostly 3-year) projects. A consequence of this is that an ideal of responsible care is not easy to align with contemporary organization of knowledge production in science. The translations of the actors engaged in proVISION funded projects need to be understood as strategies to deal with this tension. A strategy we encounter in the projects is to “outsource” responsibility. This means that the task of engaging with a particular region beyond the project duration is delegated to specialized actors. Often it is the Praxispartners (see footnote 7) themselves who are regarded as the actors to assume responsibility: Once awareness is raised and a corresponding concept is on hand, it is on the stakeholders, hence the persons concerned, to implement it and the implementation processes are granular, no? It is about who is standing in the pavilion Saturday morning? Or how much is this and that product?” (Int_07: 781).

Comments like this express a traditional imagination of science-society relations in which science is responsible for raising awareness through providing information and knowledge. This is where its responsibility ends and other actors take over, in this case its stakeholders and persons concerned. In addition to the extra-scientific partners, researchers also tend to talk about different kinds of intermediary actors such as [. . .] a manager, an external manager who works with the farmers and conversely to gastronomy, to the hotel business. [. . .] A landmanager is needed, trained people that are accepted there, who can implement these things on site. [. . .] a standout man who is accepted and he shall pursue the land-management there (Int_07: 284).

Again we encounter the Landmanager, well trained in scientific methods, but also a bearer of local or experiential knowledge and someone who is trusted. In this account, actors who are not themselves part of academia or science, take care of a region in the longterm. Figures like the Landmanager also stabilize a model that clearly distinguishes phases of knowledge production and implementation and additionally attaches them to particular kinds of actors. A similar solution for this problem is to work with specialized institutions with experience in this kind of work. It is not always personal or institutional actors who are supposed to assume responsibility. In some projects this task is delegated to knowledge understood as products or to software tools that were collaboratively developed in the transdisciplinary projects. In these instances knowledge products and software tools become material traces that stay in a region after the researchers have left. Such a translation of the vision of responsible care is nicely visible in the following quote: Well it is, I would say, like if you put yeast in somewhere and it bubbles away (Int_02: 157).

The outcomes or products of a project (for example, recommendations, future scenarios, or modelling tools) are delivered to the regional partners and are then

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expected to develop a life of their own as the metaphor suggests: like yeast knowledge bubbles and eventually actors will make decisions or actions according to the knowledge produced by experts. In this translation extra-scientific actors are enacted as users of these final products; users who additionally can contribute to the production of models and scenarios and are invited to give feedback throughout the projects. Their status as epistemic actors is anchored in their experiential and vernacular knowledge about a particular region in question. After the end of a project regional actors are expected to use the project results and—in the imagination of the researchers—act according to these results. A particular conception of materiality is crucial here. It is the material traces of the practices of producing anticipatory knowledge that are regarded as the solution of the problem that projects are temporally restricted while the work with the Praxispartners should be oriented toward longer time-frames. One researcher put it like this in talking about the main output of his project: [. . .] the other idea was to produce a model that is applicable for the actors, that is also interesting for the regional actors, that addresses questions they are interested in, developments that are interesting for the actors there and that is a model, that is not just being applied by science to produce results there, but also one that can be used directly by stakeholders and actors (Int_06: 116).

The implicit assumption in accounts like this is that local actors would use the model to continually produce scenarios and simulations according to pressing questions. In a certain sense the researchers would be able to remain in the region while leaving at the same time. This expectation of the researchers was not fulfilled and the idea of the extra-scientific actors using the models beyond the projects failed in most cases. We were provided with several narrative strategies to make sense of this, the most common ones being stories about an “unwillingness” on the side of the local actors to use the knowledge provided by the projects and a perceived lack of urgency. Summing up, translating the imaginary manifest in the proVISION funding scheme, researchers and their partners usually subscribe to the idea of a duty of science to get engaged in “the real world” while simultaneously rehearsing models of science-society relations that allow for some form of distinction between science and social reality. When tensions are encountered and researchers struggle with particular ideas of re-distributing responsibility they tend to mobilize other, more traditional imaginative resources. The different attempts to deal with them, however, should not be interpreted as unwillingness on the side of the individual actors involved. Much to the contrary, they seem to indicate problems of a more structural nature. Attempts at bringing together participatory forms of research and the temporal implications of “projectification” (Torka 2006) face the problem that transdisciplinary collaborations also need to function according to particular academic project logics on a temporal level: projects end.

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Conclusions This contribution took the Austrian sustainability research funding scheme proVIS ION as a case study to empirically explore how collectively shared ideas about producing and circulating knowledge responsibly are enacted by researchers and their collaborators in actual research practices and the challenges that arise when such ideas meet more established and institutionally stable visions of science-society relations. To conclude this chapter I will briefly direct attention to some issues that are important when looking at calls for producing and circulating knowledge responsibly in order to address the grand challenges of our time. These issues have to do with two broad questions: where is responsibility located? And, when exactly is responsibility?22 With regard to the first question, the project teams we observed and talked to had different ideas, ranging from delegating responsibility to the knowledge as products to leaving the project outcomes in the hands of regional extra-scientific actors, NGOs, or governmental actors. Researchers take on the active role of producing knowledge for their partners in order to empower them to make informed decisions. Transdisciplinary partners in this model are framed as rational actors that base their actions on sound scientific evidence, yet at the same time as passive recipients or users of knowledge (or software tools in some cases). As such they can become part of the epistemic process, for example as “reality checkers” that evaluate models or scenarios in terms of how accurately they represent a region or how easy the tools are to use. This understanding is reminiscent of Brian Wynne’s (2007) distinction between invited and uninvited publics in the sense that it is mostly the researchers who are in control of the issues to be tackled and how to tackle them. This additionally means defining particular roles or subject positions within the projects in terms of who is regarded as a legitimate epistemic actor and who is a user or recipient of the project output. If responsibility is to be understood as something more procedural and this is embedded in the process of collaboration between researchers and extra-scientific actors, framing exactly these partners as users of stable project outcomes like products seems to be a reductionist understanding of knowledge, collaboration, and the capacity to meaningfully contribute on the side of the extra-scientific actors. Sofia Bento and Oriana Rainho Brás (Chap. 8 in this volume) direct attention to similar issues in their analysis of participatory water planning in Portugal. They show how the material configuration of engagement settings becomes performative and reinforces particular expectations, roles and relationships, i.e. a traditional distinction between experts and lay-citizens. As a consequence, they argue, it was virtually impossible to go beyond narrow technical

22

While I touch on broader issues here, it is important to keep in mind that the funding scheme and the research projects that provide the empirical basis of this analysis present a case in which transdisciplinarity is closely entwined with sustainability research in Austria. It is a worthwhile task for future research to comparatively explore how transdisciplinarity might be enacted differently in other areas of research (Brouwer et al. 2017; Després et al. 2004).

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problem-framings and to establish modes of interaction that are not limited to questioning and justification. The second broader issue relates to a range of observations in regard to the temporality of responsibility. When does the re-distribution of responsibility start and when does it end? And at what points in the projects does a re-distribution of responsibility take place? In a recent paper on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Megan K. Halpern and colleagues nicely directed attention to the temporalities of responsibility by re-reading the novel not as a cautionary tale for scientific endeavour as a whole, but by arguing instead that Frankenstein should “caution us against abandoning our creations to the world” (Halpern et al. 2016). This brings together the notions of care and responsibility and reminds us that science and research creates objects of care that are in need of “collective stewardship”, as Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten state, and also resonates with Puig de la Bellacasa’s conception of “care as an everyday labour of maintenance that is also an ethical obligation: we must take care of things in order to remain responsible for their becomings.” (2011: 90) In the translations of responsibility in the proVISION projects especially, this sensitivity for “becomings” was clearly at odds with contemporary logics of science and research. Thinking about temporalities, it is also imperative to consider the question of when to start such collaborations. In the transdisciplinary projects we observed some of the researchers consulted selected partners in the proposal phase, but mostly Praxispartners were confronted with the final project (proposal) and were offered a pre-determined role within the research process. The projects thus struggled with opening up the projects and the research questions up-stream to their partners. This, however, is far from being a consequence of their unwillingness. Most of the actors we talked to completely agreed on the need to make knowledge production and circulation a more integrative and collective effort. However, most of them also struggled with the demands of requirements of academic or other careers. Additionally, even if they tried to integrate their partners early on, they usually encountered surprised extra-scientific actors who were not sure about what to with this unusual position, which simply does not exist in their imagination of science-society relations. Integrating heterogeneous actors early in the phase of project design would be valuable in order to productively challenge or creatively experiment with traditional demarcations and science-society relations and to create care objects and matters of concern (Halpern et al. 2016; Latour 2004; Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). For doing so, it is important to remain attentive to the temporalities of responsibility and to find ways to sustain partnerships such as those developed within the transdisciplinary projects I very briefly described. Establishing such long-term partnerships depends on critically challenging the institutional settings of science and research as well as the “technologies of engagement” (Chilvers and Kearnes 2015) through which such attempts of “collective stewardship” are mediated. Being able to actualize and take care of desirable futures through producing and circulating knowledge thus first of all means remaining attentive to the conditions governing contemporary sciencesociety relations.

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Jasanoff, S. (2015). Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In S. Jasanoff & S.-H. Kim (Eds.), Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power (pp. 1–47). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2009). Containing the atom: Sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the U.S. and South Korea. Minerva, 47(2), 119–146. Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (Eds.). (2015). Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Klein, J. T. (2004). Prospects for transdisciplinarity. Futures, 36(4), 515–526. Klein, J. T., Grossenbacher-Mansuy, W., Häberli, R., Bill, A., Scholz, R. W., & Welti, M. (2012). Transdisciplinarity: joint problem solving among science, technology, and society: an effective way for managing complexity. London: Birkhäuser. Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–248. Law, J. (1994). Organizing modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Law, J. (2003). Traduction/trahison: Notes on ANT. Lancaster: Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University. Mittelstrass, J. (2011). On Transdisciplinarity. Trames, 15(4), 329–338. Nowotny, H. (2003). Democratising expertise and socially robust knowledge. Science and Public Policy, 30(3), 151–156. Nowotny, H. (2007). The potential of transdisciplinarity. helga-nowotny.eu/downloads/ helga_nowotny_b59.pdf Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science. Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2003). Introduction. Mode 2 revisited: The new production of knowledge. Minerva, 41(Special Issue), 179–194. Owen, R., Macnaghten, P., & Stilgoe, J. (2012). Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society. Science and Public Policy, 39(6), 751–760. Paula, M., Smoliner, C., & Tiefenthaler, B. (2004). Forschung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. FORNE. Rahmenstrategie 2004 plus. Vienna. Pickersgill, M. (2011). Connecting neuroscience and law: Anticipatory discourse and the role of sociotechnical imaginaries. New Genetics and Society, 30(1), 27–40. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science, 41(1), 85–106. Ricoeur, P. (1991). Narrative identity. Philosophy Today, 35(1), 73–81. Rip, A., & Kulve, H. (2008). Constructive technology assessment and socio-technical scenarios. In The yearbook of nanotechnology in society, Vol. I: Presenting futures (pp. 49–70). Stilgoe, J., Owen, R., & Macnaghten, P. (2013). Developing a framework for responsible innovation. Research Policy, 42(9), 1568–1580. Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Taylor, C. (2002). Modern social imaginaries. Public Culture, 14(1), 91–124. Torka, M. (2006). Die Projektförmigkeit der Forschung. Die Hochschule, 1, 63–83. Völker, T. (2017). Preserving landscapes and reordering science–society relations. Imagining the future in transdisciplinary sustainability research. In G. Verschraegen, F. Vandermoere, L. Braeckmans, & B. Segaert (Eds.), Imagined futures in science, technology and society (pp. 114–136). London: Routledge. Watts, L. (2014). Future archaeology. Re-animating innovation in the mobile telecoms industry. In A. Herman, J. Hadlaw, & T. Swiss (Eds.), Theories of the mobile internet: Materialities and imaginaries. London: Routledge. Wynne, B. (2007). Public participation in science and technology: Performing and obscuring a political–conceptual category mistake. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 1(1), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12280-007-9004-7.

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Thomas Völker is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and Humanities (SVT) of the University of Bergen. Initially trained as a sociologist, in his PhD thesis Völker studied “futuring” practices in transdisciplinary sustainability research from a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective. After finishing his PhD at the University of Vienna, he joined the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), where he further developed his research interests towards questions about participatory decision-making at the multiple interfaces between science, policy and society. Völker has been working both in academia and policy with his research focusing on practices of knowledge production and circulation in environmental governance as well as on collective experiments with participatory democracy in policy making.

Chapter 4

How Do Scientists Doing Animal Experimentation View the Co-evolution Between Science and Society? The Swiss Case Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten

Introduction Animals have been used for scientific purposes for centuries, but this practice increased dramatically in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries due to the development of medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, biotechnology, etc., as documented by the annual reports on the number of animals used in experiments, for example in Europe (European Commission 2013) or in the United States (US department of agriculture 2015). This practice has been increasingly discussed in the public sphere of countries of the Northern hemisphere since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the emergence of humane societies and groups opposed to the use of animals, such as animal welfarists and animal rightists. The issue of animal experimentation (AE) has been little analysed in the STS field1 although it involves the common features of a problematic issue: a balance between benefits and concerns, ethical and political considerations, a decline of public support (which has engendered a battle for public support), activism against the practice which has sometimes involved violence, etc. A review of the literature indicates few studies: on the controversy related to AE (Nelkin 1995), on the relationship between humans and animals in the laboratory (Haraway 1989; Birke et al. 2007), or on public opinion toward AE (Pifer et al. 1994; Hagelin et al. 2003; Crettaz von Roten 2008, 2009, 2013; Schuppli and Weary 2010), many studying Anglo-Saxon countries and Switzerland. Within the work on science mode 2 (see also Chaps. 2 and 3), the concept of co-evolution between science and society is fully relevant to understand this issue

1

Contrary to the field of Animal studies, in which it was widely studied.

F. Crettaz von Roten (*) University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_4

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(Nowotny et al. 2001). Developed in the book Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainties, the concept postulates that the needs, concerns, and aspirations of society affect the directions of scientific research, its processes, and its institutions, which in turn alter the aspirations, problems, and modes of functioning of our societies.2 “Science and society, as has already been argued, are mutually invasive and invaded” (2001: 54). Cross fertilizations between science and society also combine university, industry, and governments in projects in which social pressure determines the orientation of scientific programmes, and in which results of these programmes weigh on economic and social development. In this process, knowledge becomes contextualized and socially robust. This co-evolution has engendered profound changes in the state: “[. . .] the advance of science and technology has also enlarged the territory of the ‘political’, creating the need for an array of new regulations and regulatory frameworks, notably in the bio-medical area”. “As a result of these and other changes, the state has become a transgressive institution, penetrated by but also penetrating market, social movements and individual responses by consumers and citizens” (ibid. 2001: 23–24). This chapter applies the aforementioned concept to AE. Analysing this co-evolution reveals significant evolutions, bringing us to study how main actors face these evolutions. This chapter focuses on one group of actors, i.e. scientists doing AE. A scientist occupies multiple functions and social roles, simultaneously and during his professional life: scholar, technician or expert, contributor, disseminator, and fighter for the truth. These functions may be affected by the aforementioned evolutions, and therefore require adaptation skills by scientists. This chapter will focus on the following research questions: How do scientists cope with these evolutions? What is the level of acceptance for each aspect? What influences the levels of acceptance? These are relevant research questions to address within the sociology of science, especially within the study of production of scientific knowledge. There are very few studies on scientists in AE, and to date none with this theme. Switzerland is an interesting country for analysing this issue because it is a leading country in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological sectors with a network of top quality academic institutions in basic research and education in life and biomedical sciences. The AE issue is very present in the public sphere, with media campaigns using powerful images, constant mobilization, and vandalism such as physical attacks on the belongings of pharmaceutical companies’ shareholders.3 Public opinion of AE is among the least favourable in European countries (Crettaz von Roten 2009, 2013). Finally, the Swiss political system of direct democracy

2 The concept of co-evolution seeks to go beyond the traditional distinction between external influences that affect science and the internal forces that determine the dynamics within science, to highlight the dynamic interplay between science and society. As a result, it defines science “as a form of culture and therefore constituting a set of cultural practices” (ibid. 2001: 18). 3 For example, Daniel Vasella’s (former Novartis CEO) holiday home was set on fire in 2009.

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allows the public to launch a national campaign to collect signatures for a so-called initiative on any subject, and AE has been the object of initiatives several times. To describe science policy decisions partly in the hand of society with these instruments of direct democracy is not idealistic in Switzerland. In the first part of this chapter a socio-historical analysis of the co-evolution is provided to document AE in Switzerland and to highlight new constraints that have been imposed on scientists in the recent past. In the second part, results of a survey of scientists describes how they cope with these new constraints.

The Co-evolution of AE in Switzerland Analysing the co-evolution of any STS issue raises the question of the time framework: how far to investigate into the past to be relevant but not confusing. The aim is to include significant events, without being exhaustive, so as to give an overview. For AE in Switzerland, it seems appropriate to start in the 1950s (Crettaz von Roten 2019), even if it means leaving aside earlier events including the foundation of the Swiss league against vivisection in 1883 in Geneva. For the simplicity of presentation of the results of this analysis, we present Table 4.1, which has the disadvantage of accentuating the demarcation of categories of the modern world—science, government, society—although they are highly permeable and inextricably entangled in modern societies. The table has one column for significant events in science, in science policy, and in society. This choice of presentation helps to visualize the co-evolution, i.e. the constant back and forth between the columns, especially between science and society. Animal welfare and the potential pain and distress experienced by animals used in science have long concerned the general public and thoughtful researchers. It was these concerns, together with the increasing use of animals in fundamental and applied research, that motivated Russell and Burch, zoologist and microbiologist respectively, to examine how decisions should be made about such use of animals. In their book The principles of humane experimental technique, first published in 1959, they proposed the concept of the 3Rs (Table 4.1). In this acronym, R stands for Replacement when possible, by techniques that do not use live animals or use animals with lower sentience, for Reduction to the absolute minimum number of animals, and for Refinement to the least possible amount of pain or distress for the animals that do end up being used in an experiment. The 3Rs principles can be seen as a middle way between total abolition and scientific libertarianism. Scientific institutions and scientists welcomed these goals fairly positively, but it took some time before they were applied in practice, notably because it implied having to create new methodological approaches in order to implement the 3Rs principles. In the same way, a series of reflections on moral philosophy and ethics related to animals emerged in the 1970s, with scholars such as Richard Ryder coining the term speciesism to indicate a discrimination (different values, different rights) on the basis of the species, in his essay Experiments on animals (1971), or Peter Singer stressing

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Table 4.1 Socio-historic analysis of the issue of animal experimentation in Switzerland from the 1950s until today Date 1959 1975

Science 3Rs principles (Russel & Burch) Singer “Animal liberation: A new ethic for our treatment of animals”

1978

Government

First Swiss Federal law on animal’s protection adopted by the Swiss federal parliament (LPA). Experiments involving animals must be subject to authorization.

1979

1983

1987

1970s: large protests for the environment and against misdeeds of industrialization (i.e. nuclear energy, industrial farming) The Swiss League Against Vivisection become “The Swiss League Against Vivisection and for the animals’ rights” The Association for the Abolition of Animal Experiments is founded in Zurich

The Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) and the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) formulate “Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Experiments on Animals”.

1985

1986

Society

Directive 86/609/EEC of the European Council on the approximation of laws, regulations, and administrative provisions of the Member States regarding the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes.

The Swiss environmental organization “Helvetia Nostra” launches a national initiative “for the abolition of vivisection” refused by 70.5% of the voters. Collection of signatures for a national initiative “for the abolition of animal testing and vivisection”. Initiative failed in 1987 at the stage of collecting signatures.

The organization of consumer protection Der Schweizerische Beobachter launches a national initiative “against the misuse of reproductive technologies and genetic manipulation to the human species” (more than (continued)

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Table 4.1 (continued) Date

Science

Government

Society 125,000 signatures are collected). The referendum is withdrawn in 1991 after the counter-proposal of the Federal Council.

1987

Creation of the 3R Research Foundation Switzerland under the supervision of the Federal Interior Department.

1991 1992

Modification of the LPA Counter-proposal of the Federal Council accepted by the population in 1992 by 73.8% of the voters. Constitutional article on the dignity of living organisms (in particular animals)

1993

1994

The Swiss government ratifies the European Convention on the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. Ordinance on the Education and Training of Specialized Staff for Animal Experiments

1998

1999

2003

2004

National initiative “for a strict and progressive reduction in experiments on animals” proposed by Society for the Animal Protection (SPA) and refused by 56.4% of the voters. National initiative “for the abolition of animal experiments” proposed by International League of Doctors for the Abolition of Vivisection, refused by 72.2% of the voters.

National initiative “for the protection of life and environment against genetic manipulation” proposed by the “Schweizerische Arbeitsgruppe Gentechnologie”, refused by 66.7% of the voters.

Implementation of the FEL ASA animal laboratory mandatory course By amendment to the Civil Code (CC) animals became a distinct legal category (CC, article 264a) The EU bans the testing of finished cosmetic products on animals in the European territory. (continued)

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Table 4.1 (continued) Date 2004

Science The 3R Research Foundation Switzerland implement an “online 3R Training Course”

Government

2005

Referendum against the construction of animal laboratory in Canton Vaud.

2010

2010

A directive of the European Council (2010/63/EU) revises the directive 86/609/ EEC on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. The new directive is based on the principle of the Three Rs. The Basel Declaration is written and signed by 60 scientists from Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden. It is a call for greater transparency and communication on the use of animals in research

2012

Revision of the Swiss Federal law on animal’s protection (LPA): In the new amendment to the law a special emphasis is placed on information and transparency.

2015

2015

2016

2017

Society

The Swiss Federal Council suggests the creation of a Swiss 3Rs National Competence Centre.

Referendum against the construction of animal laboratory in Canton Bern. In Europe, 1.1 million people sign the petition “Stop Vivisection”. Launch of two initiatives to limit animal experimentation in canton Genève. Collection of signatures for a national initiative “Yes, to the ban on animal and human experimentation, yes to research approaches that promote safety and progress”

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the intrinsic value and the ability of animals to experience suffering and denouncing the unequal consideration of the interests of the animals in his book on Animal liberation (1975), or Tom Regan discussing animal rights in his article Animal rights, human wrong (1980). These discussions on nature, environment, and animals spread from academics and encountered the same concerns in society. In the 1970s, Switzerland recorded social movements linked to environmental protection, women empowerment, promulgation of peace, etc. (Giugni and Passy 1997). These issues shared the common idea of protection of oppressed groups, in particular through the promulgation of rights, along with the issue of AE. These evolutions translated into societies: in 1978, the Swiss league against vivisection became the Swiss league against vivisection and for the animal’s rights and in 1979 the Association for the abolition of animal experimentation was founded in Zürich. For the general context, the 1970s witnessed many public demonstrations for the environment and against the misdeeds of science and industrialization. In 1978 the first “Animal protection law” was issued, which was subsequently supplemented by several guidelines in the 1980s, such as the one from the Swiss academy for medical and natural sciences in 1983 that enacted new ethical principles and directives for animal experimentation including the 3Rs principles (Weihe 1988). As a consequence, the number of animals used fell sharply between 1983 and 2000 (OVF 2016). A foundation devoted to 3Rs research—3R Research foundation—was created in 1987.4 Following the strong public mobilization of the 1970s, the 1980s saw the launch of campaigns to collect signatures for initiatives related to AE. The collection of signatures for the first campaign “For the abolition of vivisection” was successful in 1981 and the vote was held in 1985, but 70.5% of voters rejected it (38% of participation). However the issue retained a high profile in the political sphere: a new campaign for signatures that failed in 1986, then a successful campaign for the referendum “For a strict and progressive reduction of experiments on animals”. This initiative was voted on in 1992 but was rejected by a narrow majority (56.4% of rejection, 45% of participation). Some activists found this initiative not strong enough, and collected signature for another initiative “For the abolition of animal experimentation”. This initiative was voted on in 1993 and soundly rejected (72.2% of rejection, 51% of participation). While the proponents of these initiatives failed to reach a majority against AE, they nevertheless fostered considerable debates on this issue in society during this period. Over the same period, another scientific issue—genetic manipulation—became a matter of concern for the Swiss population that translated into related initiatives. A campaign for a referendum was successful in 1988, but was withdrawn in favour of the Federal Council’s counter-proposal “Against the abusive application of techniques of reproduction and genetic manipulation to the human species”. The counter-proposal was accepted in 1992 (73.8%). In 1998, the vote for another

4 A description of the aim and work of the foundation may be found at www.forschung3r.ch/en/ news/index.html

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initiative “For the protection of life and the environment from genetic manipulation” gave rise to controversial public debates. Pre-vote surveys indicated a possible ban of genetic research in the country and, for the first time in Swiss history, scientists were taking to the street to defend the liberty of research. In the end, the initiative was rejected (66.7%) and the strong mobilization of the scientific community has proven to be a valuable strategy. After the vote, Gottfried Schatz, future president of the Swiss National Science Foundation, insisted that “scientists should not get back to work without confronting the roots of the conflict and answering the question “What could scientists do better?”” (Schatz 1998: 1811). Institutions were created to pursue the debate between science and society (Fondation Science et Cité) and many initiatives were proposed (Swiss science festival, annual congress devoted to science communication, consensus conferences, science cafes, etc.). Another solution addressed the individual level: Swiss academics were encouraged to participate more actively in science communication. Academics’ evaluation grids began to involve some points related to engagement toward society (sometimes called public outreach and engagement (POE) activities), but what they involve and their relative weight in an evaluation vary considerably among institutions and disciplines. In the late 1990s, higher education established quality control mechanisms and systems of accreditation. In laboratory animal science (LAS) specific training was introduced in 1999 for scientists willing to be licensed to practice AE in Switzerland. The aims were to increase scientists’ knowledge and skills in conducting animal research and to raise their awareness about animal welfare. High standard courses, which include 20 h of lectures and 20 h of practical training with topics defined by the Swiss legislation, are accredited by the Federation of European laboratory animal science associations (FELASA). Practically, a scientist has to do a course for each species of animal on which he/she will do experimentation. Guidelines on this issue emerged at the national and European levels; an important European document is the European Commission’s Directive 2010/63/EU; this directive, not regulation, provided flexibility for member states, but Switzerland greatly exceeds the EU’s standards. The aforementioned events and the evolution in animal laboratory research did not lower citizen engagement in the public sphere against animal experimentation, however it took other forms (i.e. at regional level and not at national level, or at international level). This is illustrated by events such as a 2005 referendum that succeeded in preventing the construction of an animal laboratory in canton Vaud (Blanchard et al. 2006), another one in canton Bern in 2015, two initiatives in canton Genève in 2016, and the “Stop vivisection” petition launched at the European level in 2015.

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Three Main Changes This first step of this study has highlighted three main changes in LAS that have consequences for scientists. • Before performing animal experimentation, scientists must take an LAS course on the species of animal that they will use. • In their experimental research design and daily practice, they must apply the 3Rs principles. • Finally, they are asked for a greater transparency and communication toward society to improve the relationship with society. In particular, scientists must devote some time to POE activities. This chapter analyses the perceptions and acceptance of these changes at the level of scientists. There are few studies on AE scientists in the literature: some scholars have investigated their attitudes toward animals (Paul 1995) or toward animal use (Knight et al. 2009), others have examined how they are affected by animal-rights activism (Cressey 2011). Each constraint has given rise to a small number of studies on AE scientists, which can be grouped into studies on the acceptance of the mandatory LAS course (Carlsson et al. 2001; Franco and Olsson 2014) or on the acceptance of the 3Rs principles (Pollo et al. 2004; Fenwick et al. 2011; van Luijk et al. 2011; NC3Rs 2008; Franco and Olsson 2014; Franco et al. 2018). Besides this, there are several studies on scientists’ POE activities of scientists and engineers in this book (discussed in Chaps. 2, 5 and 7) and in the literature (for example, scientists and engineers (Royal Society 2006), and scientists in the biomedical sciences (Peters et al. 2008). However, no study has ever been done that combines these three changes in scientific practice for LAS scientists; the survey presented in the remainder of this chapter fills this gap.

A Survey of Scientists In 2016 a study was undertaken to find out how AE scientists working in Switzerland cope with the three abovementioned constraints. An online survey was sent to four cohorts of participants of LAS courses in the German- and French-speaking parts of the country.5 A total of 510 respondents completed the survey, which corresponds to a response rate of 48%. 5

The target population was the participants of FELASA-accredited courses for category B on rodents (mice and rats), because these animals correspond to around 75% of the total number of animals used in Switzerland. The study aimed to record the attitudes of the participants with various levels of hindsight toward the issue, i.e. from participants who had recently finished the course to people who had been practicing what they had learned during the course for several years. Therefore, we opted for a stratified sample. To ensure a valid assessment of the course and to avoid memory bias, we decided not to go too far back in time and opted for four strata defined by the calendar year of the course (cohorts 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016). For each year, a sample of courses was selected. The questionnaire was organized in four sections: the first focused on the

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Among the respondents, 79% were from the German-speaking region and 62% were female (Table 4.2). The modal age class was 26–31 years old and the mean age was 32 years old. Only 33% of respondents had Swiss nationality. Academically, Table 4.2 Demographics of respondents Respondent group Linguistic region (German-speaking) Gender (Female) Age 19–25 years 26–31 years 32–36 years >36 years Nationality Swiss European countries Asian countries North American countries Rest of the world Discipline of first degree Biology Chemistry, biochemistry, physics, biophysics, pharmaceutical sciences Medicine Veterinary medicine Main occupationa Lab technicians Bachelor/Master students PhD candidates Post-doc, senior scientists Faculty teachers, principal investigators, surgeons, physicians Other Having a PhD (Yes) International experience During the studies During PhD During post-doc During employment

n ¼ 510 403 (79%) 314 (61.6%) 34 (6.7%) 257 (50.4%) 126 (24.7%) 93 (18.2%) 166 (32.6%) 260 (51.1%) 51 (10%) 15 (2.9%) 17 (3.3%) 330 (68.5%) 72 (14.9%) 63 (13.1%) 17 (3.6%) 59 (11.7%) 34 (6.7%) 184 (36.4%) 170 (33.7%) 44 (8.7%) 14 (2.8%) 201 (39.6%) 235 (55.6%) 90 (18.8%) 142 (30.8%) 141 (31.8%) 163 (36.3%)

For correspondence analysis, “Other” has been excluded, the groups “Lab technician” and “Bachelor’s/Master’s student” have been gathered together into “Occupation low”, the group “PhD student” became “Occupation medium”, the groups “Post-doc, et al.” and “Faculty teacher et al.” into “Occupation high”

a

demographics of the respondent, the second on the mandatory course, the third on attitudes toward the 3R principles, and the last on public outreach and engagement. Some of the items were taken up in Franco et al. (2018) and Peters et al. (2008). For more details on the survey, see Crettaz von Roten (2018).

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68% had a first degree in biology. Professionally, 34% were a postdoc or scientist with a PhD. Finally, relative to the country where they lived when they were 18 years old, 19% of respondents studied in a different country, 31% earned their PhD in a different country, 32% did a post-doc in a different country, and 36% had a job in a different country.

Scientists’ Attitudes Toward These New Constraints On the one hand, a large majority of respondents were in favour of this mandatory course (93%, Table 4.3). Furthermore, they rated the course positively (91%), the balance between theory and practical work (89%), and the practical training on animals (87%) (Crettaz von Roten 2018). Then, scientists felt well informed about the 3Rs in animal research (42% “very well” and 54% “fairly well”). If 65% of scientists considered that the benefits to humans are too great to abandon animals in medical research (Table 4.4), 63% disagreed with relevant and scientifically sound experiments that do not fully consider the 3Rs. Among the principles, “Refinement” was by far the most supported (82% considered it as a prerequisite for quality, 57% preferred refinement over reduction). Scientists put limited hopes on “Replacement” (62% replacement with computer simulation, but 76% replacement never completely achieved). Potential problems related to the 3Rs principles were mostly rejected (59% disagreed with detrimental to the quality of results, 49% problematic for comparability), but the increasing bureaucracy was accepted (42%, relative majority). An average scale of attitudes toward the 3Rs was built6 and we observed an average of 3.04 (SD ¼ 0.52). The self-reported level of information about the 3Rs principles was not significantly related to the scale of attitudes toward the 3Rs. On the other hand, 55% of the respondents had taken part at least once in a public lecture (Table 4.5), 40% in a public event like open house day, 24% in a public debate, 21% in a talk at school, 7% in a popular article for a newspaper, 7% in an interview with journalists, and 2% participated in a TV or radio show.7 An additive scale of POE activities was built on these items (a higher score indicates a higher level of engagement). The range of the scale varied between 0 and

6 The scale was built on all items except the one with * in Table 4.4, i.e. eight items. These attitudes toward the 3Rs principles were measured on a five-point Likert-scale from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”, but when an item was indicating a negative attitude the item was reversed. Then we calculated the average. Therefore, a higher score indicates a more positive attitude toward the 3Rs. Finally, we defined the threshold of 3 on the scale to discriminate between those who accepted or did not accept the 3Rs principles. 7 The list of activities involved traditional public outreach activities (i.e. one-way, top-down activities to improve public scientific literacy) and only two engagement activities (i.e. public event and public debate, two-way, bottom-up activities in which the public participates).

