Article
ID: CBB000773320

The Issues Deserve More Credit: Pragmatist Contributions to the Study of Public Involvement in Controversy (2007)

unapi
Science and politics Science studies, as a discipline Public understanding of science Democracy Pragmatism; instrumentalism Science studies, theoretical works Dewey, John

This paper explores the `issue-oriented' perspective on public involvement in politics opened up by recent research in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This research proposes that public controversy around techno-scientific issues is dedicated to the articulation of these issues and their eventual accommodation in society. It does not, however, fully answer the question of why issue formation should be appreciated as a crucial dimension of democratic politics. To address this question, I turn to the work of two early 20th-century American pragmatists: John Dewey and Walter Lippmann. In their work on democracy in industrial society, they conceived of public involvement in politics as being occasioned by, and providing a way to settle, controversies that existing institutions were unable to resolve. Moreover, Dewey developed a `socio-ontological' understanding of issues, which suggests that people's involvement in politics is mediated by problems that affect them. Dewey and Lippmann thus provide important argumentative resources for further elaborating the approach to public involvement developed in STS. STS research has also developed a `socio-ontological' approach, as it focuses on the `attachments' that people mobilize (and that mobilize people) in the performance of their concern with public affairs. Such an approach provides an alternative to discursivist analysis of the role of `issue framing' in the involvement of publics in politics.

...More

Description Uses pragmatic political theorists Dewey and Lippmann to further elaborate the nature of public involvement in STS issues.

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000773320/

Similar Citations

Book Stephen P. Weldon; (2020)
The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism (/isis/citation/CBB416689602/)

Chapter Pestre, Dominique; (2010)
What about Participation, Governance and Politics? Remarks on Contemporary Techno-science and the Field of STS (/isis/citation/CBB001023238/)

Article Kurath, Monika; Gisler, Priska; (2009)
Informing, Involving or Engaging? Science Communication, in the Ages of Atom-, Bio- and Nanotechnology (/isis/citation/CBB000932282/)

Thesis Aronova, Elena; (2012)
Studies of Science before “Science Studies”: Cold War and the Politics of Science in the U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R., 1950s--1970s (/isis/citation/CBB001561036/)

Article Fujigaki, Yuko; Tsukahara, Togo; (2011)
STS Implications of Japan's 3/11 Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB001231676/)

Article Figaredo Curiel, Francisco Humberto; (2002)
La tradición cienciológica en el estudio de la ciencia (/isis/citation/CBB000410666/)

Article Hamlin, Christopher; (2007)
STS: Where the Marxist Critique of Capitalist Science Goes to Die? (/isis/citation/CBB000831587/)

Article Tucker, Aviezer; (2007)
The Political Theory of French Science Studies in Context (/isis/citation/CBB000720295/)

Article Lynch, Michael; (2006)
From Ruse to Farce (/isis/citation/CBB000780206/)

Book Latour, Bruno; (2004)
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (/isis/citation/CBB000651021/)

Article Evelyn Fox Keller; (2017)
Climate science, truth, and democracy (/isis/citation/CBB787498022/)

Article Gonçalves, Maria Eduarda; Papon, Pierre; (2004)
Introduction---Scientific and Technological Institutions and the New Knowledge-Based Society: A European Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB000700958/)

Article Harvey, Matthew; (2007)
Citizens in Defence of Something Called Science (/isis/citation/CBB000720315/)

Book John J. Stuhr; (2022)
No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism (/isis/citation/CBB512993699/)

Article Matthew J. Brown; (2015)
John Dewey's Pragmatist Alternative to the Belief-Acceptance Dichotomy (/isis/citation/CBB871760967/)

Article Pihlström, Sami; (2008)
How (Not) to Write the History of Pragmatist Philosophy of Science? (/isis/citation/CBB000831774/)

Article Steven Levine; (2015)
Hegel, Dewey, and Habits (/isis/citation/CBB215567620/)

Chapter Hookway, Christopher; (2000)
Pragmatism: Commonsense and the Limits of Science (/isis/citation/CBB000470112/)

Article Brown, Matthew J.; (2012)
John Dewey's Logic of Science (/isis/citation/CBB001210956/)

Thesis Evans, Karen Gilliland; (1998)
Governance, Citizenship, and the New Sciences: Lessons from Dewey and Follett on Realizing Democratic Administration (/isis/citation/CBB001562225/)

Authors & Contributors
Brown, Matthew J.
Levine, Steven
John J. Stuhr
Weldon, Stephen P.
Tucker, Aviezer
Tsukahara, Togo
Journals
Science as Culture
Perspectives on Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Social Studies of Science
Public Understanding of Science
Publishers
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
University of California, San Diego
Oxford University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Harvard University Press
Concepts
Science and politics
Science studies, theoretical works
Democracy
Science studies, as a discipline
Pragmatism; instrumentalism
Science and government
People
Dewey, John
Peirce, Charles Sanders
James, William
Whitehead, Alfred North
Rorty, Richard
Marx, Karl
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century, late
21st century
19th century
20th century
18th century
Places
United States
Russia
Europe
Cuba
Japan
France
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment

Creative Commons License REST API