Understanding networks at the science–policy interface

Geoforum 40 (2009) 355–362

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Editorial

Understanding networks at the science–policy interface

1. Science, policy and society This special issue focuses on longstanding concerns within geography and cognate disciplines over the relations between science, policy and politics in the environmental sphere. It brings together four papers, in addition to this extended editorial, from a series of sessions convened at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in March 2006 on ‘understanding networks at the extended science–policy interface’. At first sight this seems like a highly ambitious task for at least two reasons. First, the tightly coupled science–policy nexus, while no means unique to this domain, has been a defining feature of environment and sustainability agendas since their inception and pervades writing on the subject. As the main instrument through which humans view, understand, and modify nature, the sciences have always held a privileged position in environmental debates. Under these circumstances science is (often simultaneously) presented as the cause, means of detection, and possible solution to environmental problems – becoming applied, issue driven, regulatory, and inter/trans-disciplinary in the process. This has given rise to the large but highly disparate field of ‘science–policy studies’. Second, while the notion of networks and associated relational or connective concepts such as assemblages – which are crucial to understanding the mutual entanglement of science and politics – have become influential theoretical and methodological registers across the social sciences over the past two decades or more, this proliferation has generated considerable conceptual complexity. The papers in this special issue bring novel perspectives to these wide ranging and multidisciplinary bodies of work through explicitly focusing on the ‘extension’ of science–policy interfaces in late modernity. In certain respects this is well charted territory. The centrality of science to environmental understanding and action has led to its politicisation in the public sphere, as its stranglehold on reality is broken down by globalisation, radical uncertainty, contestation, and distrust associated with reflexive modernisation (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990). For Nowotny et al. (2001) this heralds a new type of ‘Mode 2’ science, which co-evolves with society. Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) have similarly described the emergence of ‘post-normal science’ which is subject to an expanding range of ‘extended peer communities’ and ‘extended facts’. These accounts suggest that the science– policy nexus is being extended to include new actors, knowledges, expertises, practices, institutions, non-humans, and spaces of knowledge production and decisionmaking. As we will go on to argue, this complexity poses challenges for conceptualising 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.03.007

and studying networks at this interface. It also underpins the central rationale of this special issue: to move towards studies of the science–policy–society interface, a triumvirate which has not been sufficiently held together or integrated in studies of environmental science–policy networks hitherto. The link between policy and society has long been a focus of political science, from early attempts to explain policy change based on competition between interest groups (Truman, 1951) to more state-centred accounts and explanations that see policy emerging serendipitously as a result of trigger events or the actions of policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon, 1984). More recent attempts to offer an explanatory role to both state and society emphasise links between different groups and aggregated sets of interests in policy networks or advocacy coalitions, emerging as part of a broader shift from government to governance (Rhodes, 1997; Stoker, 1998). Yet while earlier explanations and more recent environmental governance literatures focus on the balancing of competing interests – foregrounding the importance of power, resources, values and beliefs – they largely ignore the role of science. Knowledge remains subservient, entering the policy process as a largely pre-given reflection of particular interests. The role of knowledge in policy change, and the politics of knowledge, has received more attention in studies which directly address the link between science and policy. Early conceptions adopted an enduringly popular view of science as objective, value-free, and entirely separate from politics. Like linear models of policy-making in political science, this conception views science as isolated from social values and political interests while at the same time offering impartial knowledge to policy institutions in an attempt to ‘speak truth to power’ (Price, 1965; Wildavsky, 1979; also see Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998). Weinberg (1972) went some way to dispel this simplistic notion by identifying the domain of ‘trans-science’ between the zones of science and policy where both interact and are to some extent co-produced. Extending this argument, any sense of separation between science, politics and society has been comprehensively critiqued by work in the field of science and technology studies (STS), which has shown science itself to be a thoroughly social process. A range of work in STS has elaborated the concept of co-production where scientific, political and social orders are mutually constituted. For Jasanoff (2004a, p. 2): ‘‘co-production is shorthand for the proposition that the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we choose to live in it”.

