Sara Wylie

Institutions for Civic Technoscience: How Critical Making is Transforming Environmental Research

This article explores the changing relationship between the academy and new public formations of scientific research, which we term “civic technoscience.” Civic technoscience leverages tactics seen in critical making communities to question and transform how and who can make credible and actionable knowledge. A comparison of two case studies is used. The first is a grassroots mapping process that allows communities to generate high-quality aerial imagery. The second is an academic-led project using environmental sensors to engage disparate audiences in scientific practice. These two projects were found to differ in their ability to form strategic spaces for community-based science, and suggest pathways to foster more robust relationships across the public–academic divide. By altering power dynamics in material, literary, and social technologies used for scientific research, we argue that civic technoscience enables citizens to question expert knowledge production through critical making tactics, and creates opportunities to generate credible public science.

Introduction to the Special Forum on Critical Making as Research Program

This special issue spotlights the growing diversity of critical making practices in a range of disciplinary contexts both inside and outside of the academy, and begins to develop perspectives that will foster the emergence of critical making as a coherent field. On one hand, we see great value in incorporating material practices into existing information systems (IS) and science and technology studies (STS) research programs. In particular, forms of material engagement can help overcome the ineffectual linguistic bias of traditional critiques of technoscience. On the other hand, we believe that current material practices can benefit from the conceptualization of knowledge and social organization that are foundational to IS and STS research. In this introduction to the special issue we call attention to the mechanisms by which such practices may combine representational and material work to foster and support the development of new knowledge-making communities and institutions. We believe such work can serve as a framework for others engaged in critical making practices to better contextualize and expand the relevance of their work. We intend this special issue to serve as a “stake in the ground” for research on new forms of material-conceptual critique and their incorporation in the repertoire of critical technoscience scholarship.

Inspiring Collaboration The Legacy of Theo Colborn’s Transdisciplinary Research on Fracking

This article describes Dr Theo Colborn’s legacy of inspiring complementary and synergistic environmental health research and advocacy. Colborn, a founder of endocrine disruption research, also stimulated study of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). In 2014, the United States led the world in oil and gas production, with fifteen million Americans living within one mile of an oil or gas well. Colborn pioneered efforts to understand and control the impacts of this sea change in energy production. In 2005, her research organization The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) developed a database of chemicals used in natural gas extraction and their health effects. This database stimulated novel scientific and social scientific research and informed advocacy by (1) connecting communities’ diverse health impacts to chemicals used in natural gas development, (2) inspiring social science research on open-source software and hardware for citizen science, and (3) posing new scientific questions about the endocrine-disrupting properties of fracking chemicals.

Pokémon Go, pH, and projectors: applying transformation design and participatory action research to an environmental justice collaboration in Chelsea, MA

Abstract Environmental issues such as climate change and toxic contamination have become a lived reality for communities globally, yet as a society we have been slow to address many of these challenges. While designers have begun partnering with interdisciplinary teams to take on large social issues, the process of design, the timescale of academic work, and the pressing needs of communities experiencing the brunt of these issues are frequently ill-aligned. In this paper, we examine a year-long exploratory collaboration between an environmental justice group in Chelsea, MA, a social scientist, and a design/technology scholar to develop approaches for studying water contamination in Chelsea’s industrialized waterway and design interventions that could lead to structural change. We expand on the benefits of a slow and processional approach to co-developing research and design questions, tie our process to a theoretical framework connecting transformation design and participatory action research and point toward other potentially valuable frameworks such as civic science. We provide practical examples that can serve as guideposts for others starting similar collaborations and discuss systems-based changes that can encourage highly interdisciplinary transformational collaborations.