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Table 4.3 General assessment of the course

Decision of a mandatory course in laboratory animal

The course The balance between theory and practical work The practical training on animals

nc 507

Strongly oppose 1.6%

Tend to oppose 1.6%

Neither 3.4%

Tend to favour 11.6%

Strongly favour 81.9%

Poor

Average

Good

504 506

Very poor 0.4% 0.6%

1% 1%

7.3% 8.7%

41.9% 44.7%

Very good 49.4% 45.1

450

0.2%

1.1%

11.3%

46.7

40.7

nc 503

Strongly disagree (%) 3.8

Tend to disagree (%) 12.1

Neither agree nor disagree (%) 18.9

Tend to agree (%) 48.5

495

19.8

43.2

19.4

13.5

4.0

497

0.4

1.8

15.3

46.1

36.4

503

2.6

13.7

26.8

40

16.9

504

24.8

38.9

20.2

13.7

2.4

503

1.4

10.9

11.7

44.7

31.2

498

27.5

31.9

22.7

13.5

4.4

498

13.1

36.1

29.5

18.1

3.2

502

5.8

18.5

33.9

32.9

9.0

Table 4.4 Attitudes toward the 3Rs principles

The benefits to humans are so great that we have no choice but to use animals in medical research. I have no issues with relevant and scientifically sound experiments, even if the 3Rs are not fully considered. Refinement measures are a prerequisite for the quality of animal research. How animals are treated is more important than how many animals are used.* Using computer simulation could one day accurately represent whole animals. Complete replacement of the use of animals in research and testing will never be achieved. Implementing the 3Rs will be detrimental to the quality of my results. I am reluctant to change the way I work because of the need for comparability with earlier findings. The obligation for the 3Rs implementation increases bureaucracy.

Strongly agree (%) 16.7

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Table 4.5 Frequency of POE activities in the last 12 months

Public lecture to explain your research and its results. Public event (e.g. open house day, science fair, exhibition). Public debate or science cafe related to science. Talk at school, college, or high school. Popular article for a newspaper or non-scholarly magazine. Interview conducted by journalists (e.g. faceto-face, by phone, or by mail/fax/e-mail). Participation in a TV or radio panel discussion or talk show.

nc 497

No (%) 44.9

1 time (%) 18.7

2 to 3 (%) 24.7

4 to 5 (%) 6

More than 5 (%) 5.6

498

59.6

23.3

14.5

1.8

0.8

496 497 499

76.0 79.3 92.8

9.1 8.2 4.4

10.5 6.8 2.2

1.8 2.4 0.2

2.6 3.2 0.4

498

93.2

3.6

2.6

0.2

0.4

498

98.0

1.2

0.6

0

0.2

32: 26% of respondents have not taken part in a POE activity in the last 12 months (mean  SD scale: 3.41  4.04).

Factors Affecting Each Constraint The acceptance of the course showed only one significant difference among subgroups defined by socio-demographic and professional factors (people from Asia were significantly less positive toward the mandatory course, P < 0.001). We found differences between nationalities, disciplines, and linguistic regions on the assessment of the course: people from Asia assessed the course significantly less positively (P < 0.05), as did people having studied biology in their first degree (P < 0.05) and people from the French-speaking region (P < 0.01) (Crettaz von Roten 2018). The scale of attitudes toward the 3Rs was not related to linguistic regions, gender, main occupation, having a PhD, or having an international experience. However, the scale was related to nationality (respondents with an Asian nationality were less positive, P < 0.05), discipline of first degree (respondents having a first degree in medicine were the least positive, whereas respondents with a first degree in veterinary medicine were the most positive, P < 0.05). The level of POE activities was not related to linguistic region, gender, age group, or discipline of first degree. However, it was linked to main occupation (principal investigators, then PhD students and Post-doc were the most engaged, P < 0.001), an illustration of Merton’s Matthew effect (see Chap. 2). Finally, there were a significant relation with nationality (Swiss respondents were the least engaged, those from Asia were the most, P < 0.01), internationalization (respondents with an international experience were the most engaged, P < 0.001), and having a PhD (respondents with a PhD were the most engaged, P < 0.01).

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Fig. 4.1 Distribution of the number of constraints accepted

Relationship Between Constraints We found a significant linear relationship between the acceptance of the course and the scale of attitudes toward the 3Rs (r ¼ 0.22, P < 0.001: the more a scientist was in favour of the course, the more he/she had positive attitudes toward the 3Rs, and vice versa). However, we found no linear relationship between the acceptance of the course and the level of POE activities, nor between the scale of attitudes toward the 3Rs and the level of POE activities. For each constraint, we built a dichotomous variable, indicating whether the constraint was accepted or not, and then we calculated for each respondent the number of constraints accepted (Fig. 4.1). Among respondents, the distribution is skewed toward the highest levels of acceptance: 43% agreed with two of them and 43% with three of them.8 A correspondence analysis9 was undertaken to visualize the number of constraints accepted by socio-demographic and professional groups. According to the 8

This analysis was made among those having no missing values on any of the three dichotomous variables, nc ¼ 466. 9 Correspondence analysis is an exploratory method used to analyse categorical data for which no specific hypotheses have been formulated. The method decomposes its variance (called inertia) into a low-dimensional representation that can be interpreted. The analysis was based on the following categorical variables: number of constraints accepted (0 and 1 constraint gathered together), linguistic region, gender, age group, nationality, discipline of first degree, main occupation, PhD, international experience.

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Fig. 4.2 Two-dimensional correspondence analysis map

literature (Greenacre 2010), the resulting two-dimensional plot (Fig. 4.2) points to an underlying structure. The first axis (78.9% of inertia) discriminates between high and low acceptance of constraints, but also between low occupation status and Asian nationality on one side, and European nationality and international experience on the other side. The second axis (21.1% of inertia) highlights the distinction between the disciplines of first degree: medicine and veterinary medicine opposed to chemistry, physics, and pharmaceutical sciences. This analysis allows also us to interpret subsets of categories (rather individual categories). Looking at Fig. 4.2, the following subsets emerged: • Scientists with European or other nationalities,10 with a medium occupation status, from the French-speaking region, with international experience, aged from 26–32 years, shared the same characteristics of accepting the three constraints more often. 10 The categories of nationalities North America and rest of the world were gathered together into “Other nationalities”.

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• Male scientists, scientists with a Swiss nationality, with no international experience, from the German-speaking region, at both ends of the age spectrum (either less than 25 years old or more than 32 years old) shared the same characteristics of accepting two constraints more often. • Scientists with a low occupation status, with an Asian nationality shared the same characteristics of accepting zero or one constraint more often.

Conclusion This study started with a socio-historical analysis of the animal experimentation issue in Switzerland. From the diversity of events highlighted both on the science side and the society side through the late 1950s to the present, three significant features emerged: accreditation through LAS courses, diffusion of the 3Rs principles, and scientists’ engagement toward society. These can be seen as new constraints that scientists must cope with. This step has confirmed the relevance of the notion of co-evolution between LAS science and society (Nowotny et al. 2001). These three constraints have been analysed one by one in the past, but the survey reported in the second step of this chapter was the first effort to handle them simultaneously. Among the three features, the LAS course is the most accepted by respondents (93%). Not surprisingly, there is more acceptance of mandatory than discretionary constraints (POE activities are undertaken by 74% of the respondents and 60% of the respondents have a positive attitude toward the 3Rs). However, the level of acceptance of one constraint is not linearly related with the level of acceptance of any other constraint, except between the LAS course and the attitudes toward the 3Rs (significant positive relationship). This result may be seen as an indicator of absence of acquiescence bias and extremity bias. As 43% of the respondents agree with two constraints and 43% with all of the constraints, it implies that scientists cope positively with the evolution of LAS science. The remaining 14% should not be forgotten, however, and one should try to understand them. A multiple correspondence analysis was undertaken to characterize respondents who accept these new constraints only a little, moderately, or fully. The fact that scientists with a low occupation status adhere less may indicate a degradation of working conditions for this specific group and thereby a resistance to changes. Although this was not the main aim of the study, the results gave us a glimpse into the professional paths that scientists working in this field can experience. The careers may show frequent turnovers (observed via the high share of outdated e-mails 2–6 years after the LAS courses), involve frequent international experience (66% in 2010, 69% in 2012, 47% in 2014, and 46% in 2016), and involve periods of unemployment after the participants receive their PhDs (4% in cohort 2010, and 2% in 2012). Nationality is the most important explanatory factor, explaining the variation of acceptance of each constraint. The discipline of first degree is relevant for the

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attitudes toward the course and the 3Rs principles. However, the discipline of first degree engenders no significant differences in the level of POE activities. This absence of difference may be explained by the fact of doing the same work, namely AE, but also by the blurring of differences among disciplines, since POE is now part of the contemporary scientific landscape. Nevertheless, other factors play a significant role in the level of POE activities: occupation, PhD, and international experience. These factors are consistent with the literature of the field (Crettaz von Roten 2018). As with any study exploring new themes, it is difficult to compare its results with those reported in the literature. Scientists from our study seem to have attitudes toward the 3Rs principles broadly comparable to those of British scientists (NC3Rs 2008): 3Rs not detrimental to the quality (UK 82%, CH 59%); reluctant comparability (UK 44% disagree, CH 49%), replacement with computer simulation never completely accurate (UK 59%; CH 64%), complete replacement never achieved (UK 73%, CH 76%). Along similar lines to the Portuguese, Swiss scientists favour refinement over reduction (Franco and Olsson 2014). Finally, the fact that 26% of respondents have not taken part in a POE activity in the last 12 months indicates lower engagement than in a previous Swiss study: in 2008 only 12% of scientists from the University of Lausanne did not participate in at least one POE activity (Crettaz von Roten 2011). This figure illustrates the difficulty of engaging in the field of animal experimentation, as stated by Rothwell in 2006. The influence of occupation was similar to the previous study, but we did not find a significant effect of gender and age on the level of POE activities. Our study has some limitations, such as its cohorts-based nature. By wanting to study the three constraints simultaneously, we had to limit ourselves to cohorts of scientists who had recently finished the course (i.e. having done the course at most 6 years ago). This precludes a generalization of the conclusion to scientists at all stages of their career. As in the case of all surveys, the results depend greatly on the questions (range of issues covered and formulation of the questions) and on the moment when the survey is administered. In addition, the value of such an investigation resides in the possibility of replicating it in a timely way so as to assure a follow-up to the resulting evolution. This study needs to be continued by adding a wider range of questions related to the practical work of scientists and to the internal dynamics of the working places, either academic or private, and by following scientists throughout their professional career.

References Birke, L., Arluke, A., & Michael, M. (2007). The sacrifice: How scientific experiments transform animals and people. West-Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Blanchard, P., Crettaz von Roten, F., Felli, R., Fillieule, O., Leresche, J. P. (2006). Le vote du 27 novembre 2005 sur l’animalerie de Dorigny. Les significations du vote: Analyses sociales, politiques et territoriales [The vote of November 27, 2005 on the Dorigny animal laboratory. The meanings of the vote: social, political and territorial analyzes]. OSPS, Université de Lausanne.

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Carlsson, H. E., Hagelin, J., Höglund, U., & Hau, J. (2001). Undergraduate and postgraduate students’s responses to mandatory courses (FELASA category C) in laboratory animal science. Laboratory Animals, 35(2), 188–193. Cressey, D. (2011). Nearly one-quarter of biologists say they have been affected by animal activists. A nature poll exposes the battle scars. Nature, 470, 452–453. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2008). Mapping perception of animal experimentation: Trend and explanatory factors. Social Science Quarterly, 89(2), 537–549. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2009). European attitudes towards animal research: Overview and consequences for science. Science, Technology and Society, 14(2), 349–364. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2011). Gender differences in scientists’ public outreach and engagement activities. Science Communication, 33(1), 52–75. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2013). Public perceptions of animal experimentation across Europe. Public Understanding of Science, 22(6), 691–703. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2018). Laboratory animal science course in Switzerland: Participants’ points of view and implications for organizers. Laboratory Animals, 52(1), 69–78. Crettaz von Roten, F. (2019). Expérimentation animale: Analyse de la controverse de 1950 à nos jours en Suisse [Animal experimentation: Analysis of the controversy from 1950 to the present in Switzerland]. Neuchâtel: Editions Livreo Alphil. European Commission. (2010). National competent authorities for the implementation of Directive 2010/63/EU. Working document on Project evaluation and retrospective assessment. Assessed January 30, 2018, from http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/pdf/Endorsed_ PE-RA.pdf European Commission. (2013). Seventh report on the statistics on the number of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes in the Member states of the European Union. Assessed January 30, 2018, from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri¼COM:2013:0859:FIN:EN:PDF Fenwick, N., Danielson, P., & Griffin, G. (2011). Survey of Canadian animal-based researchers’ views on the three Rs: Replacement, reduction and refinement. PLoS One, 6, e22478. Franco, N. H., & Olsson, I. A. S. (2014). Scientists and the 3Rs: Attitudes to animal use in biomedical research and the effect of mandatory training in laboratory animal science. Laboratory Animals, 48(1), 50–60. Franco, N. H., Sandoe, P., & Olsson, I. A. S. (2018). Researcher’ attitudes to the 3Rs—An upturned hierarchy? PLoS One, 13(8), e0200895. Giugni, M., & Passy, F. (1997). Histoires de contestation. Les nouveaux mouvements sociaux et leur institutionnalisation en Suisse, 1975–1995 [History of protest. New social movements and their institutionalization in Switzerland, 1975–1995]. Paris: L’Harmattan. Greenacre, M. (2010). Correspondence analysis. WIREs Computational Statistics, 2, 613–619. Hagelin, J., Carlsson, H. E., & Hau, J. (2003). An overview of surveys on how people view animal experimentation: Some factors that may influence the outcome. Public Understanding of Science, 12(1), 67–81. Haraway, D. (1989). Primate visions. London: Routledge. Knight, S., Vrij, A., Bard, K., & Doug, B. (2009). Science versus human welfare? Understanding attitudes toward animal use. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 463–483. NC3Rs. (2008). Views on the 3Rs – Survey Report 2008. National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. www.nc3rs.org.uk/opinion survey. Accessed 30 January 2018. Nelkin, D. (1995). Science controversies: The dynamics of public dispute in the United States. In S. Jasanoff, G. R. Markle, J. C. Petersen, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 444–456). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science. Knowledge in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity.

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OVF. (2016). Nombre d’animaux de 1983 à 2015 [Number of animals from 1983 to 2015]. Confédération suisse. Accessed November 2, 2016, from http://tv-statistik.ch/fr/statistiquesdynamiques/index.php Paul, E. S. (1995). Us and them: Scientists’ and animal rights campaigners’ views of the animal experimentation debate. Society and Animals, 3(1), 1–21. Peters, H. P., Brossard, D., de Cheveigné, S., Dunwoody, S., Kallfass, M., Miller, S., et al. (2008). Interactions with the mass media. Science, 321, 204–205. Pifer, L., Shimizu, K., & Pifer, R. (1994). Public attitudes toward animal research: Some international comparisons. Society and Animals, 2(2), 95–113. Pollo, S., Vitale, A., Gayle, V., & Zucco, F. (2004). The ‘3Rs’ model and the concept of alternatives in animal research: A questionnaire survey. Lab Animal, 33(7), 47–53. Regan, T. (1980). Animal rights, human wrong. Environmental Ethics, 2(2), 99–120. Rothwell, N. (2006). Public engagement on the use of animals in biomedical research. In J. Turney (Ed.), Engaging science: Thoughts, deeds, analysis and action (pp. 38–43). London: Wellcome Trust Publication. Royal Society. (2006). Science communication: Survey of factors affecting science communication by scientists and engineers (Final report). London: Author. Russell, W. M., & Burch, R. L. (1959). The principles of humane experimental technique. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. Ryder, R. (1971). Experiments on animals. In S. Godlovitch, R. Godlovitch, & J. Harris (Eds.), Animals, men and morals (pp. 41–71). New York: Grove Press. Schatz, G. (1998). The Swiss vote on gene technology. Science, 281, 1810–1811. Schuppli, C., & Weary, D. (2010). Attitudes towards the use of genetically modified animals in research. Public Understanding of Science, 19(6), 686–697. Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation: A new ethics for our treatment of animals. New York: Random House. U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2015). Annual report of animal usage by fiscal year. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. van Luijk, J., Cuijpers, Y., van der Vaart, L., Leenaart, M., & Ritskes-Hoitinga, M. (2011). Assessing the search for information on three Rs methods, and their subsequent implementation: a national survey among scientists in the Netherlands. ATLA, 39, 429–447. Weihe, W. E. (1988). The implications of the animal protection law for research in Switzerland. International Journal of Psychology, 23, 383–398.

Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten PhD in mathematics from the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, is assistant professor (MER) and director of the Observatoire Science, Politique et Société at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research offers a symmetrical view of the relations between science and society: public perceptions of science and technology (regarding animal research in particular) and scientists’ engagement toward society (especially with a gender perspective). She has been involved in the elaboration and analyses of the Science and Technology Eurobarometers and in many European and Swiss projects. She has authored and co-authored several books and book chapters in these fields, as well as numerous articles in journals such as “Science Communication” and “Public Understanding of Science”.

Chapter 5

Science-Society Relations in a Context of Technological Change: How Scientists Working on Renewable Energy Technologies Perceive Their Role in the Energy Transition Luís Junqueira

Introduction Renewable energies development has become a concern in European policy due to the need to combat climate change, to reduce energy dependency, and to address the issue of depletion of fossil fuels. Transitioning to a post-carbon society is a highly complex process due to the way energy and its supply permeate all of human activity, from the privacy of domestic everyday life to shared practices in the workplace, and including features as central to contemporary life as mobility, security, and communication. In this sense, the promotion of the energy transition is necessarily based on a pluralistic intervention that includes both developing new technological solutions and fostering profound changes in the organization of economic activity and socio-cultural practices. European countries have promoted an effort to implement renewable energy, with diverse solutions and outcomes. In Portugal this effort resulted in considerable investment in the deployment of wind energy, and on a much smaller scale in a reinforcement of solar photovoltaic production. But the deployment of renewable energies also brought public controversy around energy technologies, the environment, and the energy transition, making it important to understand public opinion and the diversity of stakeholders involved in the planning and deployment processes of these infrastructures. Energy policy has not been restricted to promoting the implementation of existing technologies, but has also included an effort for technological development. The policy is predicated on the intention to follow a path toward technological leadership in the field of energy, ensuring the deployment of technology developed in Europe or the Portuguese territory as a strategy to make the energy transition an important

L. Junqueira (*) Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_5

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economic sector.1 The Portuguese government has to a large extent followed the political impetus for the implementation of technology, with very visible results, thrusting Portugal into a leading position in the share of renewable sources in its national energy system and also taking measures to foster research with the goal of keeping Portugal “at the technological frontier of renewable energies” and “as a leading country in renewable energies in the international context by supporting research and development of technologies” (National Energy Strategy, Resolução do Conselho de Ministros n. 29/2010, 15th of April 2010). Researchers are an important stakeholder. They are responsible for the development of new technological solutions, are called upon to present their opinion as experts in policy making, and play a role as educators and disseminators of technical and scientific knowledge. This work seeks to reveal how scientists working in renewable energies perceive the role of science and of their field in the contemporary process of energy transition by drawing on semi-directed interviews with Portuguese researchers working on a range of renewable energy technologies. The chapter is set out as follows. The first section provides a literature review of research on contemporary knowledge production and perceptions on renewable energies, while the second outlines the methods used for data collection. The next sections present the findings of the research on the perceptions of the role of renewable energy technologies in the energy transition, on perceptions on the social responsibility of science, and on public outreach activities. The last section summarizes the findings and concludes. The chapter is based on a doctoral research supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through an individual doctoral grant (SFRH/BD/90561/2012) funded by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology.

Literature Review The discussion on renewable energies has focused on a number of topics: firstly, environmental issues, both in the green and sustainable nature of renewable energies (Delicado et al. 2014; Ek 2005), and in local environmental impacts (Groothuis et al. 2008; Pasqualetti 2000; Warren et al. 2005); secondly, the issue of public participation in localization decision processes (Miller et al. 2013; Moore 2013) and environmental justice in the distribution of impacts and benefits (Mulvaney 2013); and lastly, the importance of the cost of energy for the acceptance of renewable energies (Hobman and Frederiks 2014; Ribeiro et al. 2014; Zografakis et al. 2010). The literature also shows a critical attitude toward a technocratic vision of the energy transition process in which the burden of adaptation to change is placed on the lay public (Aitken 2009). It states the necessity of encompassing the complexity of public perceptions and also extending the analysis to other actors, promoters,

1

European Commission (1996, 2006, 2015), Portuguese Council of Ministers (2007, 2010).

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politicians, manufacturers, and the contexts in which they act, from the local to the national level and imbedded in diverse institutional contexts and social networks (Brondi et al. 2014; Devine-wright 2011; Owens 2002; Taylor 2008). In this sense it is important to approach energy technologies as part of a sociotechnical system, in which the technological and social dimensions appear intertwined in complex ways (Sovacool 2009). At the same time, there is a new model of knowledge production that has been emerging since the late twentieth century, based on an increased engagement of traditional scientific institutions with the wider society and greater scrutiny over the outputs of scientific activity, due to an increased perception of the impacts of scientific activity on society (see also Chap. 2). These impacts include risks associated with technological development (Beck 1992) and the impact of technology on improving living conditions, for example in health, communications, and economic development (Castells 2011). In this sense, a set of expectations has emerged about the role of science that has been manifest in the organization of a model of science in which the definition of research objectives is shared with institutions outside the scientific sphere (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Nowotny et al. 2001). Much of the empirical work in this area has focused primarily on the institutional dimension (Calvert 2004; Leydesdorff 2000; Smith et al. 2011), but there is some literature covering a diversity of national and disciplinary contexts that captures some important aspects of how these changes might be translated by researchers. First, while there’s a shift towards openness to external influence through partnerships with industry and adoption of societal goals, it seems less extensive or disruptive of established scientific practices than it might be entailed by theoretical or institutional depictions (Gulbrandsen and Langfeldt 2004; Goldstein 2008; Ranga et al. 2003). Second, that the representations associated with classical science and the new production of knowledge can often coexist. Researchers are often selective, adopting some of the dimensions of the new modes of knowledge production while maintaining, or even reinforcing some of the dimensions of classical science (Fernández de Lucio et al. 2012; Edqvist 2003; Albert 2003; Bernasconi 2005). Lastly, it depicts a wide diversity of how these new modes of production are adopted across different national scientific systems and disciplines, that does not fit within the theoretical account of the new systems of knowledge production (Albert et al. 2012; Bernasconi 2005; Goldstein 2008; Rafols et al. 2012; Shinn 2002; Völker, see Chap. 3).

Methodology The data for this paper were collected through semi-structured interviews with a group of 12 researchers working in renewable energies. The interview script focused on questions pertaining to the state of renewable energies as technology, the role of science in society, university-industry collaboration, and public engagement practices. The interviewees were selected in two phases. A group of five interviewees was selected based on the identification of research groups in renewable energies in the

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Table 5.1 Profile of researchers interviewed Gender Male Female

11 1

Institution National Energy and Geology Laboratory University of Aveiro University of Lisbon University of Porto University of Évora New University of Lisbon

2 2 3 2 1 2

Scientific area Electric Engineering Mechanical Engineering Physics Industrial Engineering

5 3 3 1

R&D units of some Portuguese universities. A second group of seven interviewees was selected from a co-authorship network based on bibliometric data (Table 5.1).2 For this phase researchers were chosen from the main groups of co-authors identified in the network and who were not included in the first group of interviews. The selection sought to consider not only the diversity of technologies associated with renewable energies—wind, solar, waves—but also the area of energy systems, a research area dedicated to issues of management of energy systems such as the joining of energies power grids. The interviews were transcribed and later codified using the qualitative analysis software MAXQDA. The interview quotes used in the text to illustrate the researchers’ positions were translated from Portuguese by the author.

Research Findings Representations on Renewable Energies Representations on renewable energy often revolve around issues related to the environment and sustainability. It is common for promoters of renewable energies to invoke their importance in replacing fossil fuel consumption and the subsequent impact on climate change (Mulvaney et al. 2013; Petrova 2016; Slattery et al. 2011). However, only one of the researchers interviewed identifies with this perspective, and instead recognizes the main motivation for renewable energies as finding solutions to an environmental problem: I worked at the Department of Atmospheric Physics. And every Thursday had a seminar that was [about] the destruction of the planet. And after four years, when I finished my doctorate, I decided that the diagnosis was already well done and that I had to worry about the solution. (Interview 3)

Overall, the environmental concern is unusual among the interviewees, who in some cases refer to the importance of separating energy issues from environmental issues:

2

For more information about the co-authorship network see Junqueira (2018).

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We had a change that took place within the same political cycle, the change from minister that failed or did not want or could not. In practical terms he did not give an effective speech about energy and did much more about the environment. He spoke more about environment and then came as emblematic the issue of plastic bags, green taxation, but never touched the energy issues. (Interview 7)

Another concern expressed was to separate energy attitudes directed toward environmental issues from energy attitudes oriented toward more comprehensive development objectives: Sometimes the terms are repeated so much that they become confusing. And I think one of the things that is confusing is the difference between sustainable and green. Green is the question of environmental performance, sustainability includes other components [. . .]. Nothing stops us from considering nuclear energy as green, right? Because from the point of view of greenhouse gas emissions and looking only at the phenomenon of energy production, it is an energy that may be green, but maybe not sustainable, because it may have serious social impacts. (Interview 5)

Renewable energies are then valued in other ways, more related to their economic importance or impact. Another frequently mentioned aspect is the country’s energy dependence and the potential of renewable energies as endogenous sources of energy: Renewable energies are certainly important to the country because we do not have (at least that we know of) oil, and as a political option (it does not matter if right or wrong), we do not have nuclear energy. The only energy sources that do not depend on the outside are effectively renewable energies, hydro, wind, and photovoltaic. This is how we can try to be self-sufficient in some way. So, I think renewable energy, in particular photovoltaics, are an area we should bet on in the long term. (Interview 9)

The arguments about dependency branch out to questions of technological development and technological dependence. For the interviewees, renewable energies offer possibilities for applying technology developed in Portugal that other alternatives to fossil fuels do not offer: I hope the new government makes better choices in the energy sector. And for me, at my age, it is not for partisan sympathy or antipathy, it is for the good of Portugal. Whoever the minister is, I want him to be lucid. There are options that are really ideological [. . .] But here we are discussing something else that can be seen much more prominently. And it’s an option let’s call it ideological to want to favour nuclear power, obviously. Because it would put us in terrible international technological dependence. (Interview 7)

Associated with the question of energy independence are other concerns related to the country’s economic stability due to the volatility of the price of fossil fuels: The main advantages, the advantages that I think are truly important and strategic: more important than getting rid of this energy dependence from the outside or so important is also something that in terms of energy management is called security of supply. [. . .] Therefore, on the one hand we have increased security of supply on a yearly basis, and that means that if we reduce our gas imports last year and we will decrease this year, and we will decrease for the next year and it is fixed and firm for the economy. On the other hand, when the oil fires and behind the oil fires the gas, and probably the coal goes behind, we know that at the moment 50% of our electric energy has costs that are controllable. This is very relaxing in times of economic crisis that we are going through now. (Interview 12)

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On the other hand, there is insecurity regarding supply lines that go through countries facing political instability: In strategic terms this is a very important situation. Because we see all the turmoil in the countries of the Middle East, you see in Nigeria, you see in Algeria, which is a gagged country—you never know when the extremists will take over the country. It is also seen that Russia is not really a very stable country. Therefore, for natural gas supply we are dependent on countries like these. [. . .] If we have nothing installed in the country we are at the mercy of these international convulsions. From this point of view, I think renewable energy should be a strategic area for the country. (Interview 9)

The interviewees also revealed a set of representations about renewable energies as technology that are less related to the social objective and more to the particularities as a technological object and its implementation. First, researchers often characterize the energy transition to renewable sources as an inevitable development in contemporary societies as justification for investment in the area: Because renewable energies are inevitable in the future. It is clear that the fossil resources that we depend on today are predominantly finite, so they may end sooner or later, but they will end. [. . .] And then, with this non-policy we have today, we are wasting this immense capital and we are putting off something that we will have to do in the future, by the way. So it’s a waste, a huge waste. Because precisely what we need today, we need investment, economic development, growth, etc. (Interview 4)

Renewable energies are often referred to as part of a wider picture of changes in society. This systemic representation of energy appears in the researchers’ discourse in various ways. Many of the interviewees highlight the centrality of energy technologies in many sectors of contemporary societies. One of the interviewees highlights the impact of energy systems on our daily lives by shaping something as ubiquitous as building practices. Energy consumption in buildings is a fairly recent concern in Portugal—the energy certification system for buildings, which demands an energy performance certificate from all buildings placed on the market, was introduced in Portugal in 2006—but is referred to by some of the interviewees: My roots with photovoltaic go back to 1975 when we actually developed a technology, or we were pioneers in Portugal in doing anything that had any impact on our daily lives and at the time the mission was to find alternative forms of energy. But we made a serious mistake, which continues to be committed today. Our society was a society that was planned to consume energy, do you notice it? [. . .] Because we made all these buildings in ways that consume a lot of energy. Nowadays, without this energy we have nothing. (Interview 10)

Consequently, the interviewees see the implementation of renewable energy technologies as having the potential to shape practices. Energy consumption practices have been developed on the basis of “on demand” energy production, but renewable energies such as wind or solar have production cycles in which the energy intensity produced varies significantly throughout the day. Some of the interviewees mentioned the need to adapt consumption practices to an energy system that is increasingly dependent on renewables: I can have Net Zero Energy Buildings, that both consume and produce, but that one ends up having consumption in the solar zone and does not interact with the network while the other ends up interacting with the network [. . .]. Obviously, that’s not the fridge which is a

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non-controllable, but the dishwasher, let’s say that this is already controllable. And if we consider not only the building, but a community of buildings, for example, a neighbourhood, the amount of load that can be shifted into the bell from the statistical point of view grows immensely. This is to show that the history of Smart Cities may have some interest if such techniques are applied. That is the way of the future. (Interview 6)

Another topic that stands out in the interviews is of the future impact of renewable energy technologies, but in particular of solar micro production. Some frame the transition to solar microgeneration as an inevitable transformation in energy systems due to the reduction and stability of costs that put it ever closer to parity with other energy sources for the end consumer: I do not see any democratic country that can handle the expansion of photovoltaic from the moment every citizen realizes that he has safer, cheaper energy in his house if he installs a [photovoltaic] panel. I get a panel and for 10 years it is guaranteed that the only cost I have is to pay for the panel. If I have to buy from the network, I don’t know if the prices will decrease or increase in the future. And so, from the moment the costs are equivalent, everyone will want to have their little panel and in a democratic country how can you prevent it? (Interview 7)

But some of the interviewees also refer to the social processes associated with these transformations. Microgeneration has a transformative potential to our paradigm of energy consumption—modern electrical power systems, developed over the first decades of the twentieth century rely primarily on centralized production combined with an electric grid to distribute the energy to the final consumer. Much of the development of renewables over the last few decades have followed this same paradigm, with grid-connected wind farms and solar power plants making up for an increasing share of some countries’ electric production. However, some of the interviewees see that the introduction of affordable microgeneration has the potential to change the fundamental relationship between consumer and energy production. Micro generation has the peculiarity of being distributed energy, of being closer to the consumer. So, the user can look at some feedback and see how much they’re producing and consuming, and therefore know where they can save a little more energy. That is a way to stimulate the rationalization of energy consumption. Most of the renewable energy installations are not different from any other power plant—they have to carry energy at long distances and are impersonal, usually belonging to a company. Microgeneration belongs to the people, and therefore, people take care of them as they would a car, so I think microgeneration is very interesting from a social perspective. (Interview 12)

Social Responsibility of Science The question of the social responsibility of science is linked to the growing recognition of the impact of science on contemporary societies. The second half of the twentieth century is profoundly marked by a societal awareness of the destructive potential of technology, beginning with movements against post-war nuclear proliferation and later concerns about the impact of technology on the planet, raised by the

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environmental movement from the 1970s on (Beck 1992). In this new context of scientific production, there is no such clear separation between scientific work and its impacts on society (Gibbons et al. 2008). Renewable energies are usually presented as a technological solution to solve the problems of energy supply created by the technological development itself, and although the literature reports a set of public controversies around renewable energies (Delicado et al. 2015; Devine-Wright 2005; Wolsink 2007), these technologies are seen as relatively innocuous (Delicado et al. 2015). Here, therefore, the question of the responsibility of science refers not so much to the potential negative consequences but above all to the perceptions of science in the context of the knowledge society in which scientific knowledge and innovation are framed as a fundamental element of economic competitiveness in a globalized economy. The researchers’ discourse on the responsibility of the scientific system is divided, on the one hand, into a discourse on what the responsibilities of science as an institution are (and directly linked to that of the mission of the institutions where science is made, the university) and on the other, the discourse on the individual responsibility of the researchers themselves. This idea is shared by many of the respondents, who designate the production of socially useful knowledge as a moral obligation of science as an institution supported directly by public funding: In these areas, in engineering, we have a moral obligation, because it is the state paying for us, our lives and our wages. We have a moral obligation, a civil responsibility to turn knowledge into utility. (Interview 7) [. . .] and in the end when a person does research, it’s for what? This is something that afflicts me. It’s a matter of respect, I also like to be respected. “I do research because it gives me joy” is an expression I do not like. Because people forget that there are many millions of people who are paying for my salary and who enjoy nothing. (Interview 9)

Also mentioned is the need for science to adapt to a society that is more informed and therefore more demanding toward the role of science: And these quantum leaps of great amplitude for the comfort of the people are more and more judged by the users. That has not happened until now. Until now people were ignorant, sorry for the term, and bought everything that was sold to them. As the population grows in culture, and becomes more and more accustomed to certain comforts, they do not want to give up on these comforts. [. . .] And this is a normal dynamic of societies. Therefore, people are ever more demanding with what they want and with the comforts that technology can bring. (Interview 9)

More generally, there is an explicit criticism of the classic conception of scientific autonomy by these researchers, in which the direction of science is guided mainly by dynamics internal to the scientific community—ultimately the relevant problems are defined by those who evaluate the work and make decisions about its funding or publication, and which are generally other researchers. For interviewees, scientific activity is conceived as serving the interests of society, as in the words of this researcher who identifies a science not engaged in the world that surrounds it as inadequate to the contemporary world:

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What matters is that we do things that give comfort and more and more people have to understand that’s part of research in itself, [. . .] obviously we still need a solid scientific base, that is fundamental, and nobody does anything without it. But more and more there is a need for a leitmotiv, to have a strategy, to have a vision of the future and not just do the things we want. That was interesting in the eighteenth century, in the nineteenth century, until the mid-twentieth century, but nowadays that is no longer the paradigm. (Interview 10)

The classic model of organization of science is based on a broad-spectrum distribution of funding by the different disciplinary areas, and the direction of research is largely given to the priorities of each scientific area. By contrast, the literature (Bellotti 2012; Hessels and van Lente 2008; Schall 2013) points to the emergence of a strategic-type organization, in which funding is allocated according to specific objectives that meet particular societal needs. The strategy maintained by the Portuguese government has been to keep a broad distribution of funding across scientific areas, and the growth in the volume of funding for research projects and fellowships over the last few years has, to a large extent, maintained its disciplinary distribution. The government has maintained some sporadic instances of programmatic funding, such as the Associated Laboratories, which were created to maintain research lines considered to be of public interest, and more recently, the cooperation programmes with American universities (MIT Portugal, CMU Portugal) that focus on training and research in specific subject areas. The Portuguese scientific system also maintains a group of State Laboratories, many of them under the joint supervision of the Ministry of Science and other ministries, that aim to produce research in areas of national interest and provide technical services to society like accreditation or advisory services. This system of state labs includes the Institute of Energy and Geology, with competence in matters of energy and with a strong focus on renewable energy. The idea of strategic funding is therefore not entirely new in the national scientific system. Strategic funding has also been present in the Portuguese scientific system through the funding of the European science framework programmes, which are largely organized by strategic objectives, such as in the current Horizon 2020 programme, in which research funding is structured around six “societal challenges”, including “safe, clean, and efficient energy”. The idea of strategic funding of science is often referred to by the interviewees. On the one hand, some take its absence in Portuguese policy as a chronic problem of the national research system: One of the problems of scientific research, from my point of view, [. . .] is that nothing of substance is done in terms of planning. Are there no strategic lines defined such as, for renewable energies for the country? If so, let’s keep it as a strategic line not only while this or that particular government is in power. That’s what it means to be a strategic line. (Interview 9)

Many of the respondents are favourable to the introduction of these elements in science funding decisions, with the objective of fostering production of research outputs aimed at societal impact: And hence on this issue of research, not only of applied research. Even of the fundamental, more theoretical research. There is a concern [for social impact] in the design of the project.

