I compare two different arguments for the importance of bringing new voices into science: arguments for increasing the representation of women, and arguments for the inclusion of the public, or for “citizen science”. I suggest that in each case, diversifying science can improve the quality of scientific results in three distinct ways: epistemically, ethically, and politically. In the first two respects, the mechanisms are essentially the same. In the third respect, the mechanisms are importantly different. Though this might appear to (...) suggest a broad similarity between the cases, I show that the analysis reveals an important respect in which efforts to include the public are more complex. With citizen science programs, unlike with efforts to bring more women into science, the three types of improvement are often in conflict with one another: improvements along one dimension may come at a cost on another dimension, suggesting difficult trade-offs may need to be made. (shrink)

This highly multidisciplinary collection discusses an increasingly important topic among scholars in science and technology studies: objectivity in science. It features eleven essays on scientific objectivity from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy of science, history of science, and feminist philosophy. Topics addressed in the book include the nature and value of scientific objectivity, the history of objectivity, and objectivity in scientific journals and communities. Taken individually, the essays supply new methodological tools for theorizing what is valuable in the pursuit (...) of objective knowledge and for investigating its history. The essays offer many starting points, while suggesting new avenues of research. Taken collectively, the essays exemplify the very virtues of objectivity that they theorize—in reading them together, the reader can sense various anxieties about the dangerously subjective in our age and locate commonalities of concern as well as differences of approach. As a result, the volume offers an expansive vision of a research community seeking a communal understanding of its own methods and its own epistemic anxieties, struggling to enunciate the key problems of knowledge of our time and offer insight into how to overcome them. -/- (Contributors: Alex Csiszar, Scott Edgar, Peter Galison, Ian Hacking, Sandra Harding, Moira Howes, Paolo Savoia, Judy Segal, Joan Steigerwald, and Alison Wylie). (shrink)

The term sustainability can be used so liberally within production industries that it becomes meaningless. There is also recognition that for sustainability to be a useful concept, it must be crafted for the context in which it is deployed. A paradox of sustainability, it seems, lies in the conflict between the practical adoptability and context specificity of programs paired with the need for significant change. One response for those grappling with this sustainability challenge has been to adopt flexible approaches to (...) sustainability through the development of technologies and governance processes that focus on benchmarking, monitoring and ongoing change, rather than hard limits and targets. In this paper we elaborate on this point by evaluating how sustainability programs in a transition context can be seen as deliberative platforms and thus actors in governance processes. Through an analysis of the development of a sustainability program deployed in the wine industry in New Zealand, we argue that a widely adopted and clearly defined program can be an asset to democratic environmental governance, if viewed as a shared project. Drawing on interviews with key personnel in the wine industry and reviews of industry literature and media, we suggest that substantiating sustainability can have benefits for environmental governance through the precipitation of distinction and dialogue. We conclude with some suggestions about how to encourage visionary forms of practice and engagement with sustainability programs in ways that can aid their democratic development and expand the reach of their goals. (shrink)

Many studies have documented gender differences in attitudes toward and experiences with science. Compared to men, for example, women are less likely to study science and to pursue careers in science-related fields. Given these findings, should we expect gender differences in support for scientific involvement in U.S. environmental policy? This study empirically examines the relationship of gender to attitudes toward science and preferred roles of scientists in environmental policy among various environmental policy participants. Data collected in 2006 and 2007 from (...) national surveys of four different groups involved in environmental policy and management suggest that social context, including education and occupation, shapes the way that gender matters. Specifically, we find that gender is less important among scientists and managers than among interest groups and the general population regarding attitudes toward science and views about preferred roles of scientists in environmental decision making. (shrink)

During the mid-nineteenth century, the eminent British zoologist Alfred Newton recognized that some of the ideas embedded in Origin of Species provided new scientific rationales for the preservation of endangered species. He then embarked on a twenty-five-year-long campaign for law reforms and successfully lobbied Parliament to enact three new statutes for the preservation of endangered wild birds that gave priority to the scientific value of rare species. The account of Newton’s campaign presented in this article helps to locate Newton in (...) the nineteenth century conservation movement, while also shining a side light on the relationship between conservation science and policy-making more generally, including the variety of voices and approaches taken to conservation in the UK and US. Today, as we pursue new regulatory responses to critical environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, the history of Newton’s campaign offers an early example of a successful approach to science-based law reform. It also shows how some of the issues that Newton and his contemporaries confronted at the science-policy interface in the nineteenth century are enduring and remain relevant today, including debates about; the role of scientist-advocates in policy-making, the criteria that make science advice effective, and whether the “democratization” of science leads to better policy decisions. (shrink)

The conventional proper scientific self has an ethical obligation to strive to see everywhere in the universe from no particular location in that universe: he is to produce the view from nowhere. What different conceptions of the proper scientific self are created by the distinctive assumptions and research practices of social justice movements, such as feminism, anti-racism, and post-colonialism? Three such new ideals are: the multiple and conflicted knowing self; the researcher strategically located inside her research world; and the community (...) that knows. (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of leadership during implementation of a water saving initiative in the rural community surrounding Barren Box Swamp in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia. Qualitative data analysis indicated that the system elements affecting the type of leadership to emerge included the extent to which the groups were engaged in the process, the level of access to resources, and the level of investment in the outcomes of the project. Although these results reinforced key aspects of complex problem-solving (...) through collaboration, they demonstrated varying degrees and types of both engagement and leadership within the case community. Given the current finding that these varying elements can coincide within one system, this case suggests that each community’s characteristics, resources and context will determine the optimal combination of leadership style and level of collaboration needed to facilitate sustainable community development. (shrink)

This article examines the foundation myths of Brazil in the last two centuries, paying particular attention to the relationship between these myths and governmental attitudes toward the hybridity of Northern and Southern ethnic and technoscientific entities. Based upon this examination, the article argues that it is important to consider both the wider temporal frames and the shifts and sedimentations that have formed current foundation myths and shaped their relation to science and technology. Postcolonial science technology studies theories illuminate aspects of (...) this trajectory, but our analysis suggests a more complex scenario that involves internal political dynamics and the work of local intellectuals. We argue that the example of Brazilian social scientists should encourage scholars to go beyond the current focus on breaking the myths of technoscience and undertake mythmaking initiatives with wider societal resonances. (shrink)