Empowering the public? Citizens' juries and the new genetic technologies

Dunkerley, David; Glasner, Peter

doi:10.1080/09581599808402906

Cited by 56 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Webler, 1995). Dunkerley and Glasner (1998) have discussed how citizen juries can be used to support policy making in relation to new genetic technologies. An example, where not only experts were engaged in the assessment of values, expectations and risk perception related to climate change was the EU research project ULYSSES.…”

Section: The Need For Science-based Stakeholder Dialoguesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-based stakeholder dialogues: Theories and tools

Welp

Vega-Leinert

Stoll-Kleemann³

et al. 2006

Global Environmental Change

176

130

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Section: The Need For Science-based Stakeholder Dialoguesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-based stakeholder dialogues: Theories and tools

Welp

Vega-Leinert

Stoll-Kleemann³

et al. 2006

Global Environmental Change

176

130

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“…However, it has been suggested that information flows uni-directionally towards citizens rather than bi-directionally between policy makers and citizens (Abelson et al, 2003). Citizen juries suffer from top-down power imbalances (Dunkerley & Glasner, 1998) as the (often unelected and unrepresentative) advisory board can ignore the suggestions from the report. Additionally, the meeting often takes place behind closed doors (Rowe & Frewer, 2000), reducing its transparency, and concerns have been raised on the representativeness of the jury due to sampling bias or effect size (Pitkin, 1967).…”

Section: Participatory Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the human dimensions of coexistence between carnivores and people: A case study in Namibia

Rust¹

2018

Preprint

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Many carnivore populations were in decline throughout much of the 20 th century, but due to recent conservation policies, their numbers are stabilising or even increasing in some areas of the world. This, compounded with human population growth, has caused increased livestock depredation by carnivores, which threatens farmer livelihoods, particularly those in developing countries such as Namibia. How to resolve this so-called "conflict" between carnivores and livestock farmers remains challenging, in part because some mitigation strategies have proven somewhat ineffective or unacceptable. By using a case-study approach on the commercial farmlands of northcentral Namibia, I aimed to understand the complexity of the human dimensions affecting coexistence between carnivores and people in an unprotected working landscape. Specifically, my objectives were to 1) develop a participatory decisionmaking exercise to analyse the views of stakeholders on how they would like carnivores to be managed in unprotected lands, 2) understand how the media framed financial incentives to improve human-carnivore coexistence, and 3) determine if there were any underlying social, economic or political causes of negative human-carnivore interactions on commercial livestock farms.To answer objective 1, I developed a new decision-making exercise that combined Q-methodology and the Delphi technique to determine whether a diverse group of stakeholders could agree on how to manage carnivores on commercial farmland. A strong agreement was reached by participants: providing conservation education and training on livestock husbandry were acceptable and effective ways to improve coexistence with carnivores. This new also method highlighted areas of disagreement between stakeholders and showed that there were two different narratives on how carnivores should be managed. This method could be used by policy makers to help with participatory decision-making for resolving other conservation conflicts.To answer objective 2, I undertook content analysis of national newspapers to determine how the media framed articles on financial incentives to mitigate this conservation conflict. The most common (30%) financial incentive discussed was compensation -many (61%) of these articles framed compensation positively. Niki Rust © 2015However, upon categorising these articles into those where respondents were enrolled in compensation schemes compared with those who were not, a clear pattern emerged: articles were more likely (89%) to be framed ambivalently or negatively when respondents had experience of this financial incentive compared with respondents that did not. These results can help conservationists plan more effective communication interventions and anticipate issues that can affect the success of mitigation strategies.To answer objective 3, I undertook eight months of participant observation on livestock farms and interviewed 69 respondents and found that reported livestock depredation was associated with increased instances of poaching of wildl...

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“…Critics have pointed out that in practice the agenda may be pre-framed by scientific "experts" circumscribing what counts as relevant and leaving the public a reactive role (Dunkerley and Glasner, 1998;Purdue, 1999). Here the public is seen as able, with expert guidance, to adjudicate between different technical solutions but as unable to raise new and alternative questions based on their own experiential knowledge.…”

Section: Methods Of Public Consultationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gene Week: a novel way of consulting the public

Levitt

Weiner²,

Goodacre

2005

Public Underst Sci

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Within academic circles, the “deficit” model of public understanding of science has been subject to increasing critical scrutiny by those who favor more constructivist approaches. These suggest that “the public” can articulate sophisticated ideas about the social and ethical implications of science regardless of their level of technical knowledge. The seminal studies following constructivist approaches have generally involved small-scale qualitative investigations, which have minimized the pre-framing of issues to a greater or lesser extent. This article describes the Gene Week Project, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, which attempted to extend this work to a large-scale consultation on genetics and health through the medium of a local daily newspaper. Readers were invited to respond to a set of open-ended questions that accompanied stimulus material published each day for five consecutive weekdays. The articles were written with the intention of extending the limited range of discourses around genetics and biotechnology that are usually presented by the popular media (hope, fear, tragedy and bravery). Responses raised overarching issues about the place of emerging health technologies in society reminiscent of previous open-ended consultations in this field. The paper ends with a critical discussion about the potential of this method to contribute to the further development of open-ended public consultations

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Empowering the public? Citizens' juries and the new genetic technologies

Cited by 56 publications

References 7 publications

Science-based stakeholder dialogues: Theories and tools

Science-based stakeholder dialogues: Theories and tools

Understanding the human dimensions of coexistence between carnivores and people: A case study in Namibia

Gene Week: a novel way of consulting the public

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