Freek de Haan is an assistant professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam. My research, teaching and activism center around questions of speculative philosophy, urbanism and modern governmentality. Concretely my research projects have concerned the subjects of gentrification, smart cities and critical citizen science.
Project Title
Critical citizen science: From polarization to doing difference together
Behavioral change(s) addressed
Societal transitions today are knowledge-intensive, by the involvement of established knowledge institutions but also by a knowledgeable populace. Citizens produce their own knowledge about the state of the world and the need for transitions. Changing their behavior means not trying to manipulate them into particular desirable behavior (which is often exactly what they protest) but changing the knowledge on which they act. This we cannot dictate by authority, which therefore implies we have to open up our own knowledge practices somehow and co-create new knowledge together with critical groups.
Theoretical approach
Three theoretical components that combined form a ‘critical citizen science’: * Science and Technology Studies (STS); * Deliberative democracy; * Citizen science… …but is also, respectively… * …more collaborative in contrast to the rather professional scholarly affair that is STS: ‘un-blackboxing’ science and technology together; * …more transformation and action-oriented in contrast to the more communication and voice-centered practices of deliberative democracy: citizen science thus can be conceived as a part of the wider deliberative system; * …more critical, by which I mean, theory-informed, reflexive and a conscious part of the deliberative system, in contrast to regular citizen science where citizens are rather reduced to data points.
Empirical research strategies
Two components/phases: * Ethnographic research into how groups critical and adverse toward established knowledge institutions operate and produce knowledge as citizen scientists ‘in the wild’ (think of forensic amateurs, climate skeptics, conspiracy theorists, antivaxxers etc.) * Collaborative action research with the aim of developing pragmatic methods of knowledge co-creation that bring adversarial groups into productive communication (‘doing difference together’).
Possibilities for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration
From its outset the project is transdisciplinary, not just because it works together with citizen groups, but because it aims to change scientific practice in the process. However, as a critical and reflexive epistemological project centering around knowledge practices, both established and alternative, a select variety of scientific disciplines (eg. forensic, medical, climate, dietary) will naturally be participating as well.
Social transition(s) addressed
The project does not address a specific transition. It targets the epistemic practices, both institutional and popular, that are involved in reading and evaluating the needed transitions, and consequently also in deep ‘behavioral change’ among stakeholders.