NSF Short Project Statement - Environmental Health Governance in Six Cities: How Scientific Cultures, Practices and Infrastructure Shape Governance Styles
This document is the abbreviated project statement for the National Science Foundation supported study, "Environmental Health Governance in Six Cities: How Scientific Cultures, Practices, and Infrastructure Shape Governance Styles." The overview of the document states, "The aim of this project is to advance understanding of different ways scientific capacity is developed and used in governance, examining how environmental health research and governance has developed in six cities (four in the United States and two in Asia). Extending on-going work since 2008 through The Asthma Files project, this project will focus on efforts to understand and address the health effects of long term exposure to transportation-related air pollution. In each city studied, we will examine the operation and use of science in four arenas of governance (environment, health, transportation, and education), and how these different arenas interrelate. We will map the sources of scientific evidence used in governance, assess how these sources are evaluated and translated into policy and programming. We will also document and analyze the scientific infrastructures that produced the findings used in governance, the diverse stakeholders involved in interpreting scientific findings, and diverse cultural logics that shape the creation and use of science knowledge in different settings.
Ethnographic interviews will be our primary means of data collection, supplemented by analyses of scientific publications, policy debates, and media coverage. The cities we will study are Albany, New York City, Houston, Philadelphia, Beijing, and Bengaluru. In each city, we have a collaborator with deep experience and prior research in the city. The digital platform built for The Asthma Files project will support collaboration among project researchers, and the involvement of student researchers. In each city, we will run a field school to teach the project’s methods to students, and to enroll them in our effort to advance effective development and use of science in governance. Methodologically, the project models and advances understanding of collaborative research in the social studies of science.
The project will result in a theoretically robust, empirically grounded understanding of environmental health research and governance styles, detailing and categorizing different ways of developing environmental health data, advancing the sciences of environment and health, and directing these toward governance of complex problems. The project builds on work in the history and anthropology of science on how “thought styles” shape scientific research, and extends it to sociocultural analysis of “governance styles.” The project will extend theorization of governance by addressing how scientific cultures, practices, and infrastructure shape governance processes and outcomes.
Project results will have wide implications for efforts to improve collaboration between governance regimes (across scale, and between nations); such collaboration is particularly important in addressing complex, often transboundary problems like air pollution, which call for new levels of cooperation and sharing of technology, data, and effective policy design. In the final project stage, recommendations resulting from the project will be disseminated among policy makers, journalists, and other stakeholders in all cities studied in the project. Project results will also be translated into curriculum for K-12 students, using the techniques and infrastructure developed by RPI’s EcoEd Research Group, which for the past four years has successfully translated social sciences research findings on the dynamics of environmental problems into programs for young students (delivered both at RPI and at local K-12 schools)."
Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Sam Elrahman, Govind Gopakumar, Scott Kellogg, Alison Kenner, Dan Price and Rodolfo Hernandez, "NSF Short Project Statement - Environmental Health Governance in Six Cities: How Scientific Cultures, Practices and Infrastructure Shape Governance Styles", contributed by Giselle Babiarz, The Asthma Files, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 23 February 2018, accessed 16 November 2024. http://theasthmafiles.ss.uci.edu/content/nsf-short-project-statement-environmental-health-governance-six-cities-how-scientific
Critical Commentary
This document is the abbreviated project statement for the National Science Foundation supported study, "Environmental Health Governance in Six Cities: How Scientific Cultures, Practices, and Infrastructure Shape Governance Styles." The overview of the document states, "The aim of this project is to advance understanding of different ways scientific capacity is developed and used in governance, examining how environmental health research and governance has developed in six cities (four in the United States and two in Asia). Extending on-going work since 2008 through The Asthma Files project, this project will focus on efforts to understand and address the health effects of long term exposure to transportation-related air pollution. In each city studied, we will examine the operation and use of science in four arenas of governance (environment, health, transportation, and education), and how these different arenas interrelate. We will map the sources of scientific evidence used in governance, assess how these sources are evaluated and translated into policy and programming. We will also document and analyze the scientific infrastructures that produced the findings used in governance, the diverse stakeholders involved in interpreting scientific findings, and diverse cultural logics that shape the creation and use of science knowledge in different settings.
Ethnographic interviews will be our primary means of data collection, supplemented by analyses of scientific publications, policy debates, and media coverage. The cities we will study are Albany, New York City, Houston, Philadelphia, Beijing, and Bengaluru. In each city, we have a collaborator with deep experience and prior research in the city. The digital platform built for The Asthma Files project will support collaboration among project researchers, and the involvement of student researchers. In each city, we will run a field school to teach the project’s methods to students, and to enroll them in our effort to advance effective development and use of science in governance. Methodologically, the project models and advances understanding of collaborative research in the social studies of science.
The project will result in a theoretically robust, empirically grounded understanding of environmental health research and governance styles, detailing and categorizing different ways of developing environmental health data, advancing the sciences of environment and health, and directing these toward governance of complex problems. The project builds on work in the history and anthropology of science on how “thought styles” shape scientific research, and extends it to sociocultural analysis of “governance styles.” The project will extend theorization of governance by addressing how scientific cultures, practices, and infrastructure shape governance processes and outcomes.
Project results will have wide implications for efforts to improve collaboration between governance regimes (across scale, and between nations); such collaboration is particularly important in addressing complex, often transboundary problems like air pollution, which call for new levels of cooperation and sharing of technology, data, and effective policy design. In the final project stage, recommendations resulting from the project will be disseminated among policy makers, journalists, and other stakeholders in all cities studied in the project. Project results will also be translated into curriculum for K-12 students, using the techniques and infrastructure developed by RPI’s EcoEd Research Group, which for the past four years has successfully translated social sciences research findings on the dynamics of environmental problems into programs for young students (delivered both at RPI and at local K-12 schools)."