Citizen Participation and Technical Democracy

Calls for citizen participation have become central in planning and politics in the last decades. This has come hand in hand with the emergence of a critical understanding of the technocratic role science and technology experts have played in our societies and the ethical attempts to let users, patients, citizens, etc. have a say in their decisions. Hence, participatory methods and processes have been created and are often celebrated as forms of further democratizing our contemporary societies. However, participatory methods do not instantly bring more democracy and also create problems of their own.

Building from all that, this module introduces students to a series of theoretical discussions, historical analyses, empirical examples, case studies and exploratory exercises addressing some key questions: What is the role and effect of the participatory devices created in those processes? What does it mean for publics, citizens, users or patients to participate in those processes? How is citizenship and expertise imagined and practiced in these participatory exercises? How is participation reframed in technoscientific controversies? What experimental forms of collaboration could be invented and for what purposes?

Courses include: