Incommensurability Amid Multiple Crises: Scientists’ Policy Positions on a Contentious Insecticide

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: The Contested Science of Climate Crisis

Abstract

Scientific knowledge production is highly specialized and often driven by the assumption that science and technology will resolve environmental crises. How does this specialization and ideological context shape responses to complex environmental issues, particularly when multiple crises are at hand? Drawing on a social network and qualitative content analysis of scientists’ policy positions on a contentious class of insecticides in the United States, this paper examines how specialized scientific communities interpret and respond to multidimensional environmental problems. I find that distinct communities produce policy recommendations that are coherent within their own crisis-averting frameworks but at odds with one another. This surfacing of incommensurable solutions to interrelated environmental crises helps to explain historic and current disputes over pesticides.

Author

• Gabriella Altmire, University of Oregon