Paper short abstract:

We investigate the emergence of pesticides effects research in Argentina (1990-2023). Using a novel domain-topic model approach, we describe the thematic and relational structure of pesticide research and identify the network of expert activists central to the field’s emergence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between two emergent fields caught up in a long-term epistemic and social struggle, indicative of the politics of expert knowledge in times of transition. Part of a larger, ethnographic and interview-based study of experts and expert networks in Argentina’s pesticide conflict, this paper investigates two processes that unfolded simultaneously during 2000-2020: the development of the anti-spraying social movement and the emergence of a new national scientific field of pesticide effects research. To understand how the political activism of experts has shaped the scope and direction of Argentine pesticide research, we employ novel domain-topic models to analyze a bibliographic corpus of scientific publications of Argentine researchers collected from the Web of Science Core Collection (1990-2023). We describe the thematic and relational structure of Argentine pesticide research and, subsequently, locate those thematic domains aligned with the political interests of the anti-spraying movement. We show that 1) at a granularity level where the field splits into 13 thematic domains, expert activists have published in nearly all of them, 2) expert activists have published pioneering research in approximately 5 of those domains, and that 3) expert activists’ research, both preceding and following their activism, has been particularly influential in large domains of interest to the anti-spraying movement. Our broader aim is to advance network based, symmetrical analysis of the dynamics and impacts of expert activism.

Paper short abstract:

In Ghana, low cost sensors are an opportunity to extend air quality monitoring networks, yet questions remain regarding their integration into official networks. This paper explores reconfiguration ongoing in regulatory science where academics and experts are trying to legitimize their legal value.

Paper long abstract:

Air quality monitoring is based on the proliferation of heavy, expensive and fixed monitoring regulatory stations, which have become one of the pillars of regulatory science. In the Global South where resources are scarce, low-cost sensors (LCS) allow for to the extension of air quality monitoring networks at reduced costs. Therefore a wide range of actors, such as academics, citizen and experts, is seizing the opportunity to measure air pollution and act on the data. However, this technology remains controversial and raises questions about the conditions under which an uncertified device can integrate official networks. In Ghana, academics and Ghana-EPA experts are collaborating to make LCS work properly in the local settings through calibration and validation work. LCS are integral to major reconfigurations in the Global South, which raise the possibility to recognise LCS data as regulatory measurements in the same way as those taken by reference-grade monitors, which can be used for legal purposes. This proposition aims to analyse the role of local stakeholders in transforming regulatory science in Ghana by using LCS and compete with highly technical and expensive instruments from Global North. Through the analysis of the assemblages between academics, experts, donors and startups, this paper explore how Ghanaian scientists and experts produce scientific knowledge and expertise which are contesting regulatory science from Global North and inequities in knowledge production by appropriating and creating new ways of making air science. This contribution is based on observations and interviews conducted in Accra between August 2021 and April 2023.

Paper short abstract:

Examining the methods used by government- and industry-funded environmental monitoring organizations as well as community- and Indigenous-led monitoring projects, this paper analyzes the political consequences of the pluralization of expertise on environmental contamination in Alberta, Canada.

Paper long abstract:

What counts as expert knowledge on the environmental contamination that is produced by the petrochemical industry in Alberta, Canada? Examining the methods used by government- and industry-funded environmental monitoring organizations as well as community- and Indigenous-led monitoring projects, this paper analyzes the political consequences of the pluralization of expertise on environmental contamination in Alberta. Prior to the present moment of pluralization, there has been significant political pressure in Alberta to circulate data that minimizes evidence of the harm wrought by the petrochemical industry. In this context, knowledge produced through the use of dominant ecological metrics can alternately mobilize concern, prompting members of the public to take action, and, conversely, induce apathy.

With its focus on the pluralization of expertise in the field of ecology, this talk examines ecologists’ use of the metrics of inference and intactness. Inference can produce ignorance through scalar work that can render environmental contamination imperceptible, thereby limiting public knowledge of harm. Furthermore, expert knowledge that frames biodiversity as “intact” can have significant consequences for environmental regulation and policymaking in the region, enabling extractive industries to proceed. This form of expert knowledge can generate numerical measurements that are framed as evidence of a regional ecosystem that has supposedly not been harmed enough to justify halting or modifying industrial activity. In addition, the use of the metric of intactness can produce further epistemic and political tension when it directly counters Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as well as Indigenous refusals of settler colonial extraction projects in Alberta.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the plurality of avalanche experts, from engineers and foresters to mountain guides, in Switzerland during the second half of the twentieth century was the basis for the field's influence in rebuilding mountain landscapes and shaping humans' behavior in the mountains.

Paper long abstract:

In the early 1960s, Swiss officials began dividing inhabited mountain areas in three zones: white zones with no risk of avalanches; blue zones, in which buildings had to comply with certain standards to resist avalanches; red zones, in which building was basically prohibited. This cartography was based on the risk calculations of the engineers at the Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Science in Davos. The engineers trained local officials to do the zoning, refusing to do so themselves to remain a neutral arbiter in case of conflict. Conflicts arrived quickly. Private owners or local authorities contested zones that diminished land value, and unexpected avalanches challenged the science itself. When an avalanche hit a white zone in the engineers’ backyard Davos in 1968, the engineers had to publicly defended their science. Municipal authorities employed local experts, such as mountain guides, to make decisions about order to close roads and to evacuate–or not, such as in Evolène in 1999, when an avalanche killed 12 people, leading to questions about the fractured political and epistemic authorities. Ultimately, the number of avalanche victims declined steadily in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper argues that it was exactly the fractured expertise of snow and avalanches with its relationship to a multifaceted Swiss state that made it a successful science. The plurality of experts and the state-internal contestation enrolled ever more actors in the avalanche control effort, while providing avenues for generative controversies and refinement of knowledge and protection practices.

Paper short abstract:

This article demonstrates how nuclear experts produce incommensurable knowledge on nuclear accidents, which provides "epistemic leeway" to cope with crises. It results from the preservation of alternative knowledge claims in separate spaces of comparison within the same field of expertise.

Paper long abstract:

How does knowledge production during crises contribute to challenge contemporary institutions or, on the contrary, to maintain them? This article investigates this question in the case of expert knowledge on nuclear accidents in France in the aftermath of the Fukushima Dai-ich accident in March 2011. The article draws on a study of the French and European “lessons from Fukushima” learning exercise, based on document analysis, interviews and ethnographic observation of nuclear experts’ working practices. The article demonstrates how, while setting up a learning exercise that requires making Fukushima and nuclear installations elsewhere comparable, nuclear experts use their “epistemic leeway ”, the ability to define what can be compared and how in a crisis, to avoid different approaches and methods of safety analysis from dialoguing with each other. This especially preserves the boundaries between prescriptive and empirical safety analysis, protecting theoretical assumptions from being questioned in the face of a new event. Experts thereby progressively (re)construct the incommensurability of nuclear safety and render accidents ultimately unknowable. The article contributes to better understanding the understudied mechanisms of the production of incommensurability through expert knowledge and opens more general questions about the limits of knowledge on crises .

Paper short abstract:

Climate litigation is on the rise worldwide. Whereas scientific expertise plays a crucial role in climate court cases, it remains scarcely researched. We empirically investigate a Dutch climate court case which heavily drew on IPCC model projections and reflect on the political position of the IPCC.

Paper long abstract:

Driven by the lack of climate action, climate activists are growing ever more litigious. As of December 2022, there have been a total of 2,180 climate court cases in 65 jurisdictions (United Nations Environment Programme, 2023). While the impact and import climate litigation has been studied extensively by legal scholars, it is a relatively new topic for political scientists, sociologists and science and technology studies (Setzer & Vanhala, 2019). This is a surprising gap, as scientific climate expertise plays a critical role in these cases. Whether determining if litigants have standing to sue or the attribution of climate impacts to the defendants’ actions, scientific expertise is crucial (McCormick et al., 2017; Setzer & Vanhala, 2019). In practice, the use of scientific expertise in climate cases varies greatly. For example, it remains unknown how scientific expertise influences court decisions, what forms of expertise are used, or how judges engage with this expertise. In this paper, we investigate the use of scientific climate expertise in the case of Miliedefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell and its ongoing appeal. In this case, the verdict – that the oil company would need to reduce CO2 emissions with 45% by 2030 – relied on heavily on IPCC model projections . Our paper empirically analyses how litigants mobilised IPCC scenarios by litigants and the larger role of these scenarios in the final verdict, providing insights into climate litigation’s politics of expertise. Finally, we reflect on climate litigation’s broader implications for the political position of the IPCC.

Paper short abstract:

We examine how ethics advice is sought and provided in Australia, Germany and the UK. Often overlooked in STS research, we argue that how governments use national ethics committees and what forms of ethical expertise are present are central to understanding their role in societal transformations.

