Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

We enquire into the making participation in 5 research projects of a funding program for sustainability research. Guided by the concept of relational space, we explore narrations of scientific and local actors on the constitution of participation and the role of their respective knowledge therein.

Paper long abstract:

In the field of sustainability, scholars and policy-makers alike attach high expectations to the inclusion of local knowledge in both governance and research processes and herald the power of discursive, participatory processes in facilitating societal learning. Despite this widespread call for co-productionist and transdisciplinary approaches in search for more 'robust' knowledge, critical theoretical reflections on the meanings and practices of participation and knowledge integration in different scientific and political contexts are scant. In this contribution, we complement accounts on the "what" of participation (often expressed in intensities) with an empirical enquiry into practices of participatory knowledge production in sustainability research. Borrowing from the concept of "relational space" as a framing perspective on participation, this paper analyses perceptions of both scientific and non-scientific actors on the constitution of spaces of participation at the science-society interface. In our empirical enquiry into participation "in the making" in selected projects of a German funding scheme for sustainability research, we (i) explore meanings that scientific and non-scientific actors attach to participation, (ii) provide insights into the elements that non-scientific and scientific actors perceive as constitutive of spaces of participation in knowledge production and (iii) ask how actors position themselves and their knowledge vis-à-vis the respective "others" in participation spaces. Based on these empirical enquiries we aim to develop further the conceptual perspective of participation as space which, we hope, contributes to a more differentiated basis for discussing the potential transformative power of participatory knowledge production.