This dissertation consists of three essays each of which revolves around a group of environmental engineers/scientists who have a different vision of how science should be done and who are seeking to work side-by-side with non-scientific partners to find alternative pollution prevention strategies and technologies. Their goal is to address environmental and social problems by "democratizing" science and redefining expert-lay collaboration so as to involve all participants in the design and application of ecologically friendly technologies and pollution prevention strategies. These scientists and engineers, who call themselves the "Learning Alliance," reflect a trend that researchers in the area of the social study of science and technology call a shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2 science. The first essay focuses on how the Learning Alliance attempts to enact Mode 2 science. I present an ethnographic study that analyzes how the Learning Alliance goes about establishing the kind of collaboration with end-users on which their vision of science depends. I show that successful negotiations between the Learning Alliance and a particular corporate group of end-users with whom they were working took place only after a series of failed attempts. I argue that both the failures and the successful project they were finally able to establish, can be explained in terms of what Learning Alliance learned about the prerequisites for successful collaborations. More specifically, using social worlds theory and the concept of boundary objects, I make the case that only once effective boundary objects are found can lines of action between social actors in different social worlds be fit together. In the second essay I draw parallels between the emergence of a Mode 2 model of science and debates within sociology about the need to move towards a public sociology, that is, a sociology that is more socially engaged. I discuss how the demands of a more publicly oriented sociology presented itself as a dilemma in my own research and how this ultimately led to both a repositioning of myself as an analyst and a re-negotiated relationship with the Learning Alliance I was studying. The third essay serves as an example of the kind of product that can result when sociologists step outside of their role as detached observers of the groups they study and instead, collaborate with those groups in promoting their collective agendas. The essay is a paper I wrote together with a member of the Learning Alliance. The paper deals with the question of how to involve end-users in all phases of technological development within water and sanitation sectors. The paper builds on the trading zone metaphor frequently used in the sociology of science to explain expert-lay collaborative ventures. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21188 |
| Date | 02 1900 |
| Creators | Kelly, Benjamin |
| Contributors | Pawluch, D. A., Sociology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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