Towards the Common Good : An expansive post-abyssal (Re)stor(y)ing of the epistemic cultures of the citizen sciences
Authors:   , Vallabh Priya 
Published: September 2022

In this study I explore and explain transformatiThe citizen sciences convene complex and reflexive ecologies of knowledges in response to a range of social-ecological risks. Their epistemic cultures seem to be assembled in ways which increase potential mobilisation of the common knowledges being produced, thereby producing knowledges in forms that are more strongly aligned with a range of implementation strategies. However, much of such processes of knowledge production have been ‘cleaned out’ of official accounts through scientifically hegemonic systems of legitimation, deepening hegemonically-entrenched systems of epistemic, contributory and distributive injustices, and undermining the potential for stronger enactments of participatory and radical democracies. The engagement of sociologies of absences and emergences in this study evidence these epistemic insights, thereby evidencing an expansive post-abyssal (re)stor(y)ing of the citizen sciences. Through this research, I consider knowledge production as ‘commoning', towards the constitution of the common good. To date, most accounts of knowledge production within citizen science projects primarily focus on scientific processes of knowledge production and legitimation. Such accounts neglect the ecologies of diverse knowledges through which knowledge is being collaboratively produced, the forms of learning that occur, or the ways in which such ecologies are mobilised in response to specific socialecological risks. To better understand the ways in which citizen science projects build risk-responsive common knowledge, I bring a focus to the diversity of epistemic cultures convened, speaking to this gap. My primary research question is: How do the epistemic cultures within citizen science projects enable commoning in response to social-ecological risk? To begin, I establish a particular vantage point from which the remainder of the thesis is launched, one which centres as the primary interest of knowledge production, an interest in social-ecological justice and the constitution of the common good. From this vantage point, knowledge co-production and learning can be viewed as acts of commoning, which themselves constitute common goods. I draw on the work of Karin Knorr Cetina to conceptualise and frame notions of epistemic cultures and their epistemic features. Expanding notions of epistemic cultures from a post-abyssal perspective, I draw on the work of Bruno Latour and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Latour’s distinctions between the production of ‘matters of fact’ and ‘matters of concern’ provide a way to challenge hegemonic systems of scientific knowledge production, while preserving the potential emergence of multiplicity in the context of evolving risk, thereby enabling a greater degree of situated reflexivity. Santos argues for the reclamation of all ways of knowing, including but not limited to scientific ways of knowing the world. He argues that other forms of knowledge are produced as nonexistent, and that they might be reclaimed through engaging sociologies of absences and emergences. Both authors enable a stronger analysis of knowledge production in terms of its ability to intervene into context in response to manifest risks. These three theoretical approaches are convened into an analytical framework for the study. To enact sociologies of absences and emergences, I engage two forms of immanent critique, complemented by an epistemic mapping of 50 South African citizen science projects, and an analysis of three illustrative case studies. The first critique is one of produced nonexistence, through which I consider three aspects of the general knowledge cultures within which the epistemic cultures of citizen science projects are situated. This critique makes evident the ways in which the ontological and related conceptual structures of hegemonic scientific knowledge production actively produce as nonexistent, other onto-epistemic contributions to knowledge production in response to social-ecological risks. The second critique reviews the field of peer-reviewed literature through a reading of presence and absence, with a focus on the articulation of epistemic cultures. Predictably, a key finding is that this form of scientific reporting primarily foregrounds legitimated scientifically processed knowledge, while once again producing as nonexistent, other forms of knowledges. However, there is evidence of increasing accounts of citizen science which recognise both a diversity of knowledge contributions, and epistemic, contributory and distributive justice issues as regards hegemonic forms of reporting. The epistemic mapping evidences a highly diversified field of citizen sciences, whose epistemic cultures are convened to produce distinct forms of scientifically-informed knowledges in response to diverse contexts, scales and notions of risk. The three illustrative case studies engage sociologies of absences and emergences, with particular focus on articulating the ecologies of knowledges evidenced in project documentation, including both official and unofficial accounts of epistemic activity. This analysis highlights the significant contributions of diverse forms of knowledges, including scientific, situated, embodied, governance, indigenous, spiritual and relational knowledges, and the ways in which these knowledge are convened to respond to specific configurations of risk. It once again highlights issues of epistemic, contributory and distributive justice, and makes evident the need for stronger integrity in processes of producing and reporting common knowledges. The case studies also illustrate the increased effectiveness of leveraging an ecology of knowledges (in contrast to a monoculture of scientific knowledge) in response to situated risks, including how such ecologies have a tendency to be generative and enable multiple forms of intervention into structures and applied contexts of intervention. In response to the collective research findings, a think-piece on rigour-as-integrity is offered as a contribution to commoning, in response to social-ecological risk. The piece draws together a postabyssal system of rigour intended to strengthen knowledge production in ways which actively centre forms of justice and commoning. ve potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants.