The Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies: Future Research Directions on Expertise and Experience, 2019
Experts will always be potentially problematic for democracy, because
experts complicate the idea... more Experts will always be potentially problematic for democracy, because experts complicate the ideal of government by discussion. Yet while we can all find our own particular cases that warrant ignoring experts, this does not warrant a general case for ignoring experts. I criticize two general arguments for ignoring experts—the “robotic experts” and “dangerous experts” arguments, because some general arguments for ignoring experts create more problems for democracy than they solve. When experts are constructed as mechanically reflecting instrumental reason, as robotic experts, expert judgment is misrepresented and deference relations mischaracterized. When experts are constructed as undemocratic authorities, as dangerous experts, that image is reasonable in mild form but normatively disabling in its more radical version.
There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via r... more There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via referendums—‘direct democracy’—or do the people choose representatives who govern relatively independently between elections? It is natural in representative democracy for experts to be consulted by the elected government, whereas if directness is the ideal, experts can look like unaccountable elites. Under ‘pluralist democracy’ governments’ power is limited by institutional ‘checks and balances’, such as the judiciary, the free press and alternative parliamentary chambers, ensuring that minorities and minority opinions are not completely suppressed. Checks and balances require experts. There are many other dimensions of democracies including voting systems and the degree of devolution, but an uncritical advocacy of ‘rule by the people’ is antagonistic to pluralist democracy.
There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via r... more There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via referendums—‘direct democracy’—or do the people choose representatives who govern relatively independently between elections? It is natural in representative democracy for experts to be consulted by the elected government, whereas if directness is the ideal, experts can look like unaccountable elites. Under ‘pluralist democracy’ governments’ power is limited by institutional ‘checks and balances’, such as the judiciary, the free press and alternative parliamentary chambers, ensuring that minorities and minority opinions are not completely suppressed. Checks and balances require experts. There are many other dimensions of democracies including voting systems and the degree of devolution, but an uncritical advocacy of ‘rule by the people’ is antagonistic to pluralist democracy.
According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert... more According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert domain. Society consists of many expert domains of different extent, some small and esoteric, some, like language, large and ubiquitous. Expert domains overlap and are embedded within each other like a fractal. Citizens possess ‘ubiquitous meta-expertise’ which enables them to choose domains when seeking expert opinions—such as whether a vaccine is safe. In such cases, citizens must be ready to treat domains of scientific expertise as more valuable than power or celebrity if we are to avoid dystopia and maintain pluralistic democracy with its checks and balances. Democracies depend on their citizens—‘the law of conservation of democracy’; this means we need more civic education to safeguard the future.
With rising concerns about the social and environmental impacts of industrial and manufacturing w... more With rising concerns about the social and environmental impacts of industrial and manufacturing waste, scientists and engineers have sought solutions to the burdens of waste which do not simply involve burying, burning, dumping or diluting. Our purpose here is to sketch how social science perspectives can illuminate aspects of the waste problem which are not routinely grappled with within science and engineering perspectives. We argue that if one is concerned about the burdens of waste, it is crucial to understand the way political and cultural contexts shape what happens (or does not happen) in regards to reuse. We sketch some of the challenges facing green manufacturing; challenges that hinge on the gap between the best laid plans and social realities. Rather than imply green manufacturing is simply a post hoc move to hide the excesses of industrial capitalism in the green cloth of sustainability, we hope our discussion can assist those who hope to use green manufacturing as a pre-emptive move to build sustainability into industrial capitalism. We suggest that a socio-political conception of technology can bring greater depth to understandings of the industrial, political and consumer environments into which green manufacturing researchers hope to insert their efforts.
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie
Recently, computational social scientists have proposed exciting new methods for 'mapping mea... more Recently, computational social scientists have proposed exciting new methods for 'mapping meaning space' and analysing the structure and evolution of complex cultural constructs from large text datasets. These emerging approaches to 'cultural cartography' are based on a foundation of neural network word embeddings that represent the meaning of words, in relation to one another, as vectors in a shared high-dimensional latent space. These new methods have the potential to revolutionize sociological analyses of culture, but in their current form, they are dually limited. First, by relying on traditional word embeddings they are limited to learning a single vector representation for each word, collapsing together the diverse semantic contexts that words are used in and which give them their heterogeneous meanings. Second, the vector operations that researchers use to construct larger 'cultural dimensions' from traditional embeddings can result in a complex vector soup that can propagate many small and difficult-to-detect errors throughout the cultural analysis, compromising validity. In this article, we discuss the strengths and limitations of computational 'cultural cartography' based on traditional word embeddings and propose an alternative approach that overcomes these limitations by pairing contextual representations learned by newly invented transformer models with Bayesian mixture models. We demonstrate our method of computational cultural cartography with an exploratory analysis of the structure and evolution of 120 years of scholarly discourse on democracy and autocracy.