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She goes on to add that: ‘‘co-production is symmetrical in that it calls attention to the social dimensions of cognitive commitments and understandings, while at the same time underscoring the epistemic and material correlates of social formations” (Jasanoff, 2004a, p. 3). Knowledge-making is incorporated into governance, and governance influences the making and use of knowledge. Until recently social studies of environmental science under the coproductionist idiom have emphasised the networks, settings and spaces of scientists (most often in the natural and physical sciences) and policy elites. While society and diverse publics play a powerful role in these accounts their place in the process of co-production tends to be implicit, passive, and for the most part an imagined quantity, rather than active and explicitly present. Increasingly, however, science and society are becoming more closely intertwined. Whilst by no means a new phenomenon, over the past decade or so we have seen an acceleration in the involvement of wider society at the science–policy interface. Publics, stakeholders, private industry and diverse elements of civil society are playing a more active and explicit role in the co-production of science and policy in at least three main ways.  First, is the rapid development of managed or ‘invited’ spaces of public deliberation and engagement – sponsored by science and governance institutions and mediated by academic, consultant, and non-governmental intermediaries – in policy (e.g. Joss and Durant, 1995), scientific assessments (e.g. Kasemir et al., 2003), environmental monitoring (e.g. Ellis and Waterton, 2005), or the anticipatory governance of science and emerging technologies (Wilsdon and Willis, 2004; Anderson et al., 2007). Geographers and other social scientists have invested much effort in developing and evaluating such engagement practices but spent considerably less time critically studying them (Chilvers, 2009), their impact on networks at the science– policy–society interface (see Chilvers, 2008), and their (role in) co-production.  Second, are more longstanding ‘non-invited’ spaces of active engagement in science and policy controversies that are more organic, spontaneous, and citizen-led. There is perhaps a stronger tradition in science–policy studies of documenting cases of civic science associated with social movements, where publics develop their own innovations and knowledge claims or do so in collaboration with advocacy scientists (Hess et al., 2008). This includes classic studies such as Epstein’s (1995) work on AIDs activists and their role in the reform of US clinical trials and Brown and Mikkelson’s (1990) portrayal of lay epidemiology where community members investigated links between childhood leukemia and toxic waste in Woburn, Massachusetts. Less attention has been given to the interaction between organic spaces of engagement and institutionalised forms of participation, nor their connection with wider governance networks.  Third, is a broader complex of processes that are implicating society and the science–policy interface in indirect but influential ways. The rising visibility and importance of environmental issues in public life means that the science–policy interface is increasingly influenced by popular and celebrity culture, including media, books, film, pop music and so on. Furthermore, the active participation of citizen–consumers in pro-environmental behaviour change and sustainable consumption brings society, and, for that matter, industry, closer to the science of sustainability. While such processes have been variously studied in themselves their impact on and connection with the environmental science–policy interface is rarely elucidated, at least from a networks perspective.

Although each side of the science–policy–society triad has been studied extensively they express research gaps in relation to each other. The extensions brought about through ‘active’ forms of coproduction between science and society present a number of challenges for conceptualising, studying and understanding networks at the science–policy interface. In considering these, our special issue of Geoforum addresses three main themes, related questions and areas of contribution. The first is to better understand extended science–policy interfaces through theoretically informed empirical research exploring how various actors seek to access and shape the science–policy interface as a ‘field of power’ over different spaces and scales. The second relates to the theoretical and conceptual challenges brought about through such extension. As identities, categories and meanings blur networks become less clear-cut and more spatially and temporally differentiated. Academics have offered up a smorgasbord of metaphors – like ‘blurring’, ‘mixing’ and ‘hybrid’ – to grapple with the connective complexity between science, policy and society.1 Here we ask: what exactly is meant by ‘networks’ in the title of this special issue? What are the key ontological and epistemological differences between network approaches in policy studies and science studies? How might they be integrated or used in conjunction? Can attempts to capture increasing levels of network complexity also remain practically useful? The third contribution involves reflecting on the methodological issues of studying networks at the extended science–policy interface. This is a concern that does not receive as much attention as it should or could, demanding consideration of the relational methodologies to which different network ontologies commit us. Before introducing the papers we provide a review of network approaches in policy studies and science studies, in order to frame the papers in relation to a broader network literature, which can be quite diffuse. We then discuss approaches to integration and extension before finally offering some methodological reflections. 2. Understanding networks The emergence of science–policy studies has been driven by an increasingly complex set of governance challenges in the ‘real world’, rather than by any pre-existing and self-sustaining academic endeavour. The subject does not come with an extant set of established concepts and theories with which to make sense of it. Indeed, science and politics have more often been cast as essentially separate and even antithetical domains; two discrete cultures (Snow, 1964) or truth-making endeavours (Serres, 1995). When talking about the science–policy interface the term network has a number of attractions. It is connective, promising a conceptual basis upon which to explore the worlds of science, policy, and society in an integrative fashion. It also stands to capture the expanding range of people and things operating at the science–policy interface. Network approaches are distinctive because they base their explanatory power on the relations between nodes, rather than on the characteristics of the individual nodes themselves. This holism sets network theory apart from most analytical approaches (dialectics aside) that tend towards reductionism and binary concepts (Costa et al., 2008). Networks have their origins in Euler’s 1 Such commonly invoked metaphors reward closer scrutiny, as they each imply different modes of synthesis. So ‘blurring’ for example, commonly deployed in terms of ‘blurring the boundaries’ between science and politics, is a visual metaphor implying loss of clarity. Blurring is thus more to do with an epistemological synthesis between two different ways of looking at something. Mixing on the other hand is a material metaphor, to do with the actual intermingling of substances or processes in the ‘real world’. It is an ontological metaphor for synthesis. ‘Hybrid’ is the most complex metaphor of the three, connoting a scientific breeding technique, drawn upon and explored extensively in Donna Haraway’s (1997) work on technoscience.