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L. Junqueira If you look at a proposal or a draft for a research project, there are requirements related to costs and benefits and outputs. (Interview 5)

In the case of countries with a chronic dependence on low-density economic sectors, science and technology can be framed as a strategy for convergence with other Western countries, especially in the European context (Gulbrandsen and Langfeldt 2004). This researcher highlights the role of research in the economic development of a country that for all purposes has limited resources: What do we need today? We need investment, development of the economy, growth, etc. We should be encouraging this, having the good sense, for almost the first time in our history to choose some areas to focus on, as we have few resources. The development of the economy can happen with a focus on some sectors, which we would choose as strategic, and energy is precisely one of them, renewable energies. (Interview 4)

This discourse is linked to the path of renewable energies in Portugal and Europe over the last two decades. The transition to renewable energy sources has become a clear priority at the political and societal levels, with a strong presence in the media (Delicado et al. 2015). Some of the respondents say they are invested in the idea of working in an area of research that is the target of attention by society at large: Feeling you are working in what is a national strategic area, in fact, it’s very positive. From the point of view of the students, we get more motivated and better students, too, because they think that they are part of a national strategy, something that is targeted toward the future. (Interview 3) I first decided that I wanted to change my area of research. I wanted to move to something that was more connected with society, where it was easier to see the connection to day-to-day life. [. . .] And renewable energies attracted me for several reasons. One is that the theme of energy, especially at that time in 2007, was very much in vogue. There was a lot of impact on renewable energy implementation, there were several planned investments and there were several plans to improve the sustainability of different regions. (Interview 8)

In sum, these researchers largely reject the classic conception of academic work guided by autonomous objectives of the societies in which it is inserted. The ability to reciprocate the investment in science through the production of socially useful knowledge is seen as a moral imperative of the scientific community.

Public Engagement Engagement with non-specialist publics is another aspect of scientific activity that has a potential to play an important role in the energy transition due to the sociotechnical controversies that arise with the change to renewable sources of energies, most notably, the siting of such facilities in environmentally or socially vulnerable locations (Delicado et al. 2014; Devine-wright 2009, 2011; Walker and Cass 2007). The Portuguese government, through the Ciência Viva Agency, the main promoter of scientific outreach activities in the country, has organized some activities focused on renewable energy such as a national competition for renewable

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powered devices aimed at secondary school children. Within the framework of the above-mentioned MIT Portugal Program, the Ciência Viva Agency promoted the MIT Goes to School activity (2006–2011), with sustainable energies being one of the three central themes for the presentations. This contact with a non-specialist audience is something that researchers generally value as part of the university’s mission: We also do seminars for the wider public, but we have to dose our effort. Preparing presentations for those seminars can be time consuming and that is not our true mission, but it is also part of our mission and so whenever we can, we do it. (Interview 12) This is a highly relevant issue. We think scientific culture is needed and communicating research and the impact it can have on our lives is very important. And to share this information it is necessary to know how to educate people. And to educate someone I have to communicate in the language they know, and the language they know is their native language. (Interview 10)

But the interviewees reveal a diversity in their level of involvement in this area. In some cases the dissemination activities are a recurring practice that the researcher maintains from an early stage in her/his career: No, it started when I was a fellow, in 1995, I had to go to Coimbra because they had summer internships there. And it was foreigners who were here doing an internship in renewable, in the summer, in the part of the photovoltaic. I went to Coimbra one morning. And I and others have done this repeatedly, where it is necessary, where we are called. (Interview 11)

Others mention a general interest in dissemination activities, but do so as part of specific events: I have some. I can say that [name of company] organized a huge event on energy efficiency. It was 3 or 4 days. One day was dedicated to teaching and university teaching. I actually collaborated with them in the organization of the event. I’ve also been involved in some Ciência Viva things. I’m not one of the most active, but whenever I can I’ll do some things. (Interview 6)

At the other end of the spectrum, some of the researchers see themselves as not being fit for this type of activity: I do not have the profile of a person to be making huge publicity, for a huge audience. And be one of those people who speaks with all the comfort and can captivate an audience. And have the gift of being able to explain things in the simplest way and really can do it. [. . .] There is sometimes an opportunity for small things. The only word of mouth that I can relate to is things at the level of summer schools and things like that, where high school students come here and organize activities. A person is having some participation there, but not much more than that. (Interview 9)

At the level of contact motivations with the general public, many of the researchers report a general interest in informing non-specialist audiences: A little while ago, I was working on space physics, before that I worked on elementary particles and at work with elementary particles I did not talk about work, of course. When I worked in space physics, I lied to people and said I was an astronaut, so I could talk to people. With Renewables everyone pulls the conversation to renewables, in fact there is a great desire to learn and it is an area that is quite confusing, not transparent and with a lot of entropy created. It is no longer simple, but in the media they complicate with different schedules and so I feel that there is a need for it and so I try to meet that need. (Interview 3)

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However, it is necessary to take into account the social prominence of renewable energies, which leads to a certain overlap between what is strictly scientific dissemination and what is more socially oriented activities, like environmental education. The scientific dissemination is part of a project to promote science in society, but when it comes to renewable energies, public outreach activities also act as support for a political project, the energy transition: Inform for what? So that people can decide and can be part of the decision, because what is happening today is that things are happening because someone decides that it is so, without any concern for people’s opinions. People should be heard, because if they perceive what is happening, they will certainly agree with those options that are sensible and have a future. (Interview 4)

However, despite the positive outlook on the engagement in these activities some of the researchers consider them to be an undervalued part of their work, lacking an incentive framework on a par with their other activities: We could do more, we could do more, for this type of public, but then we also have to take into account how much effort it takes. It is a noble mission but has costs and it’s difficult to fund and we also need to do those activities that bring funds [to the institution]. People forget that the largest cost is the human resource. I have heard this argument before “don’t they already receive a salary as professors?” The answer is simple, every hour that he is with children [doing outreach] is an hour that he is not working on a project that brings funds. So, there are costs, many costs. And when there is no funding mechanism for the dissemination of science, our options are limited. (Interview 7)

This is especially true in the present context, in which institutions are incentivized to diversify their sources of funding: But the problem today is that, as if institutions are to be profitable, therefore, they bear the least weight for the possible state. Money must come from somewhere, so this kind of thing has to be safeguarded obviously, usually some scientific disclosure is safeguarded, but always, it is always dependent on the one from whom the service was contracted. (Interview 11)

Although these activities are framed by the interviewees as a neutral transmission of information or even as public empowerment, they are also framed as mostly monologic communication for the non-specialist public with an expressed intention to persuade the public about what, in the interviewees perspective, is a relatively uncontroversial fact—the transition to renewable energies is a necessary technological step.

Conclusion This chapter seeks to contribute to an understanding of the social attitudes of researchers in the area of renewable energies on their role in the energy transition. The interviewees see renewable energy primarily as a response to an economic challenge, rather than an environmental challenge. This attitude is aligned with societal attitudes toward renewable energies. Renewable energies have gone from

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a technological alternative supported mainly by a minority with ideological concerns related to the environment to a “mass” technology (Lauber and Mez 2006). Nowadays, the interest of a broad set of stakeholders is attracted: the government, energy companies, and investment companies. In this favourable context—companies investing in renewables and governments define the energy transition as a strategic area for development. Researchers express their role in knowledge transfer as mostly as the designers of technological or science-based products (devices, software, services), reflecting one the sociotechnical imaginations described by Völker (see Chap. 3) among the transdisciplinary sustainability research community. Another important element is that researchers maintain an attitude toward technology transfer and the energy transition that seems to be based mainly on a deterministic view of technological development (van Rijnsoever et al. 2015), in which adoption of technology is above all a technical problem. Renewable energies are presented as an inevitable development and whose adoption depends mainly on lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of technology. Similarly to the findings by Bento and Brás, (see Chap. 8) about the Portuguese water sector, researchers in renewable energy operate within a tradition of closed, centralized deliberative processes, where non-technical actors lack spaces to participate. The researchers largely reject the classic conception of science as an autonomous institution of society. The prevailing notion is that we are dealing with a new social contract (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Gibbons et al. 2008) between science and society, which imbues scientific activity with a set of obligations toward the society that supports it. The interviewees invoke an obligation to produce viable sustainable energy technologies in a new context in which society is increasingly critical of the impact of its investment in science. The adherence of these researchers to a logic of openness of science is also a representation of their public outreach, which they see not only as part of their work, but also as a duty to endow the non-specialist public with information that allows them to deal with the controversies surrounding renewable energies. However, the deterministic view on technological development is reflected in their approach to public outreach as it is mostly framed as an effort of persuading the public about the inevitability of the transition to new energy technologies.

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Luís Junqueira has a PhD in Sociology (Specialization in Sociology of Science and Technology) from the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. He spent 3 months of his studies as a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Studies in Graz. His main research interests include science policy, science society-relations, public attitudes toward science and technology, digital methods, and social network analysis. He has worked and collaborated in projects on the contemporary role of scientific societies, on public perceptions and controversies on renewable energy siting, and on the development of renewable energies as a research area in Portugal.

Part II

Science Communication and Citizen Participation in Science

Chapter 6

Bringing Science to the Public: Is It a Matter for Scientific Associations? Cristina Palma Conceição

Introduction Throughout the twentieth century science has become a critical resource for social and economic development of all nations, even if the processes of incorporating it into society are often not free of inequalities, uncertainties, and controversies (Dierkes and von Grote 2000; Costa et al. 2009). It is thus not surprising that so much attention is being increasingly paid, in many national contexts, to the issue of the public communication of science, including a wide range of initiatives being carried out by an array of science related professionals, and an intense academic and political debate has arisen around the topic (Gregory and Miller 1998; Miller et al. 2002; Bauer et al. 2007; Cheng et al. 2008; Conceição et al. 2020). This chapter seeks to explore the role that scientific associations have come to play in this movement. These organizations are a relevant but under-investigated actor in public communication of science. They are far from being the only ones engaged in it, though. The field seems to be dominated by research and higher education institutions, keen to raise public awareness of their own work, and specialized institutions, such as museums, science centres, and other media actors. Nonetheless, several authors have identified scientific associations as privileged actors in the area and some even point to their comparative advantages—the ability to mobilize scientists and engage them in civic action, and their greater neutrality in view of the particular interests of universities, research institutions, and private enterprises (Rogers 1981; Miller et al. 2002; Evans 2010; McCarthy and Rands 2013; Hin and Subramaniam 2014).

C. P. Conceição (*) Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte), ISCTE—University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL)/Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies (ESHTE), Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_6

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Taking the Portuguese case, this chapter will argue that the challenges that many of these national scientific associations are currently facing in their traditional missions (e.g. the internationalization of science communication among peers), as well as the new funding opportunities raised by the growing political concern about public engagement and public support for science, are important factors leading to a greater, and sometimes more innovative, participation of these entities in public communication of science. Although the Portuguese situation may have some particularities, focusing on this case can be fruitful for several reasons: the small size of this scientific system makes a thorough study of its associations possible; the good performance in recent years and the high degree of internationalization of Portuguese science may allow some generalizations to other national contexts; the strong investment the government has made in science and science outreach provides a strategic moment to understand the opportunities and challenges that scientific associations are facing at a time of transition toward a knowledge-based society. Scientific associations are here broadly defined as private non-profit organizations in science not (solely) dedicated to research. Two types of scientific associations are considered herein: the disciplinary scientific associations, usually older and traditionally more oriented toward peer communication; and the science dissemination associations, most of them recently created. The study takes science in a broader sense, including the social and human sciences in addition to the STEM disciplines.

The Scientific Associations’ Missions in Historical Perspective There are not many studies focused on contemporary scientific associations, and thus little is known about the current activities of such organizations (Hopkins 2011). The recent study by Korkeamäki et al. (2019) on the functions currently performed by Finnish learned societies is an exception. The literature mostly adopts an historical perspective, discussing the role that early science academies, such as the Royal Society (England, 1660) and the Académie des Sciences (France, 1666), have had in the rise of modern science and in the dissemination of this new form of knowledge— as described by Merton (1938) or Shapin (1996) (on Merton’s work, see also Maximiano Bucchi’s contribution to this volume—Chap. 2). The few studies addressing scientific associations in Portugal also tend to adopt this approach—an example, the study by Carneiro et al. (2000) on the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, founded in 1779 (two of its most prominent founders of which were also members of the Royal Society of London). Among the activities of these societies were public lectures and scientific demonstrations that gathered people with very different backgrounds (Rasse 2002; Zilsel 2000). From this perspective, it may be considered that scientific societies, and their members, were among the earliest public communicators of science. It is important,

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however, not to forget that in those days the distinction between scientists, other intellectuals, and amateurs was still rather tenuous (Dear 1985) and that those public meetings were not just a stage for presenting and debating the new discoveries and methods of experimental science, but were also a space for validating such knowledge. This panorama has changed with the professionalization and specialization of scientific production and science education. The distinction between experts and lay people has increased considerably (Bensaude-Vincent 2001) and an assortment of new, functionally differentiated institutions has emerged, some more strictly focused on research, others on education, dissemination, etc. The early science academies, with quite exclusive membership, have not disappeared, but their mission has certainly changed as universities have become the natural home of research, and state and private enterprise the major players in research funding (Hopkins 2011). By the nineteenth century a new type of scientific association had emerged in most European and North American countries: the disciplinary societies. These organizations—with a much larger and more inclusive membership, even if composed mostly of experts/researchers—were closely related to the rise of new scientific fields and the search for new platforms for sharing and certifying knowledge among peers (such as through specialized scientific journals). The number of such scientific associations grew substantially, as did the degree of specialization and internationalization. Most became more focused on providing services to their own members, rather than to the public. Although some kept a number of science communication activities for non-specialists, it was considered to be a less important task (Rilling 1986; Chaline 2002; Schofer 2003; Hopkins 2011; Korkeamäki et al. 2019). A Portuguese example of these nineteenth century scientific associations is the Lisbon Society of Medical Sciences, founded in 1822, that gave rise to several “spin-offs” dedicated to different medical specialities throughout the following century. Meanwhile, still in the nineteenth century, some countries saw the rise of another type of association: national transdisciplinary scientific associations dedicated to the “advancement of science”, such as the British Society for the Advancement of Science (created in 1831) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (in 1848). There was no Portuguese equivalent, at least not until 1985 with the rise of the Science and Technology Association for Development (now defunct, however). These associations were intended to be a forum for communication among scientists, but also a way to draw national attention to science and promote its development. Throughout the twentieth century many of these played an active role in the public dissemination of science, often seeking the attention of policy makers, the media, and other publics (Rogers 1981; Teich 2002; Gascoigne et al. 2010; Bodmer 2010). In recent decades some of these organizations have played a decisive role in launching the new movement for the public understanding of science, showing concern about the relationship between science and the public and a willingness to improve their work in this area (Gregory and Miller 1998). The famous report by the Royal Society (1985), diagnosing the risks of increasing levels of ignorance about

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science and mistrust of its institutions and professionals (thus stressing the urgent need for engaging a wide range of players in the efforts to raising public awareness and public debate on scientific issues) was of unquestionable importance in this matter. Since then, several scientific societies have become internationally known for actively participating in this movement and promoting the debate on the best models of dialogue between science and society.

Methodology This chapter seeks to answer questions such as: Are all types of scientific associations really participating in these efforts to bring science closer to the citizens? Why are they doing it and to what extent is this relevant to their members? How important are such organizations in this field? Are they all using the same approach to public? The results stem mostly from a broader research project on Portuguese scientific associations (Delicado et al. 2014).1 The first stage of the current study comprised a census of scientific associations in the country. The difficulty of defining such civil society organizations is well known (Hopkins 2011; Korkeamäki et al. 2019). A broad definition of scientific associations was devised, including all types of non-governmental, non-profit organizations that met one or more of the following criteria: calls itself a scientific association or society; has scientific aims in its mission statement; carries out science related activities (e.g. research, funding, communicating, disseminating, regulating science, or representing scientists’ interests). Using a variety of sources, a total of 363 scientific associations were identified. A set of quantitative and qualitative methodologies were then applied in order to provide an in-depth understanding of the current roles of these organizations: an online questionnaire survey of the Portuguese scientific associations (response rate 32%); an in-depth study of 24 associations, including interviews, document analysis, a questionnaire survey directed to association members, and ethnographic observation at events; a debate on preliminary results with associations’ representatives; and an online questionnaire survey of a sample of researchers working in Portugal regarding their association affiliations and practices. Based on the data collected through this research, a typology of scientific associations was created according to their different purposes. This typology has three “ideal types” (whose boundaries are, nonetheless, fairly flexible): • Disciplinary scientific societies, representing 73% of the Portuguese scientific associations. These are focused mainly on the promotion of a scientific discipline

1

SOCSCI Scientific Societies in Contemporary Science, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/CS-ECS/101592/2008) between March 2010 and August 2012, at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, with the collaboration of the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (University Institute of Lisbon) and SOCIUS (University of Lisbon).

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and tend to assume communication among peers as their major purpose. Examples of this type of association are the Portuguese Chemistry Society and the Portuguese Sociological Society (some of the activities of the latter are described in this volume, see Ana Delicado’s Chap. 7). • Science dissemination associations. This group account for 22% of the total and is comprised of organizations such as astronomy clubs, nature conservation associations, archaeology groups, and associations for the diffusion of robotics, etc. Although the majority are disciplinary, there are some cases of transdisciplinarity. These associations are more socially oriented than the other two types, their main focus being on public communication and public engagement with science (the associations described in Fabienne Crettaz Von Roten’s contribution to this volume—Chap. 4—could fit into this type; in Portugal, however, activism around animal experimentation issues is scarce). • Professional associations of scientists, representing just 5% of the total, this type consists of associations focused mainly on representing the interests of science and engineering professionals (researchers predominating). They can be either disciplinary (e.g. associations of geologists or biochemists) or transdisciplinary organizations (e.g. trade unions of university teachers or associations of grant holders). As the last group is so small, has such a narrow purpose, and is seldom oriented toward the public communication of science, it is excluded from the analysis presented in this chapter. In addition, in order to demonstrate the importance of scientific associations in comparison with other institutions also involved in the public communication of science, this chapter also considers data compiled through documentary analysis on the participation of a larger set of science related institutions in the national campaigns annually promoted by the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture; and the preliminary results of an ongoing research project coordinated by Cristina Luís et al. (2017), on citizen science projects currently underway in Portugal.

The Growing Number of Scientific Associations and the Emergence of Associations Devoted to the Public Communication of Science Overall, the growth of scientific associations in Portugal is a fairly recent phenomenon (Fig. 6.1). Although the oldest scientific societies date from the nineteenth century, close to 90% of associations identified in the census were founded after 1970, with slightly more than one-third established in the first decade of the twentyfirst century alone. In the absence of updated international data, it is difficult to assess how common this growth rate is. However, considering the Portuguese context, it is easy to

Number of associations

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80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

71

47 39 23 15

19 3

until 1950

1950-69

1970-79

disciplinary scientific societies

18

17 7 1980-89

1990-99

2000-11

science dissemination associations

Fig. 6.1 Scientific associations in Portugal by year of foundation. Source: census of scientific associations in Portugal, 2012. Data not available for 60 associations

identify the most significant factors that help to explain it: complete freedom of association was granted only in 1974, after the democratic revolution; and the national scientific system has experienced significant growth only since the 1980s, mostly on the base of public funding. This development has brought opportunities, such as accrued “critical mass” and specialization, but also threats, namely an increased competition for resources, and new needs, such as the need to strengthen the communication between peers across the country, to create new platforms for dialogue of scientists with policy makers and other stakeholders, and to guarantee public support for science. All of these trends are likely to have favoured the emergence of scientific associations. For the purpose of this chapter, it is particularly interesting to note the growth of the science dissemination associations. These were virtually non-existent until the 1980s, but have since increased steadily and are now no longer a negligible proportion of the scientific associations operating in the country. The emergence and growth of this specific type of organization has been strongly influenced by the rise of “scientific culture”, both as a scientists’ concern and as a policy priority in Portugal (Gonçalves and Castro 2002). This trend can also be a sign of two main features underlying the scientific association movement: the civic activism of the scientific community (oriented not only to corporate interests but toward social progress in general); and the entrepreneurship of its members (in search of funding and new areas of professional occupation) (Hin and Subramaniam 2014). Some of these associations were actually formalized in order to participate in initiatives promoted by the Ciência Viva Agency—the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture. Created in 1996 under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ciência Viva programme (which resulted in the Agency) has been the main catalyst for the public communication of science in Portugal and, consequently, for the emergence of many associations especially committed to this issue. Although associations tend to be generally understood as crystallized forms of collective action that emerge from civil society, this case shows

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an interesting example of a new social movement that has been strongly supported by governmental stimulus (Costa et al. 2009).2 By that time the Ciência Viva agency invited us to carry out some “Astronomy in the summer” activities, namely astronomical observation sessions in the countryside, in areas where such initiatives tend to be rare. That’s how we started (. . .). We were about twenty astronomers, working at the Observatory as masters, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers. Some amateur astronomers also joined us, and we set up the association (. . .), a non-profit association, aimed at science dissemination, mainly astronomy. The Agency demanded that we had some sort of legal status. (Interview with the president of the NUC LIO—Interactive Astronomy Nucleus)

As regards disciplinary fields, most of the science dissemination associations are dedicated to the natural sciences, the exact sciences, and in some cases the humanities (i.e. history and archaeology). There are few associations of this type focused on engineering or the social sciences (on public communication of sociology, see the following chapter by Ana Delicado—Chap. 7). On the contrary, among disciplinary scientific societies the health sciences are the most represented, followed by the social sciences. Some of the associations primarily devoted to the public communication of natural science issues also have the status of “environmental non-governmental organization” (a status that allows them to access other financing sources) and they usually include nature conservation among their main objectives.3 A few other associations are classified as “non-governmental organizations for development”, such as Scientists in the World, created in 2007 with the aim of promoting science dissemination in “third world” countries. As mentioned above, there are also science dissemination associations not devoted to any specific scientific field. Such is the case of the VAC association (“Live Science” Association), created in 2005 by a group of young researchers who wanted to raise public awareness of science and carry out fundraising activities in Portugal, as they had seen whilst studying and working abroad. It all began when a number of scientists returned from abroad and realized that there was so much to be done in the country as regards science dissemination. [. . .] We would like the association to be a platform that would help us to achieve two main goals: the first one is increase public awareness [. . .]; and then, the second is to make the citizens and private companies to participate in science. . . in science funding in particular. Not all of us can do science; but many of us can easily give some money, enabling the creation of alternative source of funding, beyond the State. We thought that the easiest way of doing so was to create an association. (Interview with the executive director of VAC)

Therefore, even if the birth of many of these scientific associations clearly has something to do with recent public policies, the excerpts presented above also reveal

2

On the importance of this Agency in the Portuguese context, see also the contributions to this volume by Ana Delicado (Chap. 7) and Luís Junqueira (Chap. 5). 3 On the affinity between the environmental movement and the public communication of science, see Yearley (2008).

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Belong to a scientific / professional community Receive information on scientific events Access to congresses, publications, prizes, services, etc. Networking Contribute to the promotion of scientific culture in society Enjoy participating in public communication of science Disciplinary scientific societies

74%

44% 50%

32% 25% 32%

48% 42% 45%

26%

87% 62%

Science dissemination associations

Fig. 6.2 Researchers’ motivations for belonging to a Portuguese scientific association, by type of association (%). Source: survey of researchers working in Portugal, 2012; N ¼ 462

a more grassroots social movement that seems to primarily result from the researchers’ wish for a closer connection between science and society.

Public Communication of Science as a Motivation of Scientists for Membership The motives for joining a scientific association are not expected to be the same for a disciplinary society as for a more socially oriented association. The survey of scientists concerning membership of scientific associations showed the sense of belonging to a community, communication among peers, and networking to be the main reasons for these professionals to join disciplinary societies (these findings are similar to Korkeamäki et al. (2019) in Finland). Nevertheless, many scientists also recognized public engagement with science as an important area of intervention for these entities, and about one quarter even mentioned that their personal interest in participating in science outreach activities is one of their main reasons for becoming a member of a disciplinary society (Fig. 6.2). Not surprisingly, an even more favourable picture is found in the case of science dissemination associations. Public communication is indeed the mission that scientists identify as most critical for their membership in this type of association; most of them even mentioning their joy in personally participating in such activities. These figures give a positive view of the possibility of these (both types of) organizations to become a privileged space for scientists to interact with other social actors for the purpose of bringing science closer to the public.

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The Participation of “Non-scientists” in the Associations Most scientific associations are essentially made up of scientists or experts in the field. Nevertheless, some also include “lay-people” among their members and even make a point of this openness to society. Again, this is especially the case for science dissemination associations (Fig. 6.3). Amateurs often play an important role in the life of such associations. They are not simply the audience for science communication activities; some actively collaborate in those activities as facilitators in the approach to local communities, and some are even engaged in research projects carried out within the framework of associations. Thus, these cases can be understood as an illustrative example of new forms of knowledge production/dissemination (i.e. citizen science), for which scientific associations seem to be privileged loci, given their hybrid nature, between the science realm and the society, both public and private. The professional scientists collaborate with us, for example, in the review of scientific contents. The amateur astronomers who are members of the association are also a precious help. They support many of the observation sessions and they help teachers to adapt the resources to school. Teachers also collaborate. . . and there are also IT experts collaborating with us. (Interview with the president of the NUCLIO—Interactive Astronomy Nucleus)

Is Public Communication of Science an Issue for All Types of Scientific Associations? One might think that the relatively high number of new science dissemination associations in the country would be a sign that other types of scientific associations have not been as interested in science outreach activities. That does not seem to be the case, at least not as regards many disciplinary scientific societies. Disciplinary scientific societies more than 1/4 (2%)

None (73%)

up to 1/4 (25%)

Science dissemination associations None (19%) more than 1/4 (46%)

up to 1/4 (35%)

Fig. 6.3 Proportion of “non-scientists” among the Portuguese scientific associations’ members (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 86

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As expected, science dissemination associations more often tend to be the ones that engage in science communication activities for non-specialized publics. According to the survey conducted in Portugal in 2012, 72% of this type of association perform these types of activities regularly, including events for both young people and the general public (Fig. 6.4). Nonetheless, many disciplinary scientific societies also claimed to be often involved in such actions. This participation tends to be more common in the case of activities aimed at the general public: about 50% reported doing it regularly; less than 10% reported never doing so. The young audiences tend to be addressed by a smaller number of these associations and less frequently; however, they are far from being neglected by many of these organizations. For some of these disciplinary scientific societies, engagement in the public communication of science is not something new. Nevertheless, the growing interest in these activities shows a certain change in the understanding of the mission of many of these entities. Given the internationalization of science and the increasing importance of transnational forums for peer communication (which are jeopardizing the relevance of national conferences and scientific journals), many have come to redirect their actions toward other (non-scientific) publics. By communicating with broader audiences, the associations aim to contribute to the promotion of the scientific culture of the Portuguese population—intending primarily to reinforce their interest in such topics and their appropriation of science (regarding intellectual value, the resolution of practical problems, or even the empowerment of civic participation in science related debates). However, obviously, there are also other (more corporatist) aims in such actions (which cut-cross all scientific associations)— to strengthen the public legitimacy of science, the support for science public investments, and the interest of young people in pursuing science in higher education.

science disciplinary dissemination scientific associations societies

Many people discovered—especially in biology, I think—that public communication of science turns out to be a way of valuing their field of knowledge. [. . .] Some people do it because they like it and they believe in it, but there are plenty of people who are doing it because it ends up being a weapon, a form of activism. Valuing the knowledge they produce

general public young people general public young people 0%

20% regularly

40% occasionally

60% never

80%

100%

Fig. 6.4 Frequency of public communication of science activities (in the last 5 years), for young people and the general public, by type of scientific association (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 105

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will give them visibility; it will serve to safeguard the area. (Statement by the representative of grant holders association at the workshop)

The Collaboration with Other Institutions for the Sake of Public Communication of Science The engagement of scientific associations in the public communication of science is likely to be favoured by the collaboration with other institutions, mostly with the media, but also with the above-mentioned Ciência Viva Agency and with other more local oriented organizations such as science museums, schools, and municipalities (Fig. 6.5). As for media contacts, scientific associations tend to have a fairly passive role. Although the media is seen as an important vehicle to reach broader audiences— occasionally accessed by means of press releases and, more rarely, sought for other forms of collaboration, such as the co-production of television or radio programmes—most association representatives state that they just try to respond to requests from journalists in search of researchers willing to comment on, or support the production of, science-related news. Despite their willingness to collaborate, as seen in many studies on the scientist-journalist relationship (Peters et al. 2008) most of the interviewees end up complaining about the treatment of scientific issues in the media, often advocating for more autonomous and direct forms of communication with the public (on the mediatization of contemporary science, see also the Maximiano Bucchi’s contribution to this volume). Collaboration with other institutions might also result from a number of circumstances. Sometimes institutions (such as schools, museums, municipalities, and other private non-profit organizations) seek the help of scientific associations to develop their own science outreach initiatives. In other cases they merely offer support 69 %

Media Ciência Viva Agency Science museums Schools

16 %

91 %

70 %

18 %

44 % 29 %

Municipalities Disciplinary scientific societies

79 %

34 %

72 %

Science dissemination associations

Fig. 6.5 Collaboration with other institutions for the sake of public communication of science, by type of scientific association (%). Source: survey of the Portuguese scientific associations, 2012; N ¼ 77

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(financial, logistical, or advertising) for associations’ public events, or they might provide privileged access to certain target audiences of interest to associations’ projects or other science partners’ projects. Associations have often played an intermediary role in this area, bridging the gap between local socially oriented institutions, on the one hand, and international, excellence oriented science players, such as many universities and research institutions, on the other hand. We have some support . . . some of our initiatives are the result of partnerships. This initiative is a specific action that began inside the SPEA, the Ciência Viva joined later. It is called “An eye on the birds” and it is a project aimed at anyone who wants to watch birds during weekend walks. [. . .] Maybe Ciência Viva realized that this was important . . . so we have had this partnership for some years, and we want to keep it.[. . .] The willingness to cooperate is considerable, from both parties . . . but then, sometimes, there are also circumstances that may constrain things . . . (Interview with the president of the Society for the Study of Birds) Usually those in demand are schools or municipalities . . . There are many entities who contact us because they want to do something (the Culture House, for example. . .). The municipality of Cascais is one with whom we collaborate more regularly. There’s always something on, as there is a formal agreement with the municipal authorities. But we support many other municipalities. And sometimes we are the ones searching. (Interview with the president of the NUCLIO—Interactive Astronomy Nucleus)

What Kind of Activities Are They Doing? In general, public talks are still the most common method used by Portuguese scientific associations to address the public (whatever their age). Many of these events indeed result from the above-mentioned partnerships with local actors. In an attempt to capture the interest of broader audiences (not just those who are already very interested in science topics), some promoters opt to focus the talks on particularly fascinating stories of science or on current applications of science. Sometimes they also try to give people the opportunity to debate on these issues, so that the meetings do not end up being just like a class. Occasionally, they choose to hold the meeting outside schools, universities, or other formal sites in an effort to give these events a more informal ambience and to attract new publics (such as science cafes). Nonetheless, most of the reported experiences—from disciplinary scientific societies in particular—still tend to express more traditional, top-down, and one-way communication models. Many association representatives also mentioned the role that the Internet can play as an instrument for reaching broader audiences. Social network profiles, online videos, portals, and blogs are all communication methods being more frequently utilized by some of these organizations. However, the need to keep web content updated is often mentioned as a problem because it requires human and technical resources not always available to these associations, as the majority depend heavily on the work of volunteers.

