300182 Organizing Public Deliberations on Science and Technology (S) (SoSe 2011)

A growing interest to engage with the public in matters of scientific and technological governance evokes questions about how organizations conceptualise publics as well as how specific public engagement events are organized. It also raises questions about the role of social science; partly because of a commitment to ‘scientific democracy’ scholars in science and technology studies have contributed to the interest in organized public deliberation events, and partly because of an assumption that social scientists can act as mediators and transmit scientific knowledge to the public and vice versa by providing knowledge about public attitudes to scientists and policy-makers. We will discuss the role of mediators and approaches to mediation both in relation to specific issues and specific formats of public engagement mechanisms. How can we understand one-off public deliberation events, such as a consensus conference on genetically modified food, compared to cases such as nuclear waste siting, in which long-term relations are being built up with the local population? How do organizations make choices between adjusting their own conceptions of the public and adjusting the participants? How do particular formats for organizing public deliberations change, as they travel from organization to organization?
These questions will be discussed in relation to empirical examples and theoretical approaches within organizational studies as well as science and technology studies.

29.04.2011, 10 am - 14 pm:
Introduction: Organizing Public Deliberations on Science and Technology

26.05.2011 (12-18 pm) and 27.5.2011 (10 am - 16 pm):
- Mediation through demonstration and mediation through dialogue
- Public deliberations and the role of social science

30.06.2011 (12-18 pm) and 01.07.2011 (10 am - 16 pm):
The spread of participation mechanism and a new expertise on public deliberation

Dieses Seminar kann im Rahmen des International Track studiert werden