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(1953) famous solution to the Bridges of Konigsberg problem, which took a real world problem (can a route be walked that traverses each of the seven bridges of Konigsberg only once) and solved it by abstracting the bridges and land into nodes and links on a graph (it cannot due to the amount of nodes with odd numbers of connections to other nodes). This description of static networks was subsequently refined to capture the tendency of networks encountered in the social and natural world to form ties in a much more heterogeneous manner (Dorogovtsev and Mendes, 2003). Rather appropriately, network concepts have spread rapidly through academia. Claims that we now live in a ‘network society’ (Castells, 1996) have been bolstered by the application of network theory to almost everything, from sexual relations and trade relations to neural processes and earthquakes (Costa et al., 2008; Barabási, 2003). But the profusion of networks within both policy studies and science studies has led to ambiguity over its meaning and a lack of conceptual clarity in its usage within the environmental social sciences. 2.1. Networks in policy studies Policy making resonates with the tenets of network theory, as groups of stakeholders with common interests and resources from relations with each other to negotiate mutually beneficial policy outcomes (Jordan and Schubert, 1992; Rhodes and Marsh, 1992). Beyond this definition, though, the role of networks in policy analysis has become somewhat confused. Some deploy it as a metaphor for complex groupings of stakeholders, generating descriptive typologies, while others confer analytic and explanatory power upon it, seeking to demonstrate how characteristics of the networks themselves influence policy outcomes. Thus, while social network analysis, which attempts to generate metrics (number of actors, levels of connectivity etc.) to describe networks (Scott, 2000), has been deployed within policy studies, qualitative approaches to negotiation between stakeholders have been more common (van Waarden, 1992). Borzel (1998) identifies a key schism within policy studies between the intermediation of interests and the governance schools. The dominant intermediation of interests school focuses on negotiation between the state and other interested stakeholders in policy formulation. The policy network concept is extended to cover all state–stakeholder interactions, as ‘a meso-level concept of interest group intermediation’ (Rhodes and Marsh, 1992, p. 4). Different analytical frameworks have been developed to describe policy networks, for example, according to levels of integration amongst stakeholders, varying influence and power of various stakeholders, whether mediation is occurring in a hierarchical or market framework, and levels of heterogeneity amongst stakeholder interests (Marsh and Rhodes, 1992). Intermediation policy analysis shows how different types of network exert influence over resultant policy (for example, Evans, 2004). The governance school deploys the concept of the network to describe a different situation, whereby the state is no more important than any other actor in the policy process (Rhodes, 1997). Picking up on the political realities associated with the classic ‘hollowing out of the state’ thesis (Jessop, 1994), ‘the notion of ‘policy networks’ does not so much represent a new analytical perspective but rather signals a real change in the structure of the polity’ (Mayntz et al., 1993, p. 5, original emphasis), whereby policy outcomes cannot be read off from a single dominant (state) interest. The strategic-relational approach resonates with the tenets of the governance school, viewing the state as a complex social relation, rather than as a monolithic political subject or passive institutional object (Jessop, 2001). It emphasises that state practices are socially embedded and interdependent on institutions and practices associated with other arenas of life, and that political agents have the

