Science and Citizens: Global and Local Voices

This IDS Policy Briefing argues that public engagement in scientific debates and policy processes is necessary to address how research agendas are framed and the social purposes they serve, and to ensure that economically poor people and communities will benefit from them. This policy briefing draws on examples of citizen engagement with science collected in the book Science and Citizens: Globalisation and the Challenge of Engagement. It argues that the direction taken by science and technology should be open to participation - “shaping by individual creativity, collective ingenuity, cultural priorities, institutional interests, stakeholder negotiation, and the exercise of power.”


The document argues that science and technology issues offer a particular challenge for participation because their claims to specialised expertise can limit citizen debate. Though debates on issues may take place locally, scientific and technological initiates take place in global networks, and policy may result in and from international-level treaties. This may lead to a disconnection from and misrepresentation of the local needs and perspectives of the economically poor, resulting in developments in these fields that are culturally unacceptable, or that miss key opportunities that emerge from the local, context-specific conditions in which people live. Additionally, a focus on overall growth and health of society may miss the marginalised members.


The briefing examines opportunities for citizen input - demands for evidence and assertion of their own knowledge - some of which depend on education, income, and access. These may depend on:
"• The mobilising structures available to activists and citizens – how well organised and networked are individuals and groups, what resources do they have, what do they have to say and how do they say it?
• The political arrangements with which mobilisation interacts.
• The social construction of environmental risks, especially the relationship between the knowledge and values of affected actors and the claims made by scientific and technical discourses."


Three case studies are used to highlight citizens engaging with science debates: the case of ‘Golden rice,’ genetically modified to include beta-carotene; the fight in South Africa for access to anti-retroviral drugs for working class and economically poor people; and the work in India of the Occupational Health and Safety Centre (OHSC) and the Environmental and Occupational Health Section of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) to bring workers' experiential expertise to the fore in assessing worker occupational health issues. In the case of the genetically modified rice, Indian biotechnology critic Vandana Shiva led activists to question nutritional benefits of the modified rice over local sources of vitamin A, patent rights, and monopolisation of seed and seed distribution to the economically poor farmers. In the case of anti-retroviral availability in South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) used grassroots mobilisation of volunteers, including the economically poor and HIV-positive to go to schools, factories, community centres, churches, bars, and door-to-door in the townships, while it engaged with scientists, the media, the legal system, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and government. This work increased availability, lowered prices, and increased HIV/AIDS treatment knowledge among a wide network that crossed race, class, ethnic, occupational, and educational lines. In the case of occupational hazards in India's industrialised zones, OHSC and PRIA interpreted and reframed workers’ experiences to fit the concepts and standards of legitimacy of dominant scientific culture, while organising unions and workers groups to collect diagnostic and monitoring data on occupational health issues. As stated here, "[t]he result has been the emergence of a sense of cognitive justice, where workers’ insights are taken seriously, as well as the successful realisation of particular material rights – including access to treatment and compensation."


The document concludes by suggesting that the main institutions involved with science and technology need to be more explicit in technical explanations related to social and political assumptions, "while at the same time acknowledging that alternative ways of thinking and being exist and may be rooted in people’s lives.... Approaches to involving [economically] poor people and those who represent them as partners in research and innovation deserve attention." The briefing recommends that broader questions on framing science and technology agendas - including their social purpose and who stands to gain and lose - be asked to broader audiences, particularly where donors focusing on AIDS, malaria, and TB are heavily funding scientific initiatives. It also questions "the implications of trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) for pro-poor innovation, and the potentially crucial impact of global pressures to standardise and harmonise, for instance around agricultural and vaccine products or bioethical procedures in research...." It calls for "participatory research approaches that involve user perspectives in setting research agendas, hybrids of local and scientific knowledge, learning alliances and networks, and the linking of innovation with delivery systems to meet poor people’s needs, all need consideration and investment... in tandem with...” opening public debate using “citizen mobilisation - through the media and internet, public protest and challenges through the courts..."