Deploying the Consensus Conference in New Zealand: Democracy and De-Problematization

Abstract

The turn toward public participation in technology assessment points to a link between democratization and the problematization of dominant assumptions, explanations, and justifications. Here, I evaluate whether the use of the consensus conference in New Zealand facilitated such problematization. After a brief outline of the Danish model, I discuss the ways in which the New Zealand conference differed from that model and demonstrate how strategies for managing the resulting bias undermined the possibility of problematization. Further, I argue that participants’ attempts to problematize were subsumed into the dominant scientific and economic rationalities through processes I call assimilation, resignation, and externalization. I argue that the effect of the conference process was to assimilate some concerns into the deficit model, produce a sense of resignation to the “inevitable” with regard to other concerns, and externalize those remaining onto the indigenous population.

‘Quiet as lambs’: Communicative Action in the New Zealand Parliamentary Debates on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology

“…Kedgley, too, in the opening quote of section 1, notes the power wielded by some National Party members in the select Committee. similar notions have been suggested in a New Zealand context by Goven (2003) discussing plant genetic technologies, where participants' views in deliberative processes tend to be overshadowed by economic and scientific modes of understanding. in the human domain we suggest that bioethics deliberations may also overshadow the social and cultural concerns of communities and citizens (see also Kleinman 1997;Pálsson 2007: 130).…”

“…The debates were analysed using Habermasian ideas of communicative action as applied to public debate (see lascher 1996;bessette 1994;Goven 2003;and trotter 2006). Communicative action, as defined by Habermas, refers to modes of cooperative communication in which mutual deliberation and actors' reciprocal perspective-taking leads to the creation of reasoned arguments (1984: 86).…”

Percepciones de los ciudadanos catalanes acerca de la participación del público y los expertos en las controversias sobre el agua

“…Los pronunciamientos acerca de la seguridad, la viabilidad o la utilidad de proyectos concretos están cada vez más sometidos al escrutinio y al cuestionamiento de los medios, las organizaciones no gubernamentales, las entidades gubernamentales y los sectores comprometidos de la sociedad civil (Stilgoe, 2007). De allí el uso cada vez más extendido de mecanismos consultivos y de participación directa, como las conferencias de consenso, las audiencias públicas, los paneles ciudadanos, los grupos temáticos, la gestión negociada y el referéndum (Aibar, 2002b;Goven, 2003;Lezaun y Soneryd, 2007). El adecuado diseño y ejecución de estos mecanismos requiere del examen de lo que la participación ciudadana es e implica.…”

Experts on public trial: on democratizing expertise through a Danish consensus conference

“…Third, it promises cognitive virtue by articulating viewpoints clearly, bringing different perspectives to an issue and clarifying substantive controversies. In this article, I want to highlight a specific conception of the cognitive virtue aspect of consensus conferences, related to the public contesting of dominant scientific viewpoints (Goven, 2003). Doing so, however, I abandon the "strong" Habermasian conception of cognitive virtue as the consensual singling out of the best argument (Pellizzoni, 2001).…”