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strategic capacity to learn and reflect upon their own institutional context (Jessop, 2001). Network governance has been critiqued for taking a relational approach that lacks explanatory power (e.g. Atkinson and Coleman, 1992), and in many documented cases it certainly appears that the state remains implicitly dominant in policy making processes (e.g. Davies, 2002). What these approaches do give is a more nuanced understanding of the state as multiple, dispersed and contested, though, and the term ‘network governance’ is widely used. The politically contentious nature of environmental issues means that environmental studies have tended to follow the intermediation of interests school in emphasising the role that power plays in determining policy outcomes. As Bulkeley (2000) notes in her discussion of climate change networks, environmental policy communities tend to be integrated vertically through local, national and supranational institutions, while ‘issue networks’ link horizontally. This makes environmental policy networks inherently ‘messy’, but also open to change as issue networks influence policy communities through advocacy (Eden, 1999) and, at a deeper level, through influencing the rules governing the policy process itself (Ostrom, 1990). Advocacy coalitions are groups of actors who share a similar worldview or set of ideas working together to promote their own agenda (Sabatier, 1988). Groups of actors will sign up to influential storylines, forming discourse coalitions within a certain policy area, if it furthers their broad agenda, even though they may not share the same ideas and beliefs as other members of the same coalition (Hajer, 1995). Intermediation and governance approaches are well suited to capture the extension of the science–policy interface to various political constituencies as they emphasise power. That said, these approaches lack resolution on knowledge, articulating science as something that is unproblematically received from the external world. The concept of epistemic communities directly attempts to explain the coherence of professional actors around commitments to particular forms of knowledge, as opposed to particular sets of interests or storylines (Haas, 1992). Yet while offering insights into how knowledge networks access the science–policy interface as a field of power, this approach has a similar tendency to ignore the sources and construction of scientific ideas, beliefs and practices (Miller, 2004). In grappling with the thorny question of how science fits into the study of environmental issues network concepts again come to the fore, with science studies offering perhaps the most influential approach. 2.2. Networks in science studies Actor Network Theory (ANT) imparts a radically different meaning to the notion of networks. For ANT the network includes nonhuman actors, like objects, animals and ideas (Callon, 1986; Latour 1987), and the novelty of science lies in its ability to enrol non-humans into these networks. Agency is no longer the sole preserve of humans, but is dispersed throughout the network, extending to various non-humans (for example, see Hinchliffe, 2001). ANT resonates with classic network theory in that it sees the world in terms of tied nodes that exist in topological space, but unlike network theory, which sees networks as an abstraction from the real world, ANT collapses the distinction between epistemology and ontology, arguing that the network constitutes the world itself. In perhaps the key passage in We Have Never Been Modern, Latour (1993) gives the example of Louis Pasteur’s discovery of yeast, claiming that the bacteria themselves were actually altered in the act of being discovered by the Frenchman’s gaze, as the very act of observing them down the microscope enrolled them into a new network of people and things. Within this understanding, questioning the correspondence between explanation and reality, or indeed asking whether

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this transformation is epistemological or ontological, becomes meaningless; explanations are simply added to networks. The implications of this position are too complex to discuss here (see Latour, 1996), but have led many to adopt a ‘weak’ version of ANT, whereby non-humans are accepted into networks, but the radical implications of collapsing ontology and epistemology are brushed under the conceptual carpet. What is held onto is the insight that scientific facts are not ‘discovered’, but ‘achieved’ through networks of things, people and ideas. Latour’s explication of the ‘Pasteurisation of France’ demonstrates how acceptance of Pasteur’s idea was as much political and sociological as scientific, as farmers, bureaucrats and the ruling aristocracy were gradually enrolled into a network of pasteurisation (Star, 1985). While ANT generates revealing accounts about how the world is made, it has been noted that it lacks a clear political element (Eden et al., 2000; Castree, 2002). Positioning people as just another actor, alongside everything ranging from antelopes to paperclips, downplays the role that human consciousness plays, in exercising action, credibility, beliefs and ideas (Berg, 1996; Jasanoff, 2004b). Situated in a wide range of STS co-productionist work ANT is emblematic of the constitutive strand of research centred on metaphysical concerns over ‘what is’ – about the emergence of facts, things, and systems of thought – grounded in detailed studies of scientific practices or technoscientific objects. Jasanoff (2004b) differentiates this from interactional work which is more concerned with epistemology (‘how we know about it’), which acknowledges that science and politics operate against the backdrop of an extant natural and cultural order, and highlights the conflicts between competing epistemologies. Under this perspective reliable, credible and authoritative science (and policy) depends on solving problems of social order. Within interactional studies, Gieryn’s (1995) concept of ‘boundary work’ is of particular relevance, as it explains the demarcation of science from non-science through contingent circumstances or strategic behaviour rather than through any inherent qualities of science. Instead of seeing the separation of science and policy as a problem, this concept has shed light on how such distinctions are maintained, deconstructed and reproduced in environmental knowledge controversies. For example, Jasanoff (1987, 1990) highlights political and cultural dimensions of constructivist STS work showing how US policy agencies maintain credibility and objectivity by developing hybrid communities of advisors who adopt both science and policy roles but reconstruct the distinct categories of science and policy in controversial regulatory negotiations. Interactional studies have drawn on Star and Griesemer’s (1989) notion of boundary objects; entities which sit between two (or more) social worlds and can be used by individuals within each without sacrificing their own identity and authority. An excellent example is van der Sluijs et al.’s (1998) classic study of science and policy consensus over the 1.5–4.5 °C climate sensitivity range, which remained stable for over two decades through its multidimensionality as an ‘anchoring device’ that held together social worlds relating to international action on climate change and accommodated tacitly different local meanings. Guston (2001) has extended the boundary object concept to that of boundary organizations, the success of which lies in the stability of the boundary between science and policy which is gained by being accountable and responsive to opposing, external authorities. Boundary objects/organizations are multivalent in forming a node around which networks of actors from different social worlds cohere. The application of boundary concepts holds much potential to be extended from a routine science–policy focus, to understand boundary practices and organizations at the frontiers of science– policy–society, as emphasised by the papers in this special issue. These boundary concepts are potentially consistent with ANT, even

though the latter conceptualises monovalent networks centred in the world of science. As this brief review has indicated, the contrasting uses of ‘networks’ in policy and science studies imply different sets of epistemological and ontological baggage. Because the ‘network’ is a complex concept does not mean that it cannot be used, but prompts environmental studies to more comprehensively qualify their use of the term. 2.3. Integration, extension and method Despite the fundamental differences between network approaches in political science and science studies, social scientists are increasingly attempting to marry the two approaches together to provide an integrated analysis of environmental issues. Attempts at integration attend to the extended range of actors and expertises now populating the science–policy interface – including non-humans, publics, wider society – and their active involvement in processes of co-production. Latour (2004) has attempted to politicise ANT, setting out a ‘politics of nature’ that rests on the mixing of traditional functions of science and politics. Politics, he argues, is hidebound by its dependence on Science to provide facts and Nature to provide limits. Neither is possible in the context of the highly risky, indeterminate and unknowable environmental issues that face the world today. Rather than science producing facts and politics making value judgements, he suggests forming two new assemblies, which would ask firstly ‘how many are we?’, and secondly ‘can we live together?’ While the critique is persuasive, the prescription is less so, getting bogged down in the detail of exactly what jobs different professions would hold in these two new assemblies. In linking ANT with a politics that does not resort to the old binaries of nature and society, Latour draws inspiration from Stengers’ (1997) cosmopolitics, which includes non-humans and humans in collectives that give rise to new political practices, whereby those enjoined together affect each other in the co-fabrication of knowledge and those for whom experts speak are able to speak back and actively participate (Hinchliffe et al. 2005). Cosmopolitics offers a vision, and possible forms of intervention, to account for an extended range of actors at the science–policy interface, albeit a radically altered interface to the one that is traditionally conceived of in representative politics. Rather than posing a vision of how assemblages should be, Irwin and Michael (2003) have proposed the heuristic concept ‘ethno-epistemic assemblages’ to analyse already existing collectives that takes account of the complexity of interrelations and blurrings between science, governance and society. Such assemblages are locally varying, situated alliances of expert-lay, human, and non-human actors ‘involved in the ‘establishment’ of knowledge and the production of knowledge claims’ (p. 85). It is competing assemblages of this type – which cohere around a specific point of a controversy – that are in conflict, rather than science and the public or science and politics. Irwin and Michael weave together a complex conceptual tapestry, integrating approaches from science studies and policy studies outlined above. Ethno-epistemic assemblages superficially resemble epistemic communities, but are sensitive to the role of non-professionals in constructing knowledge claims. They also resemble discourse coalitions that straddle lay/expert understandings, but acknowledge the materialities involved in the circulation of storylines that bind actors together. Irwin and Michael’s concept draws on ANT, but rather than emphasising the enrolment of heterogeneous resources by scientists in a topdown fashion they highlight the rhizomic nature of assemblages that captures the fluid, complex and collaborative nature of relations between science and publics, facilitated through the multivalent character of boundary objects.

