Towards an analytical framework of science communication models

This chapter reviews the discussion in science communication circles of models for public communication of science and technology (PCST). It questions the claim that there has been a large-scale shift from a ‘deficit model’ of communication to a ‘dialogue model’, and it demonstrates the survival of the deficit model along with the ambiguities of that model. Similar discussions in related fields of communication, including the critique of dialogue, are briefly sketched. Outlining the complex circumstances governing approaches to PCST, the author argues that communications models often perceived to be opposed can, in fact, coexist when the choices are made explicit. To aid this process, the author proposes an analytical framework of communication models based on deficit, dialogue and participation, including variations on each

The early years of Sequoia and Kings Canyon Science: Building a research program

This paper provides a history of the development of the scientific research program at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI) during the period 1968–1994 from the perspective of one of the scientists involved. The years following the 1968 hiring of Bruce Kilgore as the first park-based research scientist at SEKI saw the growth of a research program that included three permanent research-grade scientists and their support staff.  This nucleus was successful in attracting both outside funding and leading university and government scientists to work on issues of importance to the parks and to society at large, topics that included fire ecology and management, black bears, wilderness impacts, acid deposition, and climate change. During this time the SEKI scientists’ role expanded from one focused primarily on the personal research on issues of immediate importance to the park, to increasing responsibilities for marketing and coordinating a growing program of collaborative research that also addressed regional and national priorities. This, in turn, required that the park scientists increasingly become generalists, able to converse in a number of scientific disciplines as well as communicate with non-scientists. Finally, keys to success and lessons learned are discussed

Exploring the tension and synergies between science and technology in science education

This chapter explores the way in which technology has been introduced through and by science educators in Australasia in the last 25 years. A number of themes have arisen in this time from using technology to engage students in science, exploring the impact of science on society through technology, considerations of the nature of technology in relation to science, and the exploration and development of technology as a subject in its own right. In this process student and teacher perceptions of technology were explored, as well as teacher change and the influence of teacher/ subject culture through to sustained classroom research and school change and the way in which the introduction of a new subject like technology can influence our thinking around science

Risk Communication and Management in the 21st Century

Environmental, food, and health regulation in the UK and in many other European countries is in a state of crisis. Following a series of regulatory scandals, regulators decided that drastic changes were needed. There would be no more consensual style regulation with closed-door deliberations between industry and regulators. The public's trust toward regulators had disappeared, and the continued deteriorating situation was not made better by an increasingly aggressive media trying to either directly or indirectly discredit the regulators by unnecessarily amplifying risks and, in many cases, manufacturing uncertainty. Regulators and their advisors took the view that the best way out of this quagmire would be to put forward a new model of regulatory decision-making. This model would be based on transparency throughout the regulatory process and would encourage public and stakeholder deliberation. The model would also promote risk-averse decision making such as the adoption of the precautionary principle, as regulators are frightened about possible scandals lurking around the corner. Finally, in the new model, scientists are to a certain degree demoted. The new model of regulatory decision-making is not problem-free, however. It has a number of teething problems, which this paper addresses.

Political ecology and the epistemology of social justice

Piers Blaikie’s writings on political ecology in the 1980s represented a turning point in the generation of environmental knowledge for social justice. His writings since the 1980s demonstrated a further transition in the identification of social justice by replacing a Marxist and eco-catastrophist epistemology with approaches influenced by critical realism, post-structuralism and participatory development. Together, these works demonstrated an important engagement with the politics of how environmental explanations are made, and the mutual dependency of social values and environmental knowledge. Yet, today, the lessons of Blaikie’s work are often missed by analysts who ask what is essentially political or ecological about political ecology, or by those who argue that a critical approach to environmental knowledge should mean deconstruction alone. This paper reviews Blaikie’s work since the 1980s and focuses especially on the meaning of ‘politics’ within his approach to political ecology. The paper argues that Blaikie’s key contribution is not just in linking environmental knowledge and politics, but also in showing ways that environmental analysis and policy can be reframed towards addressing the problems of socially vulnerable people. This pragmatic co-production of environmental knowledge and social values offers a more constructive means of building socially just environmental policy than insisting politics or ecology exist independently of each other, or believing environmental interventions are futile in a post-Latourian world

The rise and fall of the fast breeder reactor technology in the UK: between engineering “dreams” and economic “realities”?

This report explores the evolution of the fast breeder nuclear reactor programmes in the UK, from the period of great promises and expectations in the 1950s and 1960s towards their progressive abandonment in the 1980s and 1990s. The project, of which this report is an element, aims thereby to draw lessons relevant for the current “nuclear renaissance” and medium-term planning on the future of nuclear power. Given that the fast breeder programmes were closely interlinked with the general evolution of nuclear power in the UK, this report includes a fairly detailed historical description of this more general ‘nuclear context’. This primarily chronological description of the evolution of the UK fast breeder programmes provides a basis for a comparison between the evolution of the British and French fast breeder reactor programmes. A central question in such a comparison concerns the lateness of the abandonment of the fast breeder programme in France, as compared to most other countries developing this technology. The cross-country comparison will explore the relative influence of the contextual and historical conditions within which the nuclear technologies have evolved in France and the UK on the one hand, and the ‘universal’ factors common to the evolution of socio-technical systems in general on the other. This exploratory research was based on documentary analysis and eleven interviews of experts involved in, or with knowledge of, the UK fast breeder reactor (FBR) programmes

New Challenges in Underprivileged Regions Call for People-Centered Research for Development

The need for enhancing food production and availability in underprivileged regions of the world requires the attention of scientists. This article explores the possibilities for rethinking agricultural research for development (R4D) in the light of new challenges characterized by a high degree of scientific uncertainty along with associated intense political differences of interest. New challenges that particularly influence food production in underprivileged regions include global climate change, globalization of food chains, and emerging low-carbon energy systems. We argue that by applying the people-centered sustainable livelihoods approach as a research paradigm in R4D, researchers may be more successful in producing knowledge that is useful to entrepreneurial smallholder farmers. Without such rethinking, traditional scientific approaches and logic may limit the contribution that agricultural R4D can make toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals of halving extreme hunger by 2015 and improving the livelihoods of all

The 'problem' of ethics in contemporary anthropological research

Why is it that ‘ethics’ is seen as a problem in anthropology? This paper seeks to explore this question by looking at (a) historical shifts in the relation between ethnographers and their subjects/informants and (b) anthropological practice. I am interested in past anthropological practice to see whether it provides a reasonable guide to future practice, specifically with regard to the ethical conduct of ethnographic fieldwor

Economic Inequality in New York State

New York State was the state with the greatest income disparity between the rich and poor in the mid-2000s. At that time incomes in the bottom fifth of the population were 8.7 times lower than those in the top fifth. In New York City this gap was even wider. In the mid-2000s the City’s top income quintile had an average income 9.5 times higher than the average income of the bottom quintile. Overall income in New York State grew between the 1980s and the mid-2000s but those at the top took the majority of this increase. The richest 20 percent’s share of total personal income grew from 42 percent in the late 1980s to 47 percent in the mid-2000s with the share of the richest 5 percent increasing the most, from 16 percent in the late 1980s to 21 percent in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, the other 80 percent of New Yorkers saw their total share of personal income decline