Fischer Frank Fischer

Citizens, Experts, and the Environment (eBook, PDF)

The Politics of Local Knowledge

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The tension between professional expertise and democratic governance has become increasingly significant in Western politics. Environmental politics in particular is a hotbed for citizens who actively challenge the imposition of expert theories that ignore forms of local knowledge that can help to relate technical facts to social values.Where information ideologues see the modern increase in information as capable of making everyone smarter, others see the emergence of a society divided between those with and those without knowledge. Suggesting realistic strategies to bridge this divide, Fischer calls for meaningful nonexpert involvement in policymaking and shows how the deliberations of ordinary citizens can help solve complex social and environmental problems by contributing local contextual knowledge to the professionals' expertise. While incorporating theoretical critiques of positivism and methodology, he also offers hard evidence to demonstrate that the ordinary citizen is capable of a great deal more participation than is generally recognized. Popular epidemiology in the United States, the Danish consensus conference, and participatory resource mapping in India serve as examples of the type of inquiry he proposes, showing how the local knowledge of citizens is invaluable to policy formation. In his conclusion Fischer examines the implications of the approach for participatory democracy and the democratization of contemporary deliberative structures.This study will interest political scientists, public policy practitioners, sociologists, scientists, environmentalists, political activists, urban planners, and public administrators along with those interested in understanding the relationship between democracy and science in a modern technological society.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, B, BG, CY, CZ, D, DK, EW, E, FIN, F, GR, HR, H, IRL, I, LT, L, LR, M, NL, PL, P, R, S, SLO, SK ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Seitenzahl: 351
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. Dezember 2000
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780822380283
• Artikelnr.: 54818715

Autorenporträt

Frank Fischer is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in Newark and member of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy in New Brunswick. He is the author of Evaluating Public Policy and Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise, among other books, and has coedited a number more, including The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, also published by Duke University Press, and Living with Nature: Environmental Politics and Cultural Discourse.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface ix
Part I. Citizens and Experts in the Risk Society 1
1. Democratic Prospects in an Age of Expertise: Confronting the
Technocratic Challenge 5
2. Professional Knowledge and Citizen Participation: Rethinking Expertise
29
3. Environmental Crisis and the Technocratic Challenge: Expertise in the
Risk Society 47
4. The Return of the Particular: Scientific Inquiry and Local Knowledge in
Postpositivist Perspective 68
Part II. Environmental Politics in the Public Sphere: Technical versus
Cultural Rationality 87
5. Science and Politics in Environmental Regulation: The Politicization of
Expertise 89
6. Confronting Experts in the Public Sphere: The Environmental Movement as
Cultural Politics 109
7. Not in My Backyard: Risk Assessment and the Politics of Cultural
Rationality 124
Part III. Local Knowledge and Participatory Inquiry: Methodological
Practices for Political Empowerment 143
8. Citizens as Local Experts: Popular Epidemiology and Participatory
Resource Mapping 147
9. Community Inquiry and Local Knowledge: The Political and Methodological
Foundations of Participatory Research 170
10. Ordinary Local Knowledge: From Potato Farming to Environmental
Protection 193
Part IV. Discursive Institutions and Policy Epistemics 219
11. Discursive Institutions for Environmental Policy Making: Participatory
Inquiry as Civic Discovery 221
12. The Environments of Argument: Deliberative Practices and Policy
Epistemics 242
Appendixes 263
Notes 279
References 299
Index 329