Abstract
In current practice the various social and environmental concerns of ‘lay-people’ or ‘non-experts’ are lumped together and their issues are objectified (Wynne 2007). Multiple constructions, including claims and counter-claims about what the public ‘really’ thinks and what the ‘real public’ might be is defined by prevailing institutionalised patterns of power and authority (Cunningham-Burley 2006; Irwin 2006; Marres 2005). Overshadowed by political discourse and by the fierce pressures on scientific institutions to deliver policy agendas that secure the interests of powerful global patrons, which are often justified as an endeavour for ‘the public good’, the stories of actual people have a limited voice (Lave 2012; Friedmann 1987). Under-representation renders their skills, hopes, and passions unimportant and hence, undervalued and underestimated. This inevitably leads to exclusion not only from the decision-making process but also from taking part in process of actively addressing the issue at stake (problem-solving).
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Notes
- 1.
Eymund Diegel, personal communication about the Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s Grassroots Mapping in New York.
- 2.
Akin to Kelty’s (2005) idea of ‘argument-by-technology’.
- 3.
Specifically his tutors Theodore W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer from the Frankfurt School.
- 4.
Whereas money and power are the media for the system.
- 5.
For example, the state’s arrangements take the shape of institutional strategies for public engagement and the customary reductionist top-down approach to managing social and biophysical systems.
- 6.
A phenomenon that has also occurred in other practices such as the Arts.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Petroleum coke is a byproduct of oil refining that is burned for fuel in countries where air standards are not as high as the United States (Eustis 2013).
- 13.
Mapknitter is the online open source Public Lab platform for making maps from composite aerial images.
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Regalado, C. (2017). Getting Out of Their Way: Do-It-Yourselfers, Sensing, and Self-Reliance. In: Loreto, V., et al. Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_14
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