Paper long abstract:

We report on the ESRC Ethics and Expertise project examining the seeking and provision of ethics advice at a national level in Australia, Germany and the UK. Existing research has explored the effectiveness, de/politicisation and deliberative aspects of national ethics bodies, but they are often a neglected aspect of science and technology studies. This is despite the potential contribution of STS for understanding epistemic communities, problematising distinctions between facts and values, and unpacking the relationship between technocracy and decision-making. As such the organisational practices and role of specialist ethics advisory committees and national ethics bodies should be of central interest. Yet it is sometimes argued that ethics committees change nothing and serve a purely symbolic function. How they are governed, how they navigate what counts as an ethical moment in policy-making, and how they interact with policy makers and publics are our key concerns. There have been calls to focus on the distinctive normative form of ethical expertise, the limits to democratising expertise and to rethink what decision-makers and public should expect from ethics bodies (Poort and Bovenkerk 2016: 271). Here we consider these debates in light of the problematisation of expertise coming in contrasting ways from both decades of STS research and a growing contemporary public distrust in experts. How governments use ethics committees and what forms of ethical expertise (bioethics, speculative, dialogic, solidaristic, decolonial?) are present are both central to understanding these issues, and for rethinking their role in societal transformations.

Paper short abstract:

Integrated system planning is now used to identify the 'optimal' path forward through the renewable energy transition in Australia, drawing on diverse knowledges. This paper asks whether it represents a transformation of expertise, and what it means for the trajectory of the energy transition.

Paper long abstract:

The challenges of managing the rapid transition to renewable energy in Australia have prompted efforts to develop a more coordinated, holistic approach. Conceived as a ‘roadmap’ for the energy sector, a biennial Integrated System Plan has been prepared by the Australian Energy Market Operator since 2018, based on modelling of an ‘optimal’ path forward that is expected to inform policy, infrastructure investment and regulatory reform. The plan is based on two-year cycles of extensive stakeholder and public consultation on model inputs, methodology and scenarios. The integration of technological, policy, regulatory, economic and social considerations drawn from diverse forms of knowledge is seen to ensure normative legitimacy as well as epistemic integrity, and over the years the process has expanded to include more channels for input by more diverse groups, including energy consumers, first nations communities and rural landholders. In this paper I examine the development of this planning process itself as an ongoing negotiation of the expertise deemed necessary to understand and manage the complexity of the renewable energy transition. Based on document analysis and interviews, I consider the extent to which it represents the transformation of expertise that it appears to, and what this means for the trajectory of the transformation in the Australian energy system and society.

Paper short abstract:

Using STS theories, I explore expertise-making practices in the UNFCCC's Loss and Damage committee. The thick description reveals formal and informal mechanisms that make expertise. The findings calls for reevaluating expertise's role and advocates for transparency in global governance.

Paper long abstract:

This study explores the practices of "making expertise" within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), focusing on the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage. While the ExCom asserts its commitment to embedding the "best available science" into its decision-making, what constitutes this science remains ambiguous.

Drawing on theories from sociology and science and technology studies (STS), the study shifts the analytical focus from the value and function of expertise to the processes through which it is constructed and integrated into governance mechanisms. This approach, part of the "third generation" of expertise scholarship, concentrates on the way practices make expertise and perform epistemic arrangements.

Based on ethnographic data generated between 2018 and 2022, and interviews with stakeholders, the study identifies formal and informal mechanisms that contribute to the practice of making expertise within the UNFCCC. By providing a thick description, the study contributes to theoretical discussions about expertise in environmental governance and challenges assumptions about its objectivity and universality.

The empirical findings not only shed light on the intricate processes of making expertise within the UNFCCC but also highlight the potential implications of these processes for decision-making and policy development. Ultimately, the study calls for a reevaluation of the role of expertise in environmental governance and underscores the need for greater transparency and accountability in the construction and utilization of expertise within international institutions.

Paper short abstract:

The IPCC is a global authority in the climate change discourse, but not the sole source. The pluralization of knowledge is a reality, challenging the idea of a unified voice in climate science. I will present a conceptual framework to gain a realistic understanding of its role and function.

Paper long abstract:

The IPCC is often hailed as the foremost authority in climate science for policy-making, recognized globally for its crucial reports. However, it does not hold a monopoly on knowledge, as various non-IPCC commentators contribute to public discourse, some skeptical of the IPCC's perceived stance. This pluralization of knowledge, though regrettable for those seeking a unified climate science voice, is a reality. Divergent opinions exist regarding the IPCC, with some accusing it of exaggerating climate risks, while others believe it downplays them. Some think the pluralization of knowledge is a serious problem and we should curate the content of the knowledge ecosystem, especially social media platforms. I will argue against such a position, drawing on conceptual work on expertise.

The IPCC is seen by some as an honest broker and a scientific body, while others view it as an issue advocate or a boundary organization between politics and science. Despite potential roles in different circumstances, understanding the IPCC's nature, functions, and its exercise of expertise is crucial. I propose a typology which aims to untangle this conceptual maze, presenting the IPCC as a significant commentator on climate change alongside various voices. The IPCC also assumes the roles of science arbiter, honest broker, and stealth advocate, but it notably falls short of delivering conventional policy advice.