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Using the potential of the Internet, associations can also function as a channel to convey the needs and expectations of citizens and civic groups to the scientific systems. This role is already being played in other countries by means of science shops (Leydesdorff and Ward 2005). Some Portuguese scientific association leaders are aware of this trend and are already implementing online platforms for people to ask scientists questions. However, very few have been able to put such an experience into operation on a more regular and formal basis. Concerning scientific dissemination for young people, associations are often contacted by schools asking for experts to deliver lectures (or, more rarely, scientific demonstrations). Taking this responsibility for intermediation, some already have a list of people with some experience and interest in this type of event. Nonetheless, some also stress the difficulties in raising this type of collaboration among the association membership. We have no chance to go running throughout the country. We help whenever we can, but it is not a systematic thing. [. . .] People who are working in a hospital don’t have much time to do it. But we try to ask people who have more to do with the things we have been asked to talk about, and who might have more time and willingness to do it. Then it’s up to them. (Interview with the President of the Portuguese Neurology Society)

Nevertheless, some associations take the initiative and involve students in their own dissemination activities. For instance, the Neurology Society is in charge of the activities of the International Brain Awareness Week, during which its members deliver lectures at schools, participate in round-tables, exhibitions, and seminars for the general public, and students are also invited to visit research laboratories. In close collaboration with science educators, some scientific societies are also well-known for being responsible for organizing contests for students, generally designated “Olympiads”. This occurs in “traditional” science subjects (mathematics, physics, chemistry), but is expanding to a growing number of fields of knowledge (biology, computer science, philosophy) and in some cases is acquiring an international scope. Scientific societies, such as the Biochemistry Society, even make room in their annual conferences for sessions targeting high school students, who are allowed to attend other sessions and to visit the posters section, in what is clearly an effort to attract potential undergraduates to university degrees in their field. The idea of opening the doors of the professional science sites for students to have a “first look” also lies behind the organization of visits to laboratories and other places where scientists work. To arrange these events, some societies seek the support of the research units where their members work, but some science dissemination associations are able to present and involve the public in their own research projects, many of which follow the “citizen science” model (Bonney et al. 2009; Conrad and Hilchey 2011; Greenwood 2007; Hartman 1997; Leach et al. 2005). This is a good way for us to teach students (as well as some of our members, and other publics) some of the issues we deal with . . . so that people have a different understanding of the planet, and so on . . . I think that, this way, these things (i.e. the impact climate change has on the planet) can be better taught and debated, by seeing things in practice. [. . .] These things are difficult to explain when we make a Powerpoint . . . it’s different being actually in

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the field. [. . .] During the science and technology week, we have always opened the doors of the laboratory to the general public. And even other occasions . . . Soon we are going to receive a group of 30 people from a nearby village who have asked to see these bones. They will see us working, experience how we clean and classify the bones [. . .] We really think that the public’s closer relationship with the palaeontology community will mean enormous savings in heritage preservation [. . .]. Additionally, these events also reinforce the researchers’ feeling that they are doing interesting and useful things. (Interview with the President of the Leonel Trindade Natural Science Society)

Several such science dissemination associations are making a point of engaging students, not just by talking and showing things, but also by encouraging the young public to experiment with science procedures directly (i.e. through inquiry-based science learning projects, often carried out with the help of teachers and sometimes also involving the parents). Some of these projects are part of national or international initiatives, others have strong local roots. Some have merely educational purposes, others involve preservation initiatives (environmental, or heritage), and others consist even of research activities oriented to the production of knowledge. It is worth noting that while disciplinary societies tend to be not directly involved in research projects (leaving it to universities and public or private research centres), a few of the associations here referred to as science dissemination associations end up taking direct responsibility for conducting applied research projects, often oriented toward local societal concerns. For instance, the Society for the Study of Birds has a nation-wide activity, which includes the participation of research institutes, universities, and museums, called “In a wood near you”, in which school children collect information on forest ecosystems (fauna, flora, and human threats) and upload it to a website. This association also has other initiatives that seek to combine science teaching (using real science experiments) and communities’ engagement in biodiversity conservation in sites where the organization is developing research/conservation projects. Another Portuguese association is coordinating a world-wide project (the Galileo Teacher Training Program) aimed at training teachers to help students to do astronomical observations, via the Internet, through telescopes located all over the world. Some of these students have already gathered information that can be included in databases that are accessed by both professional astronomers and amateurs. Another interesting example is the work done by the association Scientists in the World with schools from developing countries; for example, an atelier about the physics phenomena underlying local musical instruments built by the students, or a project on how to build a solar kitchen oven that could be of use for communities living in remote villages. We are not well-known by the general public . . . but, in the areas where we are operating, we are certainly well-known. For example, in S. Miguel, our centre does environmental education programmes with the teachers from all schools in the island. We are working with them in order to reach the students and then the local community as a whole. [. . .] We also had an initiative that involved several schools across the country, namely rural areas [. . .] Children love these things, they love doing practical work and getting engaged in extracurricular activities. And it’s easier to talk with children, and also a lot of fun for us. (Interview with the president of the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds)

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Many of these projects may be seen not just as a way of promoting science education amongst the youngsters (using not merely discursive approaches), but also as a way of reaching adult audiences through children. On the other hand, the same sort of hands-on and contextualized approach is sometimes being used to capture the interest of exclusively adult publics, as in the case of having experts from the associations helping non-specialists to collaborate in a census of natural specimens, or monitoring public visits to parks, archaeological sites, agricultural fields or sites for bird watching. Several interviewees emphasized the advantages of promoting a close link between science communication and leisure activities. We have also other types of events, aimed at the general public . . . the wine sector visits, for instance. [. . .] We visit wineries, horticulture companies . . . Sometimes, part of the day is devoted to a more strictly techno-scientific conference, and then we have an open visit. [. . .] In the past, visits to gardens and parks were also organized. (. . .) It’s fun because it attracts a different public. Some had nothing to do with horticulture, but became members of the association just to go on those visits. (Interview with the president of the Portuguese Horticulture Association)

Other forms of public communication of science adopted by some associations (mostly by those more strictly devoted to science dissemination) are exhibitions, popular science books and newsletters, and more rarely, theatre plays and stand-up comedy shows. Often these initiatives result from the personal interests of people who collaborate in the association, helping them to find personal fulfilment, beyond other public communication or social solidarity purposes. We did an exhibition at LX Factory . . . Nobody goes there to see science stuff. People go there to have fun, to see art exhibitions. . . But, the same way people can see an exhibition about any other topic, they can see photos that have been made by scientists and that show scientific images, and they end up learning something with it. Or, as regards theatre, we can do stand-up comedy with scientists and about science. That’s our idea: to reach publics that we normally don’t reach. Of course, the things we do always have something to do with our own interests. I’m personally interested in image, so I took photos and made documentary films. He likes theatre and humour, so he joins his love of science with it . . . People come with their own ideas, and then we see if we can do it or not . . . On our website we have “we are looking for new ideas!” (. . .) X is a great storyteller, so she thought of this project, “The Sea’s little girl”. This was a fantastic and very enriching experience with children with leukaemia at the Portuguese Oncology Institute. For three months, once a week, she went there with this story, to get them to know more about sea life. She brought some fish and other marine specimens, explained to the children some of their characteristics and then we asked them to express, by painting, the things they had learned and liked the most. These paintings were then sold at an auction; the children were also there, so they felt quite proud! And the money we collected was used to award a scientific prize for cancer research. (Interview with the executive director of VAC)

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The Role of Scientific Association in the Ciência Viva’s National Summer Campaign In order to illustrate the importance of these organizations in the Portuguese panorama of public communication of science, this last point takes into account the scientific associations’ participation in the national campaign promoted every summer (July and August) by the Ciência Viva Agency. During this campaign all sorts of science and education institutions are called to organize public events such as scientific demonstrations, astronomical observations, field trips on geology or biology topics, etc. These events take place all over the country and are primarily meant to engage friends and family groups on vacation. Even though associations are far from being the most important players in this initiative (with science museums, universities, and R&D institutions taking the lead), their role is constant and not negligible over time (Fig. 6.6). Besides scientific associations, it is worth noting the participation of some cultural and local development associations, whose direct involvement in this scientific culture movement is also a very interesting issue for future research. The role of associations is even more evident when the average number of events promoted by each entity is taken into account (Fig. 6.7). The intensity of the participation of these institutions in the campaign is very close to that of the museums and science centres (whose main vocation is indeed the public communication of science) and even exceeds that of research and higher education institutions (which are likely to mobilize greater resources). Moreover, nothing indicates that the events promoted by the associations are smaller; on the contrary, they are advertised on the same platforms and tend to be quite similar in terms of activities, time duration, or maximum number of participants.

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2003

2004

2005

Scientific associations

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Other associations (culture, local development)

2012

2013

2014

Other institutions

Fig. 6.6 Ciência Viva’s national summer campaign: number of institutions participating, by year (2003–2014) and type of institution (%). Source: Conceição (2011); updated with data from the Ciência Viva website

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science centres, museums, parks universities R&D institutions schools public administration business associations 0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

Fig. 6.7 Ciência Viva’s national summer campaign: average number of events per institution every year (2003–2014), by type of institution. Source: Conceição (2011); updated with data from the Ciência Viva website. Note: “Associations” includes a small number of events promoted by non-scientific associations (such as cultural or local development associations)

Final Remarks The vast majority of the Portuguese scientific associations seem to recognize the importance of bringing science closer to the public. Although for many disciplinary scientific societies this task is far from being regarded as their main mission, many are already showing a willingness to participate in this movement and some are even becoming fairly active players in this field. The emergence in recent years of a considerable number of associations primarily devoted to science outreach is certainly a good indicator of these trends, whether this is a direct result of public policies concerning the issue of the “scientific culture” of the Portuguese population or a sign of scientists’ growing awareness of the need to establish a closer relationship to “civic society” (in search of public support for science activities or even new forms of science production). Also interesting is the increasing engagement of the older scientific societies in such activities in what can be seen not just as a response to the fact that their traditional role (namely communication among scientists through national scientific journals and conferences) is being increasingly threatened by the internationalization of science, but also as evidence of the same dynamics that are supporting the emergence of new science dissemination organizations. Nevertheless, a distinction was found between these two types of association, not just regarding the frequency of their public events, but also concerning the ways in which they are approaching the public. Most disciplinary scientific societies tend to opt for one-way, top-down formats inspired by the “deficit model” of the public communication of science (Trench 2008). They typically provide lectures, even if some are already becoming more aware of the need to find new forms/spaces for

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talking to the public, such as science cafes, and to collaborate with schools through science “learning-by-doing” activities. Science dissemination associations tend to adopt more diversified and innovative formats. They are often searching for informal settings and for a deeper articulation between science and popular culture. They tend to promote more participative and “hands-on” experiences, with many trying to get directly engaged in local development initiatives and some also supporting new “citizen science” projects. These approaches are likely to be bolstered by the fact that many of these associations have scientists, teachers, and members of the general public among their members. Moreover, some of those scientists are indeed looking for new (public funded, often European) science-related occupations, in the face of the economic crisis and the high rates of unemployment in the country.

References Bauer, M., et al. (2007). What can we learn from 25-years of PUS research? Liberating and widening the agenda. Public Understanding of Science, 16(1), 79–95. Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2001). A genealogy of the increasing gap between science and the public. Public Understanding of Science, 10(1), 99–113. Bodmer, W. (2010). Public understanding of science: The BA, the Royal Society and COPUS. Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 64(1), 151–161. Bonney, R., et al. (2009). Citizen science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy. Bioscience, 59(11), 977–984. Carneiro, A., et al. (2000). Enlightenment science in Portugal. Social Studies of Science, 30, 591–619. Chaline, J. (2002). Les sociétés savantes en Allemagne, Italie et Royaume-Uni à la fin du XIXe siècle. Histoire, Économie et Société, 21(1), 87–96. Cheng, D., et al. (2008). Communicating science in social contexts. New models, new practices. Dordrecht: Springer. Conceição, C. P. (2011). Promoção de Cultura Científica. Análise teórica e estudo de caso do programa Ciência Viva. ISCTE-IUL: Lisboa. Conceição, C. P., et al. (2020). European action plans for science and society: Changing buzzwords, changing agendas. Minerva, 58, 1–24. Conrad, C. C., & Hilchey, K. G. (2011). A review of citizen science and community-based environmental monitoring. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 176(1–4), 273–291. Costa, A. F., Conceição, C. P., & Ávila, P. (2009). Scientific culture and modes of relating to science. In A. F. Costa, F. L. Machado, & P. Ávila (Eds.), Knowledge and society (Portugal in the European context) (pp. 61–84). Lisbon: CIES-ISCTE-IUL/Celta. Dear, P. (1985). Totius in verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society. Isis, 76(2), 144–161. Delicado, A., et al. (2014). What roles for scientific associations in contemporary science? Minerva, 52(4), 439–465. Dierkes, M., & von Grote, C. (Eds.). (2000). Between understanding and trust. The public, science and technology. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Evans, N. G. (2010). Speak No Evil: Scientists, responsibility, and the public understanding of science. NanoEthics, 4(3), 215–220. Gascoigne, T., et al. (2010). Is science communication its own field? Journal of Science Communication, 9(3), 1–6.

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Gonçalves, M. E., & Castro, P. (2002). Science, culture and policy in Portugal: A triangle of changing relationships? Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences, 1(3), 157–173. Greenwood, J. D. (2007). Citizens, science and bird conservation. Journal of Ornithology, 148(1), 77–124. Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in public: Communication, culture, and credibility. New York: Plenum Press. Hartman, J. (1997). The popularisation of science through citizen volunteers. Public Understanding of Science, 6(1), 69–86. Hin, L. T. W., & Subramaniam, R. (2014). Role of learned societies in communication science. In L. T. W. Hin & R. Subramaniam (Eds.), Communicating science to the public: Opportunities and challenges for the Asia-Pacific Region (pp. 183–194). Springer Netherlands. Hopkins, J. (2011). The role of learned societies in knowledge exchange and dissemination: The case of the Regional Studies Association, 1965-2005. History of Education, 40(2), 255–271. Korkeamäki, L. et al. (2019) Learned Societies in Finland 2018. Web Publications of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies 8. Leach, M., et al. (2005). Science and citizens: Globalization and the challenge of engagement. London: Zed Books. Leydesdorff, L., & Ward, J. (2005). Science shops: A kaleidoscope of science-society collaborations in Europe. Public Understanding of Science, 14(4), 353–372. Luís, C. et al. (2017). Perceção da comunidade científica portuguesa sobre a Ciência Cidadã. Um estudo preliminar SciCom Pt 2017, 12–13 October 2017. McCarthy, D., & Rands, M. (2013). Learned societies: A bridge between research, policy making and funding. Studies in Higher Education, 38(3), 470–483. Merton, R. K. (1938). Science, technology and society in seventeenth century England. Osiris, 4, 360–632. Miller, S., et al. (2002). Report from the expert group benchmarking the promotion of RTD culture and public understanding of science. Brussels: European Commission. Peters, H. P., et al. (2008). Science-media interface. It’s time to reconsider. Science Communication, 30(2), 266–276. Rasse, P. (2002). La médiation scientifique et technique, entre vulgarisation et espace public. Quaderni, 46, 1–14. Rilling, R. (1986). The structure of the Society of German Chemists. Social Studies of Science, 16 (2), 235–260. Rogers, C. L. (1981). Science information for the public: The role of scientific societies. Science, Technology and Human Values., 6(36), 36–40. Schofer, E. (2003). The global institutionalization of geological science, 1800 to 1990. American Sociological Review, 68(5), 730–759. Shapin, S. (1996). The scientific revolution. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Teich, A. H. (2002). AAAS and public policy: Speaking softly and carrying a medium-sized stick. Technology in Society, 24(1–2), 167–178. Trench, B. (2008). Towards an analytical framework of science communication models. In C. Donghong et al. (Eds.), Communicating science in social contexts. New models, new practices (pp. 119–135). Springer. Yearley, S. (2008). Environmental groups and other NGOs as communicators of science. In M. Bucchi & B. Trench (Eds.), Handbook of public communication of science and technology. London: Routledge. Zilsel, E. (2000). The sociological roots of science. Social Studies of Science, 30(6), 935–949. (1942).

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Cristina Palma Conceição holds a PhD in Sociology from the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL) and also a Masters degree in Communication, Culture, and Information Technologies. In the last two decades she has participated in several projects, mostly in the area of sociology of science and technology, in the Center for Research and Sociology Studies (CIES-IUL). She has been particularly interested in scientific culture, communication, and public participation in science. In recent years she has focused on matters of tourism and research methods in social sciences as an assistant professor at the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hospitality Studies.

Chapter 7

Turning the Gaze on Ourselves: Public Communication of Sociology Ana Delicado

Introduction As one of the more visible dimensions of science and society relations and under its myriad of labels, public communication of science has become, in the past few decades, a branch of scientific activity, an industry, a career, and a field of academic enquiry. Countless pages have been devoted to examining what, how, why, and who is doing communication of science to the public. But the very concept of science is little problematized in these analyses. In any event, what counts as science that deserves to be communicated usually excludes the social sciences. Sociology, in particular, has an intricate relationship with public communication. By custom, it is fairly accessible outside academia: publication in book form and in native languages, and open conferences and lectures, report on topics that are familiar and close to societal concerns. Engagements with the public are also are also part of the empirical toolkit of sociologists. From the more traditional interviews and surveys to the more participatory techniques of consultation such as workshops or action-research, citizens are an indispensable component of doing research in sociology. And yet, sociology seems to not quite fit the current models of mainstream public communication of science. It is mostly absent from museums and from science coverage in the media, it has difficulties in offering laboratory and hands-on activities, or even open days at research institutions. It is usually entirely absent or at least at the margins of public policies and programmes for promoting science communication. Additionally, the internationalization of the discipline may have partly distanced it from its national publics, with the emphasis on publication in English

A. Delicado (*) Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_7

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language journals, protected by paywalls, and the redirectioning of work toward topics determined by international research agendas and collaborations. This chapter aims not only to discuss these issues but also to examine how sociology is finding novel ways to respond to the new demand. It is based on an analysis of the communication activities of Portuguese sociology research centres, projects, and associations.

Framework In the past few decades, public understanding of science has become an unavoidable feature in science. What began as a concern with public attitudes toward and knowledge about science has turned first into a veritable industry (Gregory and Miller 1998), with a wide range of actors involved in promoting it. It became an academic field (with all the institutional requirements, such as its own journals, postgraduate degrees, and national and international associations) and a career (professional science communicators can be found in many organizations, such as research centres, universities, museums, and companies—BSA 2016). Under a multitude of labels (science communication, science popularization/vulgarization, scientific dissemination, outreach, public understanding of science/research, public engagement with science/research, scientific culture, etc.), stemming from different national traditions as well as different models of understanding the relationships between the public and science, these activities have gained importance in contemporary research. This can be seen, for instance, in European research policy and funding: ever since the Sixth Framework Programme (2002–2006) there have been dedicated policy documents and funding lines for this field (again under different labels, starting with science and society and ending in the current science with and for society—Conceição et al. 2020). In the past few years, the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach, which includes public engagement as one of its pillars (together with science education, open science, ethics, and gender balance), has become one of the tenets of European science policy, often requiring funding applications to explicitly state how they will address RRI. Public communication of science is thus a policy-intensive and well-researched field. But a glaring absence can be noted: when discussing scientific dissemination, the social sciences (and humanities) are seldom, if ever mentioned (Cassidy 2014). The vast majority of work in this field concerns the natural sciences or STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths, medicine). As Bastow et al. (2013: 215) put it: ‘A large literature on science communication, public understanding of science and public engagement research has grown up covering overwhelmingly the STEM sciences’. A cursory search in one of the leading journals in this field, Public Understanding of Science, yields no more than a handful of articles that mention social sciences, and almost always in comparisons of media coverage (Göpfert 1996; Summ and Volpers 2016), representations and attitudes toward science (O’Brien

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2013), or surveys of scientists or institutions (Torres-Albero et al. 2011; Bentley and Kyvik 2011; Jensen 2011; Kreimer et al. 2011; Entradas and Bauer 2016). There are a few exceptions, however. There are articles whose main focus is the relationships between disciplines in the social sciences and their publics, such as Cassidy’s (2006) paper on evolutionary psychology as public science or Evans’s (2009) one on the publics of sociology in early American sociology (the exclusion of the religious public as boundary work for building the discipline). Cassidy’s chapters on the two editions of the Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology (2008, 2014) chart the specific challenges of communicating the social sciences, focusing particularly on media coverage and public social sciences. More recently, Michael and Lupton (2016) published an appeal for an agenda on public understanding of big data, which is an empirical source used mostly by the social sciences. Much more frequent are the articles that analyse the role of social scientists as mediators in public engagement with science and technology (PEST). See, for instance, Wilkinson’s (2014) article on social scientists working in PEST in the UK, addressing their definitions of the concept, the roles, barriers, and contributions of social scientists and the experience of working within PEST settings and across disciplines. In the same vein, sociological publications also largely fail to address public communication of sociology in terms other than public sociology. For instance, taking Current Sociology as a case in point, hardly any articles can be found concerning this subject. Purdam’s (2014) paper on the citizen social science seems to be the sole exception. And yet, the American Sociological Association has had an award for public understanding of sociology since 1995. Far more frequent has been the discussion around public sociology. A term popularized by M. Burawoy in his 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, it stands for engaging multiple publics in multiple ways, a systematic back-translation, taking knowledge back to those from whom it came, making public issues out of private troubles (Burawoy 2005: 5). This entails taking public positions, supporting social movements, civil society, and marginalized groups, and contributing to public debates with scientific social knowledge. This resonates with the discussion about the role of sociologists as public intellectuals and sociology as a combat sport (Burawoy 2014; Cassidy 2014). Since then, this issue has been a matter for some controversy within sociology, between defenders (Acker 2005; Agger 2007) and critics (Calhoun 2005; Nielsen 2004) of Burawoy’s proposal. Borrowing its title from C. Wright Mills’ much acclaimed book, the website The sociological imagination sought to create an online space for public sociology. Between 2010 and 2018, it published original articles, commentaries on current events or debates, research profiles, and podcast interviews, as well as a diverse range of multimedia material from across the web (Carrigan and Kremakova 2014). The editors highlight the advantages of this novel publishing platform: the possibility of instant feedback through comments, the accessibility, the possibility of sharing underdeveloped arguments that can be later expanded and consubstantiated, and the discovery of new avenues for theoretical and methodological sociological thought.

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More recently, another (less politicized) debate has emerged around the impact of social sciences. What started as a research project at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), evolved into a widely-read blog1 and later into a handbook (Bastow et al. 2013). In it the authors explore the place of social sciences in contemporary research, pathways for impact of individual social scientists, and the connections with business, government, the third sector, and the media. Some sociology journals, such as The Sociological Review, also keep a strong online presence aimed at not just sociologists, with blogs, podcasts, videocasts and social media profiles. The current chapter is based on an eclectic methodology, comprising literature review, statistical data collection, document and website analysis, informal conversations with sociology communicators, and participant observation. It does not purport to be systematic and exhaustive, although it strives to give a balanced and comprehensive snapshot of public dissemination in sociology in Portugal.

Science Dissemination in Portugal Science policies to promote scientific dissemination have had considerable political weight since the second half of the 1990s (Gonçalves and Castro 2002). In 1995 science and technology achieved for the first time the rank of ministry (prior to this science policies were managed by a Secretary of State, under different ministries) and one of its key areas of intervention was the promotion of scientific culture. At one point, official documents began to mention that scientific culture would be awarded 5% of the yearly budget for science (Miller et al. 2002), though there are no data to support this statement. The relevance awarded to scientific culture was materialized first and foremost in the creation of the quasi-governmental agency Ciência Viva (Science Alive), which is formally a private, non-profit (but government funded) agency (for a more detailed analysis, see Gonçalves and Castro 2002, da Costa et al. 2009).2 This agency, besides sporadically awarding funding for dissemination activities to external organizations (research institutions, museums, universities), develops a vast range of activities for different publics: from managing a network of science centres (at the time of writing 21, scattered throughout the country) to holding summer activities (first in biology and geology, currently in several different areas), from organizing school contests to promoting summer internships in labs for secondary education pupils, from publicizing events during the S&T week (November) to participating in European research projects in the field of science with and for society. The majority of these activities are carried out by researchers in universities and research centres,

1

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/ Ciência in Portuguese means Science and it is usually used in the broad sense of all scientific disciplines, not just STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas.

2

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receiving from Ciência Viva support (including financial) and publicity. In 1998, Ciência Viva became an association, whose members are the public funding body (Foundation for Science and Technology) and 12 research centres that had the status of associated laboratories (university affiliated centres committed to conducting public interest research and funded by the government accordingly—Heitor and Bravo 2010), two of which are social sciences centres, the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS) and the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES). Other policy incentives for science dissemination are of a regulatory and financial nature. In 1999 the law on research institutions stipulated that all research centres receiving public funding ought to carry out scientific culture activities. Since then, almost all evaluation procedures for funding research (project grants, R&D institutions grants) include this within their criteria. It has thus become quasi-mandatory for research centres to be involved in dissemination, either by their own means or under the aegis of Ciência Viva. Concomitantly, many research centres have established dedicated science communication offices. At the individual level, the statutes of research and higher education teaching careers include scientific dissemination as one of their functions and it is one of the criteria for performance evaluation, though it is unclear how much weight is given to it by institutions. This policy emphasis on scientific culture has had some other impacts over the scientific system in Portugal. One the one hand, it has given rise to a growing group of professionals who work full time in science communication in different organizations (mostly paid through fellowships that grant little social rights), who recently (2016) formed their own network (together with science managers). Many have made a lateral career move from bench science, upon earning their doctoral degree. On the other hand, science communication has been established as a research field, with its own advanced training (there are two master degrees in two universities in Lisbon and a PhD programme in Porto), fellowships, and an association (SciComPT) that holds annual congresses. In this context, how does sociology (or the social sciences in general) fare? Is the notion of scientific culture restricted to traditional STEM disciplines? Are social sciences research centres and researchers exempt from the obligations of other fields? Are there specific features of scientific dissemination in sociology?

Sociology in Portugal Sociology has had a late start in Portugal, the result mainly of over 40 years of dictatorship in the middle of the twentieth century, which placed heavy restrictions on science in general (Gonçalves 2001) and on social sciences in particular: a dictatorship that associated sociology with social subversion (Machado 2012: 17; see also Torres 2010 and Silva 2016). Though the first undergraduate course in sociology was created only in 1974, some authors (Torres 2010; Ágoas 2013; Garcia et al. 2014) trace the emergence of the discipline to the writings of late

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Table 7.1 Data on sociology research in Portugal Sociology PhD awarded or recognized by Portuguese universities (1970–2016)a Web of Science publications (1990–2015)a R&D units funded by FCT (2017)b R&D units funding by FCT (2012)b Researchers in R&D units funded by FCT (2012, FTE)b R&D projects funded by FCT (2000–2013)b

% within social sciences 12.6

% within all scientific areas 3.1

820.1 16 3.4 M € 966.4

6.5 19.7 50.2

0.4 5.2 6.9

35.0

6.7

153

13.6

1.8

N. 1165

a

Source: DGEEC, Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education b Source: FCT, Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education

nineteenth-century thinkers and highlight sociological research work carried out throughout the 1950s and 1960s (mainly in rural sociology and sociology of religion) and the development of sociology courses within the training of agronomists and engineers, as well as the founding of the first research centre in 1962 and the first journal 1 year later (see also Machado 2012; Torres 2010; Silva 2016). Currently, sociology is taught at 10 public universities, and there are 16 sociology journals and 34 research centres that have had sociology research projects funded (Torres 2010; Garcia et al. 2014; Silva 2016). Table 7.1 provides an overview of the place of sociology within the social sciences and the whole of the Portuguese scientific system in terms of doctoral degrees, publications, and research funding. Though the scope of what counts as sociology is variable within these indicators (R&D units often conduct research in more than one discipline) it is noticeable that it has a significant weight mostly in terms of human resources and unit funding, and it lags behind in terms of international publication (publications in Portuguese and in book form remain dominant and are not included in the Web of Science) and research projects. Bastow et al. (2013) show that even in British academia sociologists tend to publish fewer journal articles and more books than the other disciplines in the social sciences. What the table does not show is the growth rates of these indicators, which for the most part have increased significantly in the past two decades. This has been the result of a deliberate science policy aimed at funding all scientific areas instead of prioritizing just a few, which has clearly benefited the social sciences (although between 2012 and 2015 there was some reversal of this policy, with direct effects on sociology). Since the mid-1990s sociology in Portugal has become far more internationalized in terms of teaching, publications, and research funding (Silva 2016). The sources cited above show that the development of Portuguese sociology has recently merited the publication of books, chapters, and articles in English language (and far more in Portuguese not cited in this chapter). However, not one of them mentions issues of dissemination or outreach outside academia.

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The Portuguese Sociological Association (APS) was created in 1985 and is one of the largest in the world, when taking into consideration the small size of the country (Torres 2010; Silva 2016). Its main activities concern professional representation and peer communication, mainly through a bi-annual congress, a journal, and other meetings and initiatives, in particular bringing together sociologists who work inside and outside academia. As many other learned societies (see Chap. 6), APS lists public outreach among its objectives in the statutes: ‘To promote and disseminate sociological analysis of Portuguese reality; (. . .) To publicise among institutions and public opinion the nature and contributions of sociology.’3 Despite having been defined as a priority in the programme of the current governing bodies (elected in 2016)—‘Aiming at streamlining channels with new audiences, disseminating sociological perspectives and acquiring new knowledge about their practices and knowledge, which will involve the organization of dissemination and meeting sessions, investing on content production and the use of new social networks’—, little has been done so far in this area, as will be seen below. This resonates with Bastow et al.’s (2013) assertion that professional and learned societies in the social sciences play a very minor role in mediation and knowledge transfer to outside academia, unlike what happens in other scientific fields. Very few studies address the issue of public communication of sociology. In a study of public engagement activities of Portuguese research institutions based on an inclusive sampling (all scientific fields), Entradas and Bauer (2016) note that social sciences units perform more public engagement activities than natural sciences but these activities more often concern civic public engagement than educational actions. Conceição et al. (2008) authored the only publication found specifically dedicated to scientific culture actions in sociology. They claim that there are very few social sciences initiatives under the aegis of Ciência Viva (see above), which is more due to the lack of mobilization of sociologists than to limitations of the programmes themselves. They go on to describe the initiatives developed in their own research centre between 2000 and 2005, namely open days during Science and Technology Week and the summer internships for secondary education students. Their work is based on the evaluation forms filled in by participants and their own experiences as promoters of these activities, as well as informal conversations and ex-ante and ex-post meetings. The authors conclude that this exception in terms of outreach in sociology is due to a combination of internal (researchers who work on science studies and public understanding of science, internal recognition of dissemination activities) and external (a favourable context of public policies and social movement toward scientific dissemination) factors. However, it should be noted that this is a very partial analysis, since other sociology research centres were conducting similar work at this period. Additionally, a cursory analysis of the annual conferences promoted by the association of science communicators SciComPT since 2013 shows less than a handful of oral presentations or posters have addressed science communication in sociology or other social sciences.

3

https://www.aps.pt/

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The current chapter contributes to this discussion by updating and enlarging the scope of the analysis. As will be seen below, scientific dissemination in sociology both predates the Ciência Viva period and includes a far wider array of activities, while the policy pressure to disseminate or die is felt in the social sciences as well. The following three sections examine sociology dissemination activities guided by three main objectives (and target audiences): to translate research results to policy makers and stakeholders, to stimulate scientific vocations among young people, and to reach out to the wider public.

Sociology Translated to Policy Makers and Stakeholders Burawoy (2008: 143) noted the wealth of studies carried out by Portuguese sociologists on demand by the government (see also Torres 2010), calling them policy sociology and pointing out its function as vehicle for public discussion and the impetus for more in-depth research. Research carried out by commission from local and central government, Non-Governmental Organizations, or companies usually gives rise to public presentations of results to stakeholders through seminars or workshops. For instance, in 2010 CIES-IUL carried out a research project on youth and precarious work commissioned by a government agency, the Social Security Institute, under the aegis of the European Year Against Poverty and Social Exclusion and by suggestion of one of the trade union confederations. Research results were published in book form (Alves et al. 2011) and in journal articles (e.g. Carmo et al. 2014) but also presented in debates in Lisbon and Porto organized by the trade union confederation and book launches in universities and bookshops. Besides specific research projects, some research centres also host observatories. According to Silva, Yet another institutional development in this period [1990s] has been the reinforcement of the policy orientation of public universities. As a result, a number of observatories have been created in this period, covering such topics as youth (1989), justice (1996), cultural activities (1996), the environment (1996), local government (2002), education (2003), and inequality (2008). All these observatories depend upon public funding to function and, as in most other countries, are intended to provide social knowledge to improve public decision-making (2016: 56).

Currently, the number of observatories is close to two dozen and they are mostly, though not exclusively, hosted by research centres: ICS hosts five, CIES-IUL three, CES six, and CICS-Nova five. Besides carrying out public interest research, the observatories maintain databases, organize dissemination events, publish reports and policy briefs, take part in international networks, and monitor legislation and public policies. See, for instance, the activities of ICS’s Observatory of Environment and Society, summarized by Schmidt and Delicado (2015). Training is another area of activity carried out by sociology research centres targeting stakeholders, such as public officials, teachers, journalists, company

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employees, activists, etc. In the form of summer schools, training courses, or master classes, research units contribute to the lifelong training of professionals. For instance, in 2016 CES offered five summer schools and 15 training courses on issues such as law, refugees, urban art, critical economy, scientific responsibility, and participatory democracy.4 Two private foundations play a major role in funding public interest social research and disseminating its results through publications and conferences. The Gulbenkian Foundation was founded in 1956 and has acted as the main private sponsor of art, science, and education in the country. Over the years it has commissioned social research especially on education, health, social inclusion, development, and sustainability. The Foundation Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS) is a private non-profit created by one of the largest retail groups in Portugal in 2009, with the mission of studying, disseminating and debating Portuguese reality.5 Though its scope of activities goes beyond the social sciences, this is essentially the main focus of FFMS’ undertakings.

