Framing Climate Change for Public Deliberation: What Role for Interpretive Social Sciences and Humanities?

Abstract

Public deliberation is increasingly marshalled as a viable avenue for climate governance. Although climate change can be framed in multiple ways, it is widely assumed that the only relevant public meaning of climate change is that given by the natural sciences. Framing climate change as an inherently science-based public issue not only shields institutional power from scrutiny, but it can also foster an instrumental approach to public deliberation that can constrain imaginative engagement with present and future socio-environmental change. By fostering the normative value of pluralism as well as the substantive value of epistemic diversity, the interpretive social sciences and humanities can assist in opening up public deliberation on climate change such that alternative questions, neglected issues, marginalized perspectives and different possibilities can gain traction for policy purposes. Stakeholders of public deliberation are encouraged to reflect on the orchestration of the processes by which climate change is defined, solutions identified and political collectives convened.

Qualitative Research for One Health: From Methodological Principles to Impactful Applications

“…These features mean that deliberative methods can be used to provide public input to decision making around policy issues that cannot be resolved solely on the basis of technical information, but also require the consideration of public values. Deliberative engagement can also allow opportunities for members of the public to reframe public and health policy problems in terms that are important to them, and promote imaginative engagement with different policy options and potential futures (90). For example, one of the authors have run a series of Citizens'/Community juries convened in eastern Australia have involved citizens and members of affected communities in discussions about how best to manage the present and future risks of Hendra virus spill-over events in their local area (91).…”

Designing and evaluating analytic-deliberative engagement processes for natural resources management

“…This approach, referred to as "closing down", can limit the richness, originality, representativeness and diversity of discussions on alternatives and values, focusing only on a few options where consensus can be struck and ignoring minority views. In contrast, various authors recommend ensuring that deliberation is "as open a process as possible, avoiding premature closure of particular options or framings, while striking a balance with providing enough information to make meaningful engagement possible" (Chilvers and Kearnes, 2015;Pidgeon et al, 2014, see also Bellamy et al, 2016Blue, 2015;Chilvers, 2007;Stirling, 2008). Opening up deliberation emphasizes the diversity of values, objectives and interests rather than consensus building.…”

Social justice in the digital age: re-thinking the smart city with Nancy Fraser. UCCities Working Paper # 1

“…(2) A second instance of misrepresentation lies with the increasing power of corporations to own and control technology and data (Bauriedl & Strüver, 2017;Hollands, 2015). Not only are digitally-mediated interactions dominated by the economic, cultural, and political values and interests of profit-maximizing private-sector actors (Hollands 2015), the ways the exigencies to which smart cities are supposed to respond -such as sustainability and climate changeare also increasingly shaped by corporate interests (Blue, 2016;Rosol et al 2017). It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the turn towards technologically-mediated forms of governance will continue to favor the interests of transnational corporate actors over other stakeholders (Viitanen & Kingston, 2014).…”