Postmodern? No, simply amodern! Steps towards an anthropology of science

Transitions to sustainability require not only structural policy reforms, but a rethinking of how policy-relevant expertise is produced. Scholars of Science and Technology Studies have used the concept of boundary work to examine how governments mobilize experts to establish epistemic and political authority for public policies. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which boundary work affects the scope of policy options to advance sustainability transitions, notably in the context of sociotechnical lock-in of dominant technologies. This article analyzes French pesticide regulation on alternatives to glyphosate in agriculture to reveal the governance implications of the construction of expertise. It examines how state actors and scientific experts performed cognitive and sociopolitical boundary work to affect both the framing of government-commissioned scientific reports and the institutions and policy instruments through which the government addressed the glyphosate problem. The article analyzes the factors that shaped the development of a novel regulatory instrument which restricts the use of glyphosate based on the availability and costs of alternatives, rather than on health or environmental risks alone. This process limited the framing of glyphosate alternatives to practices considered economically and practically feasible by selected experts and excluded more systemic alternatives from policy debate and instrumentation. The adoption of this regulatory instrument reflects specific institutional contexts, power differentials between governmental ministries, and the hidden political influence of a powerful agricultural sector and agrochemical industry. This article shows how expertise design plays a key role in defining the scope of policy options and determining allocations of political power.

Democratic societies face the challenge of effecting sustainability transformations, allowing for variously imagined futures and underpinned by a diversity of practices of knowledge production and action. This article investigates how political imagination of sustainable futures informs the ways knowledge and action are understood and linked in sustainability and research policy, and what potential implications this has for democratic transformative change. Empirically, the article analyses the overarching sustainability and research policies in Sweden, focusing on the central documents produced by the government and public research financiers. The analysis shows parallels between the conceptualisations of sustainability and knowledge-action, characterised by linearity, instrumentalisation of knowledge and circumscription of power-sharing spaces for knowledge creation against the background of endorsement of collaborations between academia and society. Such conceptualisations, apart from sending mixed signals to sustainability researchers and practitioners, potentially enable knowledge and action processes driven by impact, competitiveness and atomisation, precluding the exercise of the intrinsic value of democratic knowledge and action practices necessary for reflexive governance of transformations towards sustainability.

The circular bioeconomy is a highly scrutinized concept in Finland and internationally, with a high degree of polarization regarding forest utilization rates and distrust between certain actors. This offers an interesting case for an exploratory analysis of issues associated with knowledge co-production. Knowledge co-production entails the integration of different knowledge types and collaboration across multiple societal actors with potentially conflicting viewpoints and agendas. We interviewed key organizations operating at the nexus of science and policy in the processes of knowledge co-production regarding the circular bioeconomy in Finland, including representatives from ministries, universities, research institutes, innovation promoters, and interest organizations. Using qualitative content analysis, we assessed the actors' tacit knowledge and perceptions regarding 1) their role in knowledge co-production across knowledge types; 2) elements enabling knowledge co-production; and 3) tensions and needs/opportunities of knowledge co-production. To frame our data collection and analysis, we particularly draw from recent sustainability science literature on knowledge types in co-production. The findings reveal that the three main knowledge types – lay, expert, and scientific – are acknowledged by all actors, but are dealt with, to different extents, according to the roles played by different actors in the process of knowledge generation. Collaboration was reported to be largely project-oriented, enabled by funding, similar mindsets, and organizational/individual networks. Tensions included conflicting ideological positions held by various actors in the circular bioeconomy, mainly hampering the co-production of normative/target knowledge; funding-induced gaps and risks in inter-actor cooperation, mainly affecting process/system knowledge of the circular bioeconomy; and gaps and difficulties in cross-sectoral and cross-discipline engagement, mainly affecting predictive/transformative knowledge. Knowledge synthesis, policy-supporting knowledge, and transformative knowledge were perceived by several interviewees to be important avenues towards improving the sustainability potential of the Finnish forest sector.

This research paper explores the role of citizen and community engagement in climate mitigation projects, particularly related to climate infrastructure development in the Irish context. A change is needed with relation to the way in which institutions interact with community groups and citizens in order to effectively go about implementing the necessary measures to expedite the transition to a low-carbon energy system. Within this research we implement a co-production approach to the investigation of community engagement practices within public bodies, moving from framings centred on social acceptance towards social acceptability. The 2020 OECD report stressed the importance of co-production in transdisciplinary approaches to sustainable development, climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals. We develop a range of good practice guidelines for community engagement that seek to connect, build and improve current mitigation measures and on from this suggest policy measures for their implementation. The paper sets the foundations for developing a co-production framework for climate related infrastructure developments between citizens, communities and public bodies.

Co-production is one of the most important ideas in the theory and practice of knowledge and governance for global sustainability, including ecology and biodiversity conservation. A core challenge confronting the application of co-production has been confusion over differences in definition and practice across several disciplinary traditions, including sustainability science, public administration, and science and technology studies. In this paper, we review the theoretical foundations of these disciplinary traditions and how each has applied co-production. We suggest, at the theoretical level, the differences across disciplines are, in fact, more apparent than real. We identify several theoretical convergences that allow us to synthesize a strong conceptual foundation for those seeking to design and implement co-production work in programs of global sustainability research and policy.