The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in ... more The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in political decision making. This book explores the differences between populism and pluralist democracy and their relationship with science. Pluralist democracy is characterised by respect for minority choices and a system of checks and balances that prevents power being concentrated in one group, while populism treats minorities as traitorous so as to concentrate power in the government. The book argues that scientific expertise – and science more generally -- should be understood as one of the checks and balances in pluralist democracies. It defends science as ‘craftwork with integrity’ and shows how its crucial role in democratic societies can be rethought and that it must be publicly explained. This book will be of value to scholars and practitioners working across STS as well as to anyone interested in decoding the populist agenda against science.
According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert... more According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert domain. Society consists of many expert domains of different extent, some small and esoteric, some, like language, large and ubiquitous. Expert domains overlap and are embedded within each other like a fractal. Citizens possess ‘ubiquitous meta-expertise’ which enables them to choose domains when seeking expert opinions—such as whether a vaccine is safe. In such cases, citizens must be ready to treat domains of scientific expertise as more valuable than power or celebrity if we are to avoid dystopia and maintain pluralistic democracy with its checks and balances. Democracies depend on their citizens—‘the law of conservation of democracy’; this means we need more civic education to safeguard the future.
Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Joh... more Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Johnson 2 The Trouble with Nuclear / Darrin Durant 3 An Official Narrative: Telling the History of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Policy Making / Darrin Durant and Anna Stanley 4 The Long Haul: Ethics in the Canadian Nuclear Waste Debate / Peter Timmerman 5 Public Consultation as Performative Contradiction: Limiting Discussion in Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Debate / Darrin Durant 6 The Darker Side of Deliberative Democracy: The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization's National Consultation Process / Genevieve Fuji Johnson 7 Representing the Knowledges of Aboriginal Peoples - The "Management" of Diversity in Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste / Anna Stanley 8 Canadian Communities and the Management of Nuclear Fuel Waste / Brenda L. Murphy 9 Situating Canada's Approaches to Siting a Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Facility / Brenda L. Murphy and Richard K...
Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Joh... more Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Johnson 2 The Trouble with Nuclear / Darrin Durant 3 An Official Narrative: Telling the History of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Policy Making / Darrin Durant and Anna Stanley 4 The Long Haul: Ethics in the Canadian Nuclear Waste Debate / Peter Timmerman 5 Public Consultation as Performative Contradiction: Limiting Discussion in Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Debate / Darrin Durant 6 The Darker Side of Deliberative Democracy: The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization's National Consultation Process / Genevieve Fuji Johnson 7 Representing the Knowledges of Aboriginal Peoples - The "Management" of Diversity in Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste / Anna Stanley 8 Canadian Communities and the Management of Nuclear Fuel Waste / Brenda L. Murphy 9 Situating Canada's Approaches to Siting a Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Facility / Brenda L. Murphy and Richard K...
Societies are distinguished by what their citizens take for granted. In ‘Western societies’ most ... more Societies are distinguished by what their citizens take for granted. In ‘Western societies’ most citizens agree, among other things, about the need for regular elections with near-universal franchises, how to treat strangers, the poor and the sick. These understandings are sedimented in the course of socialisation and constitute the organic face of societies; there is so much agreement that such things don’t usually feature in political manifestos. Citizens record more detailed, varying, and self-conscious choices in elections, giving rise to the enumerative face of societies. Populism deliberately confuses the enumerative face with the organic face. Citizens can make non-democratic leaders accountable only if they know what democracy means; this is the law of conservation of democracy.
In a time of heightened hostility towards experts, academics and scientists, the 2017 collection ... more In a time of heightened hostility towards experts, academics and scientists, the 2017 collection of the best Conversation articles and essays is a must-read. Articles range from a FactCheck of the claim that Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people on Earth, to answering questions posed by curious children, to Hugh Mackay's observation that the state of the nation starts in your street. Joseph Paul Forgas writes on the surprising benefits of sadness and Stephen FitzGerald considers managing Australian foreign policy in a Chinese world.If proof were needed that academia makes an essential contribution to public debate, you'll find it in these pages
Since the early 1970s, in social studies of science and technology (STS), the ‘logic of scientifi... more Since the early 1970s, in social studies of science and technology (STS), the ‘logic of scientific discovery’ has been displaced by detailed examinations of science in practice; this has eroded the cultural position of scientific expertise. Furthermore, the ‘crown jewels’ of science, Newtonian physics and the like, are no longer accepted as justifying science’s contribution to citizens’ more diffuse technical concerns. Scientific expertise now seems more fallible, less removed from ordinary decision-making and less insulated from political and social forces. Populist leaders, who attack scientific expertise because it limits their power, can draw on these ideas. STS must stop celebrating the erosion of scientific expertise and, without sacrificing the new insights, rethink the justification for the role of science in democratic societies.