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Current dialogues between STS and geography are also exploring the spatial register of networks. Powell (2007, p. 310) argues that proponents of the spatial turn in science studies ‘have themselves utilised particular, and competing, notions of spatiality’ to get to grips with how location matters to the production of science, ranging from simple ideas concerning the interactional opportunities afforded by the physical design of space to more complex arguments that draw on relational understandings of space. A key point in Powell’s expansive review concerns the potential for geographers to contribute to and clarify the different ways in which space is deployed in STS. Studies of science and policy have explored the links between the abstract relational space of networks and the material territory of the world that frames political contestation of environmental issues. Relational thinking about space rejects the notion of a hierarchy of scales from global to local, positing instead that ‘what counts is connectivity’ (Thrift, 2004, p. 59). This proliferation of connectivity opens up a number of critical avenues for studies of the environment; for example, by re-politicising ‘global environmental issues’ as a set of connections between other sites and scales with attendant causes, consequences and possible solutions. Rather than being pre-given, dominant scales of governance are seen as provisional effects of networks, which opens them up to a critical interrogation in terms of who is included and excluded (Macleod and Jones, 2007). For example, environmental issues produce new scales of governance, such as the emergent role of cities in global climate change regulation (Bulkeley, 2005). These approaches have been used to explore emergent ‘uninvited’ spaces of resistance and activism that exist apart from dominant state power and discourses of the environment, where actors excluded from the formal science–policy interface enact alternative political engagements with science and policy. In the ‘postpolitical’ context of formal, managed spaces of public participation, forms of political resistance in non-state spaces are seen as having a genuine capacity to change the rules of debate (Rancière, 2007; Swyngedouw, 2005) (although others suggest that the transformatory potential of ‘invited’ spaces of participation cannot be dismissed so readily (e.g. Hickey and Mohan, 2004; Kesby, 2005)). Space underpins different network concepts, but there is little clarity on how best to articulate between relational and non-relational space. Within what can be called the ‘territory versus topology’ debate, territory is most often seen as the outcome of topology (or what Massey (2005) calls ‘power geometries’). In a similar vein, political ecologists Rocheleau and Roth (2007) have argued that the world is networked, but reject the idea that it is flat, either socially or ecologically. They call for ‘a new situated science, a radical empiricism that seeks to understand complex assemblages by treating them as networks, observing and evaluating them from multiple standpoints’ (Rocheleau and Roth, 2007, p. 433). In this sense networks are characterised by an alternate process of (relational) networking and (territorial) rooting. The analytic capacities of different conceptions of space have been explored by Jessop et al. (2008, p. 390) who identify four distinct spatial lexicons in the social sciences – networks, territory, place and scale – and suggest that geographically informed work needs to deploy them together. These integrative attempts to capture the full extent of network complexity raise major problems for empirical studies, as contrasting philosophical assumptions are often implicitly thrust together and explicit attempts at synthesis can confuse more than they clarify. Irwin and Michaels’ (2003) attempt to integrate a range of network concepts and capture the full complexity of relations at the science–policy–society interface has to be commended for its ambition, but the ethno-epistemic assemblages concept appears ‘rather cumbersome’ and arguably adds little ‘to our capacity to describe, categorize, or discriminate’ (Lezaun, 2005, p. 508) in empir-