Stimulating Vocations in Sociology According to the literature one of the most common objectives for performing scientific communication is to stimulate young people’s vocations for careers in science (Gregory and Miller 1998; Miller et al. 2002; da Costa et al. 2009). For that reason, many initiatives, from museum exhibitions to lectures in schools, from teaching based on hands-on experimentation to guided tour of laboratories, target school-aged children specifically. However, social sciences tend to be left out of these activities and Jensen points out that their [social scientists] weak presence in schools is food for thought for the community (2011, 29). In this Portugal is no exception. Ciência Viva develops a wide array of activities aimed at students in elementary and secondary education, from summer internships in laboratories to a competition for experimental projects in schools. Most of the exhibitions in science centres are in line with the schools’ curricula and the colours, texts, and materials used leave no doubt about their target audiences. Since 2010, the Ciência Viva School has hosted groups of school children for a week of activities in the main science centre of the network: lectures by scientists, laboratory experiments, classroom and playground activities, and visits to exhibitions. Social sciences have a weak presence in all of these activities, though they are not entirely absent. According to Cristina Palma Conceição (2011) though, in the first years of the competition for experimental projects in schools (in the 1990s) social

4 5

http://ces.uc.pt/pt/formacao-extensao/cursos-de-formacao https://www.ffms.pt/

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science projects were barely noticeable,6 in the last competition (2006) their presence grew, and in the national event to present these projects (Forum Ciência Viva) social science research centres were invited to participate. As to the summer internships in laboratories for secondary education pupils, social sciences represented just 2% of the internships on offer between 2000 and 2009 (Conceição 2011). This figure seems to have remained fairly constant: in 2016 there were 7 internships in sociology, out of a total of 279 internships. Conceição et al. (2008) offer more qualitative insights about these initiatives based on their own experiences of organizing sociology internships at CIES-IUL. A small group of youngsters (3–6) spend 2 weeks at the research centre, during which they are first involved in ongoing research activities, getting in contact with numerous researchers and different methodologies, and are then invited to develop their own research project on a subject of their choosing. At the end of the internship students make a presentation to researchers, discussing the objects of study and research problems, the concepts and methodologies they used and the cognitive results of the microproject (Conceição et al. 2008: 66).7 Activities during Science and Technology Week (see below) are also targeted at secondary education students: a group of pupils spend a half-day at CIES-IUL, getting acquainted with sociology, the research centre, the individual path of a few researchers, and research methodologies (Conceição et al. 2008). In the case of ICS, the summer internships started under the auspices of one of the observatories (see above) funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation, and within a wider programme of collaboration with a set of secondary schools in different parts of the country, which included lectures in schools and support to school projects (Almeida and Vieira 2006; Vieira et al. 2014). The interns spent a week at the research centre developing brief research projects. Usually made up of around 20 youngsters, the group was divided into four teams, each under the guidance of a researcher, and worked on a previously defined theme (e.g. social acceptance of nuclear energy, young people and the internet, cooking and eating practices). After the funding ended, the summer internships continued through the Ciência Viva programme. In the case of both ICS and CIES, students are asked to fill in an evaluation questionnaire at the end of the internship. Universities have also started to develop summer programmes for high school students in order to attract them to their undergraduate courses. For instance, the Junior University at the University of Porto develops various programmes for students from grades 6 to 11. Sociology is included in only the programme devoted to older students (9th to 11th grade), which is also structured around research projects. In 2017 two activities in sociology were proposed, one about the city of Porto and the other about summer festivals.8

6 Costa et al. (2005) identified just 12 applications from the social sciences (0.3% of the total) between 1996 and 2001, only 3 of which were approved (0.1% of the total). 7 See also http://cies.iscte-iul.pt/promocao/ocupacao.jsp 8 https://universidadejunior.up.pt/programas.php?p¼verao-em-projeto-9-10-e-11

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Many research centres offer lists of lectures their researchers can deliver by demand in schools. In the social sciences, one such example is the programme CES goes to school9 developed by the main social sciences centre in the University of Coimbra, also an associated laboratory. Since 2011 CES has offered a list of over a dozen themes, including issues such as LGBT rights, youth unemployment, and memories of the colonial war, which schools can chose from. Some are delivered in the form of traditional lectures, but others include films or hands-on workshops. APS also develops some initiatives aimed at secondary education students, such as lectures in schools, brochure distribution, and the more recent (2017) call for student volunteers to participate in debates in secondary schools under the guidance of a faculty member about the sociological perspective of the world, its specificities and its transformative potential.10 This initiative was justified by the lack of teachers trained in sociology and the fall in the number of students applying for sociology degrees. The scarce presence of social sciences in non-university education is also attested by the national competition for young scientists, held since 1992. Teams from elementary and secondary schools present a science project, first in written form and then, if selected, during a science fair. Although social sciences are one of the areas in which projects can be submitted, the number of applications is usually very small. For instance, in 2016 there were only 7 social sciences projects, within a total of 160.

Reaching Out to the Wider Public Sociology Publications Social sciences both benefit from and are hindered by the familiarity of their object of study. Bourdieu thus considers that the break with common sense is indispensable for the construction of a scientific object in sociology (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 235). Nevertheless, sociological writings, often published in local languages and not just in the lingua franca of science, English, are considered more accessible to non-academics, also in terms of the issues they address. In their comparisons of dissemination practices across disciplines, Jensen (2011) and Bentley and Kyvik (2011) confirmed the results of previous studies that academics in the social sciences are more likely to publish popularization articles and books than researchers in other fields. Bastow et al. (2013) use the term popular social science and state that sociology is, together with media studies, the discipline in which book publication is more frequent.

9

http://ces.uc.pt/extensao/cesvaiaescola/ http://aps.pt/pt/constituicao-de-equipas-de-estudantes-para-a-divulgacao-da-sociologia-noensino-secundario-2/

10

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In Portugal, although print runs are small, several academic (Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, Mundos Sociais) and non-academic (Afrontamento, Almedina, Colibri, Edições 70, Presença) publishers release sociology books that are usually aimed at professional sociologists and students, and to the wider public.11 The Gulbenkian Foundation has a publishing house with a collection on Social Science and Humanities University Texts, which comprises books based on doctoral dissertations and research projects. Book launches are public events held in places such as bookshops, theatres, and cafes, seeking to draw in non-academic audiences. Sociology journals, such as Análise Social (published since 1963) or Sociologia Problemas e Práticas (since 1986), are also sold in bookshops. They are likewise available online in full open access. The majority of articles are published in Portuguese, making them more accessible to non-specialists. However, their impact outside academia has never been assessed. FFMS also entered the publishing field in order to disseminate scientific knowledge among the general public, in different formats: • reports from studies they commissioned or sponsored in five main areas pertaining to the social sciences: Government and political system, social policies, knowledge, economic development, and population • short essays on relevant social topics written by academics (mostly from the social sciences) and sold at supermarkets (as well as in other more traditional outlets) • a bi-annual magazine with articles (authored often but non-exclusively by researchers) on a common theme Additionally, FFMS holds regular conferences in different formats and in different parts of the country, usually under the scientific coordination of researchers.

Sociology in Old and New Media Another form of engaging with wider audiences are media appearances. Bastow et al. (2013) distinguish between one-off involvement between academics and a media outlet (a citation of social science research in a news article or the appearance of an academic in a TV broadcast) and a more sustained relationship, when an academic writes an opinion column for a newspaper or leads the production of a radio show. Cassidy (2014: 186–187) notes that whereas science journalism leaves out the social sciences, ‘they are covered widely across the broader, non-specialist media and form a major part of the content of specialist areas such as political, economic and lifestyle journalism’. As Burawoy (2008: 142) remarked, sociology in Portugal is still very much in the public eye. As he and Garcia et al. (2014: 365) highlight, prominent sociologists

11

http://aps.pt/pt/editoras-revistas-livrarias-coletaneas/

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have regular media appearances as regular commentators on national TV networks and radio stations and in newspapers, influencing domestic debates on pressing national issues, ranging from justice to referenda on regionalization and the legalization of abortion. Several have also served as government ministers and advisors to the President and have taken other public roles (Burawoy 2008; Torres 2010; Garcia et al. 2014). Media regularly publish news about sociological research and interviews with sociologists. On his brief history of sociology in Portugal, Silva (2016: 42) mentions the media sensation caused by the publication of a report in 1996 based on the extensive usage of statistics to factually describe as accurately and comprehensively as possible the main dimensions of Portuguese social structure, partly pre-published in a daily newspaper. Though these findings may be outdated, Bentley and Kyvik (2011) cite a 1986 article that states that social sciences articles in the media are more common because newspaper editors perceive social science research as more relevant to the lay public audience. Jensen (2011: 29) also concluded that in France social scientists are overrepresented in radio/television actions and, to a lesser extent, in activities involving the press and conferences. Similar findings are reported in Kreimer et al.’s (2011) article on popularization activities of Argentinian researchers. However, Bastow et al. (2013: 221) cite research showing that media considers that social research is rarely important to cover on its own merits and acquires news worthiness or topicality chiefly from some link to or association with events happening elsewhere in society. In her analysis of science news in Portuguese media, Mendonça (2015) found a predominance of news concerning social sciences and humanities research (one fourth of the sample), though she did notice the increased occurrence of natural sciences in the latest period of sampling (2009–2010) compared to the earliest (2005). Mendonça attributes this prominence of social sciences in the media to the fact that they emerge in the public space not only as diffusers of new knowledge achieved through research but also as sources of reflection and opinion about world and human life events in their social, political and economic dimensions (2015: 70). Notable examples of longer-term, strategic relationships (in Bastow et al.’s (2013) terms) between sociologists and the media are António Barreto’s documentary series in public television Portugal, um retrato social (Portugal, a social portrait) in 2007,12 following Luisa Schmidt’s previous Portugal, um retrato ambiental (Portugal, an environmental portrait).13 Between 2007 and 2008 CIES-IUL researchers published short articles in the free newspaper Meia Hora. In 2020, ICS started a collaboration with the quality newspaper Publico that entailed the publication of longform weekly articles communicating current research. Science communication increasingly takes place also in online platforms (Delicado 2017). Websites, blogs, podcasts and social media have become

12 13

http://www.rtp.pt/programa/tv/p20216 http://www.rtp.pt/programa/tv/p17598

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indispensable tools for reaching out to the wider public. Yet, Bastow et al. (2013: 229) state that in general social scientists were initially much more conservative about online academic communication than STEM scientists. All social sciences research centres in Portugal have an online presence, though institutional communication seems to take precedence over science communication. However, it has become quite common for research projects to have their own websites and blogs, where research results are disseminated. Three of the Research Groups of ICS publish blogs whose posts are authored by researchers and students from the groups.14 CES has a podcast channel, regularly fed with interviews and debates with their researchers.15 The Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto hosts the Social Barometer, a virtual platform for reflection and analysis about Portuguese society and its positioning in the international context that publishes short articles from researchers from the whole country four times a year and organizes one yearly event.16 All these research centres and APS have Facebook profiles, the most commonly used online social network in the country. Followers of ICS, CIES, and APS number around 5000, but CES has currently close to 18,000 followers of its Facebook page, which may be due to the fact that it is very well-known in Brazil. However, no study has been made to date regarding these formats of science communication. In 2009 a novel online communication platform was created: Pordata, a social statistics web portal that aimed to translate the information provided by the National Statistical Office and other official sources into clear, appealing, and easy to find tables, charts, and maps. This was an initiative of FFMS, whose scientific director at the time was a retired sociologist from the University of Lisbon, who had been responsible for the above mentioned episode of the publication of a report on Portuguese social structure based on statistics in 1996. This portal would gradually grow to encompass data on the national, municipal, and European level, as well as a children’s area with an age-appropriate presentation of information (colourful, with simplified language and illustrations). Pordata also provides free online and offline training on statistical literacy, as well as a guidebook for journalists. Pordata was later followed by a public opinion portal with data on international public opinion surveys (European Social Survey, European Values Study, Eurobarometer), in partnership with ICS and based on the same user-friendly approach. FFMS also makes proficient use of new media to disseminate its publications and events, by producing short films, podcasts, an online TV channel, and social networks profiles, as well as collaborations with traditional media (radio and newspapers).

14

https://ambienteterritoriosociedade-ics.org/; https://liferesearchgroup.wordpress.com/ http://saladeimprensa.ces.uc.pt/index.php?col¼canalces 16 http://www.barometro.com.pt 15

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Sociology in Science Events Conversely, sociology tends to be less present in public events. Jensen (2011, 29) remarks Not surprisingly, they [social scientists] are under-represented in open door events. Kreimer et al. (2011) also found that Argentinian social scientists take part in far fewer open days or science fairs than researchers in other fields. However, APS has been organizing Sociology Nights, debates that take place in venues such as cafes, bars, and cultural centres, since 1990, and research centres in recent years have made a deliberate effort to take part in science festivals and similar initiatives. One such example in Portugal is the Science and Technology week. Held in November since 1998, it is promoted by the Ciência Viva agency. All kinds of actors within the scientific system (universities and research centres, but also schools and associations) are invited to organize events such as open days, seminars, film presentations, guided tours, workshops, exhibitions, conferences, science cafes, and astronomical observations. Ciência Viva organizes its own events and publicizes all others on its website. Conceição (2011) estimated that on average, between 1998 and 2009, the S&T Week mobilized 147 institutions and comprised 367 events per year, just 11% of which concerned the social sciences. In 2017 there were 453 events but just one of them indicated the keyword sociology and three other social sciences, despite the fact that six research centres in the social sciences participated. Conceição et al. (2008) analysed their own research centre’s activities for S&T week, which targeted secondary education students exclusively (see above). Other social sciences centres opt for disseminating events on this platform such as lectures and conferences, which are mostly aimed at traditional academic audiences. But there are also events created specifically for the S&T week, such as ICS’s initiative in 2013 5 days, 5 films, during which documentaries or fiction films about social issues (environment, immigration, family, education) were shown, followed by a debate with invited experts. Another regular science dissemination initiative is the European Researchers Night, which usually takes place at the end of September all across Europe. Portugal has participated since 2008 and the number of locations in which events are organized increases every year. Social scientists have participated since the beginning, with a wide array of activities, ranging from quizzes to debates, and from show-cooking to LEGO-building. For example, in 2013 ICS’s participation in the European Researchers Night at the National Museum of Natural History and Science consisted of a series of panels with provocative statements about the near future, the theme chosen for the event, (such as In 2020 a third of energy consumption in Portugal will come from renewable sources; In 2020 the Portuguese will include in their diet worms and insects; or In 2020 a third of children in Europe will be born in Muslim families) in which visitors had to cast their vote: whether they found the statement likely or unlikely, desirable or undesirable. Researchers were on hand to discuss the issues with the public. The use of humour in science communication is growing and it is being seen as a great way to bring science to the public through laughter (Riesch 2015). Between

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2009 and 2013 a stand-up comedy group comprising 13 Portuguese scientists, coordinated by a science communicator and a professional actor, created and presented comedy acts in different locations, in science-related facilities such as universities, scientific research institutes and centres, science museums and science centres, but also other types of venues such as theatres, book fairs, bookstores, comedy festivals, shopping centres and hotels (Pinto et al. 2015: 780). One of these scientists was a sociologist, at the time a PhD candidate, and she performed comedy routines about heavy and light sciences and about immigration. Another of these novel formats for science dissemination emerged in 2014, in Nottingham: PubhD, a regular event that takes place in a pub where PhD candidates explain their work in simple language. The model reached Portugal one year later and is currently carried out on a regular basis in five locations in the country.17 Social science and sociology PhD candidates in particular have participated in these events, though less frequently than those from other disciplines. Finally, in 2015 FFMS devised what might be considered the first social sciences exhibition in Portugal. Pordata viva was an interactive exhibition centred on statistical data, which addressed themes such as the distribution of the population in the country, various social indicators via anamorphic maps and chronologies, how individuals contribute to statistical data, or the confrontation between popular myths about social indicators and actual data. The exhibition was shown first in the core of the Ciência Viva network of science centres, in Lisbon, and then in other science centres throughout the country.

Final Remarks Though science dissemination in the social sciences in Portugal is thriving, research and reflection on it is still scarce. This chapter has attempted to reveal the breadth and width of public dissemination activities carried out by researchers and research centres in sociology. But other actors of the Science and Technology system also play a role in the dissemination of sociological knowledge to the public. However, actors such APS, Ciência Viva, and FFMS are enablers/mediators of scientific dissemination. They rely exclusively on the work performed by researchers attached to universities and research centres. Though it has had the undeniable merit of bringing social science findings to public attention and translating them into accessible and attractive formats, arguably it can obfuscate the role that research institutions play, since most dissemination materials tend to slightly downplay the institutional affiliation of authors.18

17

https://pubhd.wordpress.com The same can be said for the National Statistics Office and Pordata. There is anecdotal evidence that users of Pordata (students, journalists) tend to cite it as a source, neglecting to mention the

18

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It should also be noted that these dissemination activities seem to be mostly driven by external factors: funding rules that make public engagement quasimandatory and programmes run by non-academic organizations. As a result, some of the activities end up emulating or even mimicking those in natural sciences, such as the internships at the lab, much like what is happening in publication practices. The specificities of social sciences ought to merit perhaps more investment in different approaches, but the discussion about this is non-existent. If in STEM there has been a noticeable transition from public understanding of science to public understanding of research (Field and Powell 2001), in the social sciences the emphasis still seems to be placed on disseminating results, with much fewer initiatives concerning the process of research. It should be noted that the borders between public engagement as a dissemination tool (involving citizens and stakeholders in debates of a scientific nature) and as a research method (for collecting data from stakeholders and citizens) in sociology are fuzzy. There is no indication that science communication in the social sciences is becoming professionalized as in the STEM fields (Trench and Miller 2012). Sociology research centres seem not to have dedicated communication offices, and the roles of the researcher (especially STS researchers) and the communicator still overlap. Evaluation of dissemination activities in the social sciences seems also to be in short supply. Other than the occasional survey to audiences at events, no assessment of the results and impacts of activities has been found, which is somewhat surprising, given the role that social scientists often have in evaluating STEM dissemination. Finally, the analysis in this chapter has been severely hindered by the lack of international comparisons. Without them it is impossible to know just how much the particularities of the national context in terms of science policies, the scientific system, or the public’s relation to science have an effect on the public communication of sociology in Portugal.

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Gonçalves, M. E., & Castro, P. (2002). Science, culture and policy in Portugal: A triangle of changing relationships? Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences, 1(3), 157–173. Göpfert, W. (1996). Scheduled science: TV coverage of science, technology, medicine and social science and programming policies in Britain and Germany. Public Understanding of Science, 5 (4), 361–374. Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in public: Communication, culture, and credibility. New York: Plenum. Heitor, M., & Bravo, M. (2010). Portugal at the crossroads of change, facing the shock of the new: People, knowledge and ideas fostering the social fabric to facilitate the concentration of knowledge integrated communities. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 77(2), 218–247. Jensen, P. (2011). A statistical picture of popularization activities and their evolutions in France. Public Understanding of Science, 20(1), 26–36. Kreimer, P., Levin, L., & Jensen, P. (2011). Popularization by Argentine researchers: The activities and motivations of CONICET scientists. Public Understanding of Science, 20(1), 37–47. Machado, F. L. (2012). Generators of sociological production in Portugal: An empirically illustrated interpretation. Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 11(1), 15–29. Mendonça, H. (2015). Interacção Jornalistas – Cientistas: Os bastidores das notícias de ciência. PhD thesis, ISCTE-IUL. Michael, M., & Lupton, D. (2016). Toward a manifesto for the ‘public understanding of big data’. Public Understanding of Science, 25(1), 104–116. Miller, S., Caro, P., Koulaidis, V., de Semir, V., Staveloz, W., & Vargas, R. (2002). Report from the expert group Benchmarking the promotion of RTD culture and public understanding of science. Brussels: European Commission. Nielsen, F. (2004). The vacant ‘we’: Remarks on public sociology. Social Forces, 82(4), 1619–1627. O’Brien, T. L. (2013). Scientific authority in policy contexts: Public attitudes about environmental scientists, medical researchers, and economists. Public Understanding of Science, 22(7), 799–816. Pinto, B., Marçal, D., & Vaz, S. G. (2015). Communicating through humour: A project of stand-up comedy about science. Public Understanding of Science, 24(7), 776–793. Purdam, K. (2014). Citizen social science and citizen data? Methodological and ethical challenges for social research. Current Sociology, 62(3), 374–392. Riesch, H. (2015). Why did the proton cross the road? Humour and science communication. Public Understanding of Science, 24(7), 768–775. Schmidt, L., & Delicado, A. (2015). OBSERVA. Observatório de Ambiente, Território e Sociedade. In J. Ferrão & A. Horta (Eds.), Ambiente, Território e Sociedade. Novas Agendas de Investigação (pp. 231–241). Lisboa: ICS. Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Silva, F. C. (2016). Sociology in Portugal: A short history. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Summ, A., & Volpers, A. M. (2016). What’s science? Where’s science? Science journalism in German print media. Public Understanding of Science, 25(7), 775–790. Torres, A. C. (2010). Sociology, science and profession: The Portuguese experience. In S. Patel (Ed.), The ISA handbook of diverse sociological traditions (pp. 105–113). London: Sage. Torres-Albero, C., Fernández-Esquinas, M., Rey-Rocha, J., & Martín-Sempere, M. J. (2011). Dissemination practices in the Spanish research system: Scientists trapped in a golden cage. Public Understanding of Science, 20(1), 12–25. Trench, B., & Miller, S. (2012). Policies and practices in supporting scientists’ public communication through training. Science and Public Policy, 39(6), 722–731. Vieira, M. M., Delicado, A., & Almeida, A. N. (2014). Communicating (social) science as it is done? Proceedings-SciComPT (pp. 48–50). Lisbon: Edições VAC. Wilkinson, C. (2014). Engaging with strangers and brief encounters: Social scientists and emergent public engagement with science and technology. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 34(3–4), 63–76.

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Ana Delicado is a Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. She has a PhD in Sociology (University of Lisbon, 2006) and specializes in social studies of science and technology. She has conducted research on science museums and exhibitions, public understanding of science activities, environmental risks, international mobility of researchers, scientific associations, climate change, social acceptance of energy technologies, and disaster risk. She is vice-coordinator of ICS’s Observa Observatory of Environment, Territory, and Society. She currently coodinates the Executive Board of SSTNET (RN24) of the European Sociological Association (ESA) and is a member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).

Chapter 8

Technologies of Participation in Water Plans in Portugal: What Kind of Science– Society Relationship Are We Talking About? Sofia Bento and Oriana Rainho Brás

Introduction This chapter is an outcome of a project developed at SOCIUS/CSG, ULisboa, about Water Policy and Participation. The project was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, the Portuguese Science and Technology Agency, and its main goal was to critically observe the participation processes introduced by the Portuguese water authorities under the framework of the European Water Directive, for the planning period (2015–2021). The project seeks the answers to two overarching questions: what kind of relationship does the science-based administration build with society, and how might the technology of participation enrich the modalities of democratic processes? These questions led us to look inside participation with three purposes: to observe how a participatory event in the water sector is run, to characterize the nature of the arguments and counter arguments that emerge in a participative session, and to understand the extent to which participants can revisit techno-scientific arguments in institutionalized settings. To characterize the relation between institutionalized expertise and society, we also need to understand who attended the public sessions and how they functioned, how the material conditions of the participation technology influenced the reactions and behaviours of the people in the process, and which publics the organizers’ imagination considered. The focus on participation processes is framed by academic interest in the changes of the institutions and instruments of governance of natural resources, especially water, in areas such as geography, hydrogeology, climate change, and other related disciplines (House 1999; Buytaert et al. 2016; Akmouch and Clavreul 2016). However, questioning the roots of participation and its links with democracy

S. Bento (*) · O. R. Brás SOCIUS/CSG-ISEG Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_8

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and scientific knowledge was also undertaken in political science, sociology, and philosophy much earlier—Aristotle, Dewey, Jefferson, Tocqueville, Popper—to mention only a few. Our chapter is based on several insights of the STS approach that try in different ways to discuss the nature of participation while avoiding a causal perspective. Instead, we use a constructivist and multidimensional approach, inspired by authors who assume participation in a broader sense (Jasanoff 2003; Callon et al. 2009; Chilvers and Kearnes 2016). In this chapter we read participation as a technology in the sense that it has long been understood as a tool for enlarging democracy based on a voluntarist principle of inclusion (Latour 2005). It is a technology because it encompasses technical procedures and, as a classic technique, it has its own inscriptions1 (Callon 1991). However, although several sectors use it as an instrumental tool to practice democracy, several frustrated results have led to a dismissal of that ideal (Zask 2011). Some of the vulnerabilities of participation today are revealed in the scepticism of citizens, their disengagement for participation, and frustrated expectations due to the inertia of policies and maintenance of the status quo in public governance. STS approaches can contribute to an understanding of the sociotechnical and epistemic aspects of participatory processes by looking at not only the context in which they are constituted, but also the micro level of the space, time, and discourse of this technology. Simultaneously, studies in linguistics are also a challenging theoretical concern that can improve the understanding of participative situations. The empirical work in this project focused on the recent process of public participation undertaken by the Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA) for the elaboration of the water plans of hydrological regions for the period 2015–2021. More specifically, we observed the public sessions for discussion of the Significant Issues in Water Management (QSigA), which were held in each hydrographic region in 2015. Because this format of participation is organized by the government, it reveals limitations in the distribution of actors beyond the state, in the making of the issues, and normalization of the organization of times and spaces for dialogue. Indeed, we observed these elements, and they mirror the description of participation processes in literature. Nevertheless, our study also suggests that, even in highly formatted designs such as these, participation processes might be considered as social experimentations in which participants sketch, create, and/or test alternative possibilities of thinking and dialoguing. This constructivist lens constitutes a departure point to look deeply into participatory processes through ethnographic methodologies. This chapter is structured in three parts. The first starts with the contributions of the constructivist approach to the analysis of participation and the benefits of approaching the dynamics of participation with a linguistic perspective. We then explain the elements of this specific participatory process in Water Planning,

For more information, see Callon (1991), who defines: “inscription is the result of the translation of one’s interest into material form” (Callon 1991, 143).

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including its political and normative dimensions, and explaining the role of the European Water Directive in the Portuguese format of participation. We then present the steps of the ethnographic observation to allow the reader to see how the data were collected and to understand how the researchers proceeded. The second part of the chapter deals with data analysis and interpretation. We provide information about how the sessions occurred, who spoke, and what kind of topics were disclosed, thereby describing the main characteristics of the process. In the third part we suggest simple but applicable conclusions for extensive research on this topic.

Participation from a Constructivist Perspective: What Are the Links Between Society and Experts? Because there is no canonical format for public participation (Fung 2006), the literature is still exploring and questioning the possibilities of democratic debate and the implementation of links between science and society. In the latest reflection on participation in STS, Chilvers and Kearnes (2016) present a contribution to the understanding of participation in a broader and interconnected sense. They propose studying participation as an emergent and co-produced phenomenon, which entails paying attention to the circumstances of its construction, as well as to its performance and the productive dimensions of its processes. The who (publics), what (issues), and how (procedural formats) of participation do not exist externally in a natural state, but are actively constructed through the performance of collective participatory practices. Thus, these were the dimensions we looked at when observing and interpreting the participation sessions for the QsigA in our study. According to the same authors (ibid), the focus is on the collectives of participation in the making: emergent socio-material collectives of humans, non-human artefacts, and other elements through which publics engage in collective problems (ibid). In an effort to characterize the processes, we used Callon’s (1998), Callon et al. (2009) typology for the relationship between science and political decision makers. He considers a range of modalities that actors use and build for solving the mixed reality they face when they have to solve the practical issues of technical democracies (Callon 1998, p. 64). The possibilities of technical democracies (Callon 1998; Callon et al. 2009) help to comprehend the different sets of channels between actors, the modes of representation that institutions choose to create dialogue, and the knowledge accepted in this dialogue. The author distinguishes mainly three models: the public instruction model, the public debate model, and the co-construction of knowledge model, explaining that what varies is the degree of monopoly of scientists and, consequently, the degree of lay involvement in the development and implementation of knowledge and the way they feed the decisions (Callon 1998, p. 64). In the instruction model, the role of state agencies is to guarantee the representation of the public in the debate. The participative process aims to build confidence and communication between the state and other actors, but there is a clear

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demarcation between administration, scientists, and citizens. Being informed enables the public to decide rationally, which means that emotions and incommensurability are avoided in the decision. In any case, the legitimacy of political decisions is based on the citizens’ representatives, and on the objectivity of the science and the techno-scientific knowledge that is delegated to the experts. The means used to build this science-society relation are technical and scientific knowledge, and the solution to reduce the distance between the citizens, the scientific knowledge, and the administration is to inform the publics and offer them training. In the public debate model, state agencies assume the need for opening up the debate and a deliberative process for facing complex problems. This is the logic underlying their relation with society. The stage agencies may be constrained to act in this way in compliance with existing legal frameworks, as is the case in the water sector. They apply several procedures (focus groups, hearings, consensus conferences) to perform participation. These new formats enlarge the number of users, seek to enrich public administration, and assume the participation of specialized publics. In this configuration, the public space changes radically and decisions become legitimized by the open debate or the consultation (Callon et al. 2009). The co-construction of knowledge model accepts the construction of science and technical knowledge by citizens. Knowledge is shared and built in partnership, in which concerned groups have the power and knowledge to influence the scientific choices (Callon and Rabehariosa 2008). In our case only the first two models were clearly present in the QSigA participation sessions; there was no explicit co-construction of knowledge, and the state was the central actor defining the agenda, the procedures, and the setting of participation. Although useful, Callon’s typology did not allow us to fully consider the complexity of the processes occurring in the sessions. In a project report on Science, Technology, and Governance in Europe, Hagendijk et al. (2005) propose a more refined typology of the relationship between science and society, going beyond the dichotomy between the competition/market model and the concern for democracy and engagement (Fig. 8.1). They create six categories that describe a specific relationship between science and society, through science governance. This typology emphasizes that single cases of governance may be characterized by more than one category and no country fits straightforwardly into any single classification and all combine a mix of these elements. They also argue that the categories cannot be read as unique because various overlaps can occur. The following table illustrates the six categories:

Fig. 8.1 Modes of governance (based on Hagendijk et al. 2005)

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Discretionary governance describes political systems and governance models in which the decisions are taken without any interference from society. Portugal and Greece are given as examples of the discretionary governance of science and technology, for the main attitude is that science is a matter of government, which has universal goals and no need to translate or include the public’s views in decisions. Corporatist governance is described as a system that allows for representation of different interests and negotiation of different stakes but in a formal and regulated space and format that composes a closed process of deliberation. Like the instruction model from Callon (1998), educational governance assumes that conflicts and controversies arise from lack of knowledge. The model is then based on the provision of a variety of initiatives that aim to bring the public closer to technoscientific issues through exhibitions, special courses for children, or information campaigns. Market governance assumes citizens’ free choice as consumers. Its goal is to encourage citizens to make their choices based on regulation or government rules. Finally, the last two models are of relevance here because they match some of the situations in our study. The agonistic governance model reflects situations of conflict and confrontation in which interests are very much opposite and crystalized. In this context, the state loses control as stakeholders fight for authority and influence. The deliberative model applies the political ideal of public debate and the need to reach consensual agreements. In this type of governance participation occurs through formats such as consensus conferences. Other authors have theorized these issues in terms of hegemonic and counterhegemonic models of democracy and citizen involvement (Nunes 2007). Nunes (2007) distinguishes hegemonic forms from counter-hegemonic forms of participation, arguing that the distinction rests on the modes of knowledge and modes of expression and communication between them. The hegemonic model of participation is typically based on the figure of an informed and active participant that can be prepared through information and training or education. This concept corresponds to the so-called deficit theories. Discussion in the model is based on a question-answer format, with a clear separation of roles and discourse and a rational-scientific approach in which each expert makes affirmations based on proven data (. . ., if . . .). Alternative forms of expression or modes of knowledge such as testimony or narrative are disqualified in this format (ibid). By contrast, in counter-hegemonic forms of participation actors have the autonomy to create agendas, selection is inclusive, and participants are involved in the various phases of participation. There is no doubt that state-organized participation most frequently diverges from this model, but there are a few experiments of state-organized participation that attempt to embrace some of these principles. The participative budgeting in Brazil (Allegreti and Herzberg 2004) is one such example. In a pragmatist view, Laurent (2012) suggests using the metaphor of a scientific experiment to understand participation. A scientific experiment can be seen as a demonstration activity, and this is also the case of participative processes. The experience of participation is underpinned by instruments and procedural actions (the technology of participation) that allow citizens to act on a question. And just as a

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scientific experiment defines procedures to produce objective facts, participatory technology defines the procedures by which the democratic practice can be developed (Laurent 2012). When we look at the water sector in Portugal, the criteria for democratic processes are in the hands of the administration, just as in science the criteria of truth and objectivity belong to scientists. Moreover, the water administration is composed of expert staff on water issues, which positions them as both political and technical authorities. The choice of criteria is not discussed publicly. Usually it is based on the replication of experiences and reveals a fear of uncertainty in discussion. Finally, we mobilize studies from linguistics because they complement the sociological analysis by revealing ways of participation. Through their emphasis on the local level of an interaction, they allow us to focus on the micro level of the situation. In studies on narratives some authors have shown that the participation of discussant goes beyond the structure of talk to encompass the practices used by rich, feeling bodies to perform relevant operations on a public substrate provided by others (Goodwin 2015, p. 203). Furthermore, there is a tension inherent in communication. Plantin (2005), argues that any dialogue or communication presents the possibility of a counter discourse. In other words, the possibility that the answer might depend on the point of departure is a natural feature of any discourse. Thus, counter discourse is usually embedded in arguments that diverge from the initial question and give rise to an argumentative situation. Recently, the construct of counter discourse has been refined to include two levels of discourse, which we believe are pertinent for our analysis (Doury et al. 2015). At one level there may exist a tension between opposite arguments, as Plantin argues, in which the counter discourse delivers a position expressing an opposition. Its usual intention is to change a dominant discourse. In the specific case we are looking at, this could be a counter discourse against the water directive or against the main assumptions of the debate (ibid, 2015). At another level, a different counter discourse can exist in the linguistic exchanges at the micro level. This counter discourse takes the form of phrases that imply criticism or refutation of the argument, but remain in line with the dominant perspective. This linguistic lens will enable us to climb the steps of materiality in the participation, following the links between institutions and society and observing the possibilities of dialogue at the micro level of the discourse (communicational and relational level).