Populism contrasts clearly with pluralist democracy. By treating the result of elections as repre... more Populism contrasts clearly with pluralist democracy. By treating the result of elections as representing ‘the will of the people’, populism misrepresents the enumerative face of society as the organic face and defines all opposition to the elected government as traitorous. Minorities, and the institutions and experts upon which the checks and balance of pluralist democracy depend, are, therefore, attacked by populist leaders. Populist leaders claim that their actions, however dictatorial, and however much they favour a specific group in society, are democratic—they represent the will of the people. Because populism, in its championing of the people, is anti-elitist, some commentators consider it can enliven democracy. In today’s world, however, the dangers are obvious: attacks on minorities and the control of what counts as expertise.
I first recount the stories told by Orwell and Huxley. Next, I analyse their different control me... more I first recount the stories told by Orwell and Huxley. Next, I analyse their different control mechanisms, namely Orwell's grim constriction and Huxley's entertaining proliferation, and the enduring applicability of both dystopic visions. Orwell versus Huxley Orwell's 1984 is set in Airstrip One (a province of Oceania) and dominated by the ideology Ingsoc (English socialism). Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, but secretly hates the Party. If you fall foul of the Party, you become an "unperson". Winston rebels by getting involved with fellow employee Julia, whom he suspects is an informant. They start an affair after Julia hands Winston a simple note reading "I love you". Winston's superior is O'Brien and Winston suspects O'Brien to be a secret agent for the resistance movement (The Brotherhood). O'Brien offers Winston a chance to join The Brotherhood and Winston and Julia do so. Unfortunately, O'Brien is part of a sting operation "thoughtcriminals". Over several months, O'Brien tortures Winston to cure Winston's insanity and coerce him to believe the Party line, even if it means believing 2 + 2 = 5. Although O'Brien informs Winston that after reprogramming , he will be released, only to be executed a little later, Winston says at least he has not betrayed Julia. But soon after O'Brien takes Winston to the final stage, Room 101, where you confront your worst fears. For Winston, that is rats. A cage of rats is lowered onto Winston's head, but he yells "do it to Julia". Julia later reveals she also betrayed Winston. Winston thus realises the Party has even managed to take away their love. Winston eventually "realises" that he loves Big Brother, because he can celebrate Oceania's victory over Eurasia in Africa. Two features of 1984 are worth highlighting. First, some characters are constituted by the acts of referring to them rather than their actual manifestation. We never meet Big Brother (the leader) nor the resistance leader (Emmanuel Goldstein). Nor do we meet the enemy of the people railed against during the televised Two Minutes of Hate (where subconscious feelings of angst are redirected away from Oceania and towards external enemies). Second, everything fits: deceptions are temporary, so discordance is minimal; the plot quickly settles around clear and consistent roles; and outcomes are frightening but go to plan. By contrast, in Huxley's Brave New World, no character is shadowy, and nothing fits perfectly. The story is set in a future World State where advances in reproductive technologies, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning have created a pre-defined social hierarchy. The World State is built on the principles of Fordist production: homogeneity, mass production, and consumption of disposable goods. Citizens are engineered in vitro, and, from birth, classes are indoctrinated by recorded voices
Amazon’s Ring video doorbells allow users to easily see and talk with people in camera range over... more Amazon’s Ring video doorbells allow users to easily see and talk with people in camera range over their phones, record and save camera footage to the cloud, and share videos of suspicious activity (Molla, 2020). Although Amazon markets the home security surveillance system and related Ring products (e.g. Neighbors social media app, home security cameras, mailbox sensor, and home surveillance drone) as consumer-friendly, smart home tools for deterring and reporting burglars and package thieves, the technology has been widely criticized. Most of the condemnation comes from privacy and civil rights activists. However, some academics and tech-company workers also have been critical. The strongest position is Ring doorbell cameras should be abolished. Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, declares that ‘products like Ring’ are ‘fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy’ (Ongweso, 2020). Surveillance scholar Chris Gilliard insists that some ‘technologies are incompatible with a free and equitable society,’ including Ring doorbell cameras (Oremus, 2020). An Amazon software engineer even claims, ‘The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society’ (Peterson, 2020). In the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition of the ‘modest scholar activist’ who is ‘openly partisan’ and intending to ‘stimulate social action’ (Woodhouse et al., 2002, p. 301), our goal is to document activist criticism and provide further conceptual justification for the research trajectory of what Frank Pasquale (2019) calls the ‘second wave of algorithmic accountability’. The reformist first wave approach focuses on improving technological
