The Nobel committee in Sweden recently announced that a woman has won the prize for economics for the first time. American Elinor Ostrom won for her work on natural resource governance, demonstrating that tragedy of the commons doesn’t prevail when local communities take responsibility for sustaining their environment.
I also tweeted recently about how it was great to see an Australian woman share the prize for medicine for the first time. This year’s firsts are a reflection of the increasing impact of women in science; perhaps also the increasing pressure on the Nobel committee to balance the gender split of Nobel winners, which stands at 40 women (Marie Curie won twice) to more than 700 men.
I visited the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Nobel Museum in 2008 with a group of science communicators, where we had the chance to throw some questions at two (male) laureates and a representative of the selection committee. The gender imbalance of the Nobels was a hot topic in our discussion. The contrasting overrepresentation of women in science communication perhaps had something to do with it.
Ostrom’s work resonates beyond the field of natural resource management. For example, in my area of deliberative democracy and science policy there is much debate over whether or not laypeople have the capacity to make decisions that we tend to leave to policymakers and their science advisors.
I’m amongst those who think that everyday people can – and should – contribute to science policy. Ostrom showed that local communities are better placed to decide how to use shared resources than governments or companies. Similarly, local communities are well placed to decide how to use our discoveries in science. It’s the job of scientists to discover things – but the context and application of those discoveries should be decided by society.
The question is which society? Community participation is well established in issues with clear boundaries, such as the provision of local health services, or placement of wind farms. However the pervasive impact of emerging technologies like synthetic biology or nanotechnology makes it hard for public engagement specialists to decide who should participate in making decisions.
In a globalized world, everyone should be able to participate. But the reality is that a tiny percentage of people will have the opportunity. How can we scale up Ostrom’s work on local communities to issues without boundaries?
Perhaps a future Nobel Prize winner will find out.
Great first post, Cobi. The question of community participation in democracy is an interesting one, and one that I think will become increasingly in the public eye. You say “In a globalized world, everyone should be able to participate. But the reality is that a tiny percentage of people will have the opportunity”. Well, now anyone with access to the internet can have a say via services like Twitter. Only last week in the UK we saw three or four examples of public response overturning a court injunction, horrendous journalism and dodgy customer service on London’s transport. OK, so it’s not e-Democracy yet, and there are plenty of issues to iron out, but if someone can find a way to harness such technology into a fair and constructive means of providing feedback, shaping policy and even voting, it could give the ‘everyday person’ a bigger say. Perhaps one day we won’t even need elected representatives if everyone can represent themselves. Are you aware of any good work being done in this area?
It’s the job of scientists to discover things – but the context and application of those discoveries should be decided by society.
Maybe society should even go so far and tell scientists what scientists should discover, not just determine context and application.
Thanks Matt! Your examples demonstrate the power of online social networks; it’s no longer only the role of designated journalists to release information that’s in the public interest. But that’s more citizen journalism than e-democracy. Journalism is an important part of democracy, in that it’s critical of politicians and policies.
But government and policies are supposed to benefit society and reflect community values. Examples like yours, and public opposition to some emerging technologies, demonstrate our representative democracy isn’t working ideally. And fair enough – how are elected representatives supposed to keep up with the plethora of issues and discoveries they’re expected to act on?
The internet gives us technologies that could make shared decision making easier. But poor people are less likely to have access to it, so we risk having the same technocratic elite making decisions if we make policy online.
With the Trafigura case, suppression of information in the UK generated as much outrage as the actual dumping in Africa in 2006, even though the information in question was available on Wikileaks and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation website already. This demonstrates that the internet and services like Twitter doesn’t automatically enhance democracy and equality; people are still more interested in what happens in their local community. The payout was already arranged before the Twitter storm, so all this online activity hasn’t actually helped the victims. They might not even know about it, internet access being what it is in parts of Africa.
Regarding e-democracy and public partipation in decion making, this paper is quite comprehensive and I would love to see people implementing their suggestions: S. French, et al. (2007). `e-Participation and Decision Analysis’. DECISION ANALYSIS 4(4):211-226
Mark – I agree. I think the public should be involved in deciding where funding goes. As for telling scientists what to discover, if only it were that straightforward. It’s hard to list all the wonderful things you’re going to do on grant applications when you can’t promise your plans are actually going to lead to the discovery you want!
Interesting stuff – though like Cobi I think we have to remain skeptical of the extent to which Web 2 (whether social media or e-democracy initiatives) is in essence democratising, and cautious with those who promote it too heavily.
As much as we know that e-democracy is inherently predicated by access (which is reflective of socioeconomic status), there is also significant evidence to suggest that social networks are more insular than we might hope. This means that information and knowledge – the very basis of our democratic systems of government – remain to some extent bound up in closed circles.
The interesting thing about the Trafigura case is that it shows that the modern social internet regards secrecy as a breach, and routes around it… this online activity did help the victims, but the victims in the the Trafigura case were not the people in Africa, but people in the UK who saw their democracy under threat.