Citizen science is an increasingly popular activity, from bird counts to amateur water sample collection to air quality monitoring. Researchers and theorists in the field of science and technology studies (STS) have typically applauded these efforts because they make science more participatory, providing an example of the democratization of science, or, at least, more equitable engagement between experts and the lay public. However, a broader review of the literature on citizen science suggests that participation is but one of many virtues that practitioners and observers find in the practices of citizen science. This literature review makes two interventions. First, we discuss the dimensions of citizen science that do not easily fit in a typology or spectrum of participatory practices. We identify seven different virtues claimed of citizen science: increasing scientific data; increasing citizens' scientific literacy and awareness; building community capacity for environmental protection; building more equal relationship between scientists and citizens; filling knowledge gaps and challenging official accounts; driving policy change; and catching polluters. Second, we consider the social and political contexts that often create contradictory situations or dilemmas for citizen scientists. Going forward, a robust framework for the analysis of citizen science would not only address the ways scientific data is collected and put to a particular use, but also situate the project in relation to broader structural forces of scientization, neocolonialism, globalization, and neoliberalization.

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The struggle over genetically-engineered (GE) maize in Mexico reveals a deep conflict over the criteria used in the governance of agri-food systems. Policy debate on the topic of GE maize has become ''scientized,'' granting experts a high level of political authority, and narrowing the regulatory domain to matters that can be adjudicated on the basis of scientific information or ''managed'' by environmental experts. While scientization would seem to narrow opportunities for public participation, this study finds that Mexican activists acting ''in defense of maize'' engage science in multiple ways, using and producing scientific knowledge as well as treating scientific discussions as a stage for launching complex social critiques. Drawing from research in science and technology studies, this article assesses the impacts and pitfalls of three tactics used by maize activists that respond to the scientization of biotechnology politics: (1) using scientific information as a resource; (2) participating in scientific research; and (3) reframing policy problems as broadly social, rather than as solely scientific or technical. The obstacles that maize activists have faced in carrying out each of these efforts indicate that despite diverse and sophisticated engagements between social movements and the scientific field, scientization remains a significant institutional barrier to democratizing agricultural governance.

Spatial gaps in environmental monitoring have important consequences for public policy and regulation of new industrial developments. In the case of Marcellus Shale gas extraction, a water-intensive new form of energy production that is taking place in the state of Pennsylvania (USA), the perception of large gaps in government water monitoring efforts have motivated numerous civil society organizations (CSOs) to initiate their own monitoring programs. Using geospatial mapping, this study reveals that nearly half of the watersheds in the region lack government water monitoring, and CSOs are the sole source of continuous or frequent monitoring data in 22% of the watersheds. While many watersheds remain unmonitored, the gaps do not map on to demographic characteristics typically associated with environmental injustice. This study probes both the reasons for and the implications of the gaps in watershed monitoring, drawing conclusions about the promise and limitations of citizen science.

This study challenges the assumption that abstract “globalization” forces are driving transformations in the relationships between states and markets. Employing three cases of policy debate regarding the regulation of agricultural biotechnology (ag‐biotech), we examine the role of discourse in the formation of neoliberal regulatory schemes. We show that one important mechanism for the successful institutionalization of neoliberalism in the area of ag‐biotech has been the linking of neoliberal discourse with a discourse of scientism. This strategic combination of discourses has been used by advocates of biotechnology to depoliticize ag‐biotech—that is, to remove it further from political debate and state intervention. However, in each case examined here, certain state actors resisted industry demands for minimal regulation, and in each context this resistance produced markedly different outcomes.

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