Public participation and democratization: effects on the production and consumption of science and technology

ABSTRACT

In this article, I discuss the democratizing effects of public participation in science and technology (PPST). Various forms of PPST have emerged as reactions of civil society or as institutionalized responses of States to science-society conflicts. I distinguish PPST into three types, which I call institutionalized, activist and conflictive, and at the margins of mainstream science and technology. Based on a broad literature review and analysis of case studies, I examine the participating actors by identifying their position in the productive structure, their form of participation, the expert-lay relationship and the constitution of the discussion agenda. Then, I evaluate the democratizing effects of lay participation on the configuration of scientific agendas, on the direction of development of technological trajectories and on the imposition of norms or limits on the use of technology. I argue that this typology brings to focus some issues not highlighted in other existing public participation typologies. It identifies, from a political economy perspective, the position in the productive structure from which the actors participate and distinguishes the democratizing effects of public participation on the production and consumption of science and technology.

RESUMO

Neste artigo discuto os efeitos democratizantes da participação pública em ciência e tecnologia (PPCT). Várias formas de PPCT emergiram como reações da sociedade civil ou como respostas institucionalizadas dos Estados aos conflitos ciência-sociedade. Distingo três formas de PPCT, às quais denomino participação institucionalizada, ativista e conflitiva, e nas margens da ciência e tecnologia estabelecidas. Com base em uma ampla revisão de literatura e análise de estudos de caso, examino a posição na estrutura produtiva da qual participam os atores, sua forma de participação e a constituição das agendas de discussão. Na sequência, avalio os efeitos democratizantes da participação leiga na configuração das agendas científicas, na direção de desenvolvimento das trajetórias tecnológicas e na imposição de normas ou limites para o uso de tecnologias. Argumento que esta tipologia traz à luz algumas questões não abordadas em outras tipologias de participação pública existentes. Ela identifica, desde uma perspectiva de economia política, a posição na estrutura produtiva desde a qual os atores participam e distingue os efeitos democratizantes da participação pública na produção e no consumo de ciência e tecnologia.

RESUMEN

En este artículo discuto los efectos democratizantes de la participación pública en ciencia y tecnología (PPCT). Varias formas de PPCT emergieron como reacciones de la sociedad civil o como respuestas institucionalizadas de los Estados a los conflictos ciencia-sociedad. Distingo tres formas de PPCT, a las cuales denomino participación institucionalizada, activista y conflictiva, y en los márgenes de la ciencia y tecnología establecidas. Basada en una amplia revisión de literatura y en análisis de estudios de caso, examino desde cuál posición en la estructura productiva participan los actores, su forma de participación y la constitución de la agenda de discusión. En seguida, evalúo los efectos democratizantes de la participación lega en la configuración de las agendas científicas, en la dirección del desarrollo de las trayectorias tecnológicas y en la imposición de normas o límites para el uso de tecnologías. Argumento que esta tipología ilumina algunos aspectos no abordados en otras tipologías de participación pública existentes. Ella identifica, desde una perspectiva de economía política, la posición en la estructura productiva desde la que los actores participan y distingue entre los efectos democratizantes de la participación pública en la producción y en el consumo de ciencia y tecnología.

KEYWORDS:

• Public participation in S&T
• consensus conferences
• activism
• alternative technologies
• democracy

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

• participação pública em C&T
• conferências de consenso
• ativismo
• tecnologias alternativas
• democracia

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• participación pública en C&T
• conferencias de consenso
• activismo
• tecnologías alternativas
• democracia

1. Introduction

In this article I revisit the issue of public participation in science and technology (PPST), examining the scope of its democratizing effects. PPST involves “the diversified set of situations and activities, spontaneous, organized and structured, whereby nonexperts become involved, and provide their own input to, agenda setting, decision-making, policy forming, and knowledge production processes regarding science” (Bucchi and Neresini 2008, 449). This description, however, does not encompass the political dimension of lay involvement with matters of science and technology (S&T). This occurs in a contested terrain, where social actors immersed in power relations, with different capacities, ideologies and interests, seek to influence techno-scientific decisions (Bortz and Thomas 2017).

The forms of public participation that I review in this study have germinated as reactions of civil society or as responses of States to the science-society conflicts caused by technological disasters, recurrent scientific controversies, environmental crisis, ethical dilemmas and unequal distribution of the benefits and risks of S&T in industrialized countries (Durant 1999; Hagendijk and Irwin 2006; Jasanoff 2003) as well as in the global south (Chen, 2014; Choudhury 2012; Vara 2007). These tensions have intensified since the 1980s, highlighting the fragility of the model according to which experts inform and politicians make decisions; another actor, the public, demanded to participate (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2001; Jasanoff 2004).

In the 1990s, several types of PPST proliferated in advanced industrial democracies, such as consensus conferences, citizen juries and national dialogues, in a phenomenon called “participatory turn” (Hagendijk and Irwin 2006; Irwin 2001). Although there were earlier forms of participation—strictly speaking, according to Wynne (2007), if we considered the initiatives of the 1970s, we should talk about “participatory return”—the expansion of participatory practices in many countries was a new fact. Based on normative theories of discursive and deliberative democracy, public engagement in S&T was claimed to enhance the democratic governance of S&T (Dryzek 1990; Durant 1999; Biegelbauer and Hansen 2011). With more intensity in Europe, but also in the United States and Australia, the initiatives have been professionalized and institutionalized (Stirling 2008), with support from governments and research funding institutions (European Commission 2004). They were encouraged by the academic community of social studies of science and technology, which had been proposing to open the political and epistemic dimensions of research and technological programs to public scrutiny in order to make science and politics more robust, reflective and democratic (Levidow 2007; Thorpe 2010).

The expansion of these practices was reflected in the growing literature on the subject, which in the 1990s took on an optimistic tone. For example, Joss (1999, 293) wondered whether public participation was an ephemeral trend or whether it represented a profound and paradigmatic transformation of S&T policy. For the author, the phenomenon had gained momentum and could lead to a change, although it had not yet acquired sufficient centrality.

It is paradoxical, as Stirling (2008) well notes, that this political will to promote participation came at a time when neoliberal globalization was intensifying, corporate power was concentrated and there was a lean towards institutional harmonization, making S&T governance more inaccessible. Corporations intensified their role in financing and conducting research. In the United States, for example, they were responsible for over 70% of the research developed in the country (Moore et al. 2011). Public universities, former bastions of science “for society,” have leaned towards academic capitalism (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996), focusing on research alongside the productive sector, protected by patents. At the same time, globalization has been accompanied by growing inequality and concentration of wealth between and within nations (Alvaredo et al. 2018), excluding huge sectors of the population from the access to techno-scientific goods.

