Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Private Issues in Public Spaces: Regimes of Engagement at a Citizen Conference

  • Published:
Minerva Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The ‘participatory turn’ in science and technology governance has resulted in the growth of initiatives designed to engage lay people in consultation and decision-making on controversial matters. Almost from the start there has been both enthusiasm and serious critique of these exercises, from scholars and activists. The gaps and challenges are well known. In this paper we indicate the limitations of deliberative mechanisms as regards how they cope with familiar forms of people’s engagement with a given matter. We examine how this phenomenon unfolded at the Barcelona Citizen Conference on the Digitalization of Society; a participatory exercise inspired by the model of consensus conferences that took place in 2014 in Barcelona. Our perspective on the topic is inspired by Sociology of Engagements. Focusing on how participants and organizers deal with individual anecdotes, worries and testimonies reported during the conference, the analysis shows how these formats are ignored, externalized, banned and re-formed during deliberations. This phenomenon is seen as supporting a civic-liberal regime of engagement.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aceros, Juan C., Jeannette Pols, and Miquel Domènech. 2015. Where is Grandma? Home telecare, good aging and the domestication of later life. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 93(1): 102–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aceros, Juan C., Maria Teresa L. Cavalcante, and Miquel Domènech. 2016. Envejecer en casa con teleasistencia en España. Un análisis del discurso. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva 21(8): 2413–2422.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andersen, Ida-Elisabeth, and Brigit Jaeger. 1999. Danish participatory models. Science and Public Policy 26(5): 331–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Ashley A., Jason Delborne, and Daniel Lee Kleinman. 2012. Information beyond the Forum: Motivations, Strategies, and Impacts of Citizen Participants Seeking Information during a Consensus Conference. Public Understanding of Science 22(8): 955–970.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Marian. 2002. Bringing Difference into Deliberation? Disabled People, Survivors and Local Governance. Policy & Politics 30(3): 319–331.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Marian, Janet Newman, Andrew Knops, and Helen Sullivan. 2003. Constituting the public in public participation. Public Administration 81(2): 379–399.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. Democracy and Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blok, Anders. 2007. Experts on Public Trial: On Democratizing Expertise through a Danish Consensus Conference. Public Understanding of Science 16(2): 163–182.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bogner, Alexander. 2012. The Paradox of Participation Experiments. Science, Technology, & Human Values 37(5): 506–527.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braun, Kathrin, and Sabine Könninger. 2018. From experiments to ecosystems? Reviewing public participation, scientific governance and the systemic turn. Public Understanding of Science 27(6): 674–689.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe. 2009. Acting in an Uncertain World. An Essay on Technical Democracy. London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheyns, Emmanuelle. 2014. Making ‘Minority Voices’ Heard in Transnational Roundtables: The Role of Local NGOs in Reintroducing Justice and Attachments. Agriculture and Human Values 31(3): 439–453.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chilvers, Jason, and Matthew Kearnes. 2020. Remaking Participation in Science and Democracy. Science, Technology, & Human Values 45(3): 347–380.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chilvers, Jason, Hellen Pallett, and Tom Hargreaves. 2018. Ecologies of participation in socio-technical change: The case of energy system transitions. Energy Research and Social Science 42: 199–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Correa, Gonzalo, and Miquel Domènech. 2012. Hackear la ciencia y la democracia. Decodificación y recodificación de un mecanismo de democracia deliberativa. Eä – Revista de Humanidades Médicas & Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología 4(2): 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delvenne, Pierre, and Hadrien Macq. 2020. Breaking Bad with the Participatory Turn? Accelerating Time and Intensifying Value in Participatory Experiments. Science as Culture 29(2): 245–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Einsiedel, Edna F., and Deborah L. Eastlick. 2000. Consensus Conferences as Deliberative Democracy: A Communications Perspective. Science Communication 21(4): 323–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eranti, Veikko. 2018. Engagements, Grammars, and the Public: From the Liberal Grammar to Individual Interests. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 5(1–2): 42–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fairclough, Norman, Simon Pardoe, and Bronislaw Szerszynski. 2006. Critical Discourse Analysis and Citizenship. In Analysing Citizenship Talk, eds. Heiko Hausendorf and Alfons Bora, 98–123. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felt, Ulrike, and Maximilian Fochler. 2010. Machineries for Making Publics: Inscribing and De-Scribing Publics in Public Engagement. Minerva 48(3): 219–238.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goven, Joanna. 2003. Deploying the Consensus Conference in New Zealand: Democracy and De-Problematization. Public Understanding of Science 12(2003): 423–440.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grundmann, Reiner. 2017. The Problem of Expertise in Knowledge Societies. Minerva 55(1): 25–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hagendijk, Rob, and Alan Irwin. 2006. Public Deliberation and Governance: Engaging with Science and Technology in Contemporary Europe. Minerva 44(2): 167–184.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hausendorf, Heiko, and Alfons Bora (eds.). 2006. Analysing Citizenship Talk: Social Positioning in Political and Legal Decision-Making Processes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horst, Maja, and Alan Irwin. 2010. Nations at Ease with Radical Knowledge: On Consensus, Consensusing and False Consensusness. Social Studies of Science 40(1): 105–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irwin, Alan. 2008. STS Perspectives on Scientific Governance. In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd ed, eds. Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, 583–608. London: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science. Minerva 41(3): 223–244.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jensen, Casper. 2005. Citizen Projects and Consensus-Building at the Danish Board of Technology: On Experiments in Democracy. Acta Sociologica 48(3): 221–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kurath, Monika, and Priska Gisler. 2009. Informing, Involving or Engaging? Science Communication, in the Ages of Atom-, Bio- and Nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science 18(5): 559–573.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laurent, Brice. 2009. Replicating Participatory Devices: The Consensus Conference Confronts Nanotechnology. CSI Working Papers Series 18. Paris.

