Work on the public engagement in policymaking can include studies of the engagement of the lay public (as in consensus conferences and consultative exercises) and studies of "mobilized publics" (such as social movement and public-interest organizations). I have worked especially on the latter topic with respect to science, technology, and policy.
Current research includes the study of "undone science," or the identification of areas of science that civil society organizations determine to be underfunded but of potential broad benefit, with a discussion of policy implications (STHV); "civil society research," or attempts to remedy undone science via research by, for example, environmental organizations (Sociological Quarterly); "scientific counterpublics," or linkages among researchers and civil society organizations that occupy subordinate positions in their fields (Public Understanding of Science); further explorations of the relations between industrial opposition movements and alternative industrial movements that I had begun in Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry (Science as Culture); and a discussion of local and localist knowledge (Anthropological Quarterly).
In 2012, I will be presenting two invited workshop papers, one at the University of Augsburg and one at the University of Wisconsin, that develop the work on counterpublics and undone science. The Aubsberg paper focuses on CAM cancer research, and the Wisconsin paper on climate-related research in national politics.
Selected Publications
2011 "To Tell the Truth: On Scientific Counterpublics." Public Understanding of Science. 20(5): 627-641. Early draft of article here.
2010. "Social Movements, Publics, and Scientists." Invited Plenary Lecture, Japanese Society for Science and Technology Studies. Article here.
2010. "Undone Science: Social Movement Challenges to Dominant Scientific Practice." By Scott Frickel, Sahra Gibbon, Jeff Howard, Joana Kempner, Gwen Ottinger, and David Hess. Science, Technology, and Human Values 35(4): 444-473. Article here.
2010. "Declarations of Independents: On Local Knowledge and Localist Knowledge." Anthropological Quarterly 83(1): 147-170. Article here.
2009 "The Potentials and Limitations of Civil Society Research: Getting Undone Science Done." Sociological Inquiry 79(3): 306-327. Article here.2007 "Science, Technology, and Social Movements," coauthored with Steve Breyman, Nancy Campbell, and Brian Martin, in the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press)
2007 "Crosscurrents: Social Movements and the Anthropology of Science and Technology." American Anthropologist 109(3). Article here.
2006 "Backfire, Repression, and the Theory of Transformative Events," coauthored with Brian Martin. Mobilization 11(2): 249-267. Article here.
2005 "Technology- and Product-Oriented Movements: Approximating Social Movement Studies and STS." Science, Technology, and Human Values 30(4): 515-535. Article here.
2004 Editor of special issue of Science as Culture on "Health, the Environment, and Social Movements," published in December 2004 (13/4). Includes "Object Conflicts in a Health-Environmental Social Movement: The Movement for Organic Food and Agriculture in the U.S." Article here.
2002 "Science Studies and Activism: Possibilities and Problems for Reconstructivist Agendas," by E.J. Woodhouse, David Hess, Steve Breyman, and Brian Martin. Social Studies of Science 32/2: 297-319. Abstract. Article.