Scientised citizens and democratised science. Re-assessing the expert-lay divide

Alterações Climáticas, Perceções e Racionalidades

“…E, exatamente, que saber/poder é que se (re)produz? Lidskog (2008), num inspirado artigo intitulado Scientised citizens and democratised science. Reassessing the expert-lay divide, apresenta-nos uma revisão crítica dos desenvolvimentos recentes das posições racionalistas construtivistas, no referente à relação entre a ciência e o público, no âmbito da ciência e da gestão do risco, a partir de três propostas -i) New Production of Knowledge; ii) Postnormal Science; iii) Scientific Citizenship -de onde resulta evidente a preocupação pragmática da ciência, por um lado e, por outro, a gradativa evolução de um novo modo de produzir ciência, onde cidadãos cada vez mais informados e reflexivos têm vindo a ser chamados a contribuir, em ágoras progressivamente alargadas aos cidadãos instruídos, aos representantes da sociedade civil e aos cidadãos leigos.…”

Shale gas policy in the United Kingdom: An argumentative discourse analysis

“…See Poortinga and Pidgeon, 2003;Slovic, 1993;Wynne, 2001 for further discussion of trust relationships). This is because, as Lidskog asserts, science does not produce an uncontested view on what constitutes acceptable invisible risks, and so managing them inevitably involves boundary work -the negotiation and demarcation of what is acceptable, legitimate and safe (Lidskog, 2008). Thus, like in the post-Gasland USA situation where shale industry organisations keenly disputed the scientific claims of the film, the interviewed shale gas supporters expressed environmental safety in unequivocal terms.…”

Deliberative democracy meets democratised science: a deliberative systems approach to global environmental governance

“…Parallel to this plea, social scientists have elaborated on a democratised science, though with regard to its contribution to knowledge; important perspectives, experience and knowledges apart from scientific ones may be needed to develop more broad and valid knowledge on an issue. Under the heading of 'democratised science', a number of rather heterogeneous proposals can be found with different epistemological and normative assumptions, as well as implications (Lidskog 2008). The proposals run from stating that scientific expertise is important but needs to be complemented by other forms of knowledge (De Marchi and Ravetz 1999) to claim that expertise has dissolved as a discrete category and has now been replaced by hybrid assemblages (Irwin and Michael 2003).…”