How Can STS Support A Multiplicity Of Practices In Citizen Science?

Abstract

Citizen Science is a field of growing interest for governments and social science researchers. The current situation of increased EU funding means Citizen Science is being put under pressure to professionalise, add quality and evaluation criteria. Furthermore, there is an increasing pressure to define what is Citizen Science and what it is not. One effect of this might be the exclusion of practices based around activism, art and situated knowledge that have previously been the core of citizen-led practices, and yet are being pushed to the fringes in this move to professionalisation.

STS has often uncritically supported this technocratic logic of utility and empowerment via Citizen Science. The logic of utility aims to make science cheaper by outsourcing scientific labour to the public, while at the same time claiming scientific involvement creates empowered citizens. Yet there are few actual empirical studies of impacts of this utilitarian logic on participants or what empowerment might mean in practice.

This panel asks:

What activism, art and situated knowledge practices should be seen as citizen science and how can they benefit from being framed as Citizen Science?

How can STS researchers actively support a multiplicity of Citizen Science practices?

What STS approaches can be used to expand the scope of citizen science?

Chair

• Alexandra Albert, UCL

Individual Presentations

• The "next level" of participation: can the professionalization of Citizen Science be used creatively? - Andreas Wenninger, bidt

• Over-identification as Ethnographic approach for challenging the contradictions of Citizen Science - Christian Nold, University of the Arts London

• Bottom-up Meets Top-Down: Mapping Grassroots Citizen Science Trajectories in Environmental Pollution Monitoring - Michiel Van Oudheusden, University of Cambridge; Yasuhito Abe, Komazawa University

• The social life of citizen science: Citizen Social Science as a reflexive practice in participatory STS - Alexandra Albert, UCL

• Civic Engineering At The Grid Edge: Infrastructures, Social Movements And The Politics of Expertification - Hanno Moegenburg, University of Konstanz

Session Organizers

• Christian Nold, University of the Arts London

• Alexandra Albert, UCL