  • Levidow, Les. 2007. European Public Participation as Risk Governance: Enhancing Democratic Accountability for Agbiotech Policy? East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 1(1): 19–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lezaun, Javier, Noortje Marres, and Manuel Tironi. 2017. Experiments in Participation. In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, eds. Ulrike Felt, Rayvon Fouché, Clark A. Miller, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and Fourth Edition, 195–222. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marres, Noortje. 2012. Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryfe, David M. 2006. Narrative and Deliberation in Small Group Forums. Journal of Applied Communication Research 34(1): 72–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, Nicholas. 2015. Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime. Cultural Anthropology 30(2): 368–393.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thévenot, Laurent. 2007. The Plurality of Cognitive Formats and Engagements: Moving between the Familiar and the Public. European Journal of Social Theory 10(3): 409–423.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thévenot, Laurent. 2009. Governing Life by Standards: A View from Engagements. Social Studies of Science 39(5): 793–813.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thévenot, Laurent. 2013. Making Commonality in the Plural, on the Basis of Binding Engagements. In Social Bonds as Freedom: Revising the Dichotomy of the Universal and the Particular, eds. Paul Dumouchel and Reiko Goto, 82–108. New York: Bergham.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thévenot, Laurent. 2015. Certifying the World: Power Infrastructures and Practices in Economies of Conventional Forms. In Re-Imagining Economic Sociology, eds. Patrik Aspers and Nigel Dodd, 195–223. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tironi, Manuel. 2014. Disastrous Publics: Counter-enactments in Participatory Experiments. Science, Technology, & Human Values 12(4): 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ureta, Sebastián. 2016. A Failed Platform: The Citizen Consensus Conference Travels to Chile. Public Understanding of Science 25(4): 499–511.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynne, Brian. 1989. Sheepfarming after Chernobyl: A Case Study in Communicating Scientific Information. Environment 31(2): 33–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynne, Brian. 2007. Public Participation in Science and Technology: Performing and Obscuring a Political Conceptual Category Mistake. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 1(1): 99–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ylä-Anttila, Tuukka. 2016. Familiarity as a Tool of Populism: Political Appropriation of Shared Experiences and the Case of Suvivirsi. Acta Sociologica 60(4): 342–357.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors want to express their gratitude to the participants of the Barcelona Citizen Conference on the Digitalization of Society, particularly to the 13 people who integrated the lay citizen panel, as well as the researchers who participated in the study: Gonzalo Correa, Paula González, Guillem Palà, Joan Moyà, Kostas Gardounis, María Tereza Leal Cavalcante, Sergio Martínez and Vanessa Gamero. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that have improved the paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Plan Nacional de I+D (ref. CSO2011-29749-C02-01).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela de Trabajo Social, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Carrera 27, calle 9, Bucaramanga, Colombia

    Juan C. Aceros

  2. Department of Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Miquel Domènech

Authors
  1. Juan C. Aceros
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Miquel Domènech
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan C. Aceros.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Aceros, J.C., Domènech, M. Private Issues in Public Spaces: Regimes of Engagement at a Citizen Conference. Minerva 59, 195–215 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09423-4

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09423-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation