Jason Chilvers

Deliberating Competence Theoretical and Practitioner Perspectives on Effective Participatory Appraisal Practice

The “participatory turn” cutting across technical approaches for appraising environment, risk, science, and technology has been accompanied by intense debates over the desired nature, extent, and quality of public engagement in science. Burgeoning work evaluating the effectiveness of such processes and the social study of science in society more generally is notable, however, for lacking systematic understanding of the very actors shaping these new forms science-society interaction. This paper addresses this lacuna by drawing on United Kingdom based in-depth empirical research that made space for participatory appraisal experts to reflect on effective practice and novel questions of competence, expertise, and citizen-specialist relations within analytic-deliberative processes. Emerging practitioner principles warn that existing participatory models have not sufficiently considered constructivist perspectives on knowledge, analysis, and deliberation. Effective participatory appraisal under uncertainty needs to guard against the “technocracy of participation” by opening up to diversity, difference, antagonism, and uncertainties/indeterminacies.

Environmental risk, uncertainty and participation: mapping an emergent epistemic community

Amid increasing interest in participatory forms of environmental appraisal and decision making, the actors shaping these new governance spaces remain understudied. This paper seeks to refocus accounts of public engagement in science onto these participatory appraisal experts, or ‘experts of community’, through drawing on in-depth empirical research that followed them through networks building up around participatory appraisal practice in the UK environmental-risk domain. A mapping of the general nature and character of this emerging epistemic community provides the context within which to analyse how it has evolved and has begun to influence policy processes in the area of radioactive waste. Prospects for studying networks of public engagement experts at the science–policy interface and wider implications for deliberative democracy under uncertainty are explored.

Upping the ante: A conceptual framework for designing and evaluating participatory technology assessments

Radical uncertainty, political controversy and public distrust in emerging areas of science and technology is fuelling moves towards new forms of governance centred on ex ante or ‘upstream’ public and stakeholder engagement with policy. Yet how is such deliberation and inclusion to be achieved in contentious national policy processes? We present a contextual framework that seeks to understand this question better and use it to reflect on two high-profile UK examples of ‘new governance’ in genetic modification and radioactive waste management. In doing this, we argue for: better definition of who/what is represented in such processes; mixed methodologies both to integrate analytic-deliberative dimensions and address questions of representativeness; and more systematic evaluation of the outputs and outcomes of appraisal processes. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Understanding householder responses to natural hazards: flooding and sea‐level rise comparisons

Starting from a general understanding that experience of hazards is important in motivating protective response, this paper reports a novel study to understand the relationship between householder experience, understanding and response to two natural hazards – flooding and sea‐level rise – in three contrasting high‐risk areas of England. It presents a generic Individual Understanding and Response Framework (IURF) as a simple but potentially valuable means of comparing hazards and expressing the dynamic processes that appear to heighten or attenuate understanding and drive or constrain responses to specific natural hazards. The IURFs confirm the complexity of factors underlying householder understanding and response. Even in high‐risk areas a lack of recent direct personal experience of flood events serves to attenuate understanding and to constrain motivation to take personal action. For sea‐level rise, as yet a largely ‘unknown’ hazard in the local context, perceived responsibility to act is transferred to others. Social networks are confirmed as important local sources of information often more important than the official. People evaluate potential protection or mitigation measures in terms of their efficacy, cost and implementation barriers. The paper concludes with discussion of the communication and engagement implications for communities at risk from natural hazards.

Reflexive Engagement? Actors, Learning, and Reflexivity in Public Dialogue on Science and Technology:

This article contributes to a more reflexive mode of research on public engagement with science-related issues through presenting an in-depth qualitative study of the actors that mediate science-society interactions, their roles and relationships, and the nature of learning and reflexivity in relation to public dialogue. A mapping framework is developed to describe the roles and relations of actors mediating public dialogue on science and technology in Britain. Learning within public dialogue networks is shown to be instrumental only, crowding out potentials for reflexive and relational learning. This calls for renewed critical social science research alongside more deliberately reflexive learning relating to participatory governance of science and technology that is situated, interactive, public, and anticipatory.

Public awareness, concerns, and priorities about anthropogenic impacts on marine environments

Significance We report the results of a 10,106-person pan-European survey of public awareness, concerns, and priorities about marine anthropogenic impacts as a way to inform both science and policy initiatives in achieving marine sustainability. Results enable scientists and policymakers to understand how the public relates to the marine environment and how they frame impacts and can help make managerial, scientific, and policy priorities more responsive to public values. Numerous international bodies have advocated the development of strategies to achieve the sustainability of marine environments. Typically, such strategies are based on information from expert groups about causes of degradation and policy options to address them, but these strategies rarely take into account assessed information about public awareness, concerns, and priorities. Here we report the results of a pan-European survey of public perceptions about marine environmental impacts as a way to inform the formation of science and policy priorities. On the basis of 10,106 responses to an online survey from people in 10 European nations, spanning a diversity of socioeconomic and geographical areas, we examine the public’s informedness and concern regarding marine impacts, trust in different information sources, and priorities for policy and funding. Results show that the level of concern regarding marine impacts is closely associated with the level of informedness and that pollution and overfishing are two areas prioritized by the public for policy development. The level of trust varies greatly among different information sources and is highest for academics and scholarly publications but lower for government or industry scientists. Results suggest that the public perceives the immediacy of marine anthropogenic impacts and is highly concerned about ocean pollution, overfishing, and ocean acidification. Eliciting public awareness, concerns, and priorities can enable scientists and funders to understand how the public relates to marine environments, frame impacts, and align managerial and policy priorities with public demand.

Power Relations: The Politics of Risk and Procedure in Nuclear Waste Governance

This paper develops a critical perspective on the ‘new’ governance of science and the environment which is increasingly evident in practical attempts to build more constructive relations between science and democracy through hybrid ‘analytic–deliberative’ processes. The focus is on recent institutional and participatory experiments in the governance of nuclear waste, specifically the work of the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management and the trialling of a novel participatory, multicriteria, options appraisal tool called Deliberative Mapping undertaken by the authors as part of this process. Drawing on these attempts to build relations and make connections between citizens, specialists, stakeholders and policy makers, radioactive wastes, and possible courses of action for their long-term management, the methodological performance of analytic–deliberative practices and the contextual influences that frame and govern them is evaluated. The paper demonstrates powerful framing effects operated at the level of specific participatory practices, procedural politics surrounding the design of ‘new’ governance institutions, and institutional behaviour linked to wider politics of environmental risk and energy futures which narrowed down and marginalised particular discourses, knowledges, meanings, and forms of expression. Unless these often tacit power relations are acknowledged, accounted for, and exposed by all involved, but especially vested interests, analytic–deliberative institutions may well undermine public trust, credibility, and legitimacy rather than promote these democratic virtues as is widely claimed.

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

Abstract This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions.

Responsible innovation across borders: tensions, paradoxes and possibilities

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from Sao Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Towards Analytic‐deliberative Forms of Risk Governance in the UK? Reflecting on Learning in Radioactive Waste

While participatory forms of risk assessment and management have been the focus of much conceptualisation, experimentation, and evaluation, relatively less effort has gone into understanding how so called ‘analytic‐deliberative’ processes are developing across policy‐for‐real decision contexts. This paper develops a novel typology of citizen‐science interaction as a basis for analysing the nature and extent of recent participatory risk assessment practice in the UK. It draws on the reflections of professional actors operating across the UK environmental risk domain, focusing down on practice in the area of radioactive waste between 1998 and 2003. Compared with past science‐centred approaches, analysis shows an ‘opening up’ of risk decision processes to extended actors, knowledges, and values, with particular importance placed on public involvement in front‐end framing. This is being constrained by a failure to integrate engagement throughout decision processes, the exclusion of publics from assessing/evaluating environmental risks, and the upholding of a strict separation between citizens/science. These patterns of analytic‐deliberative practice — determined by contextual influences, barriers and challenges operating across UK environmental risk issue‐areas — highlight the need for further methodological development and systematic evaluation of relations between processes and outcomes.