Chasing balloons as scientific practice: On transformative cocreation and epistemic ethics of care in the emerging field of youth citizen social science

Abstract

How does including youth in research within a citizen social science framework challenge and transform our participatory action research practices and approaches? Through a storying journey we unravel how the training and subsequent conducting of a co-creative research process with young citizen social scientists are evolving from a cacophony of traditions, approaches and disciplines, among them youth participatory action research, action research in organizations, citizen science and social anthropology. The article is based on empirical research with a group of young people in Oslo, Norway, involved in a large collaborative citizen social science project on social inclusion of youth in Europe. We have witnessed closely how an epistemic ethics of care is integral to securing the epistemic justice of youth and argue that citizen social science can promote both epistemic justice and epistemic abundance by including youth in all parts of a rigorous research process that produces new scientific knowledge. Yet, we found that performing an ethics of care is (close to) impossible within the current conditions and structures of social sciences, as our ideals and views on what science is, delimit the practices of relational care necessary for inclusive processes. The implications of our findings call for an ethics of care framework for both citizen social science and action research practices.