Séamus Ó Tuama

Public Policy and Public Participation in the Knowledge Society

Science and technology has introduced us to a previously unimaginable world of wealth, health, comfort, education, recreation, convenience and many more benefits. It has also brought with it many unwelcome guests and visitors. The guests are those intended outcomes of our deployment of technology; the visitors are often unexpected or unforeseen outcomes. Much of the current debate around the impacts of science and technology concerns fears about unwanted consequences. The end of the Cold War allowed us to conceive, rightly or wrongly, of a safer military climate. But it did not mean a significantly less contingent world, as the Chernobyl disaster and the events of 9/11 and a general rise in global terror graphically reminded us. A great deal has been written and spoken about the risk society. It is not important here to deal in depth with that term, but whatever label we place on it, we live in a planet of new and emerging contingencies, which we need to manage, harness or contain if we are to prosper. We need to develop new ways in which to assess and make decisions about the deployment of new and existing technologies. This is a key problem now because science and technology are transforming our world. In this contingent contemporary reality we need to make decisions about technologies very few understand. We need to balance progress with risk, caution with lost opportunity. Decisions need to be made at global, supranational, national, regional and local levels across a complex web of often-interconnected issues. Most theorist, decision-makers and ordinary citizens see democracy as the preferred model for decision-making. There is a high degree of consensus that any institutional arrangements to deal with the new technological and scientific concerns need to be democratic ones. Unanimity dissipates though when it comes to either framing ways to deploy democracy or reaching common understandings of what it means. The contemporary period is one in which science and technology is playing a significant role in shaping everyday lives. As citizens this challenges us to address issues around the decision-making process at the level of political participation, regulation and control of science and technology. Increasingly ordinary citizens are called upon to make difficult private and public decisions about science and technology. The climate in which those decisions, discussions and debates take place has changed considerably in recent decades - civil society and the public sphere have undergone major shifts. The meaning of democracy is contested at a time when democracy is seen as the panacea for all issues of governance. On one side the influence of Neo-Liberalism places greater emphasis on what are seen as the characteristics of classical liberalism, where the autonomous free acting individual sits at the centre of things. This actor is rational and market-oriented. Decisions are made in terms of rational choice, each individual acts to maximize his or her wealth, health and happiness. It transfers the emphasis from the collective to the individual or we might say from the public sphere to the private sphere. This derives from an interpretation of early economic thinkers like Adam Smith. The assumption is that society works best when governments allow individuals express their preferences as rational actors and allow a de-regulated market respond to these preferences through the laws of supply and demand. On the other side civic republicanism and much of liberal thinking from John Stuart Mill in the 19th century to J. M. Keynes and T. H. Marshall in the 20th century present a case for understanding citizens not just as formally equally, but also as factually equal. From that perspective notions like society, solidarity and the common good have a higher premium. While Neo-Liberalism was pushing that agenda to the background in most developed countries from the 1970s, there were countervailing forces changing the political landscape. These include an erosion of the position, power and even legitimacy of some of the main pillars of liberal representative democracy. Less people vote, national parliaments concede power both upwards to international bodies and downwards to regional and local ones. We see a dynamic and fluid web of social movements engage around all the issues of the day from local to global. The media, including the Internet, facilitates public awareness, discussion and debate around issues and facilitates the formation of public opinion in a process that Strydom (1999b) calls triple contingency. Issues like responsibility and risk emerge as serious concerns. It is in this context that I wish to propose a model for democratic engagement with issues around science and technology. In designing my model of political participation I am hoping to address both opinion and policy formation on science and technology issues.

Towards a Theory of Urban Sustainability

This article draws together the three societal domains of Economy, Politics and Lifeworld in an attempt to construct a theory of urban sustainability. It takes an holistic approach which integrates an analysis devolving on these three domains. The concern with the urban pivots around the transformed role of cities in the transition from industrial to post-industrial society. It asserts that an adequate understanding of the concept of sustainability can only be grasped if the totality of the tensions, balances and dynamics of the three domains outlined above are fully incorporated into the theory. While it concentrates on these three domains it recognises that ecological deterioration, is perhaps the most pressing challenge to sustainability. Resumen: Ester articulo perfila conjuntamente tres ambitos sociales de la economia, de la politica y de la vida cotidiana en un intento de construir una teoria de la sostenibilidad urbana. Se parte de un enfoque holistico que integre el analisis de estos dominios. Se afirma que una correcta comprension del concepto de sostenibilidad solo se puede alcanzar si se incorpora la totalidad de tensiones, balances y dinamicas de los tres ambitos ya senalados. A la vez se reconoce que el deterioro ambiental es el mayor desafi para la consecucion de la sostenibilidad.

Cork Learning City: Toward a Community Wide Learning Environment

Cork has had a wide learning agenda for several decades. As early as 1911 the university was already offering extra mural education. A few years later it was engaging with trade unions offering courses for working men, through the support of the City Corporation (City Council). That tradition took off in earnest in 1947. In Cork throughout the 20th century there were experiments around broadening education and the development of new educational models. From this base the city, through the Cork City Development Board, engaged in a two-year consultation ahead of launching a vision for the city over a ten year horizon called Cork 2002-2012: Imagine our Future. Imagine our Future included a ‘theme’ on ‘Cork as a Learning City’, with an orientation towards an all encompassing flexible learning model: ‘We see learning as a life-long activity for all our citizens and not as something to be pursued only by young people’ (91). This plan established a Cork City Learning Forum representative of a wide range of stakeholders. However its most significant legacy was the establishment of the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival. This festival was launched in 2004 and steadily grew in scale and reach into the community to a point where there are now in the region of 500 discrete activities offered by all types of providers non-formal, informal and formal in an annual week long festival. All activities are free and are open to the public. The participation of ordinary citizens during the festival is impressive. The idea of developing a festival was prompted by key educational influencers. It emerged into a very fertile environment in a city that was already extensively networked and became an instant success. It mobilised and animated a wide range of actors and provided the context through which the subsequent Learning City project blossomed. The idea of a learning city became embedded in public consciousness, there was buy-in for the concept from a wide range of stakeholders and it gathered momentum with the growth of the festival and through international engagement with PASCAL International Exchange (PIE) which also delivered the EcCoWell concept and ultimately opened the doors that led to a 2015 UNESCO Learning City Award. The community wide learning environment is an exciting mix of local innovation and participation and engagement with global networks of cities who are developing their own learning environments under a number of learning cities umbrellas.