Abstract: AbstractMany have observed the decline of scientific authority over the last three decades, for reasons ranging from the toxic legacies of Cold War science (Beck 1992), to the current commercialization and privatization of knowledge production (Mirowski 2011), to the success of social constructivist critique (Latour 2004). Whatever the cause(s), it seems clear that the relationship among academia, the military, and state and economic elites is shifting once again. A new regime of knowledge production is emerging (Pestre 2003) in which academia carries significantly less clout than it has over the previous half-century, and broadly legitimate knowledge claims are increasingly developed outside of the academy. These changes carry obvious implications for the future of academic legitimacy and institutions. The implications for environmental and social justice are less obvious, although perhaps even more important, as the ways in which knowledge is vetted and the questions investigated (or ignored) shift. In this article, I use exploration of the changing relationship between academic and extramural knowledge producers to lay out potential futures for the production of environmental knowledge. I argue that although academics have been notably unsuccessful in challenging private-sector, commercialized environmental knowledge claims, we are increasingly successful in leveraging our remaining authority to enable the democratization of knowledge production to intellectually and politically progressive ends.过去三十年来,由于冷战科学的毒害遗绪(Beck 1992)、当前知识生产的商业化与私有化(Mirowski 2011),以至社会建构论的成功批判(Latour 2004),诸多人已观察到,科学权威因而衰落。不论肇因为何,学术、军事和国家暨经济菁英之间的关係,似乎的确再度有所转变。新的知识生产体制正在浮现(Pestre 2003),其中学术较前半世纪而言,明显拥有更加无足轻重的影响力,而广泛具有正当性的知识主张,亦逐渐在学术圈之外构成。这些转变,为学术正当性及机构的未来,带来了显着的意涵。当知识调查的方式与探问(或忽略)的问题转变之时,该转变对环境与社会公义的意涵,儘管或许是更为重要的,但却较不明显。我将在本文中,运用学术和外界知识生产者之间改变中的关係之探讨,藉此展示环境知识生产的潜在未来。我主张,儘管学术界在挑战私部门、商业化的环境知识主张上相当不成功,但我们仍在採取自身仅有的权威、使知识生产得以民主化以追求知识和政治上的激进目标方面,逐渐取得成功。Son muchas las personas que han observado la declinación de la autoridad científica durante las últimas tres décadas, debido a razones que incluyen desde los tóxicos legados de la ciencia de la Guerra Fría (Beck 1992), la actual comercialización y privatización de la producción de conocimiento (Mirowski 2011), hasta el éxito de la crítica social constructivista (Latour 2004). Sean cuales fueren las causas, parece claro que la relación entre academia, lo militar y el estado y las élites económicas está de nuevo cambiando. Un nuevo régimen de producción de conocimiento está tomando forma (Pestre 2003), en el que la academia comanda significativamente menor influencia de la que ejercía en la anterior media centuria, y ampliamente legítimos reclamos sobre el conocimiento son cada vez más desarrollados fuera de la academia. Estos cambios llevan consigo obvias implicaciones para el futuro de la legitimidad académica y para sus instituciones. Las implicaciones para la justicia ambiental y social son menos obvias, aunque quizás sean mucho más importantes, al propio tiempo que cambian el modo como se evalúa el conocimiento y las preguntas investigadas (o ignoradas). En este artículo utilizo la exploración de la cambiante relación entre los generadores de conocimiento, académicos y extramurales, para entrever futuros potenciales sobre producción de conocimiento ambiental. Argumento que aunque los académicos han tenido poco éxito al retar las reivindicaciones de conocimiento ambiental del sector privado comercializado, sí tenemos cada vez más éxito en hacer valer nuestra restante autoridad para habilitar la democratización de la producción de conocimiento hacia fines intelectual y políticamente progresistas.Key Words: citizen sciencefree-range sciencepolitics of knowledgescience regimes关键词:: 公民科学野放科学知识政治科学体制Palabras clave: ciencia del ciudadanociencia de ámbito librepolíticas de conocimientoregímenes de ciencia AcknowledgmentsThis article has benefited greatly from the thoughtful comments of four anonymous reviewers, carefully considered and prioritized by Bruce Braun. I am also grateful to Gwen Ottinger, Tom Gieryn, and the Indiana University STS Working Group for insightful comments on earlier versions of the text.Notes1 It might be argued that the science regime concept is implicitly too restrictive to describe the current diversification of knowledge production. Pestre's definition, however, seems to me sufficiently open-ended to describe any configuration of power relations between elites and knowledge producers, regardless of where the latter are located.2 The history I offer here is predominantly Western and thus has obvious limitations. As Adas (Citation1989) and others have documented, there were typically far sharper status distinctions between indigenous and Western knowledge producers under colonial governments, although Dove (Citation2011) has noted a more benign aspect to that separation, as mutual ignorance and imagination facilitated trade relations.3 For very helpful reviews of science & technology studies (STS) and geographic scholarship on the emplacedness of science see Henke and Gieryn (Citation2008) and Powell (Citation2007).4 Search terms: amateur science, citizen science, crowdsourcing, indigenous knowledge, indigenous ecological knowledge, indigenous technical knowledge, and local knowledge.5 I have not included regulatory science in this typology because it is publicly funded and thus not typically subject to commercial conflicts of interest (cases of agency capture aside) and because the knowledge claims produced by regulatory science are typically incorporated into the academic literature without reservations. For example, in academic writing on stream restoration, publications by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are cited as authoritative.6 There is a substantial critical literature in anthropology and geography that challenges the epistemological assumptions shown in Figure 1. Authors such as Blaikie (Citation1985), Braun (Citation2002), Brosius (Citation1997), Fairhead and Leach (Citation1996), Mitchell (Citation2002), and Robertson (Citation2006) address the politics of science and the question of whose knowledge claims are awarded social legitimacy. In STS, authors such as Irwin (Citation1995), Wynne (Citation1996), and Collins and Evans (Citation2007) have mounted an epistemological defense of extramural knowledge, arguing that nonacademic experts must have a place at the decision-making table to increase the intellectual robustness of scientific decision making.7 Although Rosgen earned a PhD from the University of East Anglia in 2004, there was no course work involved in that degree, and for most of his career he had only a BS in forestry from California State University, Humboldt.8 Gieryn's concept of boundary work describes efforts to redraw the maps of what constitutes legitimate science to define particular research subjects or approaches as unscientific and therefore illegitimate forms of knowledge production.9 The rise of non-peer-reviewed forms for communicating knowledge claims, such as blogs, and of crowd-funded research seem likely to accelerate these trends.10 See, for example, http://www.notesfromnature.org (last accessed 20 May 2014).11 Data in this paragraph are drawn from personal communications with Sarah Wylie, one of Public Lab's founders, participant observation at a Public Lab workshop, and publiclab.org. There are some interesting parallels between Public Lab and Science Shops; see Leydesdorff (Citation2005) for a useful overview of the latter.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-02-06
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 78
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