Democracy, Science, and Technology III: Citizenship

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

Interactions between democracy, science, and technology run in both directions. From the appearance of the democratic state, the very field of statistics developed in support of evidence-informed policy-making, constitutions and statutory law support intellectual property rights based on the belief that innovation is critical to state capacity, and governments have been involved in the practice of and funding for science and technological innovation. More recently, we have seen the rise of demands for democratic participation in decision-making about the funding of "big science" and the use of research findings, and both citizen scientists and scientist citizens have become important roles. Recent political trends, however, appear to be breaking these relationships. Policy-making is increasingly evidence-averse – or evidence-hostile – with consequences that touch the fundaments of society and the environment. Shifts in funding and in regulation of science and technology threaten to undermine knowledge production and use. There is again the possibility that taking particular scientific positions may be treated as a political rather than intellectual matter. Already some scientists are declining to cross certain borders because of fear generated by political developments. This panel will look at relationships between democracy, science, and technology as they have been in the past, as they are in the present, and as they may be in the future. Papers dealing with the problem of developing arguments and evidence that will be persuasive in what The Economist described as a "post-truth" environment, hostile to facts and to reason, are particularly encouraged.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Sandra Braman, Texas A&M University

Discussant

• Christoph B Graber, University of Zurich

Individual Presentations

• Contestations over Spaces of (Un)Democratic (In)Transparency in Danish Wind Power Deployment - Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Technical University of Denmark; David Philipp Rudolph, Technical University of Denmark; Tom Cronin, Technical University of Denmark

• The Government, Experts, Media and Public in the Safety Assessment of Agricultural GM Organism: A Case Study in China - Zhicong Shang, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

• Priority Setting in Food and Health Research Domain: Legitimacy Criteria and Processes - Lada Timotijevic, University of Surrey; Shumaisa Kahn, University of Brighton