Remaking Participation does for public participation what alcohol does for drinkers in the adage ... more Remaking Participation does for public participation what alcohol does for drinkers in the adage 'the best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk'. Apparently if you imbibe enough participatory elixir you can be saved from having to face any of the actual challenges of deliberative democracy revealed by either theory or practice. Chilvers and Kearnes (the editors) accomplish that evasion early, pouring cold water on Arnstein's ladder of participation model, apparently because Arnstein dared to rank participatory practices according to the degree to which they enable citizenry power. Remaking Participation is aimed at specialists, and Chilvers and Kearnes advertise the book as developing an "altogether different view of the reality of participation … not simply as externalized, fixed and pre-given models … but as actively and materially made and remade through the performance of situated participatory practices" (xvi). Chilvers and Kearnes seek to discredit efforts to conceive of public participation as something subject to being "externally validated as a final outcome" (xvi), and they suggest we eschew any "holistic multilevel theory of participation" (52). Instead they recommend we map "collective struggles and ongoing processes of (re)making" (xvi), and "map the relations" and "document the ways" participatory ontologies are (re)made (52). "[O]ur intention is to highlight the active and contingent" (13), say Chilvers and Kearnes, and they succeed. But along the way we are thereby invited to limit the normative horizons of deliberative democracy to what the analyst is on site to observe. How did Chilvers and Kearnes arrive at such self-prohibition? What is at stake for Science and Technology Studies (STS) if we adopt a similar selfprohibition? My explanation for Chilvers and Kearnes' self-prohibition is that they deny to themselves the theoretical resources for dealing with their own conclusion, that "participation and democracy is always to come but already exists in powerful ways" (283; italics in original, for no obvious reason). They assert that the "dynamic interplay between stabilities and emergence … has not formed a significant element of the imagination of participatory democracy" (283). That assertion relies on an absurd reductionism applied to most political theory. Were STS to follow Chilvers and Kearnes on participation, we would quickly find that the only theoretically supported side of the dynamic is the 'emergence' side. The limits of our normativity with regard to deliberative practice would be set by the methodological fetish of being there while it happens and watching it turn out just that little bit different each time. While the book's co-production idiom helps clarify emergent properties, in that idiom stabilities remain under-theorized and tend to be surreptitiously imported as backdrop to ongoing moments.
According to Ingolfur Blühdorn's theory of post-ecologist politics, attempts to promote ecologica... more According to Ingolfur Blühdorn's theory of post-ecologist politics, attempts to promote ecological sustainability and enact an authentic democratic politics are highly unlikely to succeed and are more a performance of seriousness than a set of authentic demands. Affluent post-industrial consumer societies can now only produce 'simulations' of sustainability and democracy, aiming only at reassurance. Using the case of policymaking about highlevel nuclear waste disposal, it is argued that while Blühdorn's description of democratic politics is accurate, critics are right when they argue that his theory is problematic as an explanation because it rejects any appeal to the intentions and interests of strategising actors. It is shown how the deficiency can be rectified by using Zygmunt Bauman's account of how power can flow from being fluid and in control of uncertainty. When the conditions giving rise to simulative democracy are expanded to include such power relations, simulative politics becomes a more firmly grounded concept and maybe an even more portable concept than Blühdorn supposes.
The Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies: Future Research Directions on Expertise and Experience, 2019
Experts will always be potentially problematic for democracy, because
experts complicate the idea... more Experts will always be potentially problematic for democracy, because experts complicate the ideal of government by discussion. Yet while we can all find our own particular cases that warrant ignoring experts, this does not warrant a general case for ignoring experts. I criticize two general arguments for ignoring experts—the “robotic experts” and “dangerous experts” arguments, because some general arguments for ignoring experts create more problems for democracy than they solve. When experts are constructed as mechanically reflecting instrumental reason, as robotic experts, expert judgment is misrepresented and deference relations mischaracterized. When experts are constructed as undemocratic authorities, as dangerous experts, that image is reasonable in mild form but normatively disabling in its more radical version.
