Showing papers by "Brian Wynne published in 1992"

Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science:

Abstract: This paper draws general insights into the public reception of scientific knowledge from a case study of Cumbrian sheep farmers' responses to scientific advice about the restrictions introduced after the Chernobyl radioactive fallout. The analysis identifies several substantive factors which influence the credibility of scientific communication. Starting from the now-accepted point that public uptake of science depends primarily upon the trust and credibility public groups are prepared to invest in scientific institutions and representatives, the paper observes that these are contingent upon the social relationships and identities which people feel to be affected by scientific knowledge, which never comes free of social interests or implications. The case study shows laypeople capable of extensive informal reflection upon their social relationships towards scientific experts, and on the epistemological status of their own `local' knowledge in relation to `outside' knowledge. Public uptake of science might...

Uncertainty and environmental learning: reconceiving science and policy in the preventive paradigm.

Abstract: for current assumptions about scientific knowledge and environmental policy raised by the preventive approach and the associated Precautionary Principle. He offers a critical examination of approaches to characterizing different kinds of uncertainty in policy knowledge, especially in relation to decision making upstream from environmental effects. Via the key dimension of unrecognized indeterminacy in scientific knowledge, the author argues that shifting the normative principles applied to policy use of science is not merely an external shift in relation to the same body of ‘natural’ knowledge, but also involves the possible reshaping of the ‘natural’ knowledge itself.

Representing Policy Constructions and Interests in SSK

Abstract: Kleinman's exchange with Cambrosio, Limoges and Pronovost (CLP) over their paper, 'Representing Biotechnology',' can be seen as another rehash of the debate between discourse-focused and interests-based explanations in social studies of science and technology. CLP berate Kleinman for assuming that their goal was explanation of how Quebec's policy for biotechnology came into being, rather than an account of the contingent nature of the construction of that policy. They suggest that their aim was not to give a causal explanation, which would be naive in their view, but to provide the resources for a different kind of (eventual) explanation. What they did not clarify is the fundamental difference between their notion of explanation and that of Kleinman; in particular, theirs embodies a far greater recognition of the essential contingency, or indeterminacy, in the construction of'natural' or 'rational' policy commitments. In defending their discourseor representations-based analytical approach, CLP are surely right to deny that they were ever naive enough to claim that representations unilinearly 'cause' policies, any more than they cause anything else. However, their self-defensive concern does tend to reduce into a false unilinear causation the processes of mutual constitution between representations and political actors (interests, or 'sides') to which they are otherwise fully sensitive. Thus, for example, for CLP, the positing and bounding of sides (in policy negotiations or conflicts) 'are consequences, not causes, of representational practices in an agonistic field'.2 Although they rightly criticize Kleinman's gratuitous assumption of 'sides' with 'winners' and 'losers', and his presumption that these