While the mechanisms of public deliberation, organized in a top-down manner, constituted the governmental response to the context reported above in several industrialized countries, another form of public participation—activism—was much more widespread around the world. The social mobilization around problems involving S&T—growing since the 1960s with the formation of environmentalist, anti-nuclear, pacifist, and feminist movements—was gaining increasing strength by the nineties. Social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and interest groups, such as patients or victims of technological disasters, began to put pressure on scientific agendas, exposing technology risks, demanding greater S&T regulation and opposing technological projects (Carty 2002; Hess 2010; Arancibia and Motta 2019).

Several typologies are intended to account for the variety of forms of PPST and assess their impacts. Rowe and Frewer (2000) differentiate types of public engagement—communication, consultation and participation—according to the flow of information between participants and sponsors, with several results in terms of effectiveness, representativeness and transparency. Wynne (2007) distinguishes forms of invited participation, such as consensus conferences, and uninvited, through the engagement of organized groups. They are differentiated by the imposition or autonomy of the agenda and the framing of the discussion, respectively. This differentiation between forms of sponsored and self-organized participation is revisited by Bucchi and Neresini (2008), who further classify them by the intensity of cooperation between experts and non-experts in the production of knowledge. For Bogner (2012), the distinction between invited/uninvited participation would be better classified as laboratory and protest participation. While the first is organized by experts and executed in a controlled situation, separate from public controversies, the latter emerges from the autonomous framing and politicization of issues around S&T by social organizations. Finally, the typology proposed by Schrögel and Kolleck (2019) aims to integrate the forms of public participation in science governance and those that do science (citizen science), examining the incidence of experts, social groups and the general public in the normative (which must be done) and epistemic (knowledge generation) dimensions.

In this study, I recover from these typologies some aspects such as the distinction between invited and uninvited participation; the circulation of information between experts and lay people and the production of knowledge by lay people. However, I consider that none of these typologies has taken into account some relevant dimensions to investigate the democratizing scope of PPST.

Based on a broad review of case studies conducted in several countries, I propose three strands of PPST, which I call institutionalized participation, activist and conflictive participation and participation at the margins of established (or mainstream) S&T. I systematize, in each of these types, the participating actors' position in the productive structure, the form of participation, the expert-lay relationship—whether or not it opens space for the creation of new expertise—and the constitution of the discussion agenda. I then explore to what extent different forms of lay participation have been able to democratize scientific and technological development in different social and political contexts, by affecting its direction, scope, and pace (Fressoli, Dias, and Thomas 2014). To do so, my analysis focuses on the influence of public participation on the configuration of scientific agendas; the development direction of technological trajectories; and the imposition of norms or limits on the use of technology. I argue that this typology sheds light on some issues that are not highlighted in other existing typologies, especially because it identifies, from a political economy perspective, the position in the productive structure from which the actors participate, and distinguishes the different effects of participation on the production and consumption of science and technology.

After explaining the methodology and specifying some concepts in the next section, in the results and discussion section I present the three modalities of PPST and examine their democratizing effects. I finish the paper with brief closing remarks.

2. Materials, methods and concepts

This research started with an extensive literature review of PPST, including case studies and conceptual works. However, the objective was not to conduct a systematic unbiased review, from a set of predefined categories given the enormous amount of scientific production in the field.¹

The bibliographic search was guided by an interest in systematizing some questions about the possibilities and limitations of PPST that intrigued me after following, for a decade and a half, the development of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology prompted several initiatives of public participation and was also the focus of activist contestation. However, this didn't prevent its broad commercialization amid controversy about its health and environmental risks, and before the adaptation of existing chemical regulation (Foladori and Invernizzi 2019; Invernizzi and Foladori 2013).

The readings were systematized around three broad questions: Has public participation contributed to democratizing S&T? Has it changed scientific agendas? Has it influenced technological trajectories? Initially, I revisited a set of articles through which I came into contact with PPST in 2002. Most of these articles made optimistic assessments of experiences with consensus conferences and influenced an equally optimistic paper I wrote at the time (Invernizzi 2004).

Later, I identified two groups of literature. The first, temporally situated at the end of the 2000s, critically reviewed PPST based on the accumulation of experiences. The second was composed of more recent articles published in the main journals of social studies of science and technology and in books, in which, from the critical view mentioned above, new approaches began to be designed emphasizing the co-construction of audiences, the performative character of participatory technologies and the situated multiplicity of participatory experiments.

Finally, I conducted a search to identify literature addressing forms of public participation performed by different organizations and social movements, using the keywords “S&T activism,” “S&T and social movements” and “alternative technology movements.” I used a snowball sampling approach identifying new texts from the bibliographical references of the articles read. In addition, I did a specific search to locate Latin American cases. The resulting set of cases was quite broad, and many of them are used as examples in this article. Most of the cases could be labeled as “success” cases since they are more researched than failures.² However, cases of absolute success, such as the discontinuation of nuclear energy in Germany, a historical demand of the environmental and peace movement, are rare. Most often, success is partial, and quite often, limited. Consider, for instance, the very slow pace and almost no advance on mandatory regulation of nanotechnology; or the fact that regulation of several harmful pesticides restricted but didn’t rule out their use, still affecting people and the environment; or how workers that transformed a failed factory into a cooperative, despite owning it and trying to change the previous division of labor, struggle to undo the alienating effects materialized within inherited capitalist technology … 

As the readings progressed, the public incidence on technologies that were already on the market—that is, in the sphere of consumption—began to stand out. At the same time, I noticed the almost complete absence of recent case studies on labor resistance to productive technologies. This contrasted with the relevance of the subject in previous decades, addressing labor resistance to Fordist technologies and, later, to microelectronic-based automation. These findings made me realize that the literature on PPST attributes little importance to fundamental dimensions of political economy, such as the distinction between production and consumption of S&T, and their roles in the capital accumulation regime. In fact, Mirowski and Sent (2008) and Tyfield (2012) argue that STS literature, in general, has been refractory to consider techno-science development within the framework of capital accumulation, even in a context of increasing commercialization and privatization of knowledge production.³ This, in turn, overlooked the power relations that are embedded into this process, which permeate and constrain any attempt to democratize technologies.

The analysis of PPST presented here is constructed under a political economy of science and technology perspective that looks at the production, distribution and consumption of knowledge and technology under current capitalist accumulation conditions (Tyfield et al. 2017). Accordingly, I look at the position within production relations from which the actors participate in S&T, and examine the effects of public participation on the production and consumption of S&T. As I show later, the empirical evidence suggests that PPST differently affects the production and consumption of S&T, production being a capital fortress more difficult to trespass.

Paying attention to these issues throughout the case studies, I came across gaps in the existing typologies of public participation (previously mentioned) and designed a new categorization that better evidences the categories of production and consumption. I classified the cases into three strands of public participation: institutionalized, activist and conflictive, and at the margins of established S&T. Certainly, the boundaries between them are permeable, but each type has distinctive characteristics. For each strand I examined the participating actors by identifying their position in the productive structure, their form of participation, the expert-lay relationship, and the development of the discussion agenda (Figure 1, left).

Figure 1. Dimensions of analysis. Source: the author.