Paper short abstract:

I discuss expertise in climate resilience, focusing on its role in opening up political possibilities through facilitating debate and contestation, using the Cost Benefit Analysis technique as a case.I show resilience can be an exercise in democracy if we see expertise as a site of problematization.

Paper long abstract:

The role of expertise in climate adaptation is widely debated in scholarship on resilience. Scholars argue that resilience is a form of technocratic expertise through top-down managerial interventions, or that resilience marks a limit to expert knowledge due to complexity; both casting resilience as depoliticizing. However, these works do not adequately grapple with the fact that expertise is not only deployed but also demanded in the wake of climate change, nor do they engage with key insights on the unsettled and unsettling nature of expert knowledge and its production from STS. In this paper, I address the issue of expertise in the making of resilience with attention to its role in the opening up of political possibilities through facilitating, rather than short-circuiting, debate and contestation. I look at the technique of Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and its use in resiliency projects, showing it as a critical tool used to articulate – and debate – what resilience is in specific geographical contexts. I discuss CBA use in two cities built on low-lying marshlands, New York City and Paramaribo, where disputes about resilience as gray or green infrastructure intervention play out through the CBA. I argue that CBA as a calculative technology has effects, but not determinative ones, and that in its contested use and authority helps organize resilience politics. I conclude that resilience can be an exercise in democracy – and a politicization of ways of living revolving around the potentiality of future environments – if we view expertise as a site of problematization.

Paper short abstract:

The European PEF methodology, rooted in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), serves as a framework to quantify environmental impact. Figures produced for scoring food's impacts spurred a counter-calculation framework (PlanetScore). The paper unpacks the political and epistemological debates it created.

Paper long abstract:

A European methodology (PEF*) and a French tool (EcoBalyse) were developed to quantify food's environmental impact. The need to convert the concept of environmental impact into quantifiable figures arose from the 'Green Claims' regulation of the European Commission and the 'Affichage Environnemental' project of the French government, aimed at addressing the greenwashing dilemma. While demonstrating fraud in qualitative claims can be challenging, numerical data provides objective insights.

The data generated and made publicly available during the French regulatory experimentation (Affichage Environnemental) in 2021 has raised societal concerns. Questions have been raised as to why the scores suggest intensification as the optimal method for reducing environmental impacts and why organic farming appears to have a bigger impact on ecosystems than conventional farming. The Life Cycle Analysis framework used to develop the institutionnal methodology is contested.

In response, a counter-analysis utilizing another conceptual framework, datas and calculation process, known as PlanetScore, has been developed during the experimentation. This approach has garnered support from environmental and consumer associations, as well as agricultural technical institutes. By challenging the institutional proposition (PEF-EcoBalyse), this alternative proposal reintroduces political and epistemological considerations into the public discourse on environmental impact assessment.

As coordinator of the CESIAe*, created in 2023 to produce an independent expertise on the methodological issues, I am both an observer and part of the pluralization of expertise on this topic. I propose to retrace the origin of the dispute, its trajectory and its content.

*Product Environmental Footprint

*Interdisciplinary Scientific Expert Group on Sustainability Scoring

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the increasing plurality of competing economic forecasting expertises. It highlights their epistemic disagreements and their distinctive interests, before showing that they still share a common understanding of the economy, resisting the emergence of divergent alternatives.

Paper long abstract:

The evolution of economic planning in France since the 1950s has fostered the development of state expertise in predicting economic futures. However, starting from the 1970s, forecasters' failure to accurately describe and analyze important economic fluctuations led to the emergence of competing expertise from the private sector, independent institutes and universities.

This increasing complexity of the French economic forecasting institutional landscape has led to what some forecasters termed as "institutional pluralism without a diversity of methods." The inability to foresee economic downturns such as the subprime crisis resulted in a polarization within the ecosystem, between highly applied approaches focused on anticipating the effects of economic policies debated in the public arena, and more academic approaches centered on refining models and software.

This paper, drawing on ethnographic studies conducted within different poles of economic forecasting, examines the impact of diversified expertise on the economic knowledge generated and disseminated to guide policies amidst uncertainty. Firstly, it demonstrates that the imperatives and goals of experts vary greatly: academic forecasting tools follow an epistemology vastly different from that of field forecasters. The paper also explores the role given to health and environmental issues by economic forecasters. Overlooked before 2007, they are now gradually gaining attention as a distinguishing factor among experts.

Nevertheless, these reflections are still constrained by a particular conception of the economy shared across different arenas. Despite the diversity of forecasting contexts, there is a lack of genuine pluralism in conceptualizing alternatives for understanding the impacts of socio-ecological transformations on the economy.