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AbstractHow do we know things? The question of epistemology – which drives both the sociology and philosophy of science – is also a crucial question for political sociology. Knowledge is essential to even the most basic and foundational of political processes and institutions. In 2000, for example, the transition of power in the US presidential election hung for 36 days on uncertainty over a seemingly simple question of fact: who won the most votes in Florida? A few years later, disputed factual claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction unraveled, calling into question key justifications of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and significantly weakening perceived US legitimacy. Yet, surprisingly, sociologists and political scientists know relatively little about how knowledge gets made in political communities, nor how the making of knowledge is tied to other key aspects of political life, such as identity, authority, legitimacy, and accountability.

Processes of globalization and decentralization are changing the relationship among statistical knowledge production, nation, and state. This article explores these changes through a comparison of five projects to design and implement indicators of sustainable development to replace conventional measures of economic welfare and social demographics—community sustainability indicators, Metropatterns, greening the gross domestic product, the Living Planet Index, and standardized accounting rules for inventorying greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing on a coproductionist idiom, the article argues that these projects constitute experiments in modifying the civic epistemologies of democratic societies, transforming not only knowledge production but also political identities, relationships, and institutions.

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks.

Participatory forms of policy-making have often been criticized for insufficiently theorizing the coproduction of publics and matters of concern. This paper seeks to investigate this relationship further by analyzing how the concept of civic epistemologies (CEs) can provide insights for understanding how political contexts shape both publics and contestable debates. Presenting fieldwork on cyclone governance in Odisha, India, based on the analysis of interviews with vulnerable fishing communities and state actors, the article shows how CEs influence the interdependent formation of vulnerable fisher and state subjectivities on one hand with representations of risk located in external biophysical atmospheric gases on the other, thereby sustaining reductive roles and futures. At the same time, the paper develops the concept of CEs by examining them as performative acts carried out by marginalized communities and state actors at the subnational level of a nonindustrialized country, thereby indicating sites at which epistemic agency can be increased and governed. Participatory knowledge production needs to understand how it is affected by CEs if it is to generate effective expertise for transformative futures in the face of increasing climatic risks.

Although international actors operating under the United Nations umbrella put much faith in the possibility of bridging science and policy through various institutional arrangements, research in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition suggests that different civic epistemologies revolve around environmental degradation issues. Civic epistemologies, which imply peculiar understandings of knowledge across cultures, are not easily bridged. This paper contends that conflicting (civic) epistemologies inevitably emerge in epistemic debates at the intergovernmental level, with strong implications for how science and knowledge are dealt with and understood in environmental negotiations. Drawing on the experience of global soil and land governance and building on the idiom of civic epistemologies, the concept of intergovernmental epistemologies is introduced as an analytical tool to capture the diverging ways of appreciating and validating knowledge in intergovernmental settings. Placing state actors and their perspectives center stage, intergovernmental epistemologies account for the tensions, contestations and politicisation processes of international institutional settings dealing with environmental issues. The paper concludes discussing the consequences of intergovernmental epistemologies for the study of global environmental governance: it cautions about overreliance on approaches based on learning and all-encompassing discourses, emphasizing the value of using STS-derived concepts to investigate the complexity of international environmental negotiations.

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. ; This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) under grant no. 16DII111 ("Deutsches Internet-Institut").

As datafication progressively invades all spheres of contemporary society, citizens grow increasingly aware of the critical role of information as the new fabric of social life. This awareness triggers new forms of civic engagement and political action that we term "data activism". Data activism indicates the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication. Combining Science and Technology Studies with Social Movement Studies, this theoretical article offers a foretaste of a research agenda on data activism. It foregrounds democratic agency vis-à-vis datafication, and unites under the same label ways of affirmative engagement with data ("proactive data activism", e. g. databased advocacy) and tactics of resistance to massive data collection ("reactive data activism", e. g. encryption practices), understood as a continuum along which activists position and reposition themselves and their tactics. The article argues that data activism supports the emergence of novel epistemic cultures within the realm of civil society, making sense of data as a way of knowing the world and turning it into a point of intervention and generation of data countercultures. It offers the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool for the study of new forms of political participation and civil engagement in the age of datafication, and explores data activism as an evolving theoretical construct susceptible to contestation and revision.

Abstract
As datafication progressively invades all spheres of contemporary society, citizens grow increasingly aware of the critical role of information as the new fabric of social life. This awareness triggers new forms of civic engagement and political action that we term "data activism". Data activism indicates the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication. Combining Science and Technology Studies with Social Movement Studies, this theoretical article offers a foretaste of a research agenda on data activism. It foregrounds democratic agency vis-à-vis datafication, and unites under the same label ways of affirmative engagement with data ("proactive data activism", e. g. databased advocacy) and tactics of resistance to massive data collection ("reactive data activism", e. g. encryption practices), understood as a continuum along which activists position and reposition themselves and their tactics. The article argues that data activism supports the emergence of novel epistemic cultures within the realm of civil society, making sense of data as a way of knowing the world and turning it into a point of intervention and generation of data countercultures. It offers the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool for the study of new forms of political participation and civil engagement in the age of datafication, and explores data activism as an evolving theoretical construct susceptible to contestation and revision.