I then turned to assess the democratizing effects of PPST in its institutionalized, activist, and “at the margins” forms. This, of course, was not a simple task. As noted by Marres and Lezaun (2011), while science studies thoroughly scrutinize knowledge claims, the concept of democracy related to PPST is imported without further examination. In the same vein, Chilvers and Kearnes (2020) call attention to the use of “democracy” (as well as “the public”) as pregiven, external categories in the design and evaluation of participatory experiments. More interaction between S&T studies and political theory is certainly necessary to better grasp the ability of public participation to democratize S&T, as argued by Marres and Lezaun (2011) and Biegelbauer and Hansen (2011).

A particular challenge is to accommodate forms of participation within the diverse contemporary democracies in different parts of the world, which expect (or allow) different spaces for citizen participation. While the increasing and ubiquitous controversies generated by techno-scientific endeavors evidence the limits of the model of representative democracy and the centrality of experts on S&T decision-making, the reactions to such limits, as our revision of case studies suggest, are quite diverse. One of the responses is the set of methodologies for public participation typical of the “participative turn” of the nineties in Europe. Inspired by normative models of direct democracy, it is unclear how the output of these participative exercises can impact dominant representative political systems (Biegelbauer and Hansen 2011). Another response was activism, yet democracy theory has been hesitant to accommodate activist movements’ direct action within representative democracy; while deliberative democracy, based on the principles of debate and negotiation, rebukes this kind of action (Young 2014). In addition, there is the increasing role of professionalized NGOs in the disputes over S&T, which is often instrumental to strengthen the action of social movements and interest groups (Invernizzi and Foladori 2013; Vara 2007). Should these organizations be treated as conventional pressure groups within representative democracy? Finally, it is necessary to set a place for the political action of groups that deal with S&T “at the margins” of mainstream S&T, and often at the margins of capitalist relations as well.

Although much discussion is necessary on these issues, I conceptualized the democratizing effects of PPST as its capacity to affect the decisions on the direction, scope and pace of knowledge production, and technology production and consumption. To operationalize this, I addressed a specific set of democratic outcomes of PPST, listed on the right side of Figure 1. Regarding knowledge, what is the impact of PPST on scientific agendas? In relation to technology production, is public participation able to influence technological trajectories by changing them, stimulating the development of alternative trajectories, or contributing to extinguishing trajectories? In relation to technology consumption, has PPST been able to change the locus of technology use? Has it imposed limits (regulation) for their application? Has it been able to get compensation for damage caused?

Although I recognize the growing interpenetration between science and technology in so-called techno-science, when examining the democratizing effects of PPST I follow Feenberg (2009) in maintaining the distinction between the two. I agree that the ability of lay people to influence science tends to be much more modest, given their difficulty in controlling epistemic decisions. Feenberg stresses the under-determination of technology, inasmuch as it involves not only cognitive dimensions, but also social, economic and cultural choices in which intervention is possible. Technology is not subject to a single design, since alternative designs for each artifact are feasible. Moreover, while science enjoys considerable autonomy and separation from everyday life for cognitive decision-making, technology is commonplace, and ordinary people experience it and build knowledge about its benefits and risks. The case of regulatory science, however, seems to escape this distinction. It is a scientific field permeated by strong uncertainty and clearly subjected to economic and political pressures and demands. In other words, it is a field with a low degree of autonomy (Bourdieu 2004).

3. Results and discussion

In the following sections, I present the forms of PPST: institutionalized, activist and conflictive, and at the margins of the established S&T. After a brief characterization of each participation strand, I use some cases as examples to discuss who participating actors are, how they participate, and which are the democratizing achievements. In Figure 2, I summarize the findings about these three modalities.

Figure 2. Characteristics of the three strands of public participation in science and technology and their democratizing effects. Source: elaborated by the author. * Likely if consensus conferences and similar mechanisms do have impacts on the policy sphere.

3.1. Institutionalized participation

In the late 1980s, the Danish Board of Technology, an advisory organization to the Danish Parliament, began using consensus conferences to stimulate public participation in technology assessment (Andersen and Jaeger 1999). This methodology would become the trademark of institutionalized public participation (Delvenne and Macq 2019). Conferences last from 2 to 4 days and involve a group of experts, who present different perspectives on the subject under discussion, and a group of citizens, who debate the subject, assisted by a mediator and, as a final product, seek to draft consensual recommendations. The discussions are usually open to the public and media. The political impact is expected from the delivery of the conference recommendations to decision-makers (Horning 1999).

With variations in format and denominations, such as citizens’ panels, citizens’ juries, citizens’ conferences and public dialogues, these models of citizen participation have spread since the early 1990s to many countries in Europe, in the United States and in Southeast Asia (Joss 1999). In Latin America they were rarely used (Ureta 2016). Issues addressed included biotechnology, genetically modified foods; information technologies, nuclear waste, research in human genetics, environmental policy (Marris and Joly 1999) and, more recently, nanotechnology, gene therapies, reproductive technologies, among others (Laurent 2009; O’Doherty and Einsiedel 2013).

Taking case studies of conferences on genetically modified foods held in France in 1998 (Marris and Joly 1999), in Denmark, Canada and Australia in 1999 (Dryzek and Tucker 2008; Einsiedel, Erling, and Breck 2001) in Japan in 2000 (Nishizawa 2005), in the United States in 2001 and 2002 (Dryzek and Tucker 2008), and in Taiwan in 2008 (Fan 2015) as examples, and considering the literature that has critically evaluated these mechanisms over the past decade, I will examine the characteristics of institutionalized participation.

Who are the social actors participating in these instances? They are basically individuals, “representative citizens” of society. In the reviewed cases, citizens were chosen from volunteers who responded to public convocations or invitations, either randomly or representing society in terms of gender, age, occupation, and geographical location (Dryzek and Tucker 2008; Einsiedel, Erling, and Breck 2001; Fan 2015; Nishizawa 2005). Several authors (Felt and Fochler 2010; Irwin 2006; Laurent 2009; Marres and Lezaun 2011) have shown that the selection of participants pursued the ideal of “neutral citizen,” not ideologically or politically conditioned in relation to the topic under discussion; people who held previous positions were excluded. Thus, a clear demarcation is established between this model of individualized public participation and the collective action of organized groups. From the point of view of their position in the productive structure, the participating citizens are actual or potential consumers of the knowledge or technological artifacts under discussion. The parallel between post-Fordist individualist consumerism and the democratic individualism idealized in neoliberalism is evident (Thorpe 2010).

As for the form of participation, the conferences are characterized for being of small scale, or what Dryzek and Tucker (2008) have called “mini-publics.” In the cases mentioned, there were between 14 and 20 citizens. However, there are attempts to broaden the scale to increase its representativeness through public debates replicated in various locations. This was the case of GM Nation?, involving 675 meetings in the United Kingdom between 2002 and 2003 to probe citizens’ perspectives on the commercialization of biotechnological agriculture (Horlick-Jones et al. 2006), and of Débat Public Nanotechnologies held in France between 2009 and 2010 to discuss options for developing and regulating nanotechnologies (Bensaude-Vincent 2012). Another innovation was a transnational consultation on sustainable consumption held in 2014 with simultaneous events involving 1100 citizens in several European Union countries (Delvenne and Macq 2019).

Participation is invited, sponsored and regulated by the organizer, who defines the procedures. The events were co-organized by State agencies and universities in Taiwan and Canada, sponsored by universities and a think-tank in the United States and by State agencies (ministries, advisory centers) in the other five countries. As they take place in spaces separate from people’s daily life conditions, and under controlled conditions, Marres and Lezaun (2011) describe them as “agoristic” participation, and Bogner as “laboratory experiments” (2012).

The relationship between experts and lay people can be unidirectional or dialogical, with the former presenting scientific information—in the reviewed cases, usually taking care to include different points of view. There is a tendency to separate the scientific and political aspects of the problem under discussion and to limit public engagement to issues of values and ethics, without opening epistemological aspects to public scrutiny (Hagendijk and Irwin 2006). Citizens often do not have the specialized knowledge, material resources or time to participate effectively in these instances (Delvenne and Macq 2019; Jasanoff 2003; Stirling 2008).

As for the discussion agenda, the framing of the issues under debate is decided by the organizers, facilitators and experts. While lay neutrality is valued, the framing of the discussion involves an implicit political dimension that determines what is important and what is not, which issues are included and which are excluded (Bogner 2012; Hagendijk and Irwin 2006; Wynne 2007). At the Japanese conference, the participants were skeptical about the role of the Ministry of Agriculture. The body required the consultation, but was clearly aligned with promoting the development of biotechnology. In France, the organizing committee was interventionist, trying to justify the government’s positions. Literature has drawn attention to the importance of the socio-material conditions of participation in the framing of the discussion: artifacts, objects, scenarios through which audiences are mobilized, and which constrict, inform and are constitutive of the way in which this involvement occurs (Marres and Lezaun 2011). The imposition of a discussion guide excludes disagreement and consideration of scientific or technological alternatives (Jasanoff 2003; Laurent 2009; Stirling 2008; Wynne 2007), while the emphasis on consensus disregards conflict and dissent (Marris and Joly 1999; Van Bouwel and Van Oudheusden 2017).

How democratizing are these instances of deliberative democracy that are anchored to individual participation? Although the discussion takes place within the framework of “established” science and does not intend to delve into the epistemic dimensions of the problem, consensus conferences may have some influence, albeit diffuse, on scientific agendas. At conferences on genetically modified foods, citizens repeatedly drew attention to potential risks to health and the environment, pointing out that expert reports did not provide enough information on these issues and thus stressed the need for further research. Nevertheless, only the Japanese case study reports the funding of new research projects following the participants’ recommendation.

This participatory mechanism does not demonstrate sufficient strength to affect technology production, either by encouraging changes or abandonment of technological trajectories or by stimulating alternative ones. Genetically modified foods have generated strong public controversies and contestation by activist groups. However, during conferences, it was observed that citizens tended to internalize the optimistic visions presented by experts, as in Taiwan, or remained in a neutral position, as in Japan, or gave conditional support as in Canada, Australia and one US conference. Only in France and at the second US conference was there a stronger opposition, but with no influence on the political sphere. Alternative trajectories, such as organic food, were discussed by Danish and Canadian participants, but the recommendations excluded the subject. The literature emphasizes that these forms of regulated participation often function as legitimizers for existing trajectories and as softeners of conflicts around S&T (Levidow 2007) in the context of competitiveness imposed by the knowledge economy (Bensaude-Vincent 2012; Thorpe 2010).⁴

Finally, some case studies report effects on technology consumption when the results of discussions are taken into account in the development of regulatory policy. Thus, the results of GM Nation? in England have led to the government adopting a more cautious approach to the regulation of genetically modified organisms (Jasanoff 2006). The five case studies, however, report no evidence on this point, although regulation was an aspect highlighted by citizens, particularly during the French conference.

It is important to note that these deliberative mechanisms have proven fruitless in influencing political decision-making. The GM food conferences in Canada, Australia, the United States, Japan and Denmark had no political effects beyond a response to the recommendations by a Danish parliamentarian. In the case of France, the conference was virtually ignored by the parliament, despite taking place inside its own building. This ineffectiveness occurs because the participatory process occurs late in the development of public policies (Hagendijk and Irwin 2006; Jasanoff 2003; Wynne 2007), because participation is used to legitimize decisions already taken (Bucchi and Neresini 2008; Stirling 2008), or even to respond to public discontent or to prevent controversies (Dryzek et al. 2009; Levidow 2007; Marris and Joly 1999).

3.2. Activist and conflictive participation

Activism around social problems involving S&T has deep historical roots, such as the Luddite rebellion against textile machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Hobsbawm 1952). However, its closest antecedents lie in the second post-war period when, amidst the controversies generated by the Manhattan Project and the subsequent nuclear arms race, some scientists created organizations to promote a “responsible science” (Moore 1996). In the 1960s and 1970s, new social movements were formed, such as the pacifist, feminist, environmentalist, and civil rights movements, which challenged the direction taken by S&T and its social and environmental impacts. A new wave of activism began in the 1980s, responding to the intensification of the Cold War and militarism, the prominence of environmental issues, the advance of genetic research, the AIDS epidemic, the development of information and communication technologies, biotechnology and nanotechnology (Lengwiler 2008; Levidow 2007).

Many of these groups, constituted by NGOs or associations, became increasingly professionalized.⁵ Some started to have their own scientific staff and research capabilities, which allowed them to have a more relevant role in the production of scientific knowledge (Bucchi and Neresini 2008; Feenberg 2009). In addition to the focus on government policies and national research agendas, many groups operate globally, targeting multinational corporations and multilateral organizations and supporting mobilizations around the world (Vara 2007). Their strategies include information campaigns, massive demonstrations, as well as direct action and legal action (Hess 2007; Jasanoff 2006). Their activity is inherently political (Bogner 2012) and often involves conflict.

The literature reports a wide range of fronts in which activism operates. One of these fronts comprises the health and environmental risks of technologies, often obscured by discourses of techno-scientific progress. For example, the Canadian NGO ETC Group (2003) has called for a moratorium on nanotechnology, based on its potential health risks to workers, consumers and ecosystems. Although unsuccessful, the request put the topic of risks to public discussion, mobilized other organizations to include it in their agendas – Triste, Engeman, and Cruz (2012) identified 127 NGOs and other organizations worldwide acting on the issue – and induced greater investment in research on the risks of nanotechnology (Warheit 2018). The risks of pesticides are another target of activism. Suspecting that the high incidence of cancer in the city of Ituzaingó, Argentina, resulted from fumigation with glyphosate in the nearby agricultural areas, The Mothers of Ituzaingó started the Fumigated Cities movement. They made a lay mapping of the cases, organized demonstrations and formed alliances with researchers and lawyers to generate the counter-expertise necessary to bring the case to justice (Arancibia and Motta 2019). In the case studied by Broitman and Kreimer (2018), residents of Chilean Patagonia were opposed to the construction of a large hydroelectric project because it would cause a strong environmental impact. Thus, they prompted a national scale movement that eventually led to the abandonment of the project when a new president took office. Also, residents of the Páramo de Santurbán, Colombia, were against the construction of an open-pit mine that would endanger the region’s aquifers. They resorted to the residents’ ancestral knowledge and scientific knowledge to highlight possible damage, managing to influence the denial of the environmental license (Parra Romero 2019).

Another target of activism are the social implications of techno-scientific development. In the late 1990s, protests against genetically modified foods broke out around the world, identifying biotechnology as a symbol of the environmental, economic and cultural homogenization imposed by large corporations (Jasanoff 2006; Pelaez and Schmidt 2000). It was a project that “affected the current and future social order,” according to the activists, threatening small farmers’ productive practices, the diversity of plants and fruits, local culinary traditions, and ancestral cultures (Schurman and Munro 2010). Monsanto’s project to create sterile seeds was in the crosshairs of activism, being nicknamed by the NGO RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) as the “Terminator.” A successful campaign increased international pressure and the company decided to abort the project (Jasanoff 2006). The different forms of maternity/paternity and new family configurations created by reproductive technologies are another well-documented case of the social implications of S&T, which has led to the mobilization of conservative, feminist, and homosexual groups (Jasanoff 2007).

The fight for the right to access S&T results is well exemplified by movements of patients seeking to guarantee resources for research and access to medicines. During the burst of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, homosexual groups that had been fighting for civil rights quickly found themselves involved in a battle for life. In the United States, Epstein (1995) showed that, in the absence of a cure, activists demanded rapid design and approval of clinical trials, which simultaneously served as both research and treatment, guaranteeing patients’ right to undergo tests. In the process, patients were required to understand scientific methodologies, becoming quasi-experts. In Brazil, the mobilization of AIDS patient organizations, allied with the health reform movement, was pivotal in achieving universal access to antiretroviral treatments. The guarantee of access, conditioned by the reduction of prices through the production of generics in the country, escalated to international conflicts within the scope of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations so that the precedence of the right to life over trade was recognized (Barros and Vieira-da-Silva, 2017; Grangeiro, Laurindo, and Teixeira 2009).

An increasingly frequent front of action is social mobilization to force or harden the regulation of technologies. In Brazil, despite the tragedy that occurred in the early 1960s, thalidomide continued to be widely used to treat leprosy, producing new generations of victims. As Moro (2017) examines, the Brazilian Association of Thalidomide Syndrome’s Victims (ABPST) and the organization of leprosy patients, although with different initial interests, ended up as allies in pressuring, quite successfully, the National Health Council for tougher regulations to protect patients. While old technologies remain poorly regulated, the emergence of new ones creates regulatory challenges. In view of the increase in nanotechnology products on the market and the uncertainty about their risks, several organizations, convened by the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) and Friends of the Earth, developed the Principles for the Oversight of Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials in 2007. This document, signed by more than 70 social organizations and unions across six continents, materialized a broad global alliance to guide the assessment and demands for nanotechnology regulation (ITCA 2007).

Organized groups have also been fighting about repairing the damage caused by technologies. Former RCA employees in Taiwan were victims of a contaminating industrial process that resulted in cases of cancer, abortions, stillbirths and other health problems suffered by 1600 workers. Organized in an association, they mapped the cases and, with the help of unions, lawyers and researchers, were able to gather the necessary evidence to demonstrate the damage suffered, as well as to sue the company, demanding compensation and penalties. After 20 years of action, they obtained a favorable verdict in 2018 (Chen 2014; Jobin, Chen, and Lin 2018). In Brazil, the forced displacement of people by large hydroelectric projects, especially of small rural producers, has pushed these people to contest the unfair compensation received for their land. Several local movements joined the Movement of People Affected by Dams in 1984, expanding their scope of action. Not only did they question the supposed non-issued, beneficial and developmental perspective of large hydroelectric projects, but they also expanded the interpretation of the damage and losses recognized by the technicians of the companies, including other dimensions such as ecological, cultural and social damage (McCormick 2009; Reis 2009).

Feenberg (1995) has insisted that technical principles are insufficient to determine technology design, as there are gaps to modify technologies. He argues that the computer was conceived as an imitation space of daily interactions in which only valuable information (military, corporate) would circulate. However, users have appropriated the computer and converted it into a means of communication, where all kinds of virtual communities proliferate. Carty (2002), for example, showed that the World Wide Web was used by the global anti-sweatshop movement, which mobilizes global consumers against corporations that exploit workers, and Van Aelst and Walgrave (2002) report that the use of the Internet was instrumental in calling for massive worldwide anti-globalization demonstrations. Another case of technology modification comes from the critique of the hegemonic model of childbirth care, considered excessively medicalized and technocratic (Hirsch 2015). In Brazil, with a cesarean rate of 57%, women's movements and health professionals have insisted since the 1980s on using simpler and safer technologies, aiming to recover autonomy in the delivery experience. These movements for natural and humanized childbirth challenged the thesis of safer surgical delivery, widespread in medical circles, revaluing the knowledge of midwives and doulas (Tornquist 2004). Taking advantage of political opportunities (Hirsch 2015), or through litigation in the courts (Leão et al. 2013), they managed to modify practices in the public health system.

The eradication of technologies as a result of organized citizen resistance is infrequent, and does not always result in the complete extinction of a technological trajectory. The anti-nuclear movement embraced the cause of disarmament and the end of nuclear reactors to generate energy, given its risks. Although with limited gains on the first front, activism was essential to the signature of arms control treaties and freezing armament campaigns (Coburn 2017). The success was greater on the second front, causing the delay, suspension or cooling pace of nuclear plants construction in the United States and in some European countries (Kitschelt 1986). In what was then West Germany, anti-nuclear activism, strengthened in the 1970s, was successful in freezing nuclear infrastructure after the Chernobyl disaster (Rucht 1990). Later, the Fukushima tragedy accelerated German actions to completely shut down nuclear reactors by 2022 (Feldhoff 2014) and invigorated anti-nuclear movements in several countries, including Japan (Eijii 2016), and created new movements in India (Choudhury 2012).

On all these fronts, PPST occurs through collective actors mobilized around a problem. From the point of view of their position in the productive structure, they are effective or potential technology consumers. There are also affected people, either by the production of technologies, such as RCA workers or by its consumption, such as thalidomide users. Others are affected by the spatial position they occupy vis-à-vis productive activities, when people’s spaces are taken by technological projects, such as dams in displacing them, or when inhabitants of cities adjacent to agricultural production are exposed to uncontrolled pesticide fumigation intake.

