Linda Soneryd

• Professor of Sociology University of Gothenburg
• Professor (Full) at University of Gothenburg

Throughout this book, a range of challenges and possibilities that arise in relation to science and expertise have been discussed. These include the boundaries between science and democracy or, more generally, between science and politics, and how concerned groups or the general public can be involved in technoscientific issues. It is almost imposs...

Both science and democracy are based on representation. It has been suggested in this book that this means a dividing line is created between those who represent and those who are represented. Concerning science, and expert knowledge more generally, fears are sometimes raised in relation to expert rule. However, this is often an unproblematic, and...

Science and democracy have emerged as important institutions in modern Western societies. But what does it mean that a society is ‘modern’? Among other things, modernity means that the world is understood in the light of scientific knowledge, instead of traditional knowledge and religious beliefs. Scientific knowledge takes precedence over other fo...

Citizenship is formally and historically connected to the nation state, though this has not always been the case (cf Athens’ city-centred democracy). In today’s understanding of democracy, however, scientific knowledge and technical expertise intersect with citizens’ ability to hold state power accountable to democratic values. Sheila Jasanoff (201...

This book explores the relationship between science and democracy from an STS perspective. Through the focus on the interplay between science and politics and the role of participation when it comes to highly expert-dependent issues, the book contributes important insights into the relation between science and democracy. The book also introduces ST...

This chapter goes deeper into the complex relation between science and democracy. Previous chapters discussed how science and politics are separate and that one elite (scientific experts) is delegated the power to represent nature (as knowledge objects) and another elite (decision makers, not only elected politicians but broadly speaking) is delega...

Science, in its very basic sense, means knowledge, from the Latin scientia; and democracy, in its very basic sense, means rule of the people, from the Greek demos (people) and kratos (rule). Throughout history, science and democracy have each developed with a keen ability to alter their shape in various contexts. Nevertheless, science has come to d...

This chapter continues the presentation of ideas about science and politics as separate. While the previous chapter focused on separation as part of wider societal changes and discussed thinkers who demonstrate a clear separation, some of whom also support the idea of strictly separated domains, this chapter focuses on approaches that discuss how s...

As an interlude, this chapter is an effort to connect, bridge, and provide an overlap between the other two parts of this book: Separation and Co-production. In this work, the picture of a clear division between science and politics is complicated. The focus is on science and politics as two separate activities with their own institutions and pract...

Sustainable development as a subject area and learning objective increasingly finds its way into the curriculum from pre-school to university level, and education and learning are emphasized as key drivers for sustainable development. At the same time, the sustainable development discourse has since its inception been met with critique, not least t...

In this paper, we explore Indigenous peoples’ engagement and inclusion in the Green Climate Fund. We rely on the distinction between simple inclusion and a deeper recognition of Indigenous peoples’ contributions, described as epistemic belonging. We analyse how organizational interdependencies, i.e. the exchange and valuation of resources between a...

This paper explores the river landscapes and concomitant values resulting from tensions between flood management and visions of a River City. The aim is to contribute to an understanding of the management of urban waters as valuation practices. We regard valuation practices as co-constitutive of current and future river landscapes. Sweden’s second-...

En pandemi är en kris och som sådan en ny situation som präglas av både vetenskapliga och samhälleliga osäkerheter, i vilken vardagslivets invanda rutiner till viss del omkullkastas. Covid-19-pandemin har synliggjort redan etablerade samhällsstrukturer och ojämlikheter men också förvärrat maktrelationer och utsatthet. I denna artikel introducerar v...

As in many other policy areas, there is a rising concern about how to involve the general public in heritage management and preservation. We analyse attempts made by Swedish cultural heritage authorities to initiate new participatory devices. We ask: How is storytelling used as a participatory device? What are the implications of this in terms of h...

Sociologisk Forskning bad fyra sociologer i Sverige att svara på några korta frågor om coronapandemin och vårt samhälles hantering av den. Deras tidigare forskning har på olika sätt berört olika frågor såsom socialmedicin och medicinsk kunskapsproduktion, sociala nätverks betydelse för smittspridning, samhällets hantering av kriser och risker, gen...

With the emergence of global mechanism for toxic harm accountability, a transnational environmental justice regime is slowly rising. One of the ways in which its taking form is through transnational litigation schemes where corporations are being locally sued by the alleged victims of their overseas misbehaviours. Using a science and technology stu...

This study explores the journey of a model for stakeholder involvement called RISCOM. Originally developed within the field of radioactive waste management in Sweden, it was later used in the Czech Republic to re-establish public dialogue in the process of siting a geological repository. This case of ers an opportunity to empirically study the frag...

This paper analyses citizen dialogue in urban planning from a governmentality perspective. We focus on (1) how motives and goals connected to ‘citizen dialogue’ and the activities and practices initiated to accomplish these can be understood in light of competing rationalities and (2) how public officials and other actors involved in organising cit...

This study explores the journey of a model for stakeholder involvement called RISCOM. Originally developed within the field of radioactive waste management in Sweden, it was later used in the Czech Republic to re-establish public dialogue in the process of siting a geological repository. This case offers an opportunity to empirically study the frag...

The starting point for this paper is the increasing shift towards green governmentality as a particular mode of governance in the Western world, implying a shift from state-centered regulation to marketbased mechanisms. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) in this form of g...