Water Policy and Participation: Portuguese Water Planning In order to understand the technology of participation, it is necessary to consider its institutional and historical context. In our case we are concerned with the water sector, its main trends and, necessarily, the society in which it occurs. We first explain what Water Plans consist of at the European and the Portuguese levels. Second, we review studies that allow us to characterize the relationship between Portuguese society and science and specify the limitations of participation in the

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Portuguese situation. This overview provides a framework for the evolution of links between society and expert institutions in Portugal. The water sector is covered by several official declaration and legal frameworks (Dublin Statement 1992, Aarhus Convention in 1998, European Water Directive in 2000, and others) that emphasize the need to open up the decision process of the sector to other actors, namely non-governmental actors (Mostert 2003). The current water plans in Europe and in Portugal are the consequence of this extensive legal framework. Specifically, the European Water Directive has stimulated different transpositions into national laws, and several studies have shown the diversity in administrative formulas for participation adopted by European countries (Borowski et al. 2008; Le Bourhis 2003). The Portuguese Water Law (Law no. 58/2005, of 29 December) is the application of the Water Framework Directive (WFD)—Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October) into the national law. This law establishes environmental goals for bodies of water, which must be achieved through the application of the Program of Measures specified in the Water Plans (Fig. 8.2). The main objective of the Portuguese Water Law is to ensure both the good ecological and chemical status of water bodies and the good quantitative and chemical status of groundwater. It also details specific objectives for protected areas, including the areas for water extraction for human consumption, the protection of aquatic species with economic value, recreational uses, and the maintenance of nutrient-sensitive areas and habitats. The Water Law and The Water Framework Directive created a new paradigm: to stop managing water by thinking only of uses and to consider it as an ecosystem. Under this framework it is not enough to satisfy uses. The quality of water and the good state of the aquatic ecosystems must also be guaranteed. The Management Plans of the Hydrographic Regions, hereafter Water Plans, are water planning instruments. They are organized every 6 years, and they aim to manage and protect water, as well as ensure its environmental, social and economic valuation at the level of the hydrographic basins. The complexity of the task warrants that each planning cycle is composed of several formal steps, of which the first, called Significant Issues, characterizes the hydrographic region. In this phase, a survey of the hydrographic region is carried out. The resultant report details the quality and quantity of water in the region, the impact of human activities and challenges to managing water in compliance with the law. For this chapter we selected a single, circumscribed empirical case, limiting fieldwork to a specific phase of the second cycle for Water Plans (for the period 2016–2021)2: the public consultation on the Significant Issues for Water Management (QSigA), which lasted 6 months (February–June 2015). During this period the

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This cycle followed the first cycle of plans concluded in 2013.

Fig. 8.2 Water plans, second cycle (source: APA 2015b)

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Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA) held public sessions in each of the hydrographic regions to present and discuss the Significant Issues.3 The final report of the QSigA participation process indicated that 66% of the participants learnt about the sessions through email (at the APA’s invitation), 27% learnt about the process by other means, and 7% saw the announcement on the APA’s website (APA 2015a). The main targets of this mobilization were state departments and big water users, either public or private, which may partly explain their share of attendance in the sessions. If taken homogeneously, the state was overrepresented in the sessions, accounting for 64% of total participants. The presence of the state as a participant was an explicit feature of the new institutionalization of water management in Portugal, with the goal of articulating the actions of different state departments toward common goals of water management. Public companies and private companies followed with 11% and 8% respectively, and the universities/ research centres with 6%. Individual citizens made up 5% of total participants, and other types of participants—local/regional development associations, environmental NGOs, and professional associations—accounted for less than 5%. These proportions show an under-representation of environmental NGOs, individual citizens, and local organizations. There were also some notable absences: no consumer associations or representatives of the movement for public water (i.e. against the privatization of water) in Portugal were present. It is important to note that representatives of public administration governing other sectors sat in the audience and participated as public. Thus, the state was simultaneously promoter and organizer, participant and stakeholder, a characteristic that other researchers have also found empirically (Ehrenstein and Laurent 2016). The planning process was framed by a new political and administrative context in the country. Indeed, the right-wing government (2011–2015) re-centralized water planning and management and reduced the role of participation, when compared to the socialist government previously in power. From 2012 on, the government merged the formerly autonomous regional water administrations into the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), and suspended the activity of the Councils of Hydrographic Regions, a consultative organ integrated in each hydrographic region. Schimdt and Ferreira (2014) refer to this period as a regression in water policies, criticizing the fact that a centralized model of governance in water services replaced the exercise of institutional autonomy. This had an impact on the participation mechanisms such that the choice of their format responds to a tendency for standardization in governing through a centralized administration. In Portugal the context of science production and its dissemination, as well as its relation to decision making, underwent profound changes between the 1990s and the twenty-first century (Godinho 2013), for until the 1990s, the indicators in education, training, and science were very low. The literature identifies several factors

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Public participation in the second generation of hydrographic plans (2016–2021) included public consultations in the phases: (1) schedule and programme; (2) significant issues for water management in each hydrographic region; (3) projects of regional hydrographic plans.

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explaining the changes that affected all the science based administration and society relations: increasing investment in human resources and equipment in science (Godinho 2013); a science oriented policy since the 1990s (Nunes and Gonçalves 2001; Gonçalves and Castro 2003) that instigated programmes for popularizing science; the emergence of science based public controversies (Nunes and Gonçalves 2001), and the creation of the governmental department of environment in the 1990s. These social studies have mainly tackled questions as to how scientific knowledge has been used and performed in the environmental sector, emphasizing the role of the state and the weak dialogue with other areas of knowledge. Science was presented as something specialists do in their offices and is able to come up with unproblematic answers. These unproblematic answers were, afterwards, to be used as the basis of governmental decisions (Gonçalves and Castro 2003). However, at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century, public protests involving scientific controversies showed that Portuguese society challenged this stance, as exemplified by the protests against the co-incineration of toxic waste in Souselas (Matias 2004) and the closure of several maternity hospitals (Matos 2012). Nonetheless, Portugal is characterized by few institutionalized forms of participation (Mendes and Seixas 2005) and very little innovation on this topic.

Methods and Data The current research is based on the ethnographic observation of participative sessions, understood as a scientific inquiry of a commitment to producing a story about events as they occur in their natural settings (LeCompte and Schensul 1999). This method seems the most appropriate to approach participatory processes in the making because, as mentioned in the introduction, we want to deepen knowledge about the possibilities of dialogue in a formatted space of participatory processes. The meetings about the Significant Issues occurred in 2015 and were organized in each hydrographic region. They provide the single and central empirical data source used in this chapter. The public nature of the sessions was an effective way to avoid the need for an authorization request from the administration, as would have been necessary for fieldwork inside the administration and which could take a long time to obtain (see Lopes et al. 2017). In some of the sessions, some institutional technicians recognized us from other projects or workshops (Faysse et al. 2014; Varanda et al. 2014), and in one session one of the authors also presented herself as a researcher and directed a question to the table about the possible re-activation of the regional hydrographic councils, which remain inactive to date. During the sessions we mainly kept an attitude of non-participant observation, taking notes on direct discourses and collecting data about the conditions, configurations, and dynamics of the sessions. We observed each session from beginning to end using an observation guideline, notes, and audio recording. Afterwards, we

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transcribed the audio data and composed our field diary.4 Our study focused on the first session of hydrographic regions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.5 We did not intervene in the sessions, except for the one session mentioned above, and this was quite natural because of the complexity and specificity of the reports. Due to the nature of the funding (fieldwork was conducted in the frame of a post-doc grant of 7 months), we had neither the opportunity nor the means to interact a posteriori with the participants of the sessions. This omission constitutes one of the limitations of this study. We believe that the opportunity to follow the sessions in the Portuguese territory would bring to light aspects that normally remain unanalysed or even unmentioned in the official reports from the expert institutions. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no study in the water sector has undertaken this type of observation centred on verbalizations in public debates. Our rationale is that the resulting detailed description can provide a good narrative of the participation process and contribute to the understanding of the mediation of participative technologies for the relationship between science, expertise, and knowledge with society. Besides the observation of the public sessions, we analysed relevant documents and websites, and organized them by hydrographic region. In each case we also consulted the respective Significant Issues Report. As the public participation process was mediated through the Portuguese Environment Agency’s website, we were able to access information on the water planning process, the participative process, and the reports, and we were also able to register in the public sessions. In this narrative, interpretation is presented through vignettes which offer short-focused descriptions of interactional patterns (Jacobsen 2014) that we extracted from the observation and transcription of the public sessions. We anchored our choice in our interpretation of all of the observations and documents available, paying special attention to both communicational and relational aspects of participation.

Participative Sessions for Significant Issues in Water: A Report at the Centre of a Participation Mechanism The main element of the public sessions is the Significant Issues Report, which functions as a central reference between actors. The Portuguese Water Administration is responsible for writing the report that defines a list of 21 Significant Issues for Water Management. Using a set of 17 criteria, the characterization of the hydrographic region, the analysis of pressures and impacts on water, and the evaluation of 4 For technical reasons, the audio recordings of sessions of hydrographic regions 1, 6, and 7, and the second national meeting were not good enough for transcription, so we rely on written notes taken at the time. 5 It was not possible to observe the first national session in full. In the hydrographic regions 4 and 8 there were two Significant Issues sessions, whereas in all other regions there was only one. The researcher could not be present in the session of hydrographic region 2 or in the second session of hydrographic region 4.

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the state of water (Relatório Qsiga Região Hidrográfica 1 Minho e Lima 2014), each regional administration should then identify the issues that were relevant to its own reality. The Significant Issues for Water Management report thus constitutes a technical instrument that identifies the main problems of a river basin and/or a hydrographic region, covering an exhaustive list of issues ranging from biology and aquatic systems’ ecology to risks such as coastal erosion, floods, water scarcity, and water cost recovery. Its goal is to inform the planning process from a technical point of view by providing knowledge on the region, a framework for users’ involvement, and the normative framework for the operationalization of the measures to be chosen in the next planning stage. Although regional reports all obeyed the same structure, their length differed in each hydrographic region: the shortest had 43 pages and the longest had 138 pages. Because it is so central, this report was presented in each regional public session as the starting point for discussions. The representatives of the water authority presented the contents of the respective Significant Issues Report, occupying between 22% and 39% of each session’s total time. The presentation consisted of a detailed characterization of each Significant Issue, the description of which included the analysis of the impact on water, reference to the historical evolution of the hydric entity, and the sectors responsible for the problems found, as well as the authorities involved in the proposed goals. Finally, it also mentioned the relation with the previous planning period, alternative actions, and their effect on the environmental goals, as well as the recommendations for the next planning period. Following this presentation the discussion started, in which the administration representatives invited the public to comment on or question them, and the floor was passed back and forth between administration and public. These debates took between 48% and 64% of the total time. The rest of the time was spent on introducing/concluding the session and giving formal information. The report is a specific technical device that mediates the relation between the water administration and the participants with an important impact on the participative format. Contrary to the classic public debate in which speakers present opposite views or contributions for the definition of the issue, the sessions here were more like a text commentary, and they constrained participants to a formal procedure of always basing their interventions on the report’s text. The following vignette represents three interactions between participants and the administration during the debate in which the report frames the communication. The information we reproduce in these vignettes are extracted from different type of data: descriptions of field notes and direct speech of the participants. Vignette 1 (a) Session of the Vouga, Mondego, and Lis Hydrographic Region The discussion took place just after the administration presented the report. In the intervention of the participant, a representative of the irrigators’ federation, we see how the report constitutes the referent used in the whole dialogue and restricts the type of issues being considered. Even if the participant were able to identify issues that were absent in the report, such issues would not be discussed. One of the questions is the quantitative classification of bodies of water. So we have that classification in the first phase of the plans for the water underground; for the surface waters this was not done [. . .] In this hydrographic region, the scarcity coefficient aggravates the

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water resources fee by 10%. Under the green taxation, now called environmental taxation, in 2016 it can go up to 50% more. For the management plans of the hydrographic region, this is not a significant issue, but it should be analysed because the scarcity coefficient does not depend on the state of the basin. It does not depend on the annual state of the basin, or on its hydrologic status. Besides, the application of this coefficient at the level of sub-basins is important, [. . .] so that we have this differentiated application of the scarcity coefficients at the level of sub-basins. (. . .).

The need to not restrict or close down issues in a discussion has been emphasized by Jasanoff (2003) with regard to the tradition in risk assessment, where novel points of view are excluded: If a problem is framed too narrowly, too broadly, or wrongly, the solution will suffer from the same defects (p. 240). In the water discussion, whenever the participants chose to refer to a completely new topic, not included in the indicators of the report, the organizers interpreted it as a non-question, as we can also read in part (b) of vignette 1 regarding the issue of dams. Vignette 1 (b) Session of the Douro Hydrographic Region Environmental association representative: [. . .] I would like to say a last word: how is it possible to build an effective management plan without truly analysing the cumulative impacts of the national dam plan? [. . .] And I emphasize that the building of new dams does not seem to me to be the promised gold mine. There are alternative local development models which work much better toward the goals of the Water Directive and with the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of those regions. Thank you.

APA: The last question is connected to the dams; I am sorry, this session is only about Significant Issues of Water, but we will bear this in mind. Anyway, I remind you that all those dams (already ongoing) were submitted to environmental impact assessments and the corresponding measures are being implemented at this moment.

The main modality of interaction was limited to justification from the authorities and the answer was confined to their point of view of what could constitute a significant issue. There was no place for counter discourse, not even in terms of a contradictory argument (Doury et al. 2015). In most of the interactions participants expressed critical views on the report or raised questions, to which one or more representatives of APA replied and added contextual information related to the issue. This process is exemplified here: Vignette 1 c APA representative 2: The significant issues were identified; it doesn’t mean that other issues will not be approached in the plans, namely water scarcity and other problems. These are, among the significant, maybe, the ones that, judging from their score, are the most significant ones, but we will make an economic analysis, we will deal with water scarcity; all those questions will be dealt with. With regard to the quantitative state, in fact the underground waters, let’s say that maybe they have an easier classification because it is a balance between recharge, availability, and extraction. About surface waters this quantification is a little bit harder because inoperative automatic stations are not available [. . .].

This situation is a typical clarification statement, and it lasted 32 min. As the vignette shows, there seems to be a mix of two types of relation between

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administration and society, in which neither of them is fully realized. The Significant Issues for Water Management process reveals some characteristics of the discretionary model, in which the state is the guarantor of the public interest, and objectivity is closely equated with political, administrative, and technical authority. However, in this case it works in parallel with characteristics of the agonistic model: Agonistic governance takes place under conditions of confrontation and adversity, when decisions have to be made in a political context where positions are strongly opposed (Hagendijk et al. 2005:18). The closing and framing of the issues, as well as the technical detail approaching them in and through the report, exposed, at the same time, the omissions. Participants often identified the limitations of the report, whether it was about omitted issues or the level of detail with which the report presented them. As such, this technology of participation brought to light the vulnerability of the administration, which was visible in, for example, their acceptance that there were insufficiencies in the monitoring of the system and that they sometimes lacked control of the information about quality and quantity of water availability. It was also implied by their refusal to engage in discussion of topics about which they faced uncertainties. Moreover, the report defined not only most of the content of discussion but also its form. Its language and structure provided the main repertoire of communication: how the issues related to each other and how—that is, with what words—to speak of them. This last vignette illustrates this clearly. For instance, a variety of entities which would be termed rivers, streams, ponds, or lakes in everyday language have to be referred to with technical terms, as bodies of water. Such highly technical language is clearly a characteristic of this kind of participation and creates the need for more expertise among the non-technical participants. It has often been identified as one of the more visible limitations in the participation process (Jasanoff 2003; De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2015). Guillem Palà and Miquel Domenech, in Chap. 9, focused on the “material conditions that allow issues to materialize and be sustained until a conclusion is reached” (p. 172), highlighting the role of documents in such processes. Borrowing their metaphor of the river, we may say that, through the QsigA report, the administration sought to define and keep within margins the flow of issues to be dealt with in the sessions. Even, if participants’ interventions provoked fluctuations and possible overflows, the sessions did not end up in a re-writing of the report and so the “river’s margins” kept the same. However, the administration produced a final document where it registered all the questions raised during the consultation process and the corresponding administration’s answers, presented in a national closure session. While this document shows a rather static view of the process, it is also a non-human material entity housing issues which actors may thus “re-fish” in the future.

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Looking at the Participation Format: How Does a Material Configuration Enact Actors’ Roles? Observation of the participatory process is also useful for understanding the performativity of participation—use of space and use of time—and the discourse held by the organizers. Knowledge constructed in these situations depends on the interactional space, considering the possibilities of speaking and listening to each other that may or may not happen in this procedure. Vignette 2 reproduces the initial phase of the participative event, when official representatives gave an opening discourse. The opening expressed the responsibility of the administration, whose representatives were seated behind tables, and briefly explained the goals of the session. It was clearly a performative process (Austin 1962; Butler 1993), repeatedly observed in each session, where words had the power to make a participation process happen, assuming that all were listening and accepted the imposed format for discussion. According to the concept of performativity (Austin 1962), when talking about participation, the speech of these actors carries the process forward. This is illustrated in vignette 2. Vignette 2 The opening discourse of the Director of the Tejo and West Hydrographic Administration is a welcoming message; first she mentions the hospitality and the collaboration of the municipality that has made public space available for the session and underlines the proximity of the town that was chosen for the water users and potential participants. In addition, she stresses the importance of the sessions because of the importance of the involvement of stakeholders in water management, showing the willingness of the institution to understand what the best methodologies are and what the best actions we can do are to ensure good water quality for all uses.

This presentation reveals another level of the performativity effect: the existence of components that we could qualify as belonging to a scientific experiment (Laurent 2012) as a setting whose aim is to make visible the participative experience of a water plan. Let us identify the actors step by step: the promotor defines the topic and the physical setting. In all the sessions, the organizers chose a classic layout for the organization of the room and in the majority of the cases the session was in an auditorium. Usually, the configuration of the room was based on that of a court, in which the administration sat at a bench, and the public was invited to occupy the floor. The space may be seen as simply a room; however, the duality between organizers and public was well marked with a few tables for the speakers from the administration and the seats arranged in parallel lines in front of the tables for the public. Defrances (1988) suggests that this spatial logic is closer to the traditional school than the court, particularly the Anglo-Saxon court, where the participants in a case are placed spatially at the same level in front of the judge. We believe that the rooms constrained the roles and the expectations of the actors. All the participants had first to listen to a master talk presented by the administration staff and these would orchestrate the way the discussion flowed. This type of exchange develops a dynamic of questions and answers, assuming a specialization of roles and an asymmetry in the paths of participation. In this configuration, the

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image of public is that of the lay, such that the administration would be the one bringing in the knowledge. This modality performed a classic model of relations between administration and society: one of delegation, in which the public delegates to experts the task of knowing and deciding (Callon 1998), or of deficit, in which the public lacks knowledge for the task and needs the administration’s information/ education to acquire it and be able to participate. The format of the audience in rows is also rigid because it reduces the interaction to a privileged communication between administration and the participants who decide to speak. Thus, the layout of the room dissuades dialogue among the public. Indeed, we observed interaction between participants in only one of the sessions. On this occasion, the transgression in the bodies was noticeable and it did perform a different interaction. When technical staff from the regional water administration sat in the audience and answered questions from the public whenever their personal expertise in the specific matter of the question required, they half-turned their backs to the bench to face the participants in the back rows who had made the question. The situation that emerged was much more informal and very soon caused chaos at the session as a result of the challenge to the formal rules of distributed dialogue between the chairman and the audience. Suddenly, the representative of the Water Administration needed to call for order. Logistics and organization of the room performed a clear ordering of roles in the debate. It reinforced an image of the public that was far from the Deweyan perspective (2003) whose aim was to deal with uncertainties and make it possible to test hypotheses collectively. In many cases participants already knew each other and had also worked with the administration in other situations. Moreover, the public was heterogeneous; it was composed of several institutions, each of them with diverse competences and perspectives. Hence, the administration was concerned with ordering the space into an intentional, neutral form, but the process itself led to other ways of ordering the interaction. The organization of time in the interaction also brought diversity into the modes of discussion that might occur. Sessions presented a classic three-part structure: an opening part followed by a presentation of the Significant Issues for Water Management report, the debate of the report, and the closing moment. Despite this common order, the distribution of the time devoted to each stage differed among regions: the openings took between 1% and 20% of the total time. The presentation of the Significant Issues for Water Management report took between 22% and 39% of total time and the debate took between 48% and 64%. The session closures were shorter, taking up less than 1% of the total time in all the sessions. The Portuguese Environmental Agency representatives delivered the openings (with a few exceptions), the presentations of Significant Issues reports, and the closures. The public intervened in the debate, along with APA representatives. While it is clear that the administration took much of the time, it is worth looking deeper into the modes of interaction that occurred in the time dedicated to two-way conversation, for it occupied around half of the total time of each session. A question and answer model of interaction does not facilitate the possibility of conflict or the opportunity for criticism (Doury et al. 2015). On the contrary, it values information

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transfer. So, what happened during the sessions? A detailed observation of discursive aspects shows that expressions of emergent dialogue, verbalizations of new opening ideas, and contributions may be rare, but they could and did take place despite an unfavourable participative configuration.

Looking Closely at the Discourse: To What Extent Can Techno-Scientific Arguments Be Revisited? One of the biggest criticisms of the European Water Directive is that citizens have little opportunity to influence the water policy (Voulvoulis et al. 2017; Jager et al. 2016). In our case, analysis of the data on interaction between participants confirms this view, indicating a very low level of contradiction and conflict between arguments. Very few changes in the initial propositions of the administration were observed, and these positions made up approximately 3% of all interventions in the debates. A few cases of interaction illustrate the shaping of new positions mainly from the administration, but, the narrowness of these interventions can hardly be considered a revision of the techno-scientific proposition. In the session of the Alentejo regions, in vignette 3, the administration answered that the issue of exotic species in the river would be inserted in the water plan because other institutions (EDIA and APA) had already undertaken work to prevent the spread of those species. Vignette 3 Joint session of the hydrographic region of Sado and Mira, and the hydrographic region of Guadiana. Citizen: [. . .] I did not see [on the slides] anything on exotic species in the Guadiana River and which may affect the territory at the national level [. . .].

APA: [. . .] EDIA6 has an ongoing project, funded by European Programme, to combat exotic species, such as the mexilhão zebra7 for example. EDIA and APA have been working in combatting the water hyacinth. Those are measures already in place and function, combatting those weeds is also included in the [issue] competition between species. We will take a note on this question to insert it [in the Significant Issues].

APA’s response indicates that in addition to being minor, the changes in position did not relate to issues compromising the report; rather they were in line with the 6

EDIA Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infraestruturas do Alqueva is a public company running the Alqueva dam in the south of Portugal (EDIA, 2018) http://www.edia.pt/en/. Accessed March 12 2018. 7 “Mexilhão zebra” (Dreissena polymorpha) is a bivalve mollusk originating in Russia and considered an exotic harmful species in other areas where it was accidentally introduced (Wikipedia, 2018). https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexilh%C3%A3o-zebra. Accessed March 12 2018.

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report and would be feasible for the administration. In other sessions there were different processes in place, which reflected a more active involvement and repositioning of the arguments. For instance, this happened in the Algarve when the administration raised an issue with the public, who gave a new explanation to the administration. Vignette 4 illustrates how the usual direction of information was reversed, as it was the administration receiving input and the new ideas came from the public. Vignette 4 Session of the Algarve hydrographic region. APA: Let me ask a question, you were saying that the area of greenhouses has seen a great reduction (in terms of area) but doesn’t it show, with hydroponics, meanwhile, doesn’t it show an increase in the area?

Regional Office of Agriculture: I mean, it reached a point, it reduced so much that now twenty or thirty hectares may be noticeable.

In the same session, suddenly a very intense and specific interaction between academics, administration, and the Algarve Water Company occurred. They identified two cases in which the wrong classification of the water body could lead to a negative evaluation and later have an impact on the water plan. Similar failures in the process of identification are reported in the literature (Voulvoulis et al. 2017) in the context of other European Plans: they happen when a water body is not classified correctly and the following measures are inadequate. In this case, an area originally classified as a freshwater zone received a negative evaluation because the water was saline. In fact, the water is situated in a brackish area and it is therefore expected to have a higher salinity than fresh water. The other example was of a small stream that, in some years, has running water for only 1 week, whereas the official method stipulated that a stream must run for at least 2 weeks to structure an ecosystem. Slowly, the different participants came to the conclusion that the criteria for the classification of the ecological state of bodies of water do not suit all cases. The point obtained in this dialogue was the need to alter the classification. Thus, the statements of the participants questioned the criteria used in the report itself. This case suggests that knowledge collaboration between the different actors can happen in a classic participative setting. In fact, it is surely impossible to totally ignore such a possibility in a session. Collaboration in making a hypothesis is highly fruitful for the solution of water problems and for the administrative work of the institution that carries out the governance of the resources. Coming back to our question To what extent can techno-scientific arguments be revisited? . . . we observed that Plantin’s counter-discourses (2005) were not the main type of discourse. Instead, the micro level counter discourses—criticisms but still in line with the dominant perspective (Doury et al. 2015)—were the main form taken in the discussions. The prevalence of the micro level counter discourses explains the fact that although participants expressed criticisms and the

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administration mainly provided explanations of the contexts surrounding the issues raised, sessions proceeded in friendly, cordial tones. Nevertheless, there were a few moments of strong disagreement and tension between public and administration. In vignette 5, the administration representative interrupted a citizen who was pointing out the omission of species extinction as a significant issue. Vignette 5 Session of Douro hydrographic region. Citizen: [. . .] I now want to refer to the significant issues, an issue that was discarded in the first cycle [. . .] here it is, excuse me, it is related to the extinction of species in the hydrographic basin. This question was removed because it was not confirmed as significant in the first cycle in any of the hydrographic regions. Now, we go to the webpage of the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests and the documentation is quite exhaustive and well elaborated. It is just a matter of searching identified species, namely the ones critically in danger (in the fish chart) in the red book, [he then cites more than ten species of fishes] So I think probably this question may be reintroduced, I think this could be important for the [he could not conclude because the APA representative interrupted him].

APA: OK, thank you very much, OK? More, there is another enrolment and it is the last one in this second phase.

Citizen: Everything is so easy. [He said these last words in an ironic tone and left the room].

The tension in this interaction was unresolved. The whole structure of the session—both material and interactional—limited the ways in which the citizen was able to reinforce his argument after the interruption of his speech. His response, to express himself, was to immediately leave the room. To summarize our reasoning, analysis of our empirical data demonstrates few possibilities for contradiction or conflicts during the public sessions. The specific issue in vignette 5 could be considered a technical one in terms of the water directive goal of environmental quality of water, and it reveals the contested nature of technical issues themselves. Indeed, technical is often taken as isolated, but it is a socially constructed category. The format of the participatory sessions did not open up to the discussion of those boundaries. This testimony also shows how contradiction is excluded from the debate with interruption and ignorance of the new issue. It shows the boundedness of the epistemic arena of these debates, which are mainly based on a technical report that precludes many of the indicators that make sense for the locals and specific activities in the areas analysed. In this context, it is very unlikely for a change in arguments to take place.

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Concluding Remarks The water sector is similar to other areas of the Portuguese state, for it reflects a tradition of centralization and closure toward participative dialogue. This tradition runs in parallel with the centralization of the water administration in 2012 when the government merged the former Regional Hydrological Administrations into a central body (Schmidt and Gomes Ferreira 2014; Bilhim 2015; Varanda et al. 2017). Consequently, as we have demonstrated here, participation processes in the Significant Issues of Water took the form of pre-given, fixed, and normative models already tested in public participation. The sessions were based on a single-event (one session per region), and they evolved around a technical report that was accessible for all but not readable by all, which thus defined and closed the repertoire of interventions from the public. The model of participation reflects a mimetic process of participation experiments throughout the country in which no innovation is introduced. Likewise, it reflects the lack of deliberative and participative spaces in Portuguese institutions (Gonçalves and Castro 2003; Nunes 2007; Matos 2012; Crisóstomo et al. 2017). Through this specific process, the water sector in Portugal disclosed some of the techno-material assemblages that translate local formats of performing water governance anchored in a closed network (Varanda et al. 2017), in which it is hard for non-technical entities and new issues to find a space to exist and become visible. This conclusion is based on the observation of participative sessions. We invite the reader to go back to our initial questions. The type of relationship that the Water authorities develop in these participative processes is in between the instruction model, the public debate model (Callon 1998), and the deliberative model (Hagendijk et al. 2005). However, there were frequent echoes of both the corporatist and the agonistic models (Hagendijk et al. 2005) in the sessions, reflecting the hosts’ imagined public as lay persons distant from expertise and therefore not equipped for dialogue even though the water administration seemed to establish a ground for the representation of different interests and the possibility for negotiation. Yet, once again, the arrangements for the deliberation reinforced a politically and epistemically closed arena. At the same time, the highly technical character of the central device around which the discussions took place—the Significant Issues Report—predefined the repertoires of intervention and reduced the possibility of a totally agonistic model where strong opposition would occur. Returning to the ability of the technology of participation to boost the modalities of democratic processes, we extended our analysis to the micro level of the participation. We observed the interactional and material dimensions, and they showed mainly two features: the material and the content-based format of the participative process enacted a mainly passive modality of participation. Conflict was rare, and antagonism rarely appeared as a counter discourse around the Significant Water Issues Report. While the micro analysis suggests that participatory configurations are shaped by contexts, it also reveals how criticism and even opposition can occur despite limiting formats.

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This constructivist and micro-level analysis of the participation needs to be discussed with the administrations. The solution to improve democracy in participative debates will not be to build a single and normative model of participation. Instead, we argue for a broader and more abstract model of participation with multiple possibilities for experimentation, resonating with the appeal by Völker (Chap. 3) to creatively experiment with the usual demarcations of science and society and create care objects and matters of concern on which the collective shares responsibility. Some conditions already create a potential favourable context to such developments in Portugal: the legal framework, the recent history of public participation in water basin councils, and the experience the administration is gaining in promoting participation. Consequently, the ability to learn from participation is essential if all involved accept that participation remains a useful technology for the future.

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ENASB/XVI SI LUSBA (pp. 1–15). Lisboa: APRH/APESB/ABES. Varanda, M.,Teixeira, E., Cupeto, C., Pio, S., Bento, S., Neto, S., & Stigter, T. (2014). Governação da água: uma parceria Estado-Sociedade. ParticipationWaterNet Report, http://www. participationwater.net Varanda, M., Duarte, J., Bina, O., & Stigter, T. (2017). Que interdisciplinaridade? Procuram-se as ciências sociais e humanidades nos estudos da água: O caso de Portugal. Conference Paper at 5ª Reunión Latinoamericana de Analisis de Redes Sociales, Florianópolis, 12–15 December. Voulvoulis, N., Arpon, K. D., & Giakoumis, T. (2017). The EU Water Framework Directive: From great expectations to problems with implementation. Science of the Total Environment, 575, 358–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.09.228. Zask, J. (2011). Participer. Essai sur les formes démocratiques de la participation. Paris: Editions Le Bord de L’eau.

Sofia Bento is a sociologist and associate professor at the Business Institute of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon (ISEG-ULisboa). She is currently a researcher at SOCIUS, a unit specializing in Economic and Organizational Sociology belonging to the Consortium for Research in Social Sciences and Management (CSG-ISEG/UL). She holds a PhD in Sociology of Innovation from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. She investigates the social studies of science and deals with topics such as climate, water, pollution, and citizen involvement in environmental and thematic policies related to the environment. Oriana Rainho Brás is a researcher at SOCIUS-Research Centre in Economic and Organizational Sociology, CSG-Consortium of Social Sciences and Management, ISEG-School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon, Portugal. She studied Anthropology and Sociology and currently focuses her research on health, the environment, social studies of science and technology, and public participation in water management.

Chapter 9

Material Trajectories: How Issues Come to Matter in a Citizen Conference Guillem Palà and Miquel Domènech

Introduction Demographic ageing is one of the major challenges that industrialized societies are already facing, politically and managerially, and this challenge will grow stronger in the years ahead (Schuitmaker 2012). It is widely assumed that the response should come from science, technology, and innovation (Cagnin et al. 2012; Mort et al. 2012). Nevertheless, it is unclear how this movement should be orchestrated. Several authors highlight the threats associated with not including the persons concerned in the planning of such reconfiguration (Callén et al. 2009; Mort et al. 2013). What is at stake is the way to connect scientific and technological production with democratic ideals (De Vries 2007). These concerns do not grow apart from others that have been largely discussed in public engagement with science (PES) literature. It is in that sense that Irwin et al. (2013) expressed themselves when they asked for further scrutiny of PES infrastructures in both academic and political terms. Nevertheless, inspired by previous analysis from Science and Technology Studies (STS), these authors demanded fresh perspectives and new modes of action to overcome the hardening of positions in conflicts about engagement, knowledge, and democracy. In that vein, there is a particular theme that we consider to be under-discussed in the PES literature. Most of the mechanisms that aim to conjoin science, technology, and society tend to take the form of what can be called deliberative democracy (Habermas 2010) or dialogical democracy (Callon et al. 2009). That is, deliberation and dialogue are viewed as the central goals of these efforts, or the logic that rules their politics (Habermas 1993; Papadopoulos 2012). Meaningful insights can be built through the analysis of the discursive plans of those experiences, as Bento and Rainho Brás have shown in the

G. Palà (*) · M. Domènech Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_9

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previous chapter (Chap. 8). Nevertheless, as they have done in their second movement through the analysis of how the material configuration enacts actors’ roles, we consider relevant to extend the analysis beyond discourses. In order to contest this argument, we explore one particular instance of conjoining science, technology, and society: the Barcelona ICT Citizen Conference for Older People. To do so, we followed Marres and Lezaun’s (2011) recommendation that a vision of public action and politics centred on discursive or deliberative processes should be challenged. As such, we sought to redirect the focus from collectives—conceived as conglomerates of humans and their discourses—to the active role of nonhumans in public life. In that sense, we carefully describe all of the assemblages that occurred during the precarious translation trajectory (Law and Callon 1992) of one specific issue in the Conference: the concern regarding electromagnetic waves. That is, we trace the issue’s journey from the moment at which it comes to matter, through the moment at which it becomes a main point deemed worthy of inclusion in the final recommendations that were made to the public administration, until it is finally included in the formally written and approved recommendations document. With this, we ultimately aim to encourage more intelligent and sustainable engagements with vibrant matter and lively things (Bennett 2009). However, rather than proposing a general analogy to life, we suggest that close attention must still be paid to the specific matter at hand. In sum, this chapter experiments with a topological mode of foregrounding materiality in order to expose the complexity of the processes through which meaning emerges (Mol and Law 2002).