There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via r... more There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via referendums—‘direct democracy’—or do the people choose representatives who govern relatively independently between elections? It is natural in representative democracy for experts to be consulted by the elected government, whereas if directness is the ideal, experts can look like unaccountable elites. Under ‘pluralist democracy’ governments’ power is limited by institutional ‘checks and balances’, such as the judiciary, the free press and alternative parliamentary chambers, ensuring that minorities and minority opinions are not completely suppressed. Checks and balances require experts. There are many other dimensions of democracies including voting systems and the degree of devolution, but an uncritical advocacy of ‘rule by the people’ is antagonistic to pluralist democracy.
There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via r... more There are many forms of democracy. Importantly, is there continual accounting to the public via referendums—‘direct democracy’—or do the people choose representatives who govern relatively independently between elections? It is natural in representative democracy for experts to be consulted by the elected government, whereas if directness is the ideal, experts can look like unaccountable elites. Under ‘pluralist democracy’ governments’ power is limited by institutional ‘checks and balances’, such as the judiciary, the free press and alternative parliamentary chambers, ensuring that minorities and minority opinions are not completely suppressed. Checks and balances require experts. There are many other dimensions of democracies including voting systems and the degree of devolution, but an uncritical advocacy of ‘rule by the people’ is antagonistic to pluralist democracy.
According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert... more According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert domain. Society consists of many expert domains of different extent, some small and esoteric, some, like language, large and ubiquitous. Expert domains overlap and are embedded within each other like a fractal. Citizens possess ‘ubiquitous meta-expertise’ which enables them to choose domains when seeking expert opinions—such as whether a vaccine is safe. In such cases, citizens must be ready to treat domains of scientific expertise as more valuable than power or celebrity if we are to avoid dystopia and maintain pluralistic democracy with its checks and balances. Democracies depend on their citizens—‘the law of conservation of democracy’; this means we need more civic education to safeguard the future.
With rising concerns about the social and environmental impacts of industrial and manufacturing w... more With rising concerns about the social and environmental impacts of industrial and manufacturing waste, scientists and engineers have sought solutions to the burdens of waste which do not simply involve burying, burning, dumping or diluting. Our purpose here is to sketch how social science perspectives can illuminate aspects of the waste problem which are not routinely grappled with within science and engineering perspectives. We argue that if one is concerned about the burdens of waste, it is crucial to understand the way political and cultural contexts shape what happens (or does not happen) in regards to reuse. We sketch some of the challenges facing green manufacturing; challenges that hinge on the gap between the best laid plans and social realities. Rather than imply green manufacturing is simply a post hoc move to hide the excesses of industrial capitalism in the green cloth of sustainability, we hope our discussion can assist those who hope to use green manufacturing as a pre-emptive move to build sustainability into industrial capitalism. We suggest that a socio-political conception of technology can bring greater depth to understandings of the industrial, political and consumer environments into which green manufacturing researchers hope to insert their efforts.
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie
Recently, computational social scientists have proposed exciting new methods for 'mapping mea... more Recently, computational social scientists have proposed exciting new methods for 'mapping meaning space' and analysing the structure and evolution of complex cultural constructs from large text datasets. These emerging approaches to 'cultural cartography' are based on a foundation of neural network word embeddings that represent the meaning of words, in relation to one another, as vectors in a shared high-dimensional latent space. These new methods have the potential to revolutionize sociological analyses of culture, but in their current form, they are dually limited. First, by relying on traditional word embeddings they are limited to learning a single vector representation for each word, collapsing together the diverse semantic contexts that words are used in and which give them their heterogeneous meanings. Second, the vector operations that researchers use to construct larger 'cultural dimensions' from traditional embeddings can result in a complex vector soup that can propagate many small and difficult-to-detect errors throughout the cultural analysis, compromising validity. In this article, we discuss the strengths and limitations of computational 'cultural cartography' based on traditional word embeddings and propose an alternative approach that overcomes these limitations by pairing contextual representations learned by newly invented transformer models with Bayesian mixture models. We demonstrate our method of computational cultural cartography with an exploratory analysis of the structure and evolution of 120 years of scholarly discourse on democracy and autocracy.
The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in ... more The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in political decision making. This book explores the differences between populism and pluralist democracy and their relationship with science. Pluralist democracy is characterised by respect for minority choices and a system of checks and balances that prevents power being concentrated in one group, while populism treats minorities as traitorous so as to concentrate power in the government. The book argues that scientific expertise – and science more generally -- should be understood as one of the checks and balances in pluralist democracies. It defends science as ‘craftwork with integrity’ and shows how its crucial role in democratic societies can be rethought and that it must be publicly explained. This book will be of value to scholars and practitioners working across STS as well as to anyone interested in decoding the populist agenda against science.
