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- Convenors:
-
Jaron Harambam
(University of Amsterdam)
Willemine Willems (VU)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
- Location:
- HG-14A33
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 July, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
Moving beyond the traditional role of (climate) science as the detached and neutral conveyer of knowledge, this panel explores the work of scholars seeking novel ways of engaging society around climate change research. We welcome all kinds of novel transformative approaches.
Long Abstract:
While the urgency of the climate crisis increases, and climate science puts forward alarming reports, some citizens question the relevance and trustworthiness of their knowledge more and more. They may feel like the academic world is too far removed from their daily lives, that it invents solutions that benefit the already advantaged, or that it has too close ties with vested interests which corrupts their operations. Scholars working on climate change (in the broadest sense), in the meantime, experience despair because the general public needs to be taken along if any robust change is to be expected.
The conventional role of science as the detached producer of objective knowledge no longer fits when dealing with complex social-scientific crises – such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the climate crisis. More people understand science as societally situated, and scientists themselves increasingly feel uncomfortable with that old ideal. The same goes for the associated, traditional form of science communication, which often assumes a lack of knowledge or understanding among the general public as the main problem, and finds solutions in explaining science more. This approach falls short in restoring trust and reducing polarisation and sometimes even achieves the opposite.
In this combined panel, we welcome scholars who are working on new forms of science communication and/or societal engagement around climate research. These transformative approaches may take many forms: from social media campaigns to citizen assemblies, and from virtual reality simulations to taking part in societal activism. The key objective must fall within the broad category of improving the strained relations between science and society in the context of the climate crisis by engaging citizens and scholars in new constellations.
We welcome research papers, but also those taking part of a discussion panel (dialogue sessions) to speak about their experiences participating in such projects.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
Due to climate science increasingly being a topic of political and public debate, roles of climate scientists are changing. Here, we address how these changes affect the practices and experiences of climate scientists and demonstrate ways in which climate scientists navigate the public sphere.
Paper long abstract:
With the climate crisis becoming more complex and public trust in (climate) science decreasing, climate scientists find themselves and their discipline to be contested and at the center of debate. How do these changes affect the practices and experiences of communicating climate scientists?
Through conducting interviews with climate scientists that are active in the public domain, we have gained insights into how these scientists view their role in the climate debate. We identified two dimensions along which the scientists’ perceptions of their roles differed, namely a degree of societal interaction and a degree of advocacy. We find that the challenges and motivations expressed by these scientists can be plotted along axes representing these dimensions, suggesting that their role perceptions influence their experiences in/of the public sphere.
Interestingly, scientists that refrain from both advocacy and public participation share concerns about the loss of credibility of science. Various scientists were hesitant about the level of advocacy they deem appropriate: some refrain from debate due to a sense of loss of objectivity and scientific authority, while others experience the same doubt yet are motivated by the urgency of the climate crisis. Additionally, we found that while 'distanced’ scientists share concerns about (a lack of) public knowledge, scientists that aim for more interactive forms of research wish to hear public views and have a less polarized view on the role of science. In other words, entering into more participatory forms of engagement holds the potential to depolarize climate scientists while protecting their credibility.
Paper short abstract:
Climate change necessitates a changing role for academics. How can academics delegitimise political and social ‘business-as-usual’? In this contribution, I point at several political roles academics could play, such as motivation, activism, sabotage, and legitimisation.
Paper long abstract:
On-going denial about the severity of climate change necessitates a changing role for academics. Where in the past the role of aloof fact-provider – or of honest broker (Pielke, 2003) –still held value, lethargy in the face of climate breakdown requires an openly political stance. Climate denial and deliberate misinformation (e.g. Oreskes & Conway, 2010) render the politics of knowledge imminently visible. Despite climate damages intensifying, most societies are “living in denial” (Norgaard), nominally accepting the need for political action but continuing ‘business-as-usual’. This is deeply problematic, as in the words of Andreas Malm, “the term ‘business-as-usual’ is commonly employed as a stand-in for the fossil economy”. Academics are complicit, as they often refrain from politicising this simple fact, reproduce it in the science-policy interface, and project all manner of business-as-usual futures. I argue for a more openly political academic stance. Rather than eschewing the political aspects of knowledge production or retreating to the bastion of neutrality, I argue for academics politicising the patent absurdity of sleepwalking into catastrophe. As an analogy, one might look to the fact that academics often play (sometimes paid) roles as business and political consultants – a role easily as political as encouraging civil disobedience or sabotage. This raises the question: how can climate scientists and academics at large politicise climate change and delegitimise political and social ‘business-as-usual’? From personal experience, I point at several political roles academics could play, such as crafting aspirational futures, sabotaging established procedures, legitimising (non-)violent resistance, and becoming activists themselves.
Paper short abstract:
Examining climate perceptions, this paper bridges scientific knowledge and daily experiences. Using cultural anthropology, it explores collaborations by entities like Climate Leadership programs, addressing skepticism to enhance science-society relations through innovative communication.
