This paper argues that it is time for public understanding of science to develop a critical inventory of the forms, formats and methods of public participation and their respective implications and ambiguities. It highlights the need for analysing not only the limitations and deficiencies of participatory arrangements but also their constructive dimension, in particular the construction of the subject of participation. Looking into participatory governance arrangements in the issue area of genetic testing in Germany and the UK the paper presents a typology of formats according to the way the respective public is constructed and identifies four major constructions of publics: the general public, the pure public, the affected public and the partisan public. Each of these enables certain speaking positions while foreclosing others. The study shows that the main purposes of participatory arrangements in this issue area are knowledge production and education rather than political deliberation and decision-making.

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“… a certain amount of engineering involved”: Constructing the public in participatory governance arrangements

Over the past few decades, significant advances have been made in public engagement with, and the democratization of, science and technology. Despite notable successes, such developments have often...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0162243919850885

Remaking Participation in Science and Democracy

Neuroscience is viewed by a range of actors and institutions as a powerful means of creating new knowledge about our selves and societies. This article documents the shifts in expertise and identities potentially being propelled by neuroscientific research. It details the framing and effects of neuroscience within several social domains, including education and mental health, discussing some of the intellectual and professional projects it has animated therein (such as neuroethics). The analysis attends to the cultural logics by which the brain is sometimes made salient in society; simultaneously, it points towards some of parameters of the territory within which the social life of the brain plays out. Instances of societal resistance and agnosticism are discussed, which may render problematic sociological research on neuroscience in society that assumes the universal import of neuroscientific knowledge (as either an object of celebration or critique). This article concludes with reflections on how sociotechnical novelty is produced and ascribed, and the implications of this.

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The social life of the brain: Neuroscience in society

1. Rationalizing Politics The Rise of Social Regulation Science and Policymaking Expertise and Trust The Contingency of Knowledge The Reform Debate An Alternative Approach 2. Flawed Decisions Nitrites 2,4,5-T Love Canal Estimates of Occupational Cancer The Technocratic Response A Critical Counterpoint 3. Science for the People The Rationale for Public Science The "New" Expert Agency Scientific Advice and Open Government Judicial Review of Science Policy The Weakening of the Paradigm 4. Peer Review and Regulatory Science The Traditions of Peer Review Peer Review in Practice Instructive Failures Regulatory Science: Content and Context Implications for Regulatory Peer Review 5. EPA and the Science Advisory Board Early Political Challenges A New Cooperation Boundary Exercises SAB's Impact on Policy Conclusion 6. The Science and Policy of Clean Air CASAC and the NAAQS Process Science and Standards Redefining CASAC's Role The Carbon Monoxide Controversy CASAC's Effectiveness: Bridging Science and Policy 7. Advisers as Adversaries The Scientific Advisory Panel Implementing the Impossible Ethylene Dibromide Dicofol Alar A Fragmentation of Authority 8. FDA's Advisory Network The Scientific Evaluation of Drugs Expertise and Food Safety Advice and Decision 9. Coping with New Knowledge The Quest for Principled Risk Assessment Formaldehyde: An Uncertain Carcinogen Conclusion 10. Technocracy Revisited A Public-Private Partnership for Science Risk Assessment without Politics The Public Board of Inquiry Wider Applications 11. The Political Function of Good Science From Advice to Policy Acceptable Risk Scientific Advice as Legitimation: Negotiation and Boundary Work Defining "Good Science" Normative Implications Conclusion Notes Index

The fifth branch. Science advisers as policymakers

health administration and legislation between 1770 and 1870, drawing attention simultaneously to the interests of both the state and the nascent medical profession in this area. As for the state, he sees an interest in health care and control with the aim of increasing economic, political, and military power in the tradition of Enlightenment cameralism. As for the doctors, he develops the thesis that their involvement in sanitary reform was a strategy to acquire state-sanctioned professional autonomy and the status of sole experts in questions of health. Accordingly, several issues relevant to medical professionalization are highlighted: the competition by non-academic healers (so-called Kurpffuscherei); the problem of fraudulent advertising; the striving for abolition of the dual educational system for surgeons and medical doctors, and the creation of a unified profession, which was eventually achieved with a ministerial decree in 1872 (twenty years later than in Prussia). A link between this so-called \"surgeons question\" (Chirurgenfrage) and Austrian sanitary reform is documented by efforts of organized doctors in the late 1860s to exclude surgeons from admission to public health and forensic services. Burg's central thesis of a co-operation between the state and the medical profession each to its own benefit-is substantiated from relevant primary sources, such as manuals for public health and medical administration, publications on sanitary reform and policies of doctors' societies, and articles from the early medical periodicals in Austria. His study also provides valuable insights into the responsibilities of Austrian public health officers and sanitary committees at different administrative levels, which extended to general hygiene, action in epidemic and epizootic diseases, and control of health personnel and hospitals. It is therefore a useful contribution both to the historiography of medical professionalization and of public health.

Molecular politics: developing American and British regulatory policy for genetic engineering, 1972–1982.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, we can observe the emergence and proliferation of different processes and institutions of ethical debate throughout Europe and the Western world; these processes and institutions are supposed to inform and improve opinion-building and decision-making processes in the policy field of the biosciences and especially biomedicine. National boards of ethics, ethics commissions, citizen's consultations or conferences have been established throughout; they all have in common the task to debate the ethical aspects of biomedical research and practice, and inform politics as well as the public about the ways of dealing with biomedicine in ‘ethically’ justified ways. Conflicts in the field of biomedicine have increasingly become framed in terms of ethics, and policy makers have to explain and defend their decisions with reference to ethics. The language of ethics has become the major medium for the debate about biomedical issues. This development is accompanied by the emergence of a new cast of professionals: the ‘ethics expert’, who becomes a member of a commission or an advisor to governments or organisations. Bioscientific practice and development seem to be inevitably ethical issues. Consequentially, controversies or conflicts appear to be solved best through ethical deliberations. One can justly speak of an ethics regime
1 that surrounds, stimulates and penetrates discourses, institutions and practices concerning conflicts and policy making in the issue area of biomedicine.

“… But you Cannot Influence the Direction of your Thinking”: Guiding Self-Government in Bioethics Policy Discourse

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Genealogie der Ethikpolitik : Nationale Ethikkomitees als neue Regierungstechnologie. Das Beispiel Frankreichs

What would be the reactions of the public if nanotechnologies do not contribute to the economic growth and societal well-being? Similar questions have led philosophers, cultural and social scientists to explore the ethical and societal implications of nanotechnologies. They often call for more realistic expectations with regard to the promotion of nanotechnologies in society. If governments, firms and scientists have taken this argument into account, they still emphasise that nothing should hinder the nanotechnological innovation process. How would citizens react to such a promotional strategy of governments, firms, scientists? To address this question, we have conducted a comparative survey in March and December 2008 among people living in the cities of Grenoble (France), and Hamburg (Germany). Our results show that French and German interviewees react with scepticism towards the promotion of nanotechnologies in society. Significantly different motivations legitimise their scepticism, as well as their different image of nanotechnologies.

Sabine Könninger

Papers

“… But you Cannot Influence the Direction of your Thinking”: Guiding Self-Government in Bioethics Policy Discourse

Genealogie der Ethikpolitik : Nationale Ethikkomitees als neue Regierungstechnologie. Das Beispiel Frankreichs

Public reactions to the promotion of nanotechnologies in society