Postmigrantische Gesellschaften zeichnen sich durch die in ihnen stattfindenden Aushandlungen von Differenz und Normalität aus. Als Seismografen hegemonialen Wissens sind Schulbücher dabei ein besonders instruktives Beispiel, um sich gesellschaftlichen Selbstverständigungsprozessen über Migration und Diversität zu nähern. Daniel Schumann rekonstruiert, wie Politikschulbücher der letzten zwanzig Jahre Integration zum Gegenstand machen. Dabei stellt sich heraus: Vorstellungen von Differenz und Normalität werden nicht allein durch stereotype Darstellungen aktualisiert, sondern auch dadurch, wie der Rahmen des kontrovers Diskutierbaren und des normativ Wünschenswerten gestaltet ist

Public knowledge presents a persistent problem for democratic deliberation. While especially salient for public participation in technical decision-making, scholars agree that all deliberations are best informed by quality, shared information. But what kind of knowledge is required in deliberation? Can deliberative practices foster requisite learning? Through rhetorical analysis of 20 small-group, public conversations about water policy in Kansas, USA, I sought to describe cultural understandings of public knowledge to inform future research and deliberative practice. Discussants voiced three epistemologies, which I label cognitivist, sociocultural, and behaviorist, each with distinct implications for democracy. I argue that researchers and practitioners should further consider how and when to foreground epistemological assumptions in deliberation. I also question whether facts are the most critical information for community self-determination, and instead argue that deliberators be pushed to openly discuss their values.

"In der Regulierungs- und Governanceforschung gewinnt die Analyse von Wissensordnungen, Wissensregimen oder 'civic Epistemologies' an Bedeutung. Im Kern geht es dabei um institutionelle wie kulturelle Arrangements der Produktion und Legitimation politisch relevanten Wissens. Gemeinsam ist diesen Ansätzen die Frage nach den Bedingungen von Expertise und Wissensproduktion in den Kommunikations- und Austauschbeziehungen zwischen Politik, Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit. In dem Beitrag werden zentrale Begriffsvarianten und Teildimensionen verglichen, um einen Überblick zur jeweiligen analytischen Reichweite zu bieten. Ziel ist es, das Konzept der Wissensordnung für die Weiterentwicklung jener Forschung nutzbar zu machen, deren Gegenstand die gesellschaftliche Koordination von und durch Wissen bildet." (Autorenreferat)

The current paradigm shift in the world toward promoting reduction for civic purposes and sustainable development gravitates between philosophies of cultural revivalism and cultural relativism. The ancient axiological debate between universal eternal forms/ideas and dynamic modernity world view theories is immortal and inevitable given contemporary African knowledge-power-politics nexus favouring revitalisation of African indigenous knowledge systems for citizenship recognition, sustainable allocation and empowerment. Historically, citizenship, community empowerment, good governance, democracy, scientific inquiry, organised management and other developmental principles were regarded by some scholars of Western origins. History is constantly changing, new facts are found about old events, and old facts are reinterpreted. Revisiting ancient and contemporary texts using critical analysis in tandem with qualitative philosophical inquiry paradigms, this study questioned ethnocentrism, distorted perspectives and relativity of ancient pre-colonial African epistemologies implications in today's educational civic responsibilities. Research findings indicated applicability of ancient pre-colonial epistemologies today and in the future given the cumulative dialectic essence of knowledge. Pre-colonial epistemologies can play significant contributions in multiple education aims of responsible, self-reliant, productive participation and reflective citizenship. Given the infinitum potentiality of pre-colonial epistemology implications, this research recommended adaptation of pre-colonial pedagogies into worldwide formal contemporary education systems. However, mainstreaming ancient pre-colonial epistemologies will be a challenge without decolonising and deconstructing contemporary pro-Western teacher education systems. Article visualizations:

A partir das tecnologias genéticas de vigilância utilizadas para combater o crime, queremos explorar as preocupações éticas que constituem desafios para uma governação responsável destas mesmas inovações tecnológicas. A governação responsável enfrenta o desafio do equilíbrio entre os potenciais riscos e benefícios da vigilância – que são concebidos em cada país de forma diferente relativamente aos seus efeitos de (des)capacitação. O presente texto apoia-se nas controvérsias que têm acompanhado o surgimento e expansão de tecnologias forenses de vigilância genética em dois países: Portugal e o Reino Unido. Apesar de surgir caracterizado como um país de "sociedade de vigilância máxima", o Reino Unido tem sido palco de uma ampla controvérsia pública e contestações relativamente a estas tecnologias. Em Portugal a retórica política enfatizou a melhoria da eficácia do sistema de justiça e o estabelecimento da base de dados de ADN nacional foi acompanhado por uma aceitação pública silenciosa, companheira sintomática do sistema de vigilância português. Através do conceito de Jasanoff, 'epistemologias cívicas', analisamos de que forma é que as bases de dados genéticos forenses criadas e desenvolvidas em Portugal e no Reino Unido, com o objetivo de vigiar e controlar populações criminais, se relacionam com diferentes formas de conhecimento público. Por fim, o texto termina com um conjunto de sugestões sobre como repensar a governação democrática e responsável das tecnologias genéticas forenses. ; By focusing on genetic surveillance technologies used to fight crime, we want to explore ethical concerns that bring challenges to a responsible governance of these technological innovations. Responsible governance faces the challenge of balancing between potential risks and benefits of surveillance – which are conceived differently in each country with regards to their empowering and disempowering effects. We draw on controversies which have accompanied the emergence and expansion of forensic genetic surveillance technologies in two different countries: Portugal and the UK. While UK has been characterized as the "maximum surveillance society" it also has generally experienced broad public controversy on contested technologies. In Portugal the political rhetoric emphasized the improvement of the efficacy of the justice system, and the establishment of the national forensic DNA database has been accompanied by silent public acceptance, a symptomatic companion in the Portuguese surveillance system. Using Jasanoff's analytical concept of 'civic epistemologies' we will analyze how the development and establishment of forensic DNA databases aiming at surveillance and tracking of "criminal populations" in Portugal and in the UK are rooted in different ways of public knowing. Finally, we conclude with suggestions how to rethink democratic and responsible governance of forensic genetics technologies.

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.