Unlike forms of institutionalized participation, activism has self-organized from people's own frameworks of public problems under dispute according to the interests of the mobilized group. There are more spontaneous forms of organization (such as The Mothers of Ituzaingó) and more professional ones (NGOs such as the ETC Group or Friends of the Earth). They operate on a small scale when it comes to local problems; on a national level, such as in the mobilization against large Chilean or Brazilian hydroelectric projects; and even internationally, regarding matters such as genetically modified food or nanotechnology.

The relationship between experts and lay people is constructed in different ways in activist mobilization, resulting in distinct capacities of influencing knowledge production. There is opposition and contestation of data, as in the movement of people affected by dams, in determining the causes of diseases, as in the cases of Ituzaingó and RCA, or in assessing the nuclear risk. The cases demonstrate that the scientification of disputes over established science is recurrent, which makes access to this knowledge vital for activists. Some achieve it by becoming quasi-experts, such as US AIDS activists, or using their own scientific staff, in organizations like Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, but many movements depend on collaboration of scientists willing to take on the problems in their research agendas to produce counter-evidence. In some cases, although apparently infrequent, activists are successful in mobilizing local knowledge, such as lay epidemiologies, knowledge of traditional midwives or knowledge of “the water factories” of the Colombian Páramo inhabitants.

The discussion agenda is at the heart of the debate. The framing of the problem by regulatory authorities, industries and judges is permanently challenged by social organizations in order to include other elements in the discussion, such as the immeasurability of the damage produced in the lives of the RCA workers, the cultural and environmental value of flooded lands among those affected by dams, or the primacy of life over scientific procedures and trade in the case of AIDS. When negotiation occurs, there may be a compromise in the participants’ initial agenda. For instance, thalidomide victims stood in favor to end the use of this drug, but when sitting down to discuss this issue they had to make alliances with groups of patients who only proposed stricter regulation. In the disputes over the regulation of biotechnology or nanotechnology, the discussion of broader social regulation, claimed by activists, is recurrently limited to a narrow approach of risk-benefit.

From the set of examined cases, it is evident that activist groups achieve broader success in democratizing S&T than institutionalized participation. They affect the scientific agenda not only by forcing the introduction of new topics in the established science, such as the risks of nanotechnology, but also by creating alternative scientific agendas that produce counter-evidence on the value of the losses of displaced people by hydroelectric plants, or on the carcinogenic effects of pesticides.

These groups have demonstrated the ability to modify the production of technologies, either by changing technological trajectories—as in the case of biotechnology and the Terminator gene or in the configurations of computers—or by promoting alternative trajectories, such as non-medicalized delivery, or even by leading to the extinction of technologies, such as the case of nuclear energy in some countries.

Activists have also been able to affect technology consumption. Patient groups are an example of struggles to expand access to technology. Consumption is also the focus of action when there are struggles to change the location of technology use, such as hydroelectric plants or mining projects. However, in these cases, these technologies can be installed in alternative locations, affecting others. Organized movements have managed to impose limits on the use of various technologies by fighting for their regulation. This is the case of pesticides—with the worldwide mobilization to limit the use of glyphosate—nano- and biotechnology, and the controversial resurgence of thalidomide.

Finally, when the damage has already been done, victim organizations can only claim compensation for the damage and draw public attention to the deleterious effects that a technology may cause. This is extremely difficult for organizations because of the unequal conditions in which companies and victims oppose each other in long litigation. Organized social movements seem to have a greater impact on changing the way of using technologies, that is, their consumption, than on affecting their production.

3.3. Participation at the margins of mainstream S&T

Some types of public participation emerge at the margins and interstices of the dominant scientific-technological trajectories. They result from the absence, in mainstream research agendas, of issues relevant to social groups; the exclusion of social classes from access to established S&T or the inadequacy of existing S&T to their needs; and also, as part of alternative social projects and ideologies which demand knowledge and technologies that are compatible with them. Next, I explore some cases of public participation in shaping marginal research agendas, designing technologies for social inclusion and social technologies, and of alternative technologies.

3.3.1. Marginal research agendas and counter-expertise

When social movements participate in discussions involving S&T, in a context of increasing scientification of debates, policies, and regulations, they often want to present epistemic arguments to support their positions. However, they quickly realize that their issues of concern have not been investigated yet. This absence of topics on the research agendas is what Hess (2016; 2010) calls “undone science.” Ottinger (2013) and Harper (2016) have referred to this phenomenon as “knowledge gaps.”

In the early 1990s, the genetic causes of cancer were the dominant medical paradigm. In view of above-average breast cancer cases in the Long Island region, USA, a patients' movement contested this approach, seeking evidence about another cause, environmental contamination, which could explain why some groups were more affected than others. However, such research did not exist, or was very fragmented. After mapping the cancer cases through lay epidemiology, the group of patients was able to encourage university researchers to produce the necessary knowledge. The pressure from patients spread to Congress, which, for the first time, approved a research fund demanded by an activist group. Not without resistance (including from the chemical industry), research agendas gradually opened up for the study of environmental causes of cancer (McCormick 2009). Similarly, the study by Rabeharisoa and Callon (2002) on patient organizations in France evidences the crucial role of these organizations in promoting research agendas that include poorly studied diseases, providing research funds, determining priorities, and sometimes opening them to knowledge accumulated by the patients themselves.

Goldstein’s (2017) study on the risks of nuclear plants in Brazil shows, in the opposite sense, this relationship between social movements and undone science. The hermeticism resulting from the Cold War generated considerable undone science about the contamination and health effects of nuclear power plants. However, the author shows that the systematic destruction of the Brazilian anti-nuclear movement was essential to maintain the undone science. After Chernobyl, local activism, which had been strengthened with the support of Greenpeace, inquired about the safety of plants and their effects on health and the environment around them. A systematic campaign by the Brazilian Association of Nuclear Energy, which brought together scientists and technicians from the field, discredited Greenpeace and the whole movement, ending the debate on risks and nuclear contamination. From that moment on, scientists engaged in the topic were unable to obtain research funds to develop studies on these subjects.

Some spaces are open for social movements to fill these knowledge gaps. Between the 1970s and 1990s, European universities hosted Science Shops, offices open to the research demands of the communities and, in the United States, community-based research was developed, more loosely linked to universities (Joss 1999; Raloff 1998). In Latin America, universities and public research centers fulfill this role (Alzugaray 2016; Parra Romero 2019; Renfrew 2017). The researchers who meet these demands are usually in subordinate positions in the scientific networks of their research fields and compose what Hess (2011) calls “the scientific counterpublics,” as they draw public attention to the politics of research agendas in relation to some topic of public interest.

The reviewed studies have evidenced various combinations of lay and expert knowledge in these research arrangements. Several types of expertise are produced to question, from alternative framings, established science. As Arancibia and Motta (2019) argue, what counts as expertise varies according to the context, and may include new scientific knowledge produced by experts committed to social movements, a new interpretation of existing data, or local knowledge, empirically constructed by lay people.