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ical analysis. Similarly, Jessop et al. (2008, p. 394), speaking to researchers, posit their four spatial dimensions as both ‘fields of operation’ and ‘structuring principles’, suggesting that they need to be combined in varied ways to produce ‘more complex categories reflecting different types of articulation and disarticulation and more concrete-complex explanations for given research objects’. While there are advantages to exploring environmental issues using more than one spatial register, it can serve to decontextualise the histories, purposes, subjects, and political stakes that shape the various analytic concepts being integrated (Shapiro, 2008), and poses considerable challenges for those looking to put such a theoretical apparatus into practice. A corollary of this theoretical confusion is the current deficit of basic methodological clarity in environmental science–policy studies, which tend to provide detailed explications of theory without always outlining its exact implications in terms of the methodological approach adopted. Studies of policy processes, for example, can be undertaken in a quantitative or qualitative way. They can also involve vastly different types of stakeholders with equally divergent powers and ideological standpoints; factors that hold major implications for methodology. Turning to ANT, studies deploying such approaches should be obsessed with methodology. Consider Latour’s (1998, p. 20) suggestion that ANT is ‘. . .simply a way for the social scientists to access sites, a method and not a theory, a way to travel from one spot to the next, from one field site to the next, not an interpretation of what actors actually do’, or O’Neill and Whatmores’ (2000, p. 124) claim that ANT is less an ‘off-the-peg theoretical template’ than a disposition and set of means of doing research. Given this it is ironic that many existing studies have little concern for methodological and/or empirical rigour. Rocheleau and Roth (2007) echo these claims about ANT, suggesting that the network approach constitutes a polycentric model that allows the researcher to ‘see multiple’ (Rocheleau and Roth, 2007, p. 433) from situated perspectives. The critical questions for them are methodological – which standpoint to pick, and which methods are then appropriate to those standpoints; a task complicated both practically and philosophically by the fact that their networks are simultaneously ecological and social, but they devote little attention to resolving these questions. If anything, we would suggest that this methodological complexity is intensifying. Increasingly social scientists are just as much part of the extended science–policy interface as any other actor, and are involved in and influence the very networks and assemblages that they study. The constructivist grounding of most science–policy studies, which often positions the researcher as passive observer or distant critic, is thus juxtaposed with an upturn in concern over the public and policy relevance of the social sciences (Burawoy, 2005; Ward, 2006) coupled with their ever increasing range of action-oriented and collaborative interventions at the science–policy interface (Burgess, 2005; Wynne, 2007). Not only does this raise important questions about the strategies, roles, influence, criticality, responsibilities and ethics of social science engagements at the science–policy interface – it brings into focus the positionality and reflexivity of researchers, which are also fundamental methodological issues. Integrative network concepts, such as ethno-epistemic assemblages, have the potential to ‘sensitize us to the way that academic [social scientific] analysis is part of the production of particular versions of public and science and, therefore, of the hybrid admixtures that make up the assemblages themselves’ (Irwin and Michael, 2003, p. 113). Such analyses remain few and far between, however, and there is much to be done if commitments to symmetry that underpin relational ontologies are to be taken seriously and properly followed through in terms of relational methodologies. While many of the above debates are well-worn in the literature, bringing them together clarifies the challenges that face

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researchers trying to get to grips with how best to approach controversies in the environmental field. The concept of networks is central to this work, animating a number of contemporary debates, from the conceptual status and role of space to questions concerning the locus of politics. The papers in this special issue are concerned with these questions, addressing the relationship between extension and legitimacy, different types of ‘network’, and the ways in which science and democracy are linked by different actors for different means. In accordance with our arguments concerning the need for empirical study and methodological rigour, the papers use detailed research material to explore these theoretical questions. Each offers a unique insight into these questions, and each, we hope, develops these key themes in a coherent manner. 3. The papers In the first paper Ryan Holifield explores the contested science surrounding the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund programme to clear up hazardous waste sites. Through this case study he investigates how a community without direct access to financial and knowledge resources builds a counter-network of expertise to contest the dominant representations produced by the companies involved. This uninvited extension into the science–policy arena rests on the construction of a network capable of conferring legitimacy on their claims. By carefully tracing the social process through which networks are built, the paper problematises the way in which networks are understood. While the network between community and academic researchers becomes a ‘single collective’, the co-production of science and values reproduces the barriers between these spheres in order to maintain the legitimacy conferred by science. The network constitutes a flow of transformation, but is simultaneously territorialised through material sites of resistance – in this case, in Minnesota. In this way the paper offers an empirically grounded exploration of networked space. Diane Scott and Clive Barnetts’ paper charts a similar story of community engagement with science and policy in order to contest a report advocating further expansion of the chemical industry in Durban, South Africa. Drawing upon a rich empirical study, they explore how the community develops its own ‘civic’ science to contest a strategic environmental assessment concerning the impacts of air pollution and hazardous waste in the area. Civic science combines lay and traditional knowledge concerning the health impacts of the pollution, forging close networks between communities and scientists. Despite this close relation, the legitimacy of the science produced again depends on its perceived independence, which Scott and Barnett characterise as articulating the legitimacy imperatives of the state. The paper situates the production of civic science as a form of dynamic democracy within the context of environmental racism, which allows the community to engage differentially with the government, playing the public engagement game at certain times while deploying an oppositional politics of shame at others. Sally Eden’s paper also addresses the issue of authority, but through a detailed analysis of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) global certification scheme for sustainable forestry. Science, policy and business come together to form credibility alliances that allow forestry products to be traced through circuits of production and consumption. Legitimacy is central to Eden’s argument. The FSC tick-tree logo is conceptualised as a boundary object, capable of travelling across domains while retaining its authority as a certification. Echoing the arguments of Scott, Barnett, and Holifield, science, policy and, in this case, business, remain discrete as what Eden calls ‘monolithic blocks’. Although authority is created through a highly consensual process of network building, the authority of the network ironically remains dependent on the per-