Paper long abstract:
Global extreme weather events are daily media focal points connecting them to anthropogenic climate change. The urgency of the climate crisis sparks intensified discussions on actions and moral obligations. However, abstract scientific knowledge often lacks a link to everyday experiences, leading to divergent views on the crisis's historical basis and future projections.
This research explores the conflictual negotiation of the climate crisis, focusing on the intersection between everyday and scientific knowledge and the influence of generational perspectives. Engaged climate action, activism, and lobbyism play pivotal roles in bridging the gap between scientific knowledge, politics, and daily life. The paper investigates how governmental and non-governmental organizations, initiatives, and social movements collaborate to produce, transfer, and implement climate knowledge, with examples like Fridays for Future and Climate Leadership Programs activating climate-aware actors through knowledge dissemination, projects, and political engagement.
Adopting a cultural anthropological perspective, the research delves into how these entities produce and transfer climate knowledge. It explores how local actors integrate climate knowledge into daily life, addressing their needs for an uncertain energy future. Empirical methods, including interviews and participant observation, explore how local actors, in collaboration with social movements and climate leadership programs, navigate, negotiate, and pass on climate knowledge. The research addresses growing skepticism and trust issues in climate knowledge. By examining new forms of science communication and societal engagement, including social media campaigns, citizen assemblies, and societal activism, the paper aims to look at relations between science and society in the climate crisis context.
Paper short abstract:
We report on the outcomes of interviews held to map three climate change-related controversies and stakeholders’ experiences of conflict within them, and on how these key findings inform the development of an innovative form of theatre dialogues in which sticking with the tension is key.
Paper long abstract:
Climate change is increasingly proving to be a deeply polarizing and conflict-ridden societal issue. As a response to complex or “wicked” societal issues such as climate change, science communication research has developed various approaches to meaningfully engage publics and stakeholders in processes of scientific and technological development. Building on Chantal Mouffe’s conception of agonistic pluralism, we argue that while providing a great source of creativity, inspiration and impact, the “cocreative” focus of many of these approaches makes it difficult to keep conflict, tension, and controversy at the forefront of engagement practices. The concern is that these practices of cocreation leave the fundamentally conflictual nature of climate change unaddressed, and consequently provide little guidance for learning how to deal with conflict and prevent it from becoming antagonistic.
There is therefore a great need for exploring engagement approaches that make the conflictual nature of climate change salient and “productive”, and we believe theatre dialogues have great potential to contribute to this objective. In our contribution, we report on the outcomes of interviews held to map three climate change-related controversies and stakeholders’ experiences of conflict within them, and on how these key findings inform the development of an innovative form of theatre dialogues in which sticking with the tension is key.
Paper short abstract:
We performed an analysis of the children perceived image of the Science and Scientist, the Planet Earth, its sustainability and its future over the drawings collected for creating calendars, featuring drawings from contests for primary school children.
Paper long abstract:
Starting in 2005, INGV initiated a project involving the creation of calendars designed for schools, featuring drawings from contests for primary school children. Schools participate by submitting pupils' drawings on specific themes, which vary annually and align with Earth science subjects. Engaging primary school children in this project brings them closer to science and provides an opportunity to explore their perspectives on the Earth, science, the environment, and sustainable behavior. Drawing plays a crucial role in children's development, as it fosters imagination and serves as an effective means of expressing emotions. We start to analyze this extensive dataset by comparing drawings related to competitions with comparable main topics, such as children's perceptions of science, scientists, and their views on the Planet Earth, its sustainability, and its future.
We present a preliminary analysis of the children perceived image of the Planet Earth, its sustainability and its future over the drawings collected for the 2009 calendar: “The Earth of tomorrow is in my hands today”, the 2010 calendar: “Precious Earth” and the 2021-2022 calendar: “A future sized for the Planet”. The methodology involves a qualitative and statistical analysis of the drawings, representing the first comprehensive comparison of drawings created by primary school children across the entire Italian territory. This spans a decade or more, providing insights into how children's visions of Earth science subjects have evolved over time.
Furthermore, the results contribute to evaluating how science is portrayed, assessing whether it has fostered a shared understanding and a less stereotyped image.
Paper short abstract:
Rampant anthropogenic activities contributing to climate change are deteriorating sustainable conditions on Earth rendering the society’s future livelihood resources perilous. The ‘subalterns’ of climate change are trapped in the quicksand of climate change effect.
