Short Abstract

In this panel, we explore the relationship between populism, science, expertise and society, and how they are reshaping each other, to consider whether new ways of knowing that lend us towards more democratic ways of being might emerge.

Description

Across Europe and beyond, far-right and populist political movements are building momentum and public support in elections. This rise in populism arguably presents profound changes in the relationship between science, expertise, authority, power and citizens, but also reveals much about the imaginaries of the good life embedded within expert accounts that are often hidden from public debate.

In this panel we move beyond narratives that frame populism as anti-science, and its support based on ignorance, To consider populism through four key STS themes:

• Knowledge production: What counts as evidence in an age of populism and for who? How does populism reshape the conditions under which knowledge is produced, circulated and trusted? What are the new forms of expertise and knowledge production, and how do alternative epistemologies take root?

• Credibility and Trust: Why do certain publics find populist claims more credible than traditional expert consensus? What roles do technologies like social media and algorithmic infrastructures play in shaping these dynamics of trust, doubt and authority? And what do these shifts in trust reveal about imaginaries of the future, and which are legitimised and which excluded?

• Science, technology and social order: What roles have science and technology played in shaping the social and epistemic conditions that enable populism to flourish? How have technological infrastructures, modes of innovation, and narratives of progress contributed to the reconfiguration of public trust in expertise? Looking ahead, what alternative models of technological development or innovation governance might foster more democratic politics or knowledge-making?

• Imaginaries and coproduction of the present and future: What does this rise of populist perspectives reveal about the values and visions of ordinary people and their relationship with technology, expertise and institutions of governance? In what ways do these imaginaries affect ideas of who is capable of knowing, acting and belonging in contemporary societies?

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