Public Engagement Process Research Articles

Community Engagement to Facilitate, Legitimize and Accelerate the Advancement of Nanotechnologies in Australia

There are increasing calls internationally for the development of regulation and policies related to the rapidly growing nanotechnologies sector. As part of the process of policy formation, it is widely accepted that deliberative community engagement processes should be included, enabling publics to have a say about nanotechnologies, expressing their hopes and fears, issues and concerns, and that these will be considered as part of the policy process. The Australian Federal and State governments have demonstrated a commitment to these ideals, undertaking a number of public engagement activities in recent years. However, despite promises that these community engagement activities will enable policy makers to identify complex and contested community attitudes, and that these will be included as part of the policy making process, a closer look at Australia’s engagement activities reveals something quite different. Through an analysis of a number of Australia’s nano-engagement activities, this paper demonstrates the limits of public engagement related to the development of nanotechnology related policies and regulation in Australia. Our analysis reveals the extent to which industry interests have captured policy makers and regulators, dissenting voices have been excluded from engagement processes, and engagement processes have not connected with actual policy making activities. Reflecting on these limits, this paper concludes with recommendations for improving public engagement processes related to nanotechnologies in Australia.

Publics performing publics: of PiGs, PiPs and politics

This theoretical paper considers the ways in which the “publics” of public understanding of science and public engagement with science perform themselves not only in relation to science knowledge and scientific institutions, but also in relation to other publics. Specifically, through a survey of the literature, there is an exploration of the processes of differentiation and identification amongst publics. Two broad rhetorical categories of public are identified: Publics-in-General (PiGs) and Publics-in-Particular (PiPs). The means by which they are variously differentiated, and the performative uses to which these can be put are considered. Implications for both the implementation of public engagement processes, and the critique of such engagement, are discussed.

Towards more confidence: about the roles of social scientists in participatory policy making

From June 26 to 27, the workshop “Ironists, Reformers, or Rebels? The Role of the Social Sciences in Participatory Policy Making” took place at the Collegium Helveticum of the UZH/ETH in Zurich. The organisers’ motivation was the apparently missing involvement of social scientists in public engagement processes. This impression persists because, while social scientists often observe public debates or develop participatory methods for public policy-making, they rarely take part in those processes themselves. A closer look at ethics commissions, expert committees or public hearings concerned with science and technology issues shows natural scientists, physicians, lawyers and the occasional philosopher. Sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists, on the other hand, are often not involved. Because of this imbalance, the organisers’ aim was to bring together scholars and researchers from different areas of the social sciences to consider the role of their disciplines in public policy making. This article will focus on some of the ideas about specific roles of social scientists in participatory policy-making, discussed at the workshop, and their implications and give a commentary on some future prospects of the social sciences.

Information Into Action: Biodiversity Data Outreach and Municipal Land Conservation

Problem: Technical specialists in environmental planning rely on science to suggest effective conservation strategies. The assumption that rational technical information will be readily turned into action, however, is often not accomplished in practice. Purpose: In this article, we present a study of Maine's Beginning with Habitat (BwH) program, a statewide collaborative multiagency effort that distributes customized ecological information directly to local governments who must develop state-mandated comprehensive plans. The goal is to spur the implementation of land use policies that more effectively protect biodiversity. We first review the changing conception of how technical information from experts comes to influence decisions on science-intensive green planning issues. We then test that recent thinking with an empirical study examining what conditions have encouraged local governments to use the BwH ecological information to enact new land conservation tools. Methods: We collected data on the local government planning and implementation response to the BwH program in a 2004 survey of all participating Maine towns and cities. Results and conclusions: The investigation supports conceptual arguments by Innes and others that getting stakeholders to use planning and environmental management information is critical to overcoming the limitations of the conventional rational planning model. The likelihood that a community will act on the new science-based information depends on its wealth and urbanization pressures, but even more significantly on the extent to which different interests are engaged in using the information. We were surprised to find less implementation when local planning staff led the use of the technical information, absent wider public engagement. Takeaway for practice: When addressing local ecological land use planning issues effectively depends on using technical information, scientists, specialists, and advocates should encourage stakeholder access to such information and support them in using it to make decisions. Research on the planning process itself should aim to provide technical specialists evidence-based models of effective public engagement processes that make information usable. Research support: This work was partially supported by the Maine Coastal Program in the Maine State Planning Office, Executive Department.

Social learning from public engagement: dreaming the impossible?

Learning that transcends participation processes is critical if public engagement is to translate into a legacy of enhanced environmental citizenship. However, a lack of empirical evidence has limited discussion to date to largely ‘aspirational’ claims. This paper offers the first rigorous examination of whether public participation does generate beyond-process social learning. Initially we review the literature on public participation and environmental citizenship to identify the key dimensions of social learning. We then re-visit a well-worked case study of an innovative public engagement process on the Hampshire waste strategy from the 1990s. Approximately one third of the original participants have been interviewed to identify whether and how the experience had a lasting effect on them. Key methodological difficulties are discussed, not least the analytical difficulties of attributing learning to a process that happened ten years previously. However, we argue that there is evidence that both instrumental and communicative learning have taken place, and conclude by identifying key areas that require further research.

Nanotechnology and the public interest: Repeating the mistakes of GM foods?

There is a widespread perception that the public backlash against Genetically Modified (GM) food "effectively stalled a new industry". In this context, much has been made of the 'lessons' that governments and the burgeoning nanotechnology industry must learn from the experience of GM food. These include the importance of ensuring that the public has confidence in risk governance, that social and ethical issues are addressed alongside basic issues of safety, that applications are seen to be socially useful, and that opportunity for a two-way dialogue between the public and decision makers is established early in nanotechnology's development. Public engagement processes have identified that these issues are also important in relation to nanotechnology. And yet, despite the apparent importance attached to 'getting it right' this time around, there is a clear inconsistency between the 'lessons learnt' and the actions taken by government and industry.

