Abstract
In debates about science and the environment, the “science-lay dichotomy is both highly tenuous and highly tenacious” (Irwin & Michael, 2003, p. 124). It is tenacious because, despite continual criticism from social scientists, it continues to underpin the “cognitive-deficit model” of the public understanding of science. The deficit model rests on the assumption that the lay public is unscientific, unspecialized, and often ignorant (or at least poorly informed) about the details of scientific and technological developments and are therefore normally excluded from decisions about how science and the environment is managed. It is consequently also assumed in the model that this exclusion and lack of knowledge breed public distrust in scientific developments and their regulation and, therefore, that this distrust must be corrected by providing more information and improving public education about these matters.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Agrawal, A. (2002). Indigenous knowledge and the politics of classification. International Social Science Journal, 54, 287–297.
Agrawala, S., Broad, K., & Guston, D. H. (2001). Integrating climate forecaster and societal decision making: Challenges to an emergent boundary organization. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 26, 454–477.
Bear, C., & Eden, S. (2008). Making space for fish: The regional, network and fluid spaces of fisheries certification. Social and Cultural Geography, 9, 487–504.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society. London: Sage.
Beck, U. (1995). Ecological politics in an age of risk. London: Polity.
Campbell, R. A. (2003). Preparing the next generation of scientists. Social Studies of Science, 33, 897–927.
Cashore, B., Auld, G., & Newson, D. (2004). Legitimizing political consumerism: The case of forest certification in North America and Europe. In M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal, & D. Stolle (Eds.), Politics, products, and markets: Exploring political consumerism past and present (pp. 181–199). New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers.
Collins, H. M., & Evans, R. (2002). The third wave of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience. Social Studies of Science, 32, 235–296.
Eckersley, R. (1992). Environmentalism and political theory. London: UCL Press.
Eden, S. (2009). The work of environmental governance networks: The case of certification by the Forest Stewardship Council. Geoforum, 40, 383–394.
Eden, S., Donaldson, A., & Walker, G. (2006). Green groups and grey areas: Scientific boundary work, nongovernmental organisations, and environmental knowledge. Environment and Planning A, 38, 1061–1076.
Epstein, S. (1995). The construction of lay expertise: AIDS activism and the forging of credibility in the reform of clinical trials. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 20, 408–437.
Forest Stewardship Council. (2007). Pesticides review. Bonn: Forest Stewardship Council.
Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. R. (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25, 739–755.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge. London: Sage.
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48, 781–795.
Gieryn, T. F. (1995). Boundaries of science. In S. Jasanoff, G. E. Petersen Markle, J. C. Petersen, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (pp. 393–444). London: Sage.
Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gieryn, T. F. (2008). Cultural boundaries: Settled and unsettled. In P. Meusburger (Series Eds.) & P. Meusburger, M. Welker, & E. Wunder (Vol. Eds.), Knowledge and space: Vol. 1. Clashes of knowledge: Orthodoxies and heterodoxies in science and religion (pp. 91–99). Dordrecht: Springer.
Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in public: Communication, culture, and credibility. New York: Plenum Trade.
Guston, D. H. (1999). Stabilizing the boundary between US politics and science: The role of the Office of Technology Transfer as a boundary organization. Social Studies of Science, 29, 87–111.
Hatanaka, M., Bain, C., & Busch, L. (2005). Third-party certification in the global agrifood system. Food Policy, 30, 354–369.
Hilgartner, S. (1990). The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses. Social Studies of Science, 20, 519–539.
Irwin, A. (1995). Citizen science. London: Routledge.
Irwin, A., & Michael, M. (2003). Science, social theory and public knowledge. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.
Irwin, A., & Wynne, B. (Eds.). (1996). Misunderstanding science? The public reconstruction of science and technology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jahn, G., Schramm, M., & Spiller, A. (2005). The reliability of certification: Quality labels as a consumer policy tool. Journal of Consumer Policy, 1325, 53–73.
Jamison, A. (1996). The shaping of the global environmental agenda: The role of non-governmental organisations. In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski, & B. Wynne (Eds.), Risk, environment and modernity (pp. 224–245). London: Sage.
Jamison, A. (2001). The making of green knowledge. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jasanoff, S. (1987). Contested boundaries in policy-relevant science. Social Studies of Science, 17, 195–230.
Jasanoff, S. (1997). NGOs and the environment: From knowledge to action. Third World Quarterly, 18, 579–594.
Jasanoff, S. (2003). Breaking the waves in science studies: Comment on HM Collins and Robert Evans, ‘The third wave of science studies’. Social Studies of Science, 33, 389–400.
Kelly, S. E. (2003). Public bioethics and publics: Consensus, boundaries, and participation in biomedical science policy. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 28, 339–364.
Kinchy, A. J., & Kleinman, D. L. (2003). Organizing credibility: Discursive and organizational orthodoxy on the borders of ecology and politics. Social Studies of Science, 33, 869–896.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Marine Stewardship Council. (2006). Managing fisheries for the future with the MSC. London: Marine Stewardship Council.
Martello, M., & Jasanoff, S. (2004). Conclusion: Knowledge and governance. In M. Martello & S. Jasanoff (Eds.), Earthly politics: Local and global in environmental governance (pp. 335–349). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McCormick, J. (1995). The global environmental movement (2nd ed.). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Michael, M. (2002). Comprehension, apprehension, prehension: Heterogeneity and the public understanding of science. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 27, 357–378.
Miller, C. (2001). Hybrid management: Boundary organizations, science policy, and environmental governance in the climate regime. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 26, 478–500.
Moore, K. (1996). Organizing integrity: American science and the creation of public interest organizations, 1955–1975. American Journal of Sociology, 101, 1592–1627.
Nowotny, H. (2003). Democratising expertise and socially robust knowledge. Science and Public Policy, 30, 151–156.
Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Rethinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Pattberg, P. (2005). What role for private rule-making in global environmental governance? Analysing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). International Environmental Agreements, 5, 175–189.
Smith, J. (Ed.). (2000). The Daily Globe. London: Earthscan.
Turner, S. (2001). What is the problem with experts? Social Studies of Science, 31, 123–149.
Yearley, S. (1991). Greens and science: A doomed affair? New Scientist, 131 (1777), 37–40.
Yearley, S. (1993). Standing in for nature: The practicalities of environmental organizations’ use of science. In K. Milton (Ed.), Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 59–72). London: Routledge.
Yearley, S. (1996). Nature’s advocates: Putting science to work in environmental organisations. In A. Irwin & B. Wynne (Eds.), Misunderstanding science? The public reconstruction of science and technology (pp. 172–190). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgment
This paper comes from work funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council through its Science in Society Programme, awards L144250047 and RES-151-25-00035. I am grateful to all the interviewees for their time and to Andrew Donaldson, Christopher Bear, and Gordon Walker for their input to these projects over the years.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eden, S. (2010). NGOs, the Science-Lay Dichotomy, and Hybrid Spaces of Environmental Knowledge. In: Meusburger, P., Livingstone, D., Jöns, H. (eds) Geographies of Science. Knowledge and Space, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8611-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8611-2_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8610-5
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8611-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)