Paper long abstract:
Rampant anthropogenic activities contributing to climate change are deteriorating sustainable conditions on Earth rendering the society’s future perilous and posing a threat to availability of resources for livelihood, including the basic requirements of food, water, shelter, causing imbalances in the ecosystem which eventually leads to an imbalance in the social system. The ‘subalterns’ of climate change are trapped in the cycle of poverty with increasing conflict over depleting natural resources, thus paving the way for an upheaval in the society, eventually disrupting the social order. Climate Resilient Agriculture is an initiative adopted by nations globally to mitigate the consequent threat of climate change to food production and food security. The hitherto existing relation between societal and climatological phenomena defines the relation between the formulation and effective adoption of Climate Resilient Agriculture. Scientific researches are deeply rooted in natural sciences, and to address this concern attempted efforts have been made to integrate sociological research, and perspectives into the research of adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Based on in-depth personal interviews with plant breeding and farming communities in Assam, this paper attempts to examine various social, economic, climatic and technological factors which hinder the implementation of the development programmes and policies while formulating an integrative framework, as well as, providing an inclusive arena of intellectual space which acknowledges and accommodates alternative viewpoints that produce innovative and effective strategies for coping with the reeling effects of climate change in the rural areas for an equitable agricultural sustainability and growth.
Paper short abstract:
The Futurium, the House of Futures in Berlin, contributes insights from its everyday work to the panel discussion and reflects on its participatory forms of science communications
Paper long abstract:
We – represented by our Head of Department “Strategy and Content” Dr Karena Kalmbach – would like to contribute insights from our everyday work to the panel discussion. Together with the other participants we would like to reflect on how we can work on improving – as the conveners nicely phrased it in the panel description – “the strained relations between science and society in the context of the climate crisis by engaging citizens and scholars in new constellations”.
“We”, that is the Futurium, the House of Futures in Berlin: an exhibition / lab / event space located in the center of Berlin where everything revolves around the question: How can we collectively build sustainable futures? We are a mainly publicly funded institution with renowned partners from politics, science, foundations and business. Last year, we could welcome more than 760,000 visitors. With these figures, the Futurium is amongst the 10 most visited museum places in Berlin. Through our exhibits, workshops, events, and hand-on-experiences as well as through our educational material and (digital) communications we try to create participatory forms of science communications. With our approach, we aim at leaving the public-deficit model behind and instead building on and enhancing people’s futures literacies – in which scientific knowledge and reasoning takes center stage in the imagination of just and sustainable futures.
Paper short abstract:
Traditional science communication methods do not seem to reduce the distance between citizens and (knowledge) institutes. In our project, we are experimenting with citizens’ assemblies as a new form of research and science communication to bridge the gap between society and science.
Paper long abstract:
The sense of urgency surrounding climate change is ever increasing in research and policy domains, yet many citizens feel they have more pressing issues than climate change to contend with. Many feel researchers, policymakers and their institutes are too far removed from their own lived experiences. Traditional research methods and forms of science communication do not seem to reduce the distance between citizens and (knowledge) institutes. In this panel presentation we will share our experiences of organizing citizens’ assemblies to align climate science with citizens’ lived experiences by co-creating a “climate science knowledge agenda” with citizens, scientists and policymakers.
We will first briefly present:
Our theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the climate citizen assemblies; exploring if, how and why citizen assemblies contribute to the democratization of climate science.
Discuss the structure and methodologies used in the citizen assemblies, including methods employed, how to build relations between scientists and citizens; how to maintain the balance between public participation methods and research methods;
Our preliminary findings and themes from the citizen assemblies (including e.g. proposed climate science themes and questions; roles and collaborations between citizens, scientists, policymakers)
Our efforts to ensure social impact, e.g. through cross-sector, multi-stakeholder collaboration.
After the brief presentation, we wish to enter into a stimulating dialogue with other panel members about the enablers, barriers and hopes for outcomes of different forms of science communication and engagement methods for the democratization of climate science.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how higher education might engage society in a hopeful manner with the climate crisis. I conceptualize hope as a practice that helps to navigate in phases of liminality. Drawing from reflections on two innovative courses, I empirically explore instances of hope within education.
Paper long abstract:
Climate change and sustainability have become key themes for higher education. During the heightened emotional and political reactions, traditional approaches centered on knowledge deficits arguably encounter their limits. Besides teaching about climate change, education could also aim to nurture hope. However, hope is a complex concept and in-depth theoretical engagement with hope in sustainability education is scant, notwithstanding e.g. Ojala’s (2017) valuable contributions. Therefore, in this paper, I explore how education might foster hopeful engagement with the climate crisis.
Theoretically, I approach hope as an active practice, exploring how, when and where hope is enacted in education. Inspired by Freire (1992) and by the way Solnit (2016) describes hope as ‘an electrifying force in the present’, I conceptualize a mode of hoping that is based on a dynamic tension between a feeling of friction with unsustainable aspects, and an attraction to a direction of change. I argue that such hope is practiced during phases of liminality, uncertainty, and plurality of moving in-between worlds, and that it can be felt through a meaningful discontinuity – an experience that signals to us that are moving in a valuable direction.
Empirically, I investigate such discontinuities through vignettes, based on my experiences as a teacher and reflective practitioner in two innovative courses that focused on ‘futuring’. Thereby, I distill characteristics of learning processes that might contribute to hope. Namely, that hopeful education amidst the climate crisis entails a combination of critical- and imaginative processes and engages learners in collective, active, and dialogic settings.