Learning about learning: lessons from public engagement and deliberation on urban river restoration

This paper provides a new discussion of how people learn through deliberative processes, drawing upon empirical analysis of a novel public engagement process for urban river restoration. Such critical evaluation is rare and yet will be crucial to both theoretical development and learning about engagement practice, not least in a policy area subject to strong regulatory drivers for public participation. The analysis supports two important learning mechanisms – the use of ‘gatekeepers’ of knowledge, interests and values, and the privileging of narrative. It provides new evidence of instrumental and communicative learning about shared priorities and criteria for effective river restoration that evolved through the deliberative process and directly informed the restoration scheme. It is important to question whether and how such site or context‐specific learning might inform other restoration schemes. Finally, the paper questions the often ignored issue of expert learning, not least the issue of the link between individual and organizational learning.

Public Meetings About Suspected Cancer Clusters: The Impact of Voice, Interactional Justice, and Risk Perception on Attendees' Attitudes in Six Communities

Holding a public meeting is a frequent method of communicating with community residents during official investigations into possible cancer clusters; however, there has been little formal research into the effectiveness of this method of health communication. This article presents research examining the influence of public meetings held during ongoing cancer cluster investigations in six U.S. communities. Drawing on social psychological theories of organizational justice, it examines the degree to which three specific elements of justice, including having a voice in the process, receiving fair interactional treatment, and facing equal risk of loss (i.e., cancer), influenced five outcome variables: meeting satisfaction, community connectedness, willingness to accept meeting outcomes or recommendations, willingness to attend future public meetings, and concern about the potential cancer cluster. The analysis of data collected from meeting attendees who responded to the mailed survey (N = 165) confirms a strong role for justice concerns in public meeting evaluations. In particular, perceptions of voice and interactional treatment had consistently large effects on the outcome variables, suggesting that managing a fair public engagement process can contribute to positive civic outcomes even during periods of heightened community concern about area cancer rates.

Science communication in transition: genomics hype, public engagement, education and commercialization pressures

This essay reports on the final session of a 2-day workshop entitled 'Genetic Diversity and Science Communication', hosted by the CIHR Institute of Genetics in Toronto, April 2006. The first speaker, Timothy Caulfield, introduced the intersecting communities that promulgate a 'cycle of hype' of the timelines and expected outcomes of the Human Genome Project (HGP): scientists, the media and the public. Other actors also contribute to the overall hype, the social science and humanities communities, industry and politicians. There currently appears to be an abatement of the overblown rhetoric of the HGP. As pointed out by the second speaker, Sharon Kardia, there is broad recognition that most phenotypic traits, including disease susceptibility are multi-factorial. That said, George Davey-Smith reminded us that some direct genotype-phenotype associations may be useful for public health issues. The Mendelian randomization approach hopes to revitalize the discipline of epidemiology by strengthening causal influences about environmentally modifiable risk factors. A more realistic informational environment paves the way for greater public engagement in science policy. Two such initiatives were presented by Kardia and Jason Robert, and Peter Finegold emphasized that science education and professional development for science teachers are important components of later public engagement in science issues. However, pressures on public research institutions to commercialize and seek industry funding may have negative impacts in both encouraging scientists to inappropriately hype research and on diminishing public trust in the scientific enterprise. The latter may have a significant effect on public engagement processes, such as those proposed by Robert and Kardia.

The Sacred and the Profane: Biotechnology, Rationality, and Public Debate

This paper explores the forms of argumentation employed by participants in a recent public engagement process in the United Kingdom around new technologies for organ transplantation, with specific reference to xenotransplantation and stem-cell research. Two forms of reasoning recur throughout participants' deliberations which challenge specialist framing of this issue. First, an often scatological humour and sense of the profane are evident in the ways in which participants discuss the bodily transformations that such technologies demand. Second, a sense of the sacred, in which new biotechnologies are viewed as against nature or in which commercial companies are ‘playing god’, is a repetitive and well-recognised concern. Such forms of reasoning are frequently dismissed by policymakers as ‘uninformed gut reactions’. Yet they also form a significant part of the repertoire of scientists themselves as they proclaim the hope of new medical breakthroughs, or seek to reconstruct ideas of the body to facilitate new biotechnological transformations. Through questioning of assumptions in Habermas's notion of discourse ethics, and exploring the importance of hybridity and corporeality as concepts in ethical thinking, the author suggests that, far from being ill-formed opinions, such reasonings perform an important function for thinking through the ontological significance of the corporealisation of these proposed new forms of human and animal bodies.

Rural Health Care in the U.K.: A Rapidly Changing Scene

Delivery of medical, nursing, and other health-related services in remote and rural areas is challenging. Historically, in the U.K., rural health care delivery has focused on medically qualified general practitioners or family physicians providing primary care services, together with isolated small hospitals providing limited specialist services such as surgery, obstetrics, and internal medicine. However, three recent developments in Europe and the U.K. will change these traditional practices. These are implementation of the European Working Time Directive, constraints related to "clinical governance", and a new contract for general medical practitioners. Delivery of services in rural areas currently faces potential conflict between national standard setters and local practicalities, and re-design of services is required. Public engagement with redesign is essential, but the outcome may be dependent on the methods used. Evaluation of new services is essential. This article gives brief examples of: two public engagement processes (a survey and a discrete choice experiment), two redesign experiments related to screening for aortic aneurysm and consultant-supported care in an island hospital, and some issues concerning the use of new technologies (telemedicine and telephone triage) in remote communities. Future implications are discussed.