3.3.2. Technologies for social inclusion and social technologies

In Latin America, a set of participatory technological development experiences is associated with socially excluded populations. Technologies for social inclusion are ways of designing, developing, implementing and managing technologies to solve social and environmental problems, generating dynamics of social inclusion and sustainable development (Thomas, Juárez, and Picabea 2015). Dagnino (2014) affirms that social technologies promote social inclusion in a context of exclusion of the population from formal labor relations. Therefore, the author links them to types of solidarity economy. Several progressive governments in the 2000s supported the development of social technologies and technologies for social inclusion, although these initiatives occupied marginal positions in science, technology and innovation policies (Dagnino and Bagattolli 2009; Thomas, Fressoli, and Becerra 2012).

Bortz (2017) examines how a technology for social inclusion was designed from the cutting-edge field of biotechnology. In the province of Tucumán, Argentina, a food called Yogurito Escolar (School Yogurt, in English) was developed for poor school children with malnutrition problems. This dairy product was designed to strengthen the immune system and prevent respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases. The author shows that the product, initially designed by researchers from a public research institute, gradually became open to public participation in the testing phase and subsequent large-scale implementation. There was a negotiation of expertise between various actors, including government officials, physicians, teachers, children, and parents, culminating in modifying the product to ensure its usefulness.

The case studied by Dias (2013) deals with a traditional technology. “One Million Cisterns” was a public policy implemented in northeast Brazil to scale up the construction of cisterns to capture and store rainwater. The low-cost social technology was developed by a regional builder, based on local knowledge about the cycle of rain and drought in semi-arid local conditions. With State funding and support from community organizations, the cisterns were easily reproducible through the socialization of knowledge and were built with community work. The program resulted in a better quality of life, increased family income and empowered communities. According to Dias (2013), having local actors framing the problem as “living with drought” was essential to success, in opposition to the recurrent and ineffective solutions proposed from the perspective of “fighting drought,” using more expensive conventional technologies.

There are also cases of participatory redesign and adaptation of conventional technologies to adjust them to alternative social projects. Since the 1970s, the Uruguayan Federation of Mutual Aid Housing has organized the cooperative movement for the construction of social housing. Thomas, Becerra, and Picabea (2014) consider it a case of innovation for social development in which user participation occurs at all levels of construction, from project to occupation. The authors observed that mutual aid construction generated particular problem-solutions dynamics that resulted in a number of technological innovations, such as the adaptation of construction techniques to the builders’ fragmented availability of time. These innovations were passed on and reframed in the following cooperative undertaking.

However, redesigning technologies for new social relations is not a simple task, as Novaes (2007) argues when studying “recovered factories” in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. In the 1990s, in the context of Latin America’s deindustrialization, factories were abandoned, taken over or rented by former workers and transformed into cooperatives. Workers aimed at humanizing their work, making it more creative and egalitarian. However, they encountered difficulties in modifying the technology, beyond some simple adaptations, due to the lack of technical knowledge or even because they naturalized the technology. Thus, the pre-existing factory design ended up reproducing a good deal of alienating and repetitive work.

3.3.3. Alternative technologies

Unlike the previous cases, which arise from social exclusion, the movement for alternative technologies, developed in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, with intellectual roots in the social, cultural and environmental criticism of capitalist technology. Uncontrolled technological innovation was seen as a source of risk and alienation; hence the precautionary and almost anti-modern approach of the movement, which favored simple technologies, developed and managed locally (Harper 2016). The movement grew as a marginal culture in protected niches (Smith 2003).

Alternative energies, such as solar, wind and biogas, were one of the main focuses (and legacy) of the alternative technology movement. They were conceived as small-scale and decentralized projects, compatible with a social project that provided for their use and administration by communities aiming at self-sufficiency (Elliott 2016). Embraced by environmental movements, their use has expanded since the 1990s. For example, Vasi (2009) shows that the expansion of wind energy in Europe is correlated not only with wind conditions, but also with the intensity of the environmental movement across different countries. However, the situation created was contradictory. If, on the one hand, the design of alternative technologies has left its imprint—in 2013, 40% of renewable energy capacity in Germany was locally owned, produced by individuals or cooperatives—on the other hand, there has been a tendency for them to be co-opted by corporations, escalated to mass production, centrally controlled and used to maintain high standards of energy consumption (Elliott 2016; Smith 2005).

Organic foods, advocated by naturalist movements since the 1920s and taken up by the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s, are another expanding alternative technology following the controversies over genetically modified foods in the 1990s. Their development fits what Hess (2007) calls alternative industrial movements. These comprise the other side of social movements opposed to industry, formed from the proposal of alternative solutions; in this case, organic food is an alternative solution to the denounced environmental and health risks of industrialized agriculture. Observing their trajectory in the US, the author shows the mobilization of producers and their associations for certification, establishment of standards, technical assistance and market development. As in the case of alternative energies, the expansion of organic food has challenged its local base with the growing industrialization of organic products and the entry of large producers and distribution networks.

The free software movement is another case of alternative technology, but with peculiar characteristics. These technologies are developed through cooperation in networks of dispersed communities—in a cooperation without command—that challenge intellectual property, high costs and monopoly imposed by large corporations. Code sharing by hackers, common in the origins of computing, became an illegal practice after the commodification of software in the 1980s. In this context, an activist movement was formed, which advanced not only in the production of free software, but also in legal innovations, such as the concept of copyleft and its legal expression, the General Public License, in order to protect the right of use and not the ownership (Vidal 2000). The movement challenged the social division of labor that prevails in technological development, stripping corporations and government laboratories of their monopoly over research and development and calling into question the existence of software ownership (Söderberg 2008). However, in the late 1990s, large companies entered the production of free software, imposing more mainstream and commercially viable characteristics that, nevertheless, seek to maintain adherence to the values ⁣⁣of free use (Fitzgerald 2006; Söderberg 2008).

This set of cases shows that collective social actors, in the form of alternative social movements and communities, often assisted by researchers who question mainstream scientific agendas, are able to produce S&T in a participatory manner, on the margins of established techno-science. These actors occupy several positions in the productive structure. As the experiences with technologies for social inclusion show, these actors are consumers, but are also people excluded from consumption. They are people affected by production, such as cancer patients exposed to industrial toxics, or those residing close to nuclear plants, exposed to risks. They are also groups excluded from capitalist social relations, such as the unemployed due to closed factories, or self-excluded from these relationships, based on an ideological critique, such as the case of alternative communities. For the first time among the reviewed forms of PPST, actors appear in the productive sphere, in recovered factories, in housing cooperatives, in alternative communities or in the production of free software. Therefore, it is only in these cases that the technologies designed, although marginal, are adapted to the worldviews and values ⁣⁣of the collective actors involved.

Similarly to activist participation, and precisely because it is based in many cases on social movements, PPST at the margins of established S&T is self-organized. It comprises small groups that are capable of multiplying, such as producers of organic food; or large global and diffuse communities, such as free software producers. However, I have also presented cases in which this participation was stimulated (Yogurito case) or multiplied (cisterns) by public policies. This also occurs when the purchasing power of the State stimulates the development of these technologies, buying food for school meals from local organic producers, or using free software in public administration. In these cases, public policy has a relevant organizing role.