ceived independence of the different sectors. In this case, society intervenes at the science–policy interface through the vicarious activities of an industry keen to placate perceived consumer preferences. Eden also explores some of the spatial ramifications of the FSC certification scheme, most notably the tension between the production of a generalisable standard and the specific nuances associated with different types of forest and management practices that pertain in different places. The tick tree logo operates topologically, relating different forests together under one standard, but is performed geographically through a range of certification practices specific to actual forests. Problems abound – it is rare that an entire commodity chain will be certified, and local nuances are often sidelined in the interests of standardisation. Again, the tension within the network concept between the work of translation and the necessary work of territorialisation upon which it is based are brought to the fore. Issues of social intervention arise in Max Boykoff and Mike Goodmans’ discussion of celebrity engagement in the climate change debate. Celebrity involves the creation of an authorised speaker who can intervene in major environmental debates. Although in this case the intrusion of the social takes the form of a specifically cultural icon, the celebrity performs a similar function to the FSC logo – branding a specific environmental issue. Rather than a boundary object, Boykoff and Goodman talk about the power of the ‘celebrity artefact’ to construct new spaces of authority – from Leonardo di Caprio’s polar bear to Al Gore’s ‘hockey stick’ graph of global carbon dioxide emissions. Drawing upon Carvalho and Burgess’ (2005) cultural circuits of communication model and empirical research on celebrity interventions in media debates, they identify celebrity intervention as a form of heroic redemption, and question the utility of this form of intervention in relation to the wider social challenges associated with climate change. As a new space of authority within the science–policy field, the paper calls for detailed methodological attention to the nuances within the celebrity-environment debate, including more empirical work on the different types of celebrity that are constructed and their associated interventions. Taken together, the papers provide rich insights into how the science–policy interface is being extended to include new actors, knowledges, and practices in late modern society, across different spaces and scales ranging from global change issues through to place specific controversies linked to industrial pollution. In each case, rather than adhering to traditional science–policy–society distinctions the authors talk about varying networks of expertlay, human-non-human actors that actively collaborate in co-producing knowledge and governance. Despite accounting for these blurrings, however, each paper demonstrates how boundaries and demarcations – of science/policy, expert/lay, insider/outsider, and so on – are continually (re)made in these assemblages to gain legitimacy and authority in accessing and actively shaping the science–policy interface. The papers collectively point to the need for greater understanding of the political struggles and processes by which environmental science–policy framings are opened up and closed down through the inclusion/exclusion of actors, in knowledge practices and the political-epistemic spaces where emerging claims are contested, and the shaping of contextually specific criteria that determine the legitimacy of different assemblages and the claims that they make. While this demands the development of evermore complex theoretical registers that fuse notions of networks, actors and space with concepts of discourse, knowledge and power, the following papers highlight that it also depends on detailed empirical research. These challenges hold the key to understanding and discriminating between the complex processes at play, and contributing to meaningful democratic practice in the governance of science and the environment.

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Jason Chilvers School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] James Evans School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, M60 1QD, United Kingdom E-mail addresses: [email protected]