Mahshid Sotoudeh

Expectations play a distinctive role in shaping emerging technologies and producing hype cycles when a technology is adopted or fails on the market. To harness expectations, facilitate and provoke forward-looking discussions, and identify policy alternatives, futures studies are required. Here, expert anticipation of possible or probable future developments becomes extremely arbitrary beyond short-term prediction, and the results of futures studies are often controversial, divergent, or even contradictory; thus they are contested. Nevertheless, such socio-technical imaginaries may prescribe a future that seems attainable to those involved in the visioneering process, and other futures may thus become less likely and shaping them could become more difficult. This implies a need to broaden the debate on socio-technological development, creating spaces where policy, science, and society can become mutually responsive to each other. Laypeople’s experiential and value-based knowledge is highly relevant for complementing expertise to inform socially robust decision-making in science and technology. This paper presents the evolution of a transdisciplinary, forward-looking co-creation process — a demand-side approach developed to strengthen needs-driven research and innovation governance by cross-linking knowledge of laypeople, experts, and stakeholders. Three case studies serve as examples. We argue that this approach can be considered a method for adding social robustness to visioneering and to responsible socio-technical change.

Traditionally, expert-based forward looking has been applied to anticipate future challenges, solutions and strategic decisions, but limitations to this approach have become obvious – especially when considering long term perspectives – e.g. failing to include a comprehensive array of opinions. Aiming at producing sustainable strategies for responsible socio-technical change, research funding can benefit from combining forward looking and public participation to elicit socially robust knowledge from consulting with multi-actors, including citizens. In this paper, we give insights into the EU project CIMULACT – Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon 2020. In CIMULACT, more than 4500 citizens, stakeholders and experts from 30 European countries engaged online and offline to co-create research topics. These are supposed to serve as input for the next round of calls in Horizon 2020, national research agendas as well as the ninth framework programme in the making. We investigate key results of this transdisciplinary process focussing on the topic “democratic education” with regard to two levels: What issues concerning the topic were raised? Can we find a common European imaginary for “democratic education”? Our analysis shows that the results contribute to defining and describing challenges for the currently prevailing imaginary of democratic education in Europe.

Hellseherei ist eine alte Kunst. Der Glaube an eine vorherbestimmte Zukunft hat zur Entwicklung der skurrilsten Werkzeuge, mit denen sich diese vorhersehen lassen sollen, geführt. Auf den ersten Blick haben vorausschauende Studien auch immer einen Anschein von Wahrsagerei. Im Gegensatz zum Handlesen versuchen wissenschaftliche Methoden aber lediglich Wege zu zeigen, auf denen sich eine offene Zukunft entwickeln kann. Hinter solchen vorausschauenden Studien steckt oft die Motivation, eine breitere Informationsbasis für EntscheidungträgerInnen zu schaffen, die die Möglichkeit haben, die Zukunft aktiv mitzugestalten. ExpertInnen, StakeholderInnen und Laien können verschiedene Wertvorstellungen und Prioritäten haben, woraus sich unterschiedliche Standpunkte zu verschiedenen Fragestellungen ergeben. Die Einbeziehung einer möglichst breiten Basis solcher Standpunkte kann im besten Fall zu robusteren Entscheidungen und Strategien führen. Dabei stellt die Verarbeitung dieser Diversität in eine für EntscheidungsträgerInnen brauchbare Form eine Herausforderung an das Design und die Durchführung jeden partizipativen Prozesses dar. In diesem Beitrag wird eine neue qualitative Methode für vorausschauende Studien vorgestellt (CIVISTI: Citizen Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation; www.civisti.org), die in einem gleichnamigen EU-Projekt entwickelt wurde und kritisch durchleuchtet wird. Die Methode integriert das Wissen verschiedener Gruppen um Empfehlungen für die Forschungs- und Förderungspolitik zu erarbeiten. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf Partizipation mit klar getrennten Rollen von BürgerInnen und ExpertInnen. Am Beginn des Prozesses entwickeln BürgerInnen Visionen für eine Zukunft in 30–40 Jahren, aus denen ExpertInnen und StakeholderInnen die Empfehlungen generieren. Diese werden dann an die BürgerInnen zur Bewertung zurückgegeben um ein Endprodukt zu erzeugen. Der folgende Beitrag soll Stärken, Schwächen und Verbesserungspotentiale der Methode aufzeigen.

This paper discusses participatory methods as a tool with which to overcome some underlying barriers to the development of innovative environmental technologies. These methods may not only promote a better comprehension of society’s needs and an improved understanding of user requirements, but also generate discussions and co-operation between relevant groups (industrial scientists, members of the scientific community, company managers, politicians, assessors, investors, etc.). Participatory approaches with transparent and clearly defined goals, a well-organised process and the integration of relevant policy fields can contribute to successful communication between actors in the interest of the development of innovative environmental technologies.