The relationship between experts and laypeople presents several possibilities. Researchers engage in alternative research agendas, conducting the undone science needed by these organized groups or helping to develop inclusive technologies. Laypeople, in addition to values ⁣⁣and worldviews, provide traditional knowledge and experiences, opening space for various forms of expertise. There are cases of taking knowledge developed as marginal S&T by mainstream techno-scientific dynamics (alternative energies) and, conversely, attempting to turn mainstream technologies into technologies suitable for alternative social projects, such as housing cooperatives or recovered factories. Regarding the participatory agenda, it tends to be proposed by interest or affected groups, remaining autonomous in some occasions due to the marginal character of the groups involved, or opening up to the inclusion of new actors, either through the intervention of public policies or the incorporation of marginal S&T to mainstream dynamics.

PPST at the margins of established S&T has democratizing effects on scientific research agendas when it promotes the entry of non-researched topics. As Hess (2011) demonstrates, researchers who participate in research networks outside their mainstream fields are reinforced by giving attention to the demands of mobilized social groups and, at the same time, help to make these groups stronger. The case of breast cancer patients proves that research topics, marginal at one moment, may be accepted in more conventional circles, while other topics remain enlisted in peripheral research networks, such as agroecology and alternative medicines.

The democratizing effects also affect technology production, by changing and adapting technological trajectories to new productive configurations, such as cooperatives—although noting that manufacturing technologies resist changes—or by directing high technological trajectories such as biotechnology, typically oriented to more affluent markets, for social inclusion as shown by the food for school children in Argentina. Finally, these groups have the capacity to create completely alternative technological trajectories, such as in the energy and food field. PPST at the margins does not focus on the consumption of technologies, hence there are no results regarding this dimension.

4. Closing remarks

I have reviewed a set of experiences in PPST that reveal great historical and empirical variety around the world. Given the analogous variation in democratic settings and citizenship development from country to country, there was a risk of generalization in trying to assess the democratizing effects of such experiences. A landscape view of these cases, supported by a political economy perspective that paid attention to the different spheres of production and consumption of S&T, brought to the fore aspects that are usually left aside by the literature on PPST. In closing this article, I want to highlight four points.

First, institutionalized participation, by individualizing and decontextualizing the discussion about S&T from people’s collective experiences, tends to depoliticize participation and, contrary to its purpose, results in very fragile effects on S&T trajectories. Collective and self-organized participation, on the other hand, whether questioning and modifying established S&T, or developing S&T at its margins, is more successful because it frames the problem of democratizing S&T within the political field to which it belongs. These forms of public participation challenge power relations entrenched in the scientific and technological development and that result not only in an unequal distribution of risks and benefits, but also in class and gender bias, in environmental degradation and in cultural domination.

Second, as the cases presented show, the PPST is sometimes able to influence knowledge production; however, in order to achieve this influence, lay people and groups depend on alliances with scientists who are willing to transit spaces outside not only mainstream science, but also scientific reward systems. As society and politics become more scientified, the focus on research agendas results in a fundamental democratizing aspect. Nevertheless, as Feenberg (2009) warned, debating the epistemic aspects of public problems is arduous, as is the recognition of counter-expertise—often judged as “junk science” when controversies arise—and, even more, the recognition of local or traditional knowledge.

Third, technology production is the most resistant bastion to democratization because it is crucially crossed by strong inequalities regarding power and resources. However, social movements have achieved some successes, imposing changes in some technological trajectories to reduce their harmful effects. Exceptionally, they have managed to end trajectories. Those groups that operate at the margins of established S&T—which sometimes coincide with the margins of capitalist relations—besides modifying technologies, also manage to create them. One issue is that these groups remain in very isolated niches, or, contradictorily, they tend to be phagocytosed and reconfigured by corporations when they increase their reach.

Fourth, the consumption of technologies has been more permeable to the influence of PPST. As neoliberal States ceased to act directly in the fields of health, work and the environment, limiting their action to regulation, this constituted a space of confrontation often targeted by social organizations in order to ensure a safer or more restrictive use of technologies. The fight against the use of technologies in certain spaces, due to their risks or social implications, is another issue with increased public action, despite sometimes presenting contradictory results since the same technologies may be allocated in spaces that offer less resistance. Compensation for damage is a hostile terrain, although in some cases this leads to effective changes in the use of technologies, for example, by the imposition of stricter regulations.

Finally, I want to return to the initial question: has public participation contributed to the democratization of S&T? The answer is yes. But how deeply? This is a question that is as relevant as it is difficult to answer. In view of the overwhelming concentration of S&T development by large corporations, and at its ever-faster pace, my perception would tend to be less optimistic. However, I have no doubt that all the efforts reported here have been worthwhile.

Acknowledgements

I thank João Victor Schmicheck and Mauren Ziak from the Centro de Assessoria de Publicação Acadêmica, Unversidade Federal do Paraná, for the translation of the article from Portuguese. I thank the comments made to the presentation of an earlier version of this work in the III Argentinean Congress of Social Studies of Science and Technology, held in Mar del Plata in November 2019. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions, and the editors for their wonderful revision work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Noela Invernizzi is a Uruguayan anthropologist and holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy (University of Campinas, Brazil). She works at the Education undergraduate program and the Public Policy graduate program of the Federal University of Paraná, in Curitiba, Brazil. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Columbia University (now at ASU), USA, a professor at the Development Studies Program at Zacatecas Autonomous University, Mexico, and a fellow at the Science, Technology and Innovation Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her research interests include the effects of industrial innovation for workers' skills and employment conditions, science, technology and innovation policies, and the development of nanotechnology in Latin American countries.

Notes

1 A simple search using the terms “public participation in science and technology” returns in approximately 4000 results on Google Scholar, and 5263 papers and 11,225 chapters and books in the Simon Fraser University library.

2 For exceptions, see Goldstein (2017) and Ureta (2016).

3 “ … the overall approach of STS […] is almost constitutionally allergic to issues of political economy. This allergy arguably derives from the focus of the interdiscipline on anti-realist philosophical constructivism, which in turn entails a dismissive attitude to social structures and totalizing social critiques” (Tyfield 2012, 160).

4 Delvenne and Macq (2019) note a loss of the ideal of democratization in many recent participatory experiments, which focused on promoting innovation and commercialization.

5 This article does not pretend to deliver a complete picture of the actions of NGOs, and is biased towards NGOs aligned with environmental justice, inclusion, and other demands in line with social movements. However, a variety of NGOs adopt different stands on scientific and technological development. Consider, for instance, the opposite stances adopted by Friends of the Earth and ETC Group; on one side defending the mandatory regulation of nanotechnology and, on the other, Environmental Defense, which supported DuPont in constructing a Nanorisk Framework in line with industry voluntary compliance with best practices (Invernizzi and Foladori 2013).