From the 1990s and onwards, environmental planning and governance has undergone a broad participatory turn. This paper focuses on one specific aspect of participatory processes and the concrete arrangements through which they are carried out, more specifically: how such processes always come to enact some actors as ‘legitimately concerned’ stakehol...

Environmental movements have always dealt with intrinsically transnational issues. At the same time, many issues and strategies among environmental movement actors have been articulated as nation-based. An increased emphasis on the issue of climate change and preparations before the UN Climate Summit in 2009, held in Copenhagen, fuelled the mobilis...

div> Efforts to include a broader set of actors, knowledges and values in environmental decision-making have been promoted as a key remedy to technocratic decision-making and environmental degradation, and as instrumental for better decisions and democratic empowerment. Yet, such inclusive efforts yield uncertain results and entail various theoreti...

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the development of new theoretical and methodological resources for analysing power dynamics in planning studies. Our overarching aim is to demystify the concept of ‘power’ and what it purports to be describing, making those practices grouped under this label more tangible and, hence, also more readil...

The starting point of this chapter is recent growing interest in and criticism of public participation instruments, that is, ready-made designs for conducting dialogue with stakeholders or the general public. Several participation instruments emerged simultaneously as the idea of ‘good governance’ based on participation and deliberation gained asce...

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The complexity of the issue, along with the breakdown of international negotiations of the UN Climate Change Conference in 2009, raise demands for new forms of mobilization and strategies. In this article, we discuss how strategies of environmental movements to combat climate change can...

The synergies and trade-offs between the various dimensions of sustainable development are attracting a rising scholarly attention. Departing from the scholarly debate, this article focuses on internal relationships within social sustainability. Our key claim is that it is diffi cult to strengthen substantive social sustainability goals unless ther...

An extensive literature examines political or green consumption, attending to how people make sense of their consumption relative to norms of individual responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour. Similarly, a small but growing literature addresses green governmentality, focusing on new governance forms and responsibilization processes. These t...

This paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of the role of power by introducing an organizational perspective to the study of environmental assessment (EA) procedures. By analysing the transboundary environmental assessment (TEA) for the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, we show that Nord Stream used some of the sentiments...

The international relevance of learning from nuclear waste management in Sweden cannot be underestimated as the planning process for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Sweden has been underway for more than thirty years. During this time the same types of actors-private, public, and NGO representatives-and even the same individuals have in...

This paper explores the conditions for taking the social dimension into consideration when trying to aim for increased sustainability through activities organized in projects. Among the three commonly accepted pillars of sustainable development – economic, ecological and social – the social dimension is often the most vague and least explicit in pr...

Environmental problems that cross national borders are attracting increasing public and political attention; regulating them involves coordinating the goals and activities of various governments, which often presupposes simplifying and standardizing complex knowledge, and finding ways to manage uncertainty. This article explores how transboundary e...

Since the 1970s, the template for Swedish nuclear waste management has been for industry to deliver 'nuclear fuel safety' after first demonstrating to government authority how and where it can be achieved. In other words, nuclear fuel safety has been something to be publicly witnessed before it is decided whether or not industry should be allowed t...

Göran Sundström, Linda Soneryd and Staffan Furusten 2010. All rights reserved.

Governing environmental risk, particularly large-scale transboundary risks associated with climate change and pollution, is one of the most pressing problems facing society . This book focuses on a set of key questions relating to environmental regulation: How are activities regulated in a fragmented world - a world of nation states, regulators, do...

The new centrality of “the public” to the governance of science and technology has been accompanied by a widespread use of public consultation mechanisms designed to elicit from citizens relevant opinions on technoscientific matters. This paper explores the configuration of legitimate constituencies in two such exercises: the UK “GM Nation?” public...

This article explores processes of articulation in the controversies over third-generation mobile phone transmitters and the interrelated phenomenon of "electrosensitivity." The argument is that the search to fix public image and public concerns tends to alienate the public from technology discussions. An alternative political epistemology of artic...

At the same time as increased demands for standardization and control occur within the environmental field, regulation is being confronted by tendencies towards contextualization and fragmentation. This paper examines the question of how these seemingly opposing tendencies can be understood. The aim of this paper is to develop an approach for the s...

The goal of integrating a broad set of stakeholders and local knowledges in environmental decisionmaking can come into conflict with the aim of effectively regulating environmental change through the establishment of standardised methods. In this paper I explore public perceptions of environmental change as active sense-making with respect to a par...

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been developed to include techniques for involving the public in environmental decision making. Although there is evidence from the evaluation of EIA in many countries that these ambitions often fail, little research has been done on EIA from the viewpoint of the public or from a deliberative democracy pers...

There are many incentives to improve public participation involvement in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and public inquiries not least because the conflicts arising from protests against new developments are practical problems that need to be solved. This paper addresses the ambition of promoting public participation in EIA. In doing this, i...

In our modern society the production of material welfare causes new kinds of ecological problems. This paper investigates the decision-making process in two cases which are characterised by complex technology and dependence upon science. These cases have implementation on a local level, but are of wider interest. The consequences of the facilities...

In this paper we discuss whether environmental impact assessment (EIA) can serve as an arena for including citizens in the decisionmaking process. Through a case study of a proposed extension of a regional airport in Sweden, the role of EIA, and to what degree different actors and arguments influenced the decision, is analysed. It is found that the...