
Citizen science—an approach to research that involves nonprofessionals in the process of investigation—has attracted both strong enthusiasts and detractors. Many environmental professionals, activists, and scholars around the world today consider citizen science to be part of their toolkit for addressing environmental challenges. Critics, however, contend that it exploits volunteers’ free labor and represents a corporate takeover of scientific priorities. In this book, my co-author and I move beyond this binary debate by analyzing the tensions and dilemmas that citizen science projects commonly face.
Key lessons are drawn from case studies in the United States, Japan, Mexico, and other parts of the world, where citizen scientists have investigated the impacts of shale oil and gas, nuclear power, and genetically engineered crops. We show that diverse citizen science projects face a common set of dilemmas, relating to austerity pressures, presumed boundaries between science and activism, reductionist tendencies that privilege quantifiable indicators, and difficulties moving between scales of environmental problems. Doing environmental citizen science requires understanding and navigating these dilemmas. By unpacking the politics of citizen science, this book aims to help people negotiate a complex political landscape and choose paths that bring about social change and environmental sustainability.
Order from Rutgers University Press here.
Order from Amazon here.
A short TV interview with Kinchy here.
A radio interview with Kinchy here.
Key lessons are drawn from case studies in the United States, Japan, Mexico, and other parts of the world, where citizen scientists have investigated the impacts of shale oil and gas, nuclear power, and genetically engineered crops. We show that diverse citizen science projects face a common set of dilemmas, relating to austerity pressures, presumed boundaries between science and activism, reductionist tendencies that privilege quantifiable indicators, and difficulties moving between scales of environmental problems. Doing environmental citizen science requires understanding and navigating these dilemmas. By unpacking the politics of citizen science, this book aims to help people negotiate a complex political landscape and choose paths that bring about social change and environmental sustainability.
Order from Rutgers University Press here.
Order from Amazon here.
A short TV interview with Kinchy here.
A radio interview with Kinchy here.