According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert... more According to Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE), expertise is socialisation into an expert domain. Society consists of many expert domains of different extent, some small and esoteric, some, like language, large and ubiquitous. Expert domains overlap and are embedded within each other like a fractal. Citizens possess ‘ubiquitous meta-expertise’ which enables them to choose domains when seeking expert opinions—such as whether a vaccine is safe. In such cases, citizens must be ready to treat domains of scientific expertise as more valuable than power or celebrity if we are to avoid dystopia and maintain pluralistic democracy with its checks and balances. Democracies depend on their citizens—‘the law of conservation of democracy’; this means we need more civic education to safeguard the future.
Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Joh... more Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Johnson 2 The Trouble with Nuclear / Darrin Durant 3 An Official Narrative: Telling the History of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Policy Making / Darrin Durant and Anna Stanley 4 The Long Haul: Ethics in the Canadian Nuclear Waste Debate / Peter Timmerman 5 Public Consultation as Performative Contradiction: Limiting Discussion in Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Debate / Darrin Durant 6 The Darker Side of Deliberative Democracy: The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization's National Consultation Process / Genevieve Fuji Johnson 7 Representing the Knowledges of Aboriginal Peoples - The "Management" of Diversity in Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste / Anna Stanley 8 Canadian Communities and the Management of Nuclear Fuel Waste / Brenda L. Murphy 9 Situating Canada's Approaches to Siting a Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Facility / Brenda L. Murphy and Richard K...
Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Joh... more Abbreviations 1 Critical Perspectives on the Nuclear Story / Darrin Durant and Genevieve Fuji Johnson 2 The Trouble with Nuclear / Darrin Durant 3 An Official Narrative: Telling the History of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Policy Making / Darrin Durant and Anna Stanley 4 The Long Haul: Ethics in the Canadian Nuclear Waste Debate / Peter Timmerman 5 Public Consultation as Performative Contradiction: Limiting Discussion in Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Debate / Darrin Durant 6 The Darker Side of Deliberative Democracy: The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization's National Consultation Process / Genevieve Fuji Johnson 7 Representing the Knowledges of Aboriginal Peoples - The "Management" of Diversity in Canada's Nuclear Fuel Waste / Anna Stanley 8 Canadian Communities and the Management of Nuclear Fuel Waste / Brenda L. Murphy 9 Situating Canada's Approaches to Siting a Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Facility / Brenda L. Murphy and Richard K...
Societies are distinguished by what their citizens take for granted. In ‘Western societies’ most ... more Societies are distinguished by what their citizens take for granted. In ‘Western societies’ most citizens agree, among other things, about the need for regular elections with near-universal franchises, how to treat strangers, the poor and the sick. These understandings are sedimented in the course of socialisation and constitute the organic face of societies; there is so much agreement that such things don’t usually feature in political manifestos. Citizens record more detailed, varying, and self-conscious choices in elections, giving rise to the enumerative face of societies. Populism deliberately confuses the enumerative face with the organic face. Citizens can make non-democratic leaders accountable only if they know what democracy means; this is the law of conservation of democracy.
In a time of heightened hostility towards experts, academics and scientists, the 2017 collection ... more In a time of heightened hostility towards experts, academics and scientists, the 2017 collection of the best Conversation articles and essays is a must-read. Articles range from a FactCheck of the claim that Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people on Earth, to answering questions posed by curious children, to Hugh Mackay's observation that the state of the nation starts in your street. Joseph Paul Forgas writes on the surprising benefits of sadness and Stephen FitzGerald considers managing Australian foreign policy in a Chinese world.If proof were needed that academia makes an essential contribution to public debate, you'll find it in these pages
Since the early 1970s, in social studies of science and technology (STS), the ‘logic of scientifi... more Since the early 1970s, in social studies of science and technology (STS), the ‘logic of scientific discovery’ has been displaced by detailed examinations of science in practice; this has eroded the cultural position of scientific expertise. Furthermore, the ‘crown jewels’ of science, Newtonian physics and the like, are no longer accepted as justifying science’s contribution to citizens’ more diffuse technical concerns. Scientific expertise now seems more fallible, less removed from ordinary decision-making and less insulated from political and social forces. Populist leaders, who attack scientific expertise because it limits their power, can draw on these ideas. STS must stop celebrating the erosion of scientific expertise and, without sacrificing the new insights, rethink the justification for the role of science in democratic societies.
