Participation in real-world laboratories in a new light?! Closing the gap between co-creative and deliberative participation

Marco Sonnberger,Doris Lindner

doi:10.14512/rur.27

Abstract

Sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories involve the co-design and co-creation of knowledge, based on a transdisciplinary cooperation between actors from different social worlds – academia, the administration, business, civil society – each endowed with specific interests, resources and worldviews. Sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories claim to be a means of inclusive participation in the co-creative shaping of solutions for socioecological issues and exploring pathways to sustainability. In the literature dealing with sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories, participation is thus mainly understood as active involvement by civil society, change agents and citizens in processes of experimentation and the implementation of solutions. We call this co-creative participation. However, participation in talk-based opinion formation and decision-making processes – we call this deliberative participation – is hardly discussed in the respective literature. In this paper, we argue that co-creative and deliberative participation are two forms of participation which can be conceptualized differently but which are both relevant for successful experimentation in sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories and are mainly intertwined in practice. We propose an ideal-typical conceptual framework for participation in sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories that combines co-creative and deliberative participation. The aim is to contribute to a systematization of, and rationale for, different forms of participation in real-world laboratories.

Highlights

Wicked problems (Rittel/Webber 1973) such as environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change, which are, inter alia, characterized by ambiguity, complexity and deep uncertainty, call for a form of knowledge production which goes beyond pure disciplinary research (Brown/Harris/Russell 2010; Pohl/Truffer/Hirsch Hadorn 2017)
In order to – as far as possible – reflexively deal with and potentially circumnavigate potential pitfalls of participation, it is worthwhile to consider the well-established body of research on deliberative participation, which is concerned with the legitimacy of participation processes and outcomes
Based on our practical experiences in the ‘Real-world Laboratory for Sustainable Mobility Culture’4, we propose a conceptual framework for participation in sustainability-oriented real-world laboratories that pays equal attention to deliberative and co-creative elements of participation and offers a systemic perspective on participation in real-world laboratories

Summary

Introduction

Wicked problems (Rittel/Webber 1973) such as environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change, which are, inter alia, characterized by ambiguity, complexity and deep uncertainty, call for a form of knowledge production which goes beyond pure disciplinary research (Brown/Harris/Russell 2010; Pohl/Truffer/Hirsch Hadorn 2017). Since the involvement of non-academic actors in experimentation processes is a central feature of real-world laboratories, close attention has to be paid to the way such actors are allowed to participate in decision-making processes concerning the implementation of real-world experiments, in order to support a sense of fairness. These conclusions illustrate the need to gain a deeper conceptual understanding of the facets of participation in real-world laboratories. We turn to the concept of deliberation, since deliberation is regarded as a more fruitful approach for establishing legitimacy in participation processes

Co-creative participation and issues of legitimacy

Deliberative participation

Conclusions