Risks, alternative knowledge strategies and democratic legitimacy: the conflict over co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in Portugal.

The decision to incinerate hazardous industrial waste in cement plants (the socalled ‘co-incineration’ process) gave rise to one of the most heated environmental conflicts ever to take place in Portugal. The bitterest period was between 1997 and 2002, after the government had made a decision. Strong protests by residents, environmental organizations, opposition parties, and some members of the scientific community forced the government to backtrack and to seek scientific legitimacy for the process through scientific expertise. The experts ratified the government’s decision, stating that the risks involved were socially acceptable. The conflict persisted over a decade and ended up clearing the way for a more sustainable method over which there was broad social consensus – a multifunctional method which makes it possible to treat, recover and regenerate most wastes. Focusing the analysis on this conflict, this paper has three aims: (1) to discuss the implications of the fact that expertise was ‘confiscated’ after the government had committed itself to the decision to implement co-incineration and by way of a reaction to the atmosphere of tension and protest; (2) to analyse the uses of the notions of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’ in scientific reports from both experts and counter-experts’ committees, and their different assumptions about controllability and criteria for considering certain practices to be sufficiently safe for the public; and (3) to show how the existence of different technical scientific and political attitudes (one more closely tied to government and the corporate interests of the cement plants, the other closer to the environmental values of reuse and recycling and respect for the risk perception of residents who challenged the facilities) is closely bound up with problems of democratic legitimacy. This conflict showed how adopting more sustainable and lower-risk policies implies a broader view of democratic legitimacy, one which involves both civic movements and citizens themselves

Learning democracy in social work

In this contribution, we discuss the role of social work in processes of democracy. A key question in this discussion concerns the meaning of ‘the social’ in social work. This question has often been answered in a self-referential way, referring to a methodological identity of social work. This defines the educational role of social work as socialisation (be it socialisation into obedience or into an empowered citizen). However, the idea of democracy as ‘ongoing experiment’ and ‘beyond order’ challenges this methodological identity of social work. From the perspective of democracy as an ‘ongoing experiment’, the social is to be regarded as a platform for dissensus, for ongoing discussions on the relation between private and public issues in the light of human rights and social justice. Hence, the identity of social work cannot be defined in a methodological way; social work is a complex of (institutionalized) welfare practices, to be studied on their underlying views on the ‘social’ as a political and educational concept, and on the way they influence the situation of children, young people and adults in society

Elective Modernism and the Politics of (Bio) Ethical Expertise

In this essay I consider whether the political perspective of third wave science studies – ‘elective modernism’ – offers a suitable framework for understanding the policy-making contributions that (bio)ethical experts might make. The question arises as a consequence of the fact that I have taken inspiration from the third wave in order to develop an account of (bio)ethical expertise. I offer a précis of this work and a brief summary of elective modernism before considering their relation. The view I set out suggests that elective modernism is a political philosophy and that although its use in relation to the use of scientific expertise in political and policy-making process has implications for the role of (bio)ethical expertise it does not, in the final analysis, provide an account that is appropriate for this latter form of specialist expertise. Nevertheless, it is an informative perspective, and one that can help us make sense of the political uses of (bio)ethical expertise

Class Position of Immigrant Workers in a Post-Industrial Economy: The Dutch Case

In this paper, the issue of changing labour-market opportunities and the position of members of minority groups in advanced service economies is addressed, focusing on the Dutch case. We distinguish between two social hierarchies, one of traditional ‘fordist’ occupations and one of post-fordist occupations. Compared to the native Dutch, all immigrant groups are over-represented at the bottom of the labour market, both in the fordist and in the postindustrial hierarchy. Increased immigrant labour-market participation in the 1990s was accompanied by a strong rise in the number of flexible labour contracts. Native Dutch also work more frequently on flexible labour contracts, but not to the same extent as immigrants. The lower occupational level of the Surinamese, Antilleans and other non-Western immigrants employed in post-industrial occupations can be attributed to their low educational level. This is not true, however, for Turks, Moroccans and other non-Western immigrants employed in fordist occupations. Their low occupational level can not be completely explained by their low educational level. The effects of changes in the economic structure differ for ethnic groups, depending on their past employment, their cultural capital and the institutional framework in which they have to operate

Education at the Margins of the Political

This paper argues that the political can respond to that which exceeds it without reducing it to the same, and that public education is one of the most important places where this can happen. I present a rationale for public education to assist that which exceeds the political: singularity, solitude and difference. What I maintain is that the political must welcome this excess, especially through public education, or else it would not be possible to provide the educational context for that which might be of significance to individuals without having socio-political value

From Indymedia to Anonymous: rethinking action and identity in digital cultures

The period following the social mobilizations of 2011 has seen a renewed focus on the place of communication in collective action, linked to the increasing importance of digital communications. Framed in terms of personalized ‘connective action’ or the social morphology of networks, these analyses have criticized previously dominant models of ‘collective identity’, arguing that collective action needs to be understood as ‘digital networking’. These influential approaches have been significantly constructed as a response to models of communication and action evident in the rise of Independent Media Centres in the period following 1999. After considering the rise of the ‘digital networking’ paradigm linked to analyses of Indymedia, this article considers the emergence of the internet-based collaboration known as Anonymous, focusing on its origins on the 4chan manga site and its 2008 campaign against Scientology, and also considers the ‘I am the 99%’ microblog that emerged as part of the Occupy movement. The emergence of Anonymous highlights dimensions of digital culture such as the ephemeral, the importance of memes, an ethic of lulz, the mask and the grotesque. These forms of communication are discussed in the light of dominant attempts to shape digital space in terms of radical transparency, the knowable and the calculable. It is argued that these contrasting approaches may amount to opposing social models of an emerging information society, and that the analysis of contemporary conflicts and mobilizations needs to be alert to novel forms of communicative practice at work in digital cultures today