Citizen Science and the Dissolution of Inequalities in Scientific Knowledge Production

Abstract

Recently, a larger public has started to critically discuss scientific knowledge and its role in political decision making. In this discussion, scientific and civic epistemologies are put into connection with each other. Just as post-democratic theory argues in relation to political decisions, the production of scientific knowledge is criticized as a non-inclusive process, too. The Citizen Science movement tries to resolve this deficit by involving citizens into research. In this paper, we introduce agency as an analytical category into the discussion, focussing on how participants are represented in Citizen Science. We highlight the interdependencies between the degree of agency granted to the participants in Citizen Science projects and the degree of their representation in knowledge production.