Consulting citizens: technologies of elicitation and the mobility of publics

The new centrality of “the public” to the governance of science and technology has been accompanied by a widespread use of public consultation mechanisms designed to elicit from citizens relevant opinions on technoscientific matters. This paper explores the configuration of legitimate constituencies in two such exercises: the UK “GM Nation?” public debate on food biotechnology, and a Swedish “Transparency Forum” on the risks of mobile telephones. We consider the apparently paradoxical combination in these two examples of a tendency to produce static images of the public with a high valuation of mobility—of citizens and their opinions—as the key outcome of deliberation. We discuss the organizers' careful delineation of a distinction between “stakeholders” and the “general public,” and their aversion to any sort of “eventfulness” in public deliberations. Finally, we introduce the classical notion of the “idiot”—the individual who minds exclusively his or her own private affairs— and argue for the need to develop a new vocabulary to evaluate the politics of “listening to the public.

Klimatförändring och emotionshantering:: Institutionalisering av miljörörelsen i Danmark

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The complexity of the issue, along with the breakdown of international negotiations of the UN Climate Change Conference in 2009, raise demands for new forms of mobilization and strategies. In this article, we discuss how strategies of environmental movements to combat climate change can be understood in relation to the ways in which the movement has been institutionalized in a national and global context. We base our analysis on environmental movement actors’ own reflections on their practices and organizational forms as well as previous research describing the history of environmentalism in Denmark. We conclude by discussing the implications in terms of the emotional strategies of the movement and whether climate justice as an issue has affected the strategies of the movement

Grüne Gouvernementalität, Responsibilisierung und Widerstand: wie internationale ökologische NRO die Zukunft der Energieversorgung und der Linderung des Klimawandels sehen

The starting point for this paper is the increasing shift towards green governmentality as a particular mode of governance in the Western world, implying a shift from state-centered regulation to market-based mechanisms. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) in this form of governance. The central question concerns how international ENGOs’ approaches to energy supply and climate mitigation can be understood as aligned with or dissenting from green governmentality. To approach this issue, we analyze the major energy reports of three international ENGOs – i.e. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and WWF – focusing on their issue framings of future energy supply and climate change mitigation. We conclude that these ENGOs’ issue framings are aligned with green governmentality to varying degrees, involving the economization of environmental issues and the responsibilization and moralization of economic actions. These ENGOs also to varying degrees express opposition or resistance to this mode of governance, for example, by opening up the discussion of various aspects of responsibility, including both remedy and culpability.Ovaj se rad temelji na sve jačem zaokretu vlada Zapada prema zelenom guvernmentalitetu kao posebnom obliku upravljanja, pri čemu dolazi do pomaka od državne regulacije prema mehanizmima kojima upravlja tržište. U radu naglasak stavljamo na ulogu koju unutar takvih oblika upravljanja imaju ekološke nevladine organizacije (ekološki NVO-i). Ključno je pitanje priklanjaju li se međunarodni ekološki NVO-i zelenom guvernmentalitetu po pitanjima energetske opskrbe i ublažavanja klimatskih promjena. Kako bismo to istražili, analizirali smo ključne energetske izvještaje triju međunarodnih ekoloških NVO-a: Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace i WWF, pri čemu smo se usredotočili na način na koji shvaćaju budućnost energetske opskrbe i ublažavanja klimatskih promjena. Zaključujemo da je način na koji ovi ekološki NVO-i shvaćaju navedena pitanja u skladu sa zelenim guvernmentalitetom u nekoliko aspekata, među kojima su ekonomizacija ekoloških pitanja, responsibilizacija te moralizacija ekonomskog djelovanja. Međutim, ovi se ekološki NVO-i u određenoj mjeri i razlikuju od zelenog guvernmentaliteta kao, primjerice, po pitanju preuzimanja različitih tipova odgovornosti poput popravljanja štete i preuzimanja krivnje.Diese Arbeit beruht auf einer zunehmend starken Umkehrung westlicher Regierungen in Richtung grüne Gouvernementalität als eine besondere Form der Verwaltung; dabei kommt es zu einer Verschiebung von der staatlichen Regulierung zu den Mechanismen, die vom Markt geregelt werden. In der Arbeit setzen wir den Akzent auf die Rolle, die innerhalb von solchen Verwaltungsformen ökologische Nichtregierungsorganisationen (ökologische NRO) haben. Die Schlüsselfrage ist, ob internationale ökologische NRO sich in puncto Energieversorgung und Linderung des Klimawandels der grünen Gouvernementalität anpassen. Um dies zu prüfen, haben wir die wichtigsten Energieberichte von drei internationalen ökologischen NRO analysiert, uzw. von: Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace und WWF, wobei wir uns auf die Art und Weise konzentriert haben, wie sie die Zukunft der Energieversorgung und der Linderung des Klimawandels sehen. Wir kommen zum Schluss, dass die Art und Weise, wie diese ökologischen NRO die erwähnten Fragen verstehen, in einigen Aspekten mit der grünen Gouvernementalität übereinstimmt, darunter sind die Ökonomisierung ökologischer Fragen, die Responsibilisierung und die Moralisierung der ökonomischen Tätigkeit. Diese ökologischen NRO unterscheiden sich jedoch im bestimmten Ausmaß von der grünen Gouvernementalität, z.B. bei Fragen der Übernahme verschiedener Typen der Verantwortung, wie Schadenbehebung oder Schuldübernahme

What is at stake? Practices of linking actors, issues and scales in environmental politics.

