Citizen Deliberation and Politics of Risk Assessment: Technical Knowledge in Social-Cultural Context
Monday 12th December 2011, 3.30-5pm, followed by a drinks reception
McEwan Hall Reception Room, Teviot Place, University of Edinburgh
This seminar by Prof Frank Fischer -Rutgers (USA) and Kassel (Germany) Universities- is jointly hosted by the ESRC Innogen Centre and the Public Policy Network. This is a unique opportunity to meet this world-leading author in critical policy analysis. All welcome.
CITIZEN DELIBERATION AND POLITICS OF RISK ASSESSMENT: TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE IN SOCIAL-CULTURAL CONTEXT
This presentation examines the tensions between ordinary citizens and experts in the 'risk society'. It shows the ways standard quantitative approaches to risk assessment fail to account for important dimensions of environmental and technology policy decision-making, often exacerbating the well known standoff between citizens' Nimby groups and professional experts. Whereas the technical community frequently portrays such conflicts as the result of the citizens' inabilities to comprehend complex empirical assessments, they are seen here to be as much or more a function of two different cognitive orientations.
Through a comparison of the formal logic of empirical science and the informal ordinary language logic of practical reason, supported by a social constructivist perspective, the two modes of reason are demonstrated to be complementary rather than fundamentally conflicting. As such, the analysis shows that ordinary citizens rationally focus on important action-oriented questions that technical experts ignore or neglect. In particular, the discussion identifies the risk expert's need to situate technical information in the larger social-cultural context to which it is applied.
Emphasizing both theoretical and policy implications, the task is clarified by examining political conflicts that continue to surround nuclear power and genetically modified foods. The talk concludes with suggestions for bringing citizens and experts together through more participatory modes of inquiry, as well as the import of such practices for contemporary "Third Wave" debates in the social studies of science.
To REGISTER please email angela.mcewan@ed.ac.uk or call 0131 650 9113.
