Thursday 10 June 2010, University of East Anglia

The third workshop of the ESRC seminar series Critical Perspectives on Public Engagement in Science and Environmental Risk explored the topic of emerging forms of public engagement and participation in the context of geologic and flood hazards. The management of natural hazards has traditionally been dominated by physical scientific understandings, even though it has been recognised for some time that people’s vulnerability to disasters also depends on social, economic and political factors. Increasing attempts to incorporate these latter dimensions has led to some risk reduction strategies becoming more interdisciplinary in opening up to social science and participatory by attempting to include the voices and experiences of those most at risk. Yet while participatory practices linked to international development and community-level efforts to build resilience have existed for some time they often remain disconnected from scientific analyses of hazard and risk that inform policy. There is a need for greater critical insight into the performance of participation in these contexts.

The emergence of participation in a domain dominated by technical expertise raises important questions about power and the politics of knowledge, its possible co-production, and the extent to which assessments can be opened up to lay or community-based perspectives? In addition, how does the very nature of natural hazards, that are often localised and open to direct sensory perception, shape the forms of participation that get enacted? The global reach of these developments raises further issues about the ‘scaling up’ of participation, the ‘mobility’ of participatory techniques from place to place, and the ways in which national culture conditions participation?

The workshop report is available here UEA-report.

To read more about the seminar series see here.

Programme