How to grasp what is made of scientific developments?

Kane RaceDepartment of Gender & Cultural Studies

University of SydneyKane.race@sydney.edu.au

• C

Formation of Committees for the Public Understanding of Science in the 1980s in the US and UK

“greater public understanding of science is essential for modern democracy”

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There is a critical difference between

Public Engagement with Science and questions of engagement in care

Public engagement with science enables a reflexive space re: given formulations of prevention and care

OutlineWhat are some key approaches in the Public Understanding of Science and Public Engagement with Science literatures?

What relations between science and publics do they suppose?

What are the implications for HIV science, policy & research?

Traditional approaches to Public Understanding of Science

• Use survey methods to measure scientific literacy

• What is being measured is people’s understanding of scientifically accredited knowledge

Criticisms• Premised on a deficit model: (‘people are deficient in the right sort of

knowledge and need improvement’)

• Does not capture people’s knowledge/expertise about local contexts & conditions

• People may have a reflexive understanding of what they ‘know’ and ‘don’t know’

• They may also have an appreciation of how they know what they know (e.g. which sources of authority they trust) …. that is important to register

From Van de Ven et al. (1999) HIV treatment optimism and sexual behaviour among gay men in Sydney and Melbourne. AIDS 13(16):2289-94.

From Van de Ven et al. (1999) HIV treatment optimism and sexual behaviour among gay men in Sydney and Melbourne. AIDS 13(16):2289-94.

Cultural approaches to Public Understanding of Science

• Use qualitative techniques to embed laypersons’ knowledge in local cultural contexts

• Local knowledge and concerns may be sufficiently compelling to counter certain aspects of scientific knowledge

Criticisms

• Can produce a sense of both scientific and lay knowledge as homogenous, static, self-contained and discrete from each other

Citadel Model

SCIENCE

Lay knowledg

e

Local context

Affected communi

ty

General public

Dynamic Heterogeneity

Engaging the Recalcitrant

• What to do with the recalcitrant figure whose behaviour is simply nonsensical according to governing logics???

• Who can “neither reply nor discuss the issue” nor “propose anything that counts” because …. “there is something more important…”

“What are we busy doing?”• In recent work in Public Engagement with Science the recalcitrant figure

becomes a creative opportunity to ask “what are we busy doing?”

• This figure demands “that we slow down, that we don’t consider ourselves authorized to believe that we possess the meaning of what we know”

• Produces a creative opportunity to reflect on organising logics of the field we’re immersed in

• The question becomes, how might we “bestow efficacy on the murmurings of” such figures

Mike Michael (2012) “What are we busy doing?” Science, Technology & Human Values, 37: 528-554

A significant proportion of US racial/ethnic and sexual minority communities subscribe to HIV conspiracy theories

Approximately 25% agree with statements such as “HIV/AIDS is a man-made virus that the government made to kill and wipe out this population”

Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific respondents are more likely to agree with such statements.

These studies find that conspiracy beliefs are significantly associated with* inconsistent condom use

*negative attitudes towards condoms*lower likelihood of treatment adherence

Bogart & Thorburn 2005, Bogart et al. 2010, Bohnert et al., 2009

Early ACT UP poster, San Francisco

Mackenzie (2013) writes of one marginalized HIV+ participant:

• “Her words are excessive, they are ‘gibberish’, hence threatening to those outside their narrative … and yet they invoke threads of logic.”

• They convey a sense of her bodily experience as vulnerable and subject to “structural, intentional, and sustained” forces over which she has little power

• “Commonly understood as non-sense, her theories represent a form of meaning-making that serves to make “sense” of the experiences of injustice she has endured throughout her life”.

“The salience of these counter-narratives … indicates they will likely continue to be uttered – from pulpits, on streets, in

classrooms – until the social problems they represent are addressed.”

Acknowledgements

• Cameron Cox (Canada) and Scarlet Alliance (Australia)• Mike Michael• Marsha Rosengarten & participants in HIV speculative design

research group• Judith Auerbach (as panel co-chair)