Efforts to include a broader set of actors, knowledges and values in environmental decision-making have been promoted as a key remedy to technocratic decision-making and environmental degradation, and as instrumental for better decisions and democratic empowerment. Yet, such inclusive efforts yield uncertain results and entail various theoretical and practical problems, not least when environmental problems are increasingly complex and transgress political-geographic boundaries. We therefore need to take a step back from the normative presupposition that public involvement will enhance environmental governance with a more agnostic approach to its outcomes in terms of legitimate actors and issues: How are alliances created between issues and actors in relation to specific problems? How are stakes recognized as legitimate and tied to specific groups of actors and scales? What is the relation between governments’ inclusive approaches and visions of socio-technical progress and alternative socio-technical imaginaries of the future? This paper will discuss the contributions in this special issue in relation to these questions. The examples brought up by the authors can all be seen as practices in which legitimate participants and stakes are made real and with various scaling effects and possible futures as a result

Samverkan och deltagande i vattenråd och vattenförvaltning

Syftet med denna rapport är att sammanställa forskning och information om deltagande i vattenråd, kustvattenråd och vattenförvaltning. Rapporten omfattar en beskrivning och analys av befintligt kunskapsläge: Vilken information och forskning finns om former för deltagande och samverkan som genomförs inom vattenförvaltning i Sverige? Vilka aktörer inkluderas i deltagande och samverkan? Vilka metoder eller ansatser har varit användbara och för vilka syften?    Rapporten baseras på publicerade studier, rapporter samt övrigt tillgängligt material från myndigheter och vattenråd. Rapporten avslutas med en sammanfattning av kunskapsläget, en bristanalys som identifierar kunskapsluckor samt en sammanfattande diskussion.Water Co-Governance for Sustainable Ecosystems (förkortas WaterCoG

Representationer av tid : En studie av Power Pointbilder och slutförvar av kärnavfall

The aim of this report is to analyse representations of time in a particular social setting: how the nuclear waste issue is presented in the PowerPoint slides that the Swedish Nuclear Waste Management Company (SKB) show at its information and consultation meetings. We have chosen to see ‘time’ and ‘expressions of time dimensions’ as a way of framing the nuclear waste issue. The way in which nuclear waste is discussed in relation to time both enable and limit discussions about possible futures. In this study we ask the following research questions: how is time represented in the PowerPoint slides? In what way is time presented in relation to risk and safety? In what way is time presented in relation to environmental impact? Our empirical material consists of all PowerPoint slides shown at SKB’s information and consultation meetings. We use the material that is available at SKB’s website between 2003 and 2008. The material consists of around 1500 slides. In addition we have conducted participant observations at ten of these meetings between 2005 and 2008. We conclude that time is visualised in different forms depending on what it is that is shown: safety, risk or environmental impact. We could identify a variety of visualisations, for example time lines, and tables with dates in connection to figures of pollution levels. Taken together they represent different stories about the future as well as about the past. SKB use certain time perspectives to motivate that their suggested method for a nuclear waste disposal is reasonable and possible to implement while other time perspectives are shown in relation to the potential development of society’s capacity to manage the waste and the future development of transports and the impact related to this, for example

See for yourself! : Enrolling the public in nuclear waste management

This paper explores exhibitions of nuclear waste facilities and their use as a tool for enrolling the public in the Swedish nuclear waste programme. We argue that the planning process for the final disposal of nuclear waste has dual purposes. On one hand, the consultation meetings provide opportunities for dialogue among a broader set of actors – at least to some extent. The goal of the exhibitions, on the other hand, is to highlight the state of nuclear waste management today and the future goals for nuclear waste. Based on our observations of study visits to existing nuclear waste facilities and exhibitions of existing and planned facilities, we analyse the framing of the nuclear waste issue, how experiences are structured, and the type of visitor that is expected to attend the exhibits. The framing of nuclear waste management in the exhibitions should not be seen as separate from the public consultations, but as a critical tool for generating public interest in nuclear waste. Citizens need to be informed about the issue in order to become involved. The fact that the exhibitions are characterised by a ‘see for yourself’ logic, however, can be contrary to the aims of stimulating a dialogue on the future environmental impact