Methodological Approach Held between January and March 2013, the Barcelona Citizen Conference on the Digitalization of Society was organized as part of a research project on elderly people’s public engagement with technical issues. Although it was organized by the researchers in charge of the project, the Barcelona City Council was involved in the process; it agreed to receive the final document, and it committed itself to using it to inform future public policies. This document is perhaps what most significantly distinguishes the conference from other similar initiatives (Hörning 1999). It is for this reason that we decided to become ethnographically engaged with its production. As Riles points out (2006), one of the challenges faced by ethnographers today is the overflow of classic categories of analysis such as culture, society, gender, temporality, agency, and politics. In addition, with the emergence of new agents and artefacts—such as financial instruments, biotechnology, or even academic bureaucracy—contemporary ethnographic encounters have raised new questions about the limits of ethnographic descriptions and analyses (Riles 2006: 2). However, despite the incorporation of all these new entities into ethnographic practice, there are still subjects that have been continuously disregarded, namely: documents. The paradox is that, despite being too often dismissed from an anthropological perspective, documents and documentation practices are paradigmatic artefacts that sustain a

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large number of modern practices of knowledge production. It is in this sense that Riles proposes reconsidering the documents as an ethnographically relevant object, as an analytical category, and even as a methodological orientation (Riles 2006: 7). Nevertheless, despite being a fundamental node for the support of the diverse modern practices of knowledge production, documentation plays an extremely idiosyncratic role in each one of them. The ways in which each author is involved with their concrete artefacts of analysis and with the practices related to them result in the incomparability of the ethnographic knowledge produced from a conventional disciplinary perspective. Far from being a problem, this diversity represents a chance to develop new and creative ways of carrying out fieldwork and ethnographic analysis, as some theorists within STS have already pointed out (Law 2004; Lury and Wakeford 2012). The movement that Riles proposes to confront this incommensurability is to ask ourselves: What kind of ethnographic response can objects, such as documents, require, train or oblige of us? (Riles 2006: 23). It is precisely in this sense that we decided to trace the final document’s trajectory. As part of the organizing team of the Citizen Conference, we had the opportunity to become immersed in the ocean of negotiations that took place there. Indeed, this afforded us the possibility of interviewing the participants at different moments of the process—before, during, and after the Conference. Furthermore, we had a professional team focused on recording the different stages of the mechanism, and the data thus compiled gave us the possibility of re-experiencing the Conference after its conclusion in order to grasp details that might have gone unnoticed while it was taking place.

Building a Particular Mode of Conjoining Science, Technology, and Society The Consensus Conference is a participatory mechanism implemented in several countries in order to reduce the barriers between the citizenry and issues related to science and technology. In particular, the Conference aims to reduce the gaps between citizens, experts, and politicians (Grundahl 1995) by facilitating an informed dialogue between these stakeholders that allows the general public to share their opinions on controversies related to science and technology (Lach and Sanford 2010). The Consensus Conference is made up of four main components: formation of a panel composed of lay people, facilitation of discussion between citizens, facilitation of interactions between lay people and experts, and development of a document of recommendations (Andersen and Jæger 1999). The experience that served as the starting point of our trajectory was certainly inspired by the original Danish model of Consensus Conference, but with several variations. The main adaptation was motivated by the will to ensure that a social segment that is in danger of being excluded from social and community participation was included: the elderly (Everingham et al. 2009). Indeed, in many European

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countries, the public policies regarding the welfare of older adults are regularly developed without any involvement of or input from their beneficiaries (Carney 2010; Callén et al. 2009; Mort et al. 2009). Thus, the organizers of the Barcelona Citizen Conference contradicted one of the main principles of the original model, namely: that those sitting at the citizen panel should not be personally concerned with the issue under discussion (Laurent 2009). In the end, the decision was made based on the ongoing questioning within the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature of the existence of such citizens (Lezaun and Soneryd 2007). That is, the organizers ultimately concluded that complete impartiality is impossible, and that the participants in the panel may just as well be direct stakeholders in the issue under discussion. Consequently, participation in the Conference’s citizen panel was opened to those with personal concerns. Additionally, an expert on group dynamics—who was also an older adult and thus personally invested in the conference—was recruited to moderate the interactions between the organizers and the members of the citizen panel. As a result, although most of the requirements of a Consensus Conference were implemented, we opted to name the present initiative the Barcelona Citizen Conference on the Digitalization of Society. The process by which lay panel participants are selected is an important aspect in consensus conferences and has been the focus of much debate (Irwin et al. 2013). This supposes selection, judgment over what behaviours are acceptable or not, fine grain adaptation to ensure that deliberation occurs (Laurent 2009: 30). With these issues in mind, the conference organizers sought to select a panel as heterogeneous as possible. Ultimately, 25 people responded to the call for participation and applied to take part in the conference. Of these, nine men and four women were selected as members of the citizen panel. The places of residence of the final 13 participants were relatively evenly dispersed across Barcelona, with at least one coming from every district. As a mode of contextualization, we can say that the Conference was organized to unfold in three stages. First, there was a preparatory stage consisting of six meetings distributed across two non-consecutive weeks and carried out in a centrally-located hotel in Barcelona. During this period, the participants in the citizen panel were to become familiar with the topic of the conference, select specific issues of interest, and formulate the questions to be answered by a panel of experts in the next phase. The second stage was the public phase of the Conference, held at the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona (CCCB). During this, the citizen panellists presented each topic of interest in an oral exposition, and several experts on particular technological issues replied to the lay participants’ questions. This second stage took place on two days, 12 and 14 February 2013. Finally, in the third stage, the citizen panel met for 2 more days—one at the CCCB and the other in a municipal building—in order to produce the final document outlining their conclusions and recommendations. This document was subsequently delivered to the City Council in a public event attended by the organizers and the panellists.

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Participants’ Preparation Stage The meetings of the citizen panel were held in a comfortable, air-conditioned basement in a central hotel in Barcelona, and all the proceedings were recorded. Although the hotel employees organized the space in the typical conference fashion, the organizers rearranged the furniture in an effort to create an atmosphere that was less formal and austere. On the first day the members of the panel learned about the structure of the conference and had the chance to socialize informally and start to develop casual, friendly bonds. At the end of the day, they were provided with a document outlining some general ideas about digitalization such as the main characteristics of knowledge societies, some basic information concerning Information and Communication Technologies, and some ideas about the Digital divide. On the second day of these preliminary meetings the citizen panellists were asked to split into groups of three to five people and discuss the contents of the document they had received the day before. In these subgroups, the panellists were invited to express their concerns regarding the digitalization of society and to highlight the particular issues that they felt were the most important and that were worth being addressed during the public phase of the conference. It was in this context that the specific subject of this paper emerged for the first time. One participant initiated the discussion by stating that several studies had found that new technologies, such as mobile telephones, may have harmful consequences for our health. Another participant replied: This depends on who paid for the study, and went on to suggest that only experts were qualified to effectively discuss such issues. Thus, this second participant did not believe the matter should be open for discussion, but the first one insisted: Presently, I am scared even when I put things in the microwave, so I think we should talk about health. We call this remark a spontaneous statement, by which we mean two things. First, this issue was not explicitly raised in the document that was drafted by the organization; the participants thus began to discuss it spontaneously in the sense that it had been unprompted by their reading of the materials provided by the organizers. Second, by statement, we do not mean simply a linguistic utterance, but also the gradient that carries us from words to things and from things to words (Latour 1990: 106). If we consider only the discursive elements of the utterance, we lose the emotions and the materiality embedded in it, including the participant’s worry and the reality of health itself. It is for this reason that in order to grasp the statements made by our participants in their full complexity, we apply a broad semiotic approach that goes far beyond linguistics alone. The members of this subgroup spent several minutes discussing the advisability of including this particular topic as a main issue in the conference. Although their discussion did not convince the participant who had initially been opposed to including it, the participant who was acting as a moderator for this subgroup wrote in his notebook that this would be one of the issues to share with the whole panel. In this way, the idea, initially posed by a single participant, eventually earned facticity as new actants were recruited to sustain it. The moderating panellist had to make a

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decision regarding which issues would be included in the conference and excluded from it, and his pen and notebook became the cord or material items used to delimit the included topics from the excluded ones. From that point on, the facticity of this statement became linked to these particular materials, without which the statement could not have been sustained or disseminated. From this point on registration became a recursive operation, one that granted continuity to the statements circulating in the semiotic-material cosmos of the discussion panel. Furthermore, the inscription of this first statement in the moderator’s notebook was the first point at which a cut was made in order to reduce and manage what would have otherwise become chaos, given the impossibly long list of issues that could have potentially been addressed during the conference. In other words, this was but one moment during which a very broad topic was shaped into a particular issue by, not only the panellists’ dialogue, but also their material resources. When the facilitator eventually instructed the subgroups to reorganize themselves back into a single panel so that the ideas they had discussed in their subgroups could be shared, the spokesperson from this particular subgroup retrieved his notes and shared them with the whole panel. It was at this point that he opened the possibility of contesting the meaning embedded in the form of the issue at hand. On the third day members of the citizen panel were asked to reconsider the issues they had discussed the day before in subgroups and organize them into an outline. Participants were provided with a flip chart, on which one of the organizers wrote down the issues as they were dictated to him by the facilitator. At this point, we have to make several observations. First, the discussion helped to re-spread the main ideas that had been generated the previous day, that is, produce again from a multiplicity (Deleuze and Guattari 1988) rather than revert back to something from the past. The eventual placement of the issue of electromagnetic waves on the outline is a good example of this, as it was brought to the panel’s attention by one of the organizers. Although the issue had been discussed the previous day, none of the panellists mentioned it while the outline was being developed. Rather, it was one of the organizers who, after consulting his notes, reminded the panellists that they had mentioned this issue the day before. Thus, a new actant had to bring the issue back into the discussion to prevent the chain of translations from being disrupted (Latour 1990). In other words, rather than a participant mentioning it or one of the subgroup moderators reminding the rest of the citizen panel about it, one of the organizers had to re-introduce the issue to the group. The assemblage to which the issue had been initially attached was thus enlarged with the incorporation of new actants (Callon 1984). Each of these actants—those who discussed the issue within their subgroups, the moderator who documented it, and the organizer who reminded the broader group about it—participated in the collective action of shaping the issue that would come to be the focus of our attention. In this sense, the facilitator also played an active role in the process by discussing and categorizing the issues raised by the panellists. In fact, she had a central role in creating order out of the disorder that was the initial series of discussions about these issues (Latour and Woolgar 1979). Conversations are always marked by intermingling textures, intensities, and levels. Narrating—not in a linguistic sense,

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but in a semiotic one—requires one to surf through these overlapping smooth and striated segments (Deleuze 1993). Finally, the written outline itself constitutes a translation of the discussions held by panellists, organizers, and facilitator. As mentioned above, one of the conference’s organizers was responsible for writing the issues on the flip chart. This process of documentation rendered the formerly abstract, spoken set of issues more concrete and durable (Latour 1986), allowing anyone to access them from that point forward. Between the first and second week of the preparatory meetings, the organizers worked on the list of issues raised in the first round of sessions. In effect, the organizers translated these statements yet again by expanding upon the claims and notes originally put forward by the citizen panellists. For example, the resulting document that was distributed to the panellists included evidence from studies conducted on electromagnetic waves—evidence the panellists did not have access to while they were originally discussing the issues. Moreover, the Working Group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization, which had been commissioned to review such studies, became a new actant in the assemblage. Specifically, the document notes that: In 2011, the Working Group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization reviewed the research conducted so far on radar and microwave exposure, exposure to radio, television and wireless telecommunication and exposure associated with use of mobile phones. The agency concluded that there is limited evidence that mobile phone use can cause brain and acoustic nerve cancer. [. . . ] The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

At this phase, treatments of the issue had to do not only with limiting chaos; but were also intended to establish links with other issues and actants. That is, our political discussions became not just about delineating boundaries so we could keep our dealings within reasonable limits, but also about enforcing, negotiating, and pushing those topological limits (Law 1999). Following a week-long pause, the fourth day of preparatory meetings began. Thematic work groups were established and asked to read the new document that had been prepared by the organizers during the recess. Then, a plenary discussion with the panel in full was facilitated in order to summarize the work done by the different subgroups. This plenary discussion confirmed the fears expressed earlier: namely, that many panellists believed the issue of electromagnetic waves could be adequately addressed only by the experts who were expected to participate in the public phase of the conference. The next day, the organizers returned to the flip chart. The focus of this session was on drafting questions that the citizen panellists wanted to raise with the experts. For example, it sought to document what concerns they wanted to seek clarification on, and what information they felt would be necessary to inform political recommendations. Again, one of the organizers was responsible for translating the initially discussed ideas into concrete, written words. Not only did he write down the emerging ideas,

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but he also negotiated with the rest of the group how to capture or represent these ideas best in the flip chart. The organizer experimented with several different potential ways of capturing the questions that the experts would be asked, exploring the use of different shapes and the ways of joining together different statements. The questions that were ultimately decided upon regarding our issue are the following: 1. What damage or injury can the use of Information and Communication Technologies cause? 2. Are there any reliable studies on the relationship between electromagnetic waves and health? 3. Can Information and Communication Technologies or electromagnetic waves be especially harmful to older people? 4. Are there any recommendations we can follow to protect ourselves? The citizen panellists also discussed who they would like to answer the questions they had developed. The panel considered inviting specific experts of their choice. The final selection of expert panellists was informed by these negotiations, as well as by the requested candidates’ availability. During their preparatory meetings, the citizen panel decided to give an exposition during the public phase of the conference. This exposition was intended to give an account of the discussions that had taken place during the preparation sessions and to pose the questions that the citizen panellists had agreed to ask the experts. Which citizen panellists would speak, and the topics they would each discuss, was negotiated based on the panellists’ affinity for the given issues. The panellists who would be speaking prepared their expositions outside formally designated conference time, with the assistance of the organizers. This assistance was explicitly requested by the speaking panellists, some of whom reported feeling insecure about preparing their expositions independently. As a result, the panellists were not independently responsible for structuring and delivering a coherent exposition summarizing each of the discussions that had taken place during the preparation sessions. Rather, the speaking panellists and the organizers collaborated to this end. In this sense, the organizers’ role was also performative: their supportive work made a difference in the way the panellists’ ideas were ultimately translated for their listeners. This collaborative effort demonstrates that environments and contexts are always significant for building meaning and that affection and human connections are fundamental to the political process.

Public Stage In the public phase of the conference, the specialist called to answer questions related to electromagnetic waves belonged to the Committee of Experts of the International Commission of Electrical Methods for the Evaluation of Electric, Magnetic and Electromagnetic Fields. As she answered the panellists’ questions, she referred to several studies carried out by the Working Group of the International Agency for

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Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization. Thus, this actant was re-incorporated into the semiotic relationship once again during the public phase of the conference. Specifically, the expert made reference to a study conducted in Spain, noting that since 2009, following the Law 17/2009 on free access to service activities and exercise (BOE-A-2009-18731), neither technical studies nor technical certifications are required to verify their use of electromagnetic waves. In addition, radio stations that were formerly inspected by independent professionals came within the purview of communication companies. On the third day of the public phase of the conference, the spokespersons for the citizen panel presented the issues that had been repeatedly raised in the previous stage and identified as most important in their own presentations and as issues that the experts were to respond to. With regard to electromagnetic waves, one spokesman stressed how perplexed he felt upon hearing about the change that had been made to the legislation in 2009. Specifically, he noted that: [. . .] one thing that seems to me a complete aberration, then for me, now, everything they say about electromagnetic emissions is not believable; it is that, since 2009, monitoring of frequencies and their impact does not depend on technicians as before, it depends on the operators. That is, they have given the operators a blank check.

For this citizen panellist, the experts’ words had become largely unbelievable following the disclosure of this new law. All the arguments that had concurred since the initial emergence of the concern about electromagnetic waves during the preparatory subgroup discussions were translated at the same moment that the experts revealed this law. Once again, the issue overflowed, or failed to be clearly delimited. The statement, as it had been translated thus far—namely, that there was a lack of reliable empirical evidence on the matter—was recomposed at this point. Rather than trust the expert panellists to provide the missing evidence, the citizen panellists came to mistrust the experts, worrying about the credibility of those responsible for creating and disseminating such evidence and becoming concerned with the role of the administration in this matter. The lines encircling the issue were redrawn and new topological dimensions were incorporated to sustain that redrawing. In sum, the objectivity of supposedly scientific, empirical studies was called into question after this event and strong institutional concerns emerged as a result. After the speakers had given their presentations, the group began to discuss the format they wanted to use for the final document that would be delivered to the Barcelona City Council. As noted above, the process through which ideas are documented is important because such documents are self-contextualizing entities (Riles 2001). The group had anticipated that the spokesperson’s expositions would help confirm the positions that had been taken on the different issues and would provide the contexts in which the citizen panel had reached its consensus. However, with regard to the issue of electromagnetic waves, a consensus had not yet been reached. Therefore, the group agreed to hold one more discussion session in which the organizers would present a document outlining the issues upon which a consensus had been reached, as well as those that had remained untreated. The citizen panellists

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would either confirm the statements made by the organizers or recommend changes to those that they believed were not properly aligned with what the group had intended to state. With regard to translating the considerations that had arisen about electromagnetic waves, the organizers prepared the following statement, which was ratified by the citizen panellists: Older people are worried about the health risks associated with the use of technological devices. In particular, one of the aspects raising more distrust is the possible harmful effects of the electromagnetic waves generated by information and communication technologies.

While making recommendations on this issue, the organizers took into account the indignation and shock exhibited by the spokesman when he had discovered the lack of regulations to minimize the risks that may arise from electromagnetic waves. In this sense, translating the group’s ideas at the discussions into written statements involved capturing the concern and other emotions that had been expressed regarding the potential dangers of electromagnetic waves and the role the administration should play in managing those dangers: Given the uncertainty caused by the lack of conclusive results on the effects that electromagnetic waves have on people’s health, we insist that serious and independent studies be conducted on this issue. Administrations should ensure the development of technologies that protect the health of individuals. In this regard, we ask that the necessary measures be taken to regulate and control the quality of technology products, so they do not negatively impact people’s health.

Trajectories Matters If we take into account the trajectory travelled by the development of this issue, we see how much of a challenge it is to maintain its consistency. We can identify moments of openness, such as group discussions in which ideas flowed freely, and moments of closure, in which various material resources—such as the organizers’ flip chart or the spokesperson’s notebooks—were used in order to establish the agreed-upon points and allow the group to reach conclusions and make decisions. The more open moments jeopardize the issue; that is, in each one of these open discussions, the very existence of the issue can be questioned and even dismissed as a trivial concept. Closures, on the other hand, help to draw the boundaries that distinguish those issues that remain interesting, valuable, and worthy of being maintained from those that do not (see Fig. 9.1). When citizens are invited to participate in political decision-making, we tend to assume that deliberation will be the key process through which decisions will be reached. This is quite a dominant view in the classic social sciences, and it is consistent with the idea that social life has to do with human beings only. Michel Serres’s work has been very influential in overcoming this idea of the social. As this author has stated, it is possible to conceive of the world, the devices, and we human beings, as part of the same web (Serres 1994). According to Serres (1995), the Social Sciences have been mistaken in trying to explain society in terms

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Fig. 9.1 Trajectory followed by the issue

of a social contract that would link only naked human beings and have insisted on paying attention only to language, writing, and logic. Despite not being taken into account, the French philosopher tells us, things have always been there as an essential component in the constitution of the human community. In The Natural Contract, Michel Serres develops these ideas and expresses his concern for the abandonment of the world and a word-centred vision of human relations: But the essentials take place indoors and in words, never again outdoors with things [. . .] We have lost the world. We’ve transformed things into fetishes or commodities, the stakes of our stratagems; and our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic (Serres 1995: 29).

In this vein, in the context of participatory processes, where the word seems to be the only material to be taken into consideration and humans are the only actors with a role, his explanation of what making a decision is makes plenty of sense to us. He reminds us that the term decision expresses cutting, the creation of an edge. And he recovers an ancient figure present in the Egyptian empire whose main role was, precisely, to make decisions through the assignment of limits. In The Natural Contract, the author relates how the Nile, a river of very variable flow even now, experienced sudden floods when the rainy season came. The result

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was repeated overflows that blurred the lines delimiting the arable fields, i.e., separate properties. Once the floods receded, re-establishing these boundaries was not an easy task, since it required not only advanced technical precision, but also concepts related to law and even to religion, as the author explains to us. However, there were actors particularly suited to the task: the harpedonaptai, royal officers appointed by the pharaoh who fulfilled the triple role of priest, mathematician, and jurist. Thus, the concept of limits, defined by the creation of boundaries, surpassed its merely spatial meaning. In this sense, the Egyptian concept of maat, which is similar to the Greek concept of geometry, means truth, law, ethics, measure and part, order that arises from a disordered mix, a certain balance of fairness and justice, the smooth straightness of a plane (Serres 1995: 53). Although Serres derived this understanding from an explanation by the Greek historian Herodotus, the relationship between nature and the origins of geometry is also evident in other traditions. For example, in the book of Genesis, God is described as separating and delimiting the earth from the first waters. Thus, as the author tells us, making a decision. The reterritorialization of arable land, but also on any other subject, is thus the result of drawing a limit or creating an edge. However, what is interesting in history and begins to give us some clues about the relationship between the figure of the harpedonaptai and our case-study in particular is that the presence of the harpedonaptai alone was not enough to make a decision. The actor had to associate with another actant, a material object, to perform his function, in this case, a rope: The harpedonaptes or surveyor draws, holds and ties the cord; his mysterious title can be broken down into two words, a noun expressing the bond and a verb denoting his act of attaching it. In the beginning is this cord. [. . .] The one evoked by the word contract (Serres 1995: 52–53, emphasis in the original).

Therefore, it is only through the use of this string that the harpedonaptes is able to delimit the boundaries, which makes the cord a connective node indispensable for the fulfilment of its functions; that is to say, the objective of re-delimiting the land cannot be achieved without cord. We suspect that this ancient tale can help us experiment with new ways of thinking about participation and politics beyond the traditional discursive approaches by extending the focus to a relational materiality of participation that explores the diversity of materials, their relationships, and their mutations, and understanding the meetings between actors without prejudging a clear distinction between the social, the material, and the semiotic (Marres and Lezaun 2011; Ingold 2007; Law and Mol 1995). What the harpedonaptai narrative suggests is that each decision involves an act of closure whereby the borders are redrawn. Any discussion allows a large number of scenarios, real and futuristic, to be considered, which opens up the possibility of diagramming an extensive number of potential solutions (Callon et al. 2009). However, if the decision-making process is not delimited, we risk allowing the discussion to continue endlessly, thereby jeopardizing the possibility of reaching

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agreements. This act of delimitation, we argue, must be of a material nature. In this sense, we should remember here that many ideas discussed or dealt with during the meetings were lost unless they were recorded by using some material, nonhuman entity such as a notepad or a flip chart. It is for this reason that without access to the dialogical nature of many of the several planes that formed the Conference, we argue for the need to attend to the material conditions in order to account for how these issues are crystallized and sustained. Thus, we suggest that the issues we face extend far beyond the classic Habermasian reflections that view deliberation as the touchstone of political action (Habermas 1996), since only part of the assembly has to do with enunciations or formalized expressions, on the other side, inseparable from the first, is a machinic set or a set of bodies (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 141). Thus, far from conceiving democracy in abstract terms as a struggle between arguments and groups, we focus our analysis on the material conditions that allow issues to materialize and be sustained until a conclusion is reached. Discussions and debates appear as a sort of river Nile as this was experienced by the harpedonaptai: they threaten to overflow the margins previously established. Debates create multiple scenarios, opening up spaces in which critical changes can occur. The main example in our case is when the new regulations on electromagnetic waves were explained by the expert; we can also consider that the question of electromagnetic waves re-entered the debate only after one of the organizers reminded the panellists that they had discussed it the day before. Finally, based on the argument made explicit so far, we would like to point to an experimental form that we consider suitable for reporting these material trajectories. To our understanding, the best way to account for the intrinsic complexity of this precarious transit is by using a topological approach. That is to say, we must strive to draw a map of the territory that we wish to explain, a map where the content flutters like a curtain, neither liquid nor solid, to be sure, but to participate in both conditions . . . Plastic, tearable, stretchable . . . topological (Serres 1994: 45). These topological spaces constitute realities without essential measures, where relations cannot be pre-established (Serres 1994). Thus, the question is inseparable from the various apparatuses, circumstances, theories, moods, studies, administrations, participants etc. involved in its construction. In fact, the real and most important object of study is the general involvement of each of these entities (Barad 2007). As Law (1999: 6) explains: topology deals with spatiality and, in particular, with spatial attributes that ensure continuity of objects as they move through space. In our case, we have shown how these spaces and forms are repeatedly modified, expanded, and limited, how the opportunities to drive change emerge, and how some of those opportunities are updated. Like the harpedonaptai, the space of political debate is continually re-territorialized: the form of the subject widens or becomes smaller depending on the encounters between actors, their assemblages, and their affections. The new topological dimensions are constantly negotiated until decisions are made.

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Therefore, we suggest that politics should not be understood as an essence, but rather as something that moves, which can be reported as a trajectory; a qualifier of certain moments, stages, or segments in the complex and rather erratic destination of issues (Latour 2007; Marres 2007). Thus, tracing the development of the Citizens’ Conference allows us to illustrate the possibility of understanding political action as an always precarious process in transition. The task is clear: to pass from the human, from the essential, to the assemblage; from the substantive to the verb, the transitive, the precarious. However, as we have seen, the verb is not only conjugated by several aggregate groups of people. Rather, if we shift the focus from the subjects to the assemblages (Sayes 2014), we will see actants appear (and disappear) during the conjugation process, being in all and nowhere at the same time; sometimes [as] a particular node, sometimes [as] an entire network, (. . .) sometimes absent, sometimes interchangeable (Mialet 2009: 459). Let us be clear on this point: we do not intend to contrast and dichotomize, in a modern way, between individual actants and assemblages. What we propose is the need to consider the whole to speak about of the parts (Law 2002). Thus, once we begin to conceive objects as central to the political process, our understanding of the dynamics inside trajectories changes drastically, as long as we do not belittle them by fetishizing them as commodities, devaluing them in favour of language or the written word, as has been done so many times before (Serres 1995: 29). Addressing not only the dialogues but also the materiality embedded throughout a trajectory allows us to demonstrate how political decisions are less the result of deliberation than of the fermentation of the various propositions and energies of committed bodies (Bennett 2009: 153). Therefore, our exploration moves away from the level of discursive analysis to focus on the semiotic level, in which meaning can be derived not only from words but also from non-linguistic matter, as you will see in the next chapter regarding the materiality of autonomy (Chap. 10). This approach means that environments, machines, and bodies, as well as more traditional texts such as written and spoken words, become entangled in the struggles for power and meaning (Liboiron 2016; Abrahamsson et al. 2015; Coole and Frost 2010). Exploring these traditional and unconventional subjects simultaneously allows us to underline the way in which certain meanings and modes of transmitting meanings are privileged over others (Akrich and Latour 1992). Thus, we have seen how declarations and deliberations are meaningless without their contexts of non-linguistic support (Latour 1990). It is not only that the fate of statements is always in the hands of others (Latour 1987); it is that some of these others are not human.

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Guillem Palà is a researcher of the Barcelona Science and Technology Studies Group (STS-b) in the Department of Social Psychology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research interests are the role of documentation on participatory experiences and the related ethical considerations. Miquel Domènech is Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a member of the EASST Council and a founding member of the Barcelona Science and Technology Studies Group (STS-b), a research group recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya. His research interests are mostly in the field of science and technology studies (STS), with a particular emphasis on the relationship between care and technology and on citizen participation in techno-scientific issues. He is currently the project leader of “Ethics for robots caring for us”, funded by the Recercaixa programme.

Chapter 10

Two Turtles: Children and Autonomy in Participatory Technological Design Núria Vallès-Peris and Miquel Domènech

Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about. You are not alone. Kurt Vonnegut

Introduction Using as an anecdotic inspiration the coincidence of the designing of two turtles as social-robot prototypes, one by roboticists and the other by children, this chapter explores and reflects on the autonomy of children in a participatory process of technological design. Based on the analysis of an experiment carried out in a school regarding the designing of a social robot for a children’s hospital, we go beyond an approach that conceptualizes participation as one of the fundamental rights of children’s citizenship to introduce some critical theories concerning the ethics of care, theories that emphasize responsibilities over rights and that conceive of care as a ground for conferring citizenship. Children’s’ autonomy to decide what they wish or what they need, their autonomy to choose one type of technology for healthcare or another, or the appearance of the social robot that will take care of them if hospitalized, is a type of autonomy that is connected with the idea of independence. The fact that the process we analyse was carried out with the participation of children enabled the emergence of a set of questions that are taken for granted in other participatory experiments in technology. When analysing user’s involvement in design processes, the concepts of autonomy and choice configure more or less explicitly what is understood as identification and integration of user’s needs and desires. However, when children are the centre of the participatory process, we are confronted with the need to take into account the very conditions of possibility of their involvement, their need for support and guidance throughout the process, and their ambiguous engagement and limited decisiveness. N. Vallès-Peris (*) · M. Domènech Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Delicado et al. (eds.), Communicating Science and Technology in Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52885-0_10

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Citizen participation becomes then (as always) a more complex issue than that of merely finding and describing a set of techniques or methodologies to facilitate participation processes. Our intention here is not to enter a debate about the limits, the risks and the methodological recommendations regarding children’s participation in technology design processes (Scaife and Rogers 1999). Instead, our aim is to reflect about the idea of children’s participation in technology as a way of democratizing technology or introducing children’s needs into the design of technology. Based on the type of discussion that places care at the centre of the debate as a way to stress the importance of care as a vital requisite for thinking and understanding worlds, we problematize the supposed autonomy of children. Besides this, we integrate into the debate a criticism of the notion of citizenship that is at the centre of the debates surrounding the ethics of care. One of the most important contributions of the ethics of care to political philosophy is its critical perspective on the norm of independent citizenship as a result of its favouring of a relational focus centred on interdependence. When we depart from the guiding idea that people need each other and they can only exist as individuals through and via caring relationships, the notion of citizenship becomes broadened in order to incorporate the concept of a caring citizenship. Integrating the ethics of care into the analysis of a participatory process of designing a robot with children enables us to consider three dimensions of children’s autonomy when they take part in technological design. We shall problematize the liberal notion of (children) citizenship that appears in technoscience, as well as the autonomy of children to decide and choose their user needs and desires. The fact of reflecting on autonomy as an emergent quality, as a sustained network of intangibles, and as materiality will turn out to be a political proposal to rethink the debate surrounding the responsibilities of technological design toward society and the role that participation plays in it.

Children’s Participation in Knowledge Societies In Science and Technology Studies (STS) it is generally assumed that the changes that have taken place in knowledge societies are currently transforming the conditions of participation in the public and political lives of contemporary societies (Callon et al. 2009; Domènech 2017). As technical development has become more pervasive, global, and complex, the demand for more systematic evaluations and for international rules and standards to control the costs and benefits of technological and scientific progress has also increased. Among these, the demand for greater public involvement and participation in assessing the risks and uncertainties of new technologies is perhaps the most prominent one—the so-called participatory turn in science and technology (Jasanoff 2003). Concepts such as consultation, public participation, and debate are increasingly present in the decision-making processes about issues that have been mobilized by technoscience (Domènech 2017). All such

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concepts appear in the form of different experiences with different degrees of citizen participation, from punctual interventions to hybrid forums and public spaces where diverse groups and people discuss issues in the search for commonality and desired worlds (Callon et al. 2009). Previous to the debate on citizen participation in knowledge societies, the participation of children—as both a concept and an approach—was already consolidated in 1989 by the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC proclaimed the right of participation as a fundamental right of children, understanding that participation is the means through which a democracy is built and it is a fundamental right of citizenship. Accordingly, the participation of children refers to the processes of their participation in the public domain outside the family (schools, community associations, or other organizations), a participation by which decisions that affect their lives and the life of the community in which they live are made in a shared way (Hart 1992). One of the main concerns of the liberal theory was how to produce the citizens of a state rather than the subjects of a king. This change was crucial for children’s status, because citizenship was defined by a person’s rational capacity to consent to political authority, and such capacity produced a distinction between rational adult citizens and non-rational children. The early liberal theory also established a further distinction between the role of children and that of other noncitizens, as the former had the potential to become citizens after they had developed the necessary attributes of citizenship, such as reason, autonomy, and their own capacity for authority. In the liberal political theory, however, the objective was to produce rational citizens, while the way of producing and caring for such citizens was irrelevant to its way of thinking (Arneil 2002). Caring belonged to the private sphere, as opposed to the public one, and it also belonged to the realm of natural and organic phenomena. Therefore, it was of little political interest. The liberal theory of citizenship was founded on the separation between the public world of right-bearing citizens and a domestic sphere of non-right-bearing caregivers and their dependents (Pateman 1995). Although, in contemporary western societies, the traditional division between the reproductive labour of women in the household and the work of the male breadwinner in the labour market is no longer an accurate description of the way most people live, the notion that citizenship is linked to work still remains in place (Leonard and Tronto 2007). In its origin, autonomy, understood as self-determination, liberation, or participation, was part of what is known as the civil or political rights of children, which are different from their social or economic rights, such as nurturance, care-taking, or provision and protection (Arneil 2002). The distinction between civil or political rights, on one hand, and social or economic rights, on the other, provided the basis for children’s rights theories, whose goal was to change the status of children (and thereby improve their lives) and make them into citizens in the liberal sense, which, from Locke onward, has meant changing the status of individuals from subjects to citizens via the acquisition of rights. Nevertheless, some critical perspectives in feminist political philosophy have questioned the power of this rights discourse, which can have pernicious consequences for children. Children’s rights theorists

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have very good reasons to advocate for increased rights for children, as their ultimate goal is to improve children’s lives—a goal that we share—and seeing rights as the best tool to achieve that end. However, it is this latter assumption that the ethics of care wishes to challenge. Rights have been used by women, black people, and other oppressed groups to improve their lives, but, as Arneil (2002) proposes, we should not assume that the same holds true for children. While the concept of rights is elastic, it cannot escape its origins based on the critical distinction between public rights and private care. In his own words: The nub of the problem is this: while rights’ theorists, building upon a liberal framework, ultimately believe that the fight to improve children’s lives is progressing the further we move from nurturance to self-determination [. . .], it is clear that if one takes children’s need to care seriously, we are moving in the opposite direction, namely from a focus on the right to liberal autonomy (and the conceptualization of the individual, state, and society which accompanies it) to a reconceptualised understanding of the need for (and responsibility to) care (Arneil 2002: 86–87).