Populism contrasts clearly with pluralist democracy. By treating the result of elections as repre... more Populism contrasts clearly with pluralist democracy. By treating the result of elections as representing ‘the will of the people’, populism misrepresents the enumerative face of society as the organic face and defines all opposition to the elected government as traitorous. Minorities, and the institutions and experts upon which the checks and balance of pluralist democracy depend, are, therefore, attacked by populist leaders. Populist leaders claim that their actions, however dictatorial, and however much they favour a specific group in society, are democratic—they represent the will of the people. Because populism, in its championing of the people, is anti-elitist, some commentators consider it can enliven democracy. In today’s world, however, the dangers are obvious: attacks on minorities and the control of what counts as expertise.
I first recount the stories told by Orwell and Huxley. Next, I analyse their different control me... more I first recount the stories told by Orwell and Huxley. Next, I analyse their different control mechanisms, namely Orwell's grim constriction and Huxley's entertaining proliferation, and the enduring applicability of both dystopic visions. Orwell versus Huxley Orwell's 1984 is set in Airstrip One (a province of Oceania) and dominated by the ideology Ingsoc (English socialism). Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, but secretly hates the Party. If you fall foul of the Party, you become an "unperson". Winston rebels by getting involved with fellow employee Julia, whom he suspects is an informant. They start an affair after Julia hands Winston a simple note reading "I love you". Winston's superior is O'Brien and Winston suspects O'Brien to be a secret agent for the resistance movement (The Brotherhood). O'Brien offers Winston a chance to join The Brotherhood and Winston and Julia do so. Unfortunately, O'Brien is part of a sting operation "thoughtcriminals". Over several months, O'Brien tortures Winston to cure Winston's insanity and coerce him to believe the Party line, even if it means believing 2 + 2 = 5. Although O'Brien informs Winston that after reprogramming , he will be released, only to be executed a little later, Winston says at least he has not betrayed Julia. But soon after O'Brien takes Winston to the final stage, Room 101, where you confront your worst fears. For Winston, that is rats. A cage of rats is lowered onto Winston's head, but he yells "do it to Julia". Julia later reveals she also betrayed Winston. Winston thus realises the Party has even managed to take away their love. Winston eventually "realises" that he loves Big Brother, because he can celebrate Oceania's victory over Eurasia in Africa. Two features of 1984 are worth highlighting. First, some characters are constituted by the acts of referring to them rather than their actual manifestation. We never meet Big Brother (the leader) nor the resistance leader (Emmanuel Goldstein). Nor do we meet the enemy of the people railed against during the televised Two Minutes of Hate (where subconscious feelings of angst are redirected away from Oceania and towards external enemies). Second, everything fits: deceptions are temporary, so discordance is minimal; the plot quickly settles around clear and consistent roles; and outcomes are frightening but go to plan. By contrast, in Huxley's Brave New World, no character is shadowy, and nothing fits perfectly. The story is set in a future World State where advances in reproductive technologies, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning have created a pre-defined social hierarchy. The World State is built on the principles of Fordist production: homogeneity, mass production, and consumption of disposable goods. Citizens are engineered in vitro, and, from birth, classes are indoctrinated by recorded voices
Amazon’s Ring video doorbells allow users to easily see and talk with people in camera range over... more Amazon’s Ring video doorbells allow users to easily see and talk with people in camera range over their phones, record and save camera footage to the cloud, and share videos of suspicious activity (Molla, 2020). Although Amazon markets the home security surveillance system and related Ring products (e.g. Neighbors social media app, home security cameras, mailbox sensor, and home surveillance drone) as consumer-friendly, smart home tools for deterring and reporting burglars and package thieves, the technology has been widely criticized. Most of the condemnation comes from privacy and civil rights activists. However, some academics and tech-company workers also have been critical. The strongest position is Ring doorbell cameras should be abolished. Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, declares that ‘products like Ring’ are ‘fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy’ (Ongweso, 2020). Surveillance scholar Chris Gilliard insists that some ‘technologies are incompatible with a free and equitable society,’ including Ring doorbell cameras (Oremus, 2020). An Amazon software engineer even claims, ‘The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society’ (Peterson, 2020). In the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition of the ‘modest scholar activist’ who is ‘openly partisan’ and intending to ‘stimulate social action’ (Woodhouse et al., 2002, p. 301), our goal is to document activist criticism and provide further conceptual justification for the research trajectory of what Frank Pasquale (2019) calls the ‘second wave of algorithmic accountability’. The reformist first wave approach focuses on improving technological
