CommentaryPower, knowledge and the transformative potential of marine community science
Introduction
The concept of community science,1 a participatory research approach wherein members of the public produce scientific knowledge in contributory, collaborative, or co-production processes, has produced promising opportunities in a marine context (Garcia-Soto et al., 2021). By enhancing the scope of monitoring efforts, and empowering local communities to engage with initiatives that seek to protect the oceans, community science provides an important source of scientific research on maritime challenges, including, rising sea levels, over-fishing, and ocean acidification (Kelly et al., 2020; Sandahl and Tøttrup, 2020). Community science has been advanced as a cost-effective means of producing knowledge to inform marine policy (Hyder et al., 2015; Schläppy et al., 2017), to broaden the engagement of communities with governance processes (Turrini et al., 2018) and to instil scientific and environmental learning amongst participants (Haywood, 2016). Due to this, community science is framed by academics and practitioners as a participatory approach that can, through the production of new knowledge, transform conservation management into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic processes (Couvet and Prevot, 2015; Grossberndt et al., 2021; Loos et al., 2015; Peters and Besley, 2019). In marine governance, where decision-makers are often guided by hegemonic agendas (Tafon, 2018) and informed by the knowledge of dominant stakeholders (Said and Trouillet, 2020), community science has been suggested as a potentially transformative solution to unjust and undemocratic processes (Flannery et al., 2019). The way community science researchers and practitioners have conceptualised ‘transformation’ is, however, rather limited, and is often blind to power issues.
In this paper, we define ‘transformation’ as a fundamental form of change that is greater than progressive or incremental shifts. Transformation is described as a significant reordering, one that challenges existing structures to produce something fundamentally different (Blythe et al., 2018; Geels et al., 2017). Scholars have outlined how the realisation of ocean governance transformation is dependent upon paradigm shifts within existing structures of governance (Olsson et al., 2014). Discussing how to prepare for transformative change, Blythe et al. (2021: 261) state the importance of “the identification of a governance related challenge, growing social support for governance change and the communication of compelling narratives”. We argue that community science can provide many of the required conditions for ocean governance transformation to be instigated, specifically because of the active participation that it supports and the diverse range of knowledge that it can produce.
The need for transformational change to how marine governance processes facilitate public participation (Bennett et al., 2019; Saunders et al., 2020; Fudge et al., 2021; Tafon et al., 2021) and incorporate different types of knowledge has become more evident in recent years (Said and Trouillet, 2020; Peters, 2020). Community science has been positioned by its champions as having the capacity to instigate change to how these challenges are managed in marine governance, yet literature illustrates an under-appreciation of how truly transformative change must involve actions that challenge dominant power relations. Turnhout et al. (2020) argue that ‘depoliticisation’ in the realm of co-production has led to participatory processes inadvertently reinforcing, as opposed to mitigating, unequal power relations. Community science that ineffectively challenges dominant power arrangements can, therefore, prevent the development of transformative practices and the instigation of meaningful change (Mach et al., 2020). Although some studies have begun to critically analyse the role of power in co-production processes, revealing crucial insights about transformation barriers that participatory interventions can encounter and how they can be prevented (see Lemos et al., 2018; Oliver et al., 2019), power remains an underexplored topic in the community science literature. While studies have revealed significant insight into transformative learning (see Bela et al., 2016; Ruiz-Mallén et al., 2016), a more explicit understanding of the relationship between power and knowledge must be developed by community science actors if the potential of community science is to be realised.
We argue that the transformative capacity of projects must be understood in terms of how community science knowledge is shaped by and produces power. Our argument is built upon the premise that power and knowledge are co-constitutive, hence the Foucauldian terminology of ‘power/knowledge’, meaning that they are inextricably linked to each other and cannot exist independently (Foucault, 1980). Power/knowledge relations define what is important and what is possible in the realm of action, supporting particular developments while suppressing others (Sheridan, 1977).
We contend that if community science is to transform both how communities can participate in marine governance and how knowledge is integrated into decision-making processes, it must become politicised and acknowledge the array of power relations that define which knowledge is important and how it is used. As the concept of power/knowledge outlines, power is not a zero-sum game. Power can be challenged, resisted, and changed by developing other power/knowledge relations (Foucault, 1980). Power/knowledge arrangements can, therefore, both limit and enable action. We suggest that, by becoming conscious of the duality of power/knowledge, community science research and practice can develop a greater understanding of why attempts to instigate transformation fail, and how such barriers can be overcome. We posit that it is only by adopting more power-aware approaches that community science can realise its potential to transform marine governance into more democratic and transparent processes.
In the next section, we clarify the need to address the political and power dimensions of community science and discuss why this is important for both theory and practice. We begin by reviewing the current framings of community science and problematise how transformation has been conceptualised within the literature. The concept of power/knowledge is then outlined to demonstrate how it can inform an alternative community science paradigm that corrects for current limitations. This is followed by a discussion of how politicising community science can contribute to a better understanding of how and why projects often fail to instigate transformation and how persistent challenges can be prevented. To conclude, we consider how power-aware community science initiatives can practically work to transform the problems underpinning marine governance regimes and suggest how this topic could be examined further.
Section snippets
Reframing transformation in community science
Community science has quickly grown in popularity within marine conservation (Kelly et al., 2020), following a ‘participatory trend’ in scientific knowledge production (Chilvers and Kearnes, 2020). The increased support for participatory research and co-production has facilitated the creation of new relationships between civil society, science and government, wherein individuals can have a greater influence in decision-making processes (Albert et al., 2021). The origins of this participatory
Power/knowledge
Foucault coined the concept of power/knowledge to demonstrate their co-constitutive nature. Foucault interpreted power and knowledge as inextricably linked entities, as “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of the field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does nor presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (Sheridan, 1977, pp. 22). Although representing only one of many resources in the power field, knowledge establishes what is perceived as
Towards power-aware community science
Furthering calls for co-production processes to become ‘(re)politicised’ (Turnhout et al., 2020), we argue that marine community science must become a process that embeds power analysis into its design structure. When blind to the avenues through which power/knowledge arrangements operate, community science risks reinforcing existing relations that have limited the ability of participatory research to successfully contribute to societal transformation and to enhance the influence that
Conclusion
We recognise that politicising the field of marine community science will bring challenges and may not result in actionable knowledge in an instrumental sense amongst all forms of projects. Also, we must not ignore the wider challenges that face community science. It is important to consider how power-aware community science may respond to these. Most notably, doubts regarding the ability of community science to consistently produce valid scientific knowledge, to avoid participant bias (Gonsamo
Funding
Ben McAteer's contribution to this paper was funded by the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland. Wesley Flannery's contribution was partly funded by the FAIRCoast project which is funded by the Research Council of Norway, project number 294799.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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