Not conceptualized explicitly by the concepts of citizenship and rights, the experiences of participation developed with children in science and technology assume the logic of rights. Although participatory episodes with children are not very common in technological design, interesting experiments involving children in processes of design in the field of information technologies have appeared since the 1990s. A review of the different theories and applications developed in this field can be found in Nesset and Large (2004). Especially in computer sciences, we have witnessed the development of methods and techniques to get children involved. These approaches understand children as an important group of technology users and consumers, which implies the need to ask ourselves about the way of developing new technologies that respect them and respond to their needs (Heller 1998). In this sense, Druin’s proposal (2002), which develops a model to understand the several roles that children can adopt in a participatory design process and the ways these roles can affect the produced technologies, has become highly popular. If we regard children as technology users or consumers, then the more they participate, the more the development of innovations and improvements to the final design of technology is facilitated by them (Fails et al. 2013; Frauenberger et al. 2011).

Ethics of Care and Matters of Care in Technoscience According to the liberal logic, the more children participate, the more they will improve their status as citizens, and technological design will be progressively democratized. Nevertheless, our aim in this chapter is to challenge this assumption and put forward a radical criticism of the rights discourse, one that proposes an alternative construction of citizenship founded on the caring relations and the ethics of care. Since the publication of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982), a vast number of pages about ethics of care have been written. Despite its origins in feminist studies and struggles, some interpretations have advocated for

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understanding the ethics of care as a proposal to deprivatize and degenderize the notion of care, with the aim of transforming the moral boundaries that care has historically contained and which have feminized and privatized it (Tronto 1993). As Sevenhuijsen (2004) explains, the underlying motivation of an ethics-of-care approach is to focus the attention on care as a political concept and to position it as the social and moral practice of the notion of citizenship. The moral subject of the liberal conceptualization of the citizen is that of a free subject with a series of associated individual rights. This subject establishes relationships based on its rights and obligations and the resolution of a series of moral dilemmas derived from the existence of a hierarchy of rights, obligations, and relationships. Contrary to this, the ethical subject posited by the ethics of care lives always in a network of relationships in which each person has to reconcile different forms of caring responsibilities (Sevenhuijsen 1998). Following this care approach, the concept of autonomy is reformulated around three arguments (Verkerk 2001): (1) the questioning of the idea of self-sufficiency and independence as the main value of human living, which makes other neglected values, such as trust, caring, and responsibility, emerge; (2) the idea that autonomy may be understood as a moral capacity that can only develop in relation with others, not in isolation from all relationships (the concept of relational autonomy); and (3) the fact that, according to a care perspective, moral questions are to be presented in terms of responsibilities rather than rights (to autonomy, to participation), and in terms of the relationships in which the responsibilities toward each other are set. This latter issue is well represented by the distinction between the logic of choice and the logic of care. The concept developed by Mol (2008) for healthcare is that a world infused with the idea of individual choice and the logic of choice does not offer a way of living that is any better than the life that may be led in a world infused by the logic of care. The logic of care focuses on what we do in particular situations in order to articulate how to live well and how to shape good care; and, instead of focusing on the person as a subject of choice, it focuses on it as the subject of all kinds of activities. Care-ethics theorists hold that good care cannot be explained by a universal title defined in general principles, in the way this is done with medical ethical principles. Rather, it is something that people shape, invent, and adapt in everyday practices (Mol 2008). Care is everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. This world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all that we seek to interweave in a complex web of sustaining life (Tronto 1993: 30). Using this seminal definition and following a debate in STS that goes from matters of fact to matters of concern, Puig de la Bellacasa (2011) proposes adding matters of care to technoscience. From the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT), authors such as Storni (2015) rethink participation in the design of technology as a matter of concern (Latour 1999). Broadening the logic of matters of facts— or universal statements about the nature of phenomena—matters of concerns look at the mediated and procedural aspect of reality, with special emphasis on the relationships that may exist among the involved actors. Feminist orientations in STS and ANT add crucial sensibilities to the conceptions of agency, emphasizing the always

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relational character of our capacities for action, the constructed nature of subjects and objects, resemblances and differences, and the corporeal foundations of knowledge and action (Suchman 2003). In this sense, Puig de la Bellacasa (2011) proposes that matters of care be added to matters of concern, which means taking into account those participants who will hardly be successful in articulating their concerns and also those issues that are not part of the prevailing worldview (Papadopoulos 2011). The notion of matters of care suggests that we should turn our attention to the analysis of how care operates in a sociotechnical context (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). The participatory process developed in this research project is analysed from an ethics of care approach, seeking to identify how matters of care emerge when children participate in a process of technological design. Paraphrasing Arneil (2002), if one takes seriously into account matters of care while children participate in technoscientific processes, we move from a focus on identifying their individual needs and desires as users or consumers, to reconceptualizing autonomy as a way to reach their needs via the assumption of social responsibilities toward them, and, consequently, to make technologies more responsible and democratic.

Methodology The primary aim of our study was to produce a methodology to implement a participatory process in a school in order to design a social robot for children’s healthcare (Vallès-Peris et al. 2018). The participatory process was conceived and designed in line with the STS tradition of debate and study of citizen participation in science and technology (Bucchi and Neresini 2008). However, for the purpose of this chapter, it was analysed by taking into account its whole trajectory, from its initial stages of ideation, to its implementation and its final outputs. The object of analysing the full life-cycle of the participatory process was to expose matters of care during the experience of designing a social robot with children, which allows identifying how children’s (relational) autonomy was articulated during the process. The project team involved in some manner at one point or another in the process included the innovation department of a children’s hospital, a team of roboticists, and a team of social scientists. We made a thick description of the full life-cycle of the participatory process. Thick description is a qualitative approach that goes beyond facts and appearances and highlights the interpretative aspects of description rather than detail per se (this is what makes it thick, as opposed to thin description) (Ponterotto 2006). Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web of relationships among them. It is the researcher’s task to describe the observed social action (or behaviour) and to assign purpose and intentionality to these actions within their particular context (Ponterotto 2006). The context can be a small unit (a community, a group, a family) or a larger one (a city, a community, a general culture) (Ponterotto 2006). In our project, the context used for the analysis was the full life-cycle of the participatory process, which was organized around four

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Timeline

Previous collaborative experience

Preparatory sessions

Participatory process in a school for designing a social robot

Internal appraisal and interpretation

Fig. 10.1 Full life-cycle of the participatory process

moments or stages (Fig. 10.1): (a) the previous collaborative experience among the interdisciplinary research team in other research projects; (b) the preparatory sessions with the research team to define the process of children’s participation in the design of a social robot; (c) the participatory process per se; and (d) the dissemination activities carried out by the members of the research team and their interpretation of the results. With the analysis of the trajectory of the participatory process in mind, we used different methods for gathering information about each of the stages of the process. All the interviews that were carried out were carefully registered and transcribed, while all observations were written down in a field diary. Specifically, the information-gathering procedures for each of the four stages were as follows: (a) Previous collaborative experience: We included all those collaborative experiences in which the whole interdisciplinary research team that developed the participatory process had taken part. These started formally in 2012. Information about them was gathered through documentary analysis (papers written in collaboration, internal reports about meetings, observations in field diaries, and focus-group transcriptions) and observation (during formal and informal meetings of the interdisciplinary research team in which references to previous research were made). (b) Preparatory sessions: The process for designing a social robot with children was planned by all the interdisciplinary team in the context of a wider project to develop an innovative health programme for a children’s hospital. Three work sessions were held with the entire project team in order to design the workshops that would be conducted at the school. After that, all the workshop activities were specified in greater detail with the collaboration of the two teachers of robotics in the school where the participatory process had to be implemented. Participative observation of all sessions was done and notes were registered in a field diary. (c) Participatory process in a school for designing a social robot: According to the discussions held by the team, the design process was systematized into six phases; each phase was further defined in relation to an objective to be reached while working with the involved children in a set of workshops and activities.

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For a 3-month period a research team of roboticists, medical personnel, and social scientists worked in a school with 6-year-old children to design a prototype of a social robot for a children’s hospital. Two first-grade group classes participated—a total of 60 pupils. With each group-class, the participative experience was conducted in 12 workshops, one per week for each group-class (a total of 24 sessions). All sessions were video-recorded, and a field diary was kept. (d) Internal appraisal and interpretation: After the participatory process, five interviews were held with professionals involved in the possible future implementation of social robots in the children’s hospital: the head of roboticists, the head of the innovation department, the head of the emergency service, the head of anaesthesiology, and the head of palliative cares. The main aim of the interviews was to identify the risks and potentialities of introducing social robots in certain settings of the children’s hospital, as it was conceived during the project.

Considerations About Autonomy Focusing on matters of care when analysing the participatory process with children for the design of a social robot, three considerations about children’s autonomy when they participate in technoscience were identified: autonomy as an emergent quality, autonomy as a sustaining network of intangibles, and autonomy as materiality.

Autonomy as an Emergent Quality Since 2012 we have been collaborating in an interdisciplinary project to implement an innovative health programme aimed at introducing social robots into the daily dynamics of a paediatric hospital for children’s therapy and accompaniment. Designed to interact with people in a manner consistent with human psychology and following the guidelines and rules of human interaction (Breazeal 2011), social robots for children’s hospitals have been developed especially to reduce pain and anxiety (Díaz Boladeras et al. 2011; Tanaka et al. 2007, etc.). The interdisciplinary project team was composed of the Innovation Unit of a Barcelona Children’s Hospital, an interuniversity robotics research group and a group of social scientists. Prior to the case study analysed in this chapter and based on a participatory process with children for designing a social robot, the project team had worked together on different projects and evaluations linked to the implementation of robots in children’s hospitals (Heerink et al. 2016). In the previous year the group of roboticists had worked on a project financed by the Catalan Government fund for innovative projects with the possibility of being incorporated into the production sector. They had focused on the development of a

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Table 10.1 Phases of the participative process for designing a social robot with children Phase Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

Objective Sharing a workflow with roboticists and social scientists Empathizing with sick children’s needs Choosing the robot to be developed

Phase 4 Phase 5

Choosing the appearance and functionality of the robot Building prototypes

Phase 6

Testing prototypes

Activities to do in the school Knowing about robotics and roboticists (whole group). 1 session Reflecting on how they feel themselves when sick (individual).1 session Identifying which objects children would bring to a hospital if sick or hospitalized (small groups). 1 session Role-playing of a hospital (small groups). 1 sessions Defining the robot’s appearance and its features (small groups). 2 sessions Building prototypes with modelling clay (small groups). 2 sessions Building prototypes with robotics’ construction blocks (small groups). 2 sessions Playing with prototypes (small groups). 1 session Presenting prototypes (small groups). 1 session

prototype social robot for cognitive assistance to hospitalized children. Along this line of research, the roboticists had explored the functionalities and appearance of the robot. Before specifying any specific functionalities, they had decided to develop a pet robot with the appearance of a turtle. As the head of the robotics team explained, the turtle form was chosen because it facilitated the introduction of movement into the robot, considering that it could incorporate four small motors in the turtle’s legs. The turtle also guaranteed that children’s expectations would be met, as the robot’s slow movement would mimic the movement of a genuine turtle. Also, the turtle was especially interesting to the roboticists because, in all of its different possibilities for development, it would guarantee security in child-robot interactions. As the head of the roboticists team put it: But it is important that the robots, when you make them, cannot hurt physically. I mean, a lion does not possess less consciousness than a turtle. Its cognitive level is the same, but the damage that a lion can make is not the same as that of a turtle. And this is not determined by their degree of consciousness. Both want to survive, with their abilities. So, when you make a robot, you have to think about this. Or if you understand that you can have a lion, so you have it caged. It’s up to you. But then you're already beginning to ban, right? Lions, inside the zoos and separated by ditches, or if you know that you are in the Serengeti [National Park, in Tanzania] and that there are animals that are dangerous, then you have to take your precautions.

A few months later, during the participatory process held in the school, one of the phases in the design of the social robot was the definition of its appearance and functionalities (phase 4; see Table 10.1). In this process the children, distributed in small groups, produced 11 prototypes in total, with the appearance of mummies, a teddy bear, anthropomorphic robots, and other fantastic creatures. There were also two robots with the appearance of animals: an eagle and a turtle. It was pure coincidence, since the head of robotics had not attended any of the work sessions

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Fig. 10.2 Turtle-design prototype. Note: Virtual design of the turtle robot made by the roboticists involved in the project after the children’s participative process

with the children at the school, while they were making their robots. However, in the last stage of the life-cycle of the participative process, i.e., the dissemination phase (see Table 10.1), a link was established between the turtle designed by the children and the turtle designed by the roboticists (chosen as a pre-prototype in the latter’s previous project) (Fig. 10.2). This might be interpreted as a bias in the reading of the results because out of the 11 robots designed by the children, there was one that coincided with the one previously defined by the roboticist, and this fact was used in the activities of dissemination of the project in order to justify the pertinence of the roboticists’ decision to choose the appearance of a turtle. As highlighted by other scholars, when analysing participatory processes in technology, there is the risk of using the participation of lay people as a way to legitimize technoscientific decisions. However, from our point of view there is a more complex analysis too. If autonomy is understood as relational autonomy, a participatory process is not a linear process, but a network of relationships among different agents in multiple settings. Thus, the outputs of a participatory process cannot be analysed from only a single dimension, regarding children as independent actors that make their decisions in the freedom of an activity organized in their school; instead, children should be seen as actors that play with other actors (roboticists, social scientists, the innovation unit of a hospital, pre-prototypes previously developed) in the process of developing an innovative programme to introduce social robots into a children’s hospital. Seen in the light of this logic, the appearance of the social robot cannot be taken as the only result of the participatory process, as there were other valuable results too, such as those concerning the functionalities developed by the children, or their imaginaries of interactions with the social robot (Vallès-Peris et al. 2018). In the same manner, the participatory process could hardly be interpreted on its own, without taking into account the full life-cycle in which it was embedded, in this case, the full experience of the innovative project for introducing social robots into children’s hospitals. Instead of invalidating the results of the participatory project,

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the mapping of the project contextualizes it. While mapping helps us to contextualize the relational frame within the different projects carried out during its full life-cycle and to interpret its results, it also helps us to draw the possibilities and constraints of participation. From this perspective, children’s autonomy makes sense only if we conceive it as situated autonomy; not as absolute autonomy, and more specifically, not as autonomy in the issues in which we explicitly demanded their participation, but as an autonomy situated in the conditions of possibility of their participation, in a particular moment, with specific relationships and with past and future objectives of the research project in which they participated.

Autonomy as a Sustaining Network of Intangibles In the first workshop conducted at the school (phase 1; see Table 10.1) we wanted to share a workflow with the children, the roboticists, and the social science researchers with the intention of getting the children into the role of the roboticists by discussing with them what an engineer’s work is, their daily tasks and problems, etc. The children were asked to write their ideas on what an engineer is or does on a piece of paper, and then post it on the whiteboard and explain their pieces of writing. However, after some time, not all the 6-year-old children in the classroom had completed the task, since some of them wrote too slowly or did not know all the spellings and could not translate what they wanted to say into writing. Because of this, the possibility of making a drawing about what in particular a roboticist is/does was introduced. This was a slightly messy situation, because the children who could write and, consequently, had finished the task earlier were standing, explaining their ideas and sticking their papers at the bottom of the circle drawn on the whiteboard. While the teachers were discussing their ideas with the rest of the class, some of them were still drawing their ideas about whether this or that was or was not something that an engineer is/does. Progressively, while the other children were standing, the children who could not write as quickly could not reach the top of the circle to stick their paper there, as the bottom part was already full, so it was the teacher who had to take the paper and post it on the whiteboard. Moreover, their ideas could not be properly discussed because the teachers were posting the papers on the whiteboard (their backs turned) instead of discussing the ideas with the whole group as the initial ideas stuck were facing forward. Hence, the situation only grew messier and messier. The posting episode was not thought to be finished after the children had written or drawn their ideas. They had to stand up and post their papers in one of the circles on the whiteboard. The bottom part of the circles was progressively full of papers, and 6-year-old children have short legs and arms, so they could not reach the empty top of the circle. Finally, the teachers had to stick the pieces of paper on the top part of the circle, because the circles were drawn too high and the children could not reach the top part of them to post their ideas (Fig. 10.3). Some care ethics theorists hold that care is not only about bodies or things, but it is also about intangibles, as is clearly revealed by some of the synonyms of care that

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Fig. 10.3 The posting episode. Note: Pictures of children doing the activity of phase 1 for sharing a workflow with roboticists and social scientists

are sometimes used to refer to the same kind of tasks and activities, such as subjectivation or affective work. Caring for children means building communities and sustaining meanings, affective dispositions, and shared forms of value, all of which underpin social coexistence and cooperation (Fraser 2016). In the activity we have just described adapting the task was a way to take care into consideration in the participation process. Some 6-year-old children were writing their ideas about what an engineer is or does faster, while others were still considering how to write their thoughts or how to draw the letters they needed to spell the words. Introducing the previously unplanned possibility of drawing a picture involved changing the defined methodology of the activity and, finally, the session, was a little more chaotic than originally imagined. These ad hoc adjustments to adapt the activities and their objectives to the possibilities of children may imply a not so robust methodology, or the public recognition of weaknesses in the design of the activities for 6-year old children. However, making small changes to adjust to the children’s different literacy skills was a way of taking care of the children’s intangibles. In the task of defining what an engineer is or does, if the children who were not writing their ideas quickly enough had had no other option than to write, they probably would not have felt well or comfortable. Independently of their specific idea of what they wanted to say about engineers (i.e., their choice of how to define them), the children felt better if the research members were aware of what they were doing and what their literacy skills were and, consequently, they adjusted the participative methodology to those skills. When the ethics of care is used for analysing the participative process, we witness the emergence of relational associations of constant adaptation and adjustment to intangible care needs of the participants, those same relational associations that sustain their autonomy. The participation of children in the design of a social robot for a children’s hospital as a way to integrate children’s needs and preferences in it makes sense only if the children’s needs and preferences are integrated into the participatory process itself, something which, additionally, facilitates their autonomy, a relational one. Children’s autonomy is then sustained in a never-ending process of necessary adjustments and readjustments of intangibles: first changing

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from writing to drawing, then solving the problems of the children who could not reach the empty top part of the circle, then accepting the chaos of children moving about in the class while the teacher comments on other children’s ideas, etc.

Autonomy as Materiality After conducting a set of activities to decide which robots were to be developed by each group and defining their appearance and main features, two workshops for building prototypes were organized in phase 5 (Table 10.1). Based on the pictures and the descriptions resulting from the previous phases, a first prototyping workshop for building robots with modelling clay was conducted. For two sessions the 6-yearold children played with modelling clay and shaped a robot. After this prototyping exercise another two-session workshop was organized in order to build the same prototypes with robotic construction blocks. From one session to the following one, the prototypes were kept in trays. For each group-class, two trays were used to put away the modelling-clay prototypes and then two more trays were added to keep the robotic construction-block prototypes (Fig. 10.4). Thus, the course of events was normally as follows. In the morning, a group of children would start an activity with their two teachers of robotics, two social scientists, and one engineer, with the goal of shaping a robot (first with modelling clay and then with robotic construction blocks). After the 50-min session, they put away their (more or less finished) robot, together with the robots built by other groups, in a tray that the teachers gave to them. In the eyes of the children, the trays would then disappear from the classroom to an unknown location. One day in the following week, in the morning, the teachers of robotics, the social scientists, and the

Fig. 10.4 Prototypes kept in trays

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engineer would appear with the trays and the children’s robots again. In the sessions for prototyping with construction blocks, the earlier modelling-clay robots (along with the construction-block ones) were also taken to the classroom for the children to have a reference for the robots they had designed. Intuitively, it might seem that the sessions would resume at the same point they had left off the week before. However, there is an important fact: when the trays left the classroom and disappeared from the eyes of children, they were kept in the school’s robotics room, a room with not much space and many things. There, the trays were stacked up on top of each other together with the trays of the other groups. The consequence was that, session after session, the modelling-clay prototypes became progressively chopped, dismantled, and dirtied. As for the robotics construction-block trays, apart from the prototypes in them also being broken, the room where they were kept was also the room where older children went for their robotics lessons, and when they needed a construction piece or some programming bricks, they would simply take them from the trays. Thus, every week, on the day on which the participative process took place, the children had to devote some time to repairing their prototypes if they could. Sometimes this was possible, but other times it was not, because the modelling clay was too dirty or because a piece was missing and could not be replaced, or the brick had a different programming. Sometimes children were annoyed, or very annoyed; at other times, they thought of an alternative; and on still other occasions the damages went unnoticed. In the episode with the posting papers on the whiteboard, our analytical focus was on the care of intangibles and the constant adjustment of all the actors in order to sustain the children’s capacity to participate. However, in the episode concerning the way that the prototypes were kept in trays, our emphasis was on the care of the objects produced during the participatory process. López Gómez (2015) has brought to the fore the continuous process of adjusting and stabilizing the way that devices are arranged as a constitutive aspect in the maintenance of autonomy. From this approach, autonomy has to do with an open range of small associations and adaptations of the material ordering, along with interactions and experimentations. When children took on the responsibility of maintaining, cleaning, fixing, and composing the robot prototypes kept in trays, they organized the material world that made their own participation possible. Thus, the fact of taking care of things could be analysed as a dimension of the ethics of care and as a requisite for autonomy. In guaranteeing the maintenance of the robot prototypes, the process of caring that sustains the children’s relational autonomy was not limited to the children’s needs and preferences, but it also included the children’s material order. Their own ability to be involved in the activities of the participatory process was conditioned by the maintenance of the artefacts produced during the process. In the case analysed, part of the responsibility of taking care of the prototypes was taken on by the children themselves.

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Conclusions Our main goal in this chapter was to analyse how matters of care emerge when children participate in a process of technological design and how this challenges the supposed children’s autonomy. We adopted the perspective of the ethics of care, which proposes a radical reconceptualization of the notion of the citizen as an individual with rights and, on the contrary, emphasizes responsibilities and relationships of caring interdependency. In this same vein, on focusing on matters of care, our analysis of children’s participation in a technoscientific process took us away from the idea of autonomy as something related to individual needs and desires as users or consumers. From a broadened notion of autonomy as relational autonomy, the key to fulfilling children’s caring needs and, consequently, to making technologies more responsible and democratic lies in the assumption of social responsibilities toward them. Three expressions of children’s autonomy were elicited by our analysis: (a) Autonomy as an emergent quality of the trajectory of the participatory process. The conditions of participation in the project and its objectives are defined throughout its life-cycle. During the process of definition, execution, and assessment of the participatory experience, all the actors involved in the process (roboticists, medical personnel, teachers, social scientists, children, school dynamics, activities, etc.) shaped the possibilities of children’s autonomy during their participation. Thus, autonomy is something which is situated in the whole trajectory of the participatory process, defined by various actors in a multiple scenario of spaces and times, instead of being predefined as an element of the participatory process itself. (b) Autonomy as a sustaining network of intangibles that enables the caring of the children involved in the participatory experience. Children’s needs, understood as social responsibilities that go beyond children’s individual needs and desires, are sustained in children’s relations with others. In any participatory experience, there is a constant process of material adjustments to adapt to the children’s specificities and to ad hoc unforeseen circumstances. Such adjustments, usually related to the methodologies employed and their adaptation in concrete activities, also have an intangible moral dimension, which has to do with the responsibility of guaranteeing children’s wellbeing. (c) Autonomy as materiality is the other side of autonomy as a sustaining network of intangibles. Children’s participation is inextricably related to the responsibility of all the actors involved in the process of taking care of them in a moral dimension. The fact of taking care of intangibles—emotions, learning process, etc.—cannot be separated from the tangible in this moral responsibility toward children. In the participatory process, the world of things around children is also the world of the needed care. The things produced by the children during their participation, such as drawings or prototypes, formed the materiality of their participation. The act of taking care of such products, by children themselves or by others, constitutes the material dimension of relational autonomy in a participatory process.

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From this analysis, it is our proposal to introduce a critical reflection about autonomy into the debate surrounding citizens’ participation (and particularly the participation of children and other vulnerable collectives) as an inextricable element for the democratization of technology. If we assumed a relational type of autonomy and understand this as an emergent quality, as a sustained network of intangibles, and as materiality, then the responsibilities toward society of technology design go well beyond the identification and introduction of users’ or consumers’ needs. From the logic of citizens sustained by and sustaining networks of care, participation in technological design comes to little more than nothing in terms of democratization if it cannot integrate matters of care.

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Núria Vallès-Peris is a researcher of the Barcelona Science Technology Studies Group (STS-b) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology of the Universitat de Barcelona. Her research interests are broadly about the democratization of techno-science and the study of inequalities in knowledge production, and she is currently focused on the study about ethics and robotics. Miquel Domènech is Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a member of the EASST Council and a founding member of the Barcelona Science and Technology Studies Group (STS-b), a research group recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya. His research interests are mostly in the field of science and technology studies (STS), with a particular emphasis on the relationship between care and technology and on citizen participation in techno-scientific issues. He is currently the project leader of “Ethics for robots caring for us”, funded by the Recercaixa programme.

Index

A Accountability, 2, 41 Animals, 5, 6, 8, 17, 59–75, 101, 187 Assemblage, 7, 43, 156, 162, 166, 167, 173, 174 Associations, 5, 7, 9, 24, 27, 65, 66, 97–114, 118, 119, 121, 123, 129, 131, 145, 149, 181, 190, 192 Autonomy, 8, 19, 20, 86, 141, 145, 174, 179–194

D Decision making, 42, 145 Deficit, 4, 30, 113, 141, 152 Demand, 5, 7, 8, 40, 45, 54, 84, 108, 118, 124, 127, 161, 180, 189 Dialogue, 48, 100, 102, 138, 139, 142, 146, 148, 152–154, 156, 163, 166, 174 Dissemination, 7, 21, 24, 89, 90, 98, 99, 101–106, 109–111, 113, 114, 118, 120–124, 127, 131–133, 145, 185, 188

C Care, 6, 8, 40–43, 50, 51, 54, 85, 157, 179, 180, 182–184, 186, 189, 190, 192–194 Children, 8, 48, 89, 90, 110, 111, 125, 130, 131, 141, 179–194 Circulation, 6, 21, 23, 28, 39, 44, 54 Citizen science, 101, 105, 109, 114 Citizenship, 8, 179–183 Civil society, 5, 6, 42, 100, 102, 119 Collaboration, 1, 4, 6, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 52–54, 81, 100, 107, 109, 118, 126, 129, 130, 151, 154, 185 Communication, 2, 4–7, 21, 28, 30, 49, 50, 66, 67, 79, 81, 90, 97–99, 101–108, 111–113, 117–133, 141, 142, 148, 150, 152, 165, 167–170 Communicators, 98, 118, 120, 123, 132, 133 Consultation, 117, 140, 143, 145, 150, 180 Consumption, 22, 32, 82, 84, 85, 131, 143 Controversies, 3, 20, 29, 59, 79, 86, 88, 91, 97, 119, 141, 146, 163

E Economy, 21, 45, 83, 86, 88, 125 Education, 3, 42, 60, 66, 90, 97, 99, 106, 110, 112, 118, 120–127, 131, 141, 145, 152 Emotions, 140, 165, 170, 193 Energy, 5, 6, 8, 48, 79–91, 126, 131, 174 Engagement, 2, 4, 5, 7–9, 18, 43, 51, 53, 54, 66, 69, 74, 75, 81, 88, 90, 98, 101, 104, 106, 107, 110, 113, 117–119, 123, 133, 140, 161, 162, 179 Environment, 2, 5, 65, 66, 79, 82, 83, 124, 131, 145–147, 168, 174, 183 Epistemic, epistemic communities, 43 Ethics, 2, 8, 42, 61, 118, 172, 179, 180, 182, 184, 189, 190, 192 European Commission, 2, 41, 47, 59, 66 Exhibition, 109, 111, 125, 131, 132, 141 Expectations, 8, 33, 48, 52, 53, 81, 109, 138, 151, 187 Experimentation, 5, 6, 8, 43, 59–75, 101, 125, 138, 157, 192

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198 Experts, 1, 3, 22–25, 27–29, 31, 41, 52, 53, 60, 80, 99, 105, 109, 111, 131, 140, 141, 143, 147, 152, 163–165, 167–169, 173 Extended peer communities, 2, 41

F Funding, 2, 6, 8, 9, 25, 29, 39, 41, 43–45, 49, 52, 53, 86, 87, 90, 98, 100, 102, 103, 118, 120–122, 124–126, 133, 147

G Gatekeeper, 32 Governance, 2, 3, 7, 42, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 150, 154, 156 Government, 60, 61, 83, 87, 88, 91, 98, 120, 121, 124, 128, 129, 138, 141, 145, 156, 186

H Health, 2, 3, 23, 81, 103, 125, 165, 167–170, 185, 186

I Imaginaries, 40, 43–47, 49–52, 188 Inclusion, 42, 125, 138, 162 Innovation, 2, 9, 22, 24, 39–42, 45, 47–50, 86, 118, 146, 156, 161, 182, 184, 186, 188 Interest, 3, 6, 8, 17, 24, 25, 28, 41, 44, 65, 85–87, 89, 91, 97, 100–102, 104, 106, 108, 109, 111, 121, 124, 125, 137, 138, 141, 150, 156, 164, 181 Internet, 4, 22, 108–110, 126 Involvement, 4, 30, 89, 112, 128, 139, 141, 148, 151, 154, 164, 173, 179, 180

K Knowledge production, 2, 9, 39–41, 43, 45–48, 51, 54, 80, 81, 105, 163

L Laboratory, 6, 7, 22, 59, 66, 70, 110, 117, 125, 127 Learned societies, 98, 123 Legitimacy, 28, 39, 42, 106, 140

Index M Materiality, 8, 52, 142, 162, 165, 172, 174, 180, 186, 193, 194 Media, 4–7, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30–32, 60, 88, 89, 97, 99, 107, 117–120, 127–130 Mobilization, 60, 65, 66, 123, 145 Mode 2, 2, 39–41, 59 Moral, 19, 21, 41, 47, 49, 50, 61, 86, 88, 183, 193 Museum, 4, 7, 97, 107, 110, 112, 117, 118, 120, 125, 131, 132

N News, 4, 31, 107, 128, 129 NGOs, 41, 53, 145

O Outreach, 6, 66, 80, 88, 90, 91, 98, 104, 105, 107, 113, 118, 122, 123

P Participation, 3, 4, 6–8, 40, 65, 80, 89, 98, 101, 106, 110, 112, 131, 137–157, 163, 164, 172, 179–185, 188–190, 192–194 Participatory, 3, 5, 7, 8, 42, 43, 52, 53, 117, 125, 137–139, 142, 146, 151, 155, 156, 163, 171, 179–194 Policy, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 30, 31, 41, 43, 61, 79, 80, 87, 99, 102, 103, 113, 117, 118, 120–124, 128, 133, 137, 138, 145, 146, 153, 162, 164 Policy making, 3, 80 Popularization, 30, 31, 118, 127, 129 Post-normal science, 2, 39–41

R Regulatory, 8, 22, 60, 121 Re-ordering, 6, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47–50 Research centres, 7, 110, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130–133, 145 Responsibility, 1, 5, 6, 8, 39–54, 80, 85, 86, 109, 110, 125, 151, 157, 179, 180, 182–184, 192–194 Responsible research and innovation (RRI), 2, 40, 42, 43, 48, 118 Responsiveness, 42, 48

Index Rights, 8, 31, 44, 48, 61, 65, 67, 83, 121, 127, 179, 181–183, 187, 193 Risk, 3, 8, 41, 42, 81, 99, 148, 149, 170, 172, 180, 186, 188 Robots, 7, 8, 101, 179, 180, 184–188, 190–192

S Science centre, 22, 97, 112, 120, 125, 132 Science culture, 6, 40, 43, 46–49 Scientific community, 1, 3, 6, 8, 18–26, 29–32, 66, 86, 88, 102 Scientific culture, 7, 89, 102, 106, 112, 113, 118, 120, 121, 123 Scientific system, 1, 81, 86, 87, 98, 102, 109, 121, 122, 131, 133 Social concerns, societal concerns, 6, 8, 48, 110, 117 Social media, 4, 120, 129 Social movement, 2, 60, 65, 103, 104, 119, 123 Stakeholder, 1, 7–9, 42, 51, 52, 79, 80, 91, 102, 124, 133, 141, 145, 151, 163, 164 Sustainability, sustainable, 2, 5, 6, 39, 40, 44–48, 53, 80, 82, 83, 88, 89, 91, 125, 149, 162

199 T Technoscience, 42, 180, 183, 186 Television, 4, 107, 129, 167 Training, 6, 66, 69, 87, 110, 121, 122, 124, 125, 130, 140, 141, 145 Transdisciplinary, transdisciplinarity, 6, 39–54, 91, 99, 101 Translation, 1, 7, 44, 49, 51, 52, 54, 119, 138, 162, 166, 167 Triple helix, 39–41 Trust, 1, 4, 8, 29, 30, 39, 169, 183

U Uncertainties, 3, 29, 41, 60, 97, 142, 150, 152, 170, 180 Universities, 5, 9, 26, 31, 41, 60, 75, 86, 87, 89, 97, 99, 101, 108–110, 112, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126, 128, 130–132, 145

V Values, 1–4, 6, 8, 18–21, 23–25, 29, 32, 41, 61, 65, 75, 89, 106, 130, 143, 152, 183, 190