Remaking Participation does for public participation what alcohol does for drinkers in the adage ... more Remaking Participation does for public participation what alcohol does for drinkers in the adage 'the best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk'. Apparently if you imbibe enough participatory elixir you can be saved from having to face any of the actual challenges of deliberative democracy revealed by either theory or practice. Chilvers and Kearnes (the editors) accomplish that evasion early, pouring cold water on Arnstein's ladder of participation model, apparently because Arnstein dared to rank participatory practices according to the degree to which they enable citizenry power. Remaking Participation is aimed at specialists, and Chilvers and Kearnes advertise the book as developing an "altogether different view of the reality of participation … not simply as externalized, fixed and pre-given models … but as actively and materially made and remade through the performance of situated participatory practices" (xvi). Chilvers and Kearnes seek to discredit efforts to conceive of public participation as something subject to being "externally validated as a final outcome" (xvi), and they suggest we eschew any "holistic multilevel theory of participation" (52). Instead they recommend we map "collective struggles and ongoing processes of (re)making" (xvi), and "map the relations" and "document the ways" participatory ontologies are (re)made (52). "[O]ur intention is to highlight the active and contingent" (13), say Chilvers and Kearnes, and they succeed. But along the way we are thereby invited to limit the normative horizons of deliberative democracy to what the analyst is on site to observe. How did Chilvers and Kearnes arrive at such self-prohibition? What is at stake for Science and Technology Studies (STS) if we adopt a similar selfprohibition? My explanation for Chilvers and Kearnes' self-prohibition is that they deny to themselves the theoretical resources for dealing with their own conclusion, that "participation and democracy is always to come but already exists in powerful ways" (283; italics in original, for no obvious reason). They assert that the "dynamic interplay between stabilities and emergence … has not formed a significant element of the imagination of participatory democracy" (283). That assertion relies on an absurd reductionism applied to most political theory. Were STS to follow Chilvers and Kearnes on participation, we would quickly find that the only theoretically supported side of the dynamic is the 'emergence' side. The limits of our normativity with regard to deliberative practice would be set by the methodological fetish of being there while it happens and watching it turn out just that little bit different each time. While the book's co-production idiom helps clarify emergent properties, in that idiom stabilities remain under-theorized and tend to be surreptitiously imported as backdrop to ongoing moments.
According to Ingolfur Blühdorn's theory of post-ecologist politics, attempts to promote ecologica... more According to Ingolfur Blühdorn's theory of post-ecologist politics, attempts to promote ecological sustainability and enact an authentic democratic politics are highly unlikely to succeed and are more a performance of seriousness than a set of authentic demands. Affluent post-industrial consumer societies can now only produce 'simulations' of sustainability and democracy, aiming only at reassurance. Using the case of policymaking about highlevel nuclear waste disposal, it is argued that while Blühdorn's description of democratic politics is accurate, critics are right when they argue that his theory is problematic as an explanation because it rejects any appeal to the intentions and interests of strategising actors. It is shown how the deficiency can be rectified by using Zygmunt Bauman's account of how power can flow from being fluid and in control of uncertainty. When the conditions giving rise to simulative democracy are expanded to include such power relations, simulative politics becomes a more firmly grounded concept and maybe an even more portable concept than Blühdorn supposes.
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Papers by Darrin Durant
experts complicate the ideal of government by discussion. Yet while we
can all find our own particular cases that warrant ignoring experts, this
does not warrant a general case for ignoring experts. I criticize two general arguments for ignoring experts—the “robotic experts” and “dangerous experts” arguments, because some general arguments for ignoring experts create more problems for democracy than they solve. When experts are constructed as mechanically reflecting instrumental reason, as robotic experts, expert judgment is misrepresented and deference relations mischaracterized. When experts are constructed as undemocratic authorities, as dangerous experts, that image is reasonable in mild form but normatively disabling in its more radical version.
experts complicate the ideal of government by discussion. Yet while we
can all find our own particular cases that warrant ignoring experts, this
does not warrant a general case for ignoring experts. I criticize two general arguments for ignoring experts—the “robotic experts” and “dangerous experts” arguments, because some general arguments for ignoring experts create more problems for democracy than they solve. When experts are constructed as mechanically reflecting instrumental reason, as robotic experts, expert judgment is misrepresented and deference relations mischaracterized. When experts are constructed as undemocratic authorities, as dangerous experts, that image is reasonable in mild form but normatively disabling in its more radical version.