‘Imagining ourselves’ as participating publics: An example from biodiversity conservation

1. Introduction

This article examines how residents in Natura 2000 biodiversity conservation sites present themselves in their relations with the scientific and legal expert-systems governing their communities. How scientists and decision-makers – henceforth ‘experts’ – view their publics is well documented in the Public Understanding of Science (PUS) literature. There is ample evidence that experts’ ‘imaginations’ (Barnett et al., 2012; Maranta et al., 2003), representations (Batel and Devine-Wright, 2014; Bauer and Gaskell, 2008; Castro and Batel, 2008) and models (Wynne, 1996) of the public show remarkably stable, shared and recurrent aspects (Welsh and Wynne, 2013). It is also clear that they present the public in a more negative than positive light, systematically highlighting (lack of) information and involvement (Bauer et al., 2007; Stilgoe et al., 2014; Welsh and Wynne, 2013).

Comparatively less is known, however, about the symmetric question of how publics ‘imagine themselves’ in their relations with expert-systems. There are classical examples of laypeople reflecting upon their relationships with experts (Wynne, 1996) and evidence of public distrust in several aspects of science (cf. Engdahl and Lidskog, 2014). However, ‘self-imaginations’ remain under-researched, especially in contexts where public–expert relationships are enduring and intertwine science and law. And yet, the characteristics of experts’ representations – shared, stable, recurrent – suggest that they are hegemonic in this ‘structured group’ (Moscovici, 1988: 221), and this immediately begs two questions crucially relevant for PUS. The first is whether publics reproduce or mirror them to some extent in their ‘self-imaginations’, as would be expected for properly societal hegemonic representations (Gramsci, 1971). The second question takes into account that even hegemonic meaning can be and is contested (Castro, 2012; Howarth, 2006; Jaspal et al., 2012; Moscovici, 1988; Scott, 1990), and asks whether the publics also resist experts’ representations and how. Moreover, both hegemony and resistance are notions that call for further discussion as they can be communicated through hidden and subtle – rather than blatant – formats and discourses still insufficiently known (Castro and Mouro, 2011; Scott, 1990).

Therefore, in this article, we analyse ‘self-imaginations’ of residents in Natura sites in the interior South of Portugal, qualitatively exploring – through focus groups – whether and how residents reproduce experts’ (negative) representations or resist them. Looking at the content of what is said and the discursive formats (Castro and Batel, 2008; Jaspal et al., 2012) conveying it, we specifically examine residents’ discussions along the two recurrent dimensions of experts’ views: the epistemic and the normative (Maranta et al., 2003). Our focus will therefore be on illustrating the variety of representational contents and discursive formats residents mobilize within each dimension. This article is organized as follows.

First, we present the Natura 2000 network, seeking to clarify how it intertwines scientific and normative aspects. This means examining how it connects scientific information (e.g. biodiversity is diminishing) with normative guidelines, understood as the desirable end-states, that is, values and goals, a society should pursue (e.g. biodiversity must be preserved, people must participate), some of which are supported by laws. Next, the literature on experts’ views of the public is summarized and used together with Social Representations Theory (SRT) and Scott’s (1990) work for substantiating our claim that these views can be taken as hegemonic. Finally, we present an analysis of nine focus groups (n = 49). Examining PUS together with public understanding of laws, this article contributes to integrating public engagement into its wider political and societal context and to a better understanding of how this context affects different representations of knowledge and their relative visibility (Castro and Batel, 2008; Howarth, 2006; Welsh and Wynne, 2013).

2. Natura 2000: Normative and epistemic dimensions

The Natura 2000 network of protected sites – the cornerstone of the European Union (EU) policy for biodiversity conservation – cuts across the territory of the 27 Member States representing today 18% of their area. The governance of the sites – which include public and private land – is supported by legislation initially prepared at the EU level (the 1979 Birds Directive and the 1992 Habitats Directive) and gradually transposed to the legal frameworks of Member States.

Natura 2000 illustrates well how, in the governance of trans-boundary environmental problems, ‘knowledge making and policy making have in recent decades become increasingly related and intertwined’ (Lidskog, 2014: 670). The Natura legislation was prepared with the extensive contribution of biodiversity and ecology scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They helped in shaping EU Directives that accorded high priority to ecological goals (Castro and Mouro, 2011; Rosa and Silva, 2005; Weber and Christophersen, 2002). Member States then designated the sites on the basis of the Directives, with no or little public consultation (Paavola, 2004). This first phase of Natura appeared to some residents as one when ‘It was simply announced: “we are doing a good thing for the people”’ (see Stoll-Kleemann, 2001: 377). It thus illustrates well the first stage Welsh and Wynne (2013) identify in expert–public imaginations (1950–1990, but continuing): one when publics were expected to comply with the proposals of those who know best, that is, those with epistemic authority (Maranta et al., 2003).

Contestation of Natura 2000 started as soon as national implementation began, with protests all over Europe (see Paavola, 2004; Stoll-Kleemann, 2001) and the regional press voicing local discontent in some countries, Portugal included (Castro et al., 2012). Yet although the construction of the network had intertwined scientific and normative aspects, the protests targeted normative ones. Conservation values were accused of sidelining other relevant values, like local prosperity and development, and there was abundant criticism of the lack of public consultation for site selection (Castro and Mouro, 2011; Weber and Christophersen, 2002). Experts’ reactions during this period are well captured by Welsh and Wynne’s (2013) second phase of public imaginations (the 1990s), when the public was viewed as an ‘obstruction’ to innovation (examples in Stoll-Kleemann, 2001).

After this wave of protests, both the EU and national governments offered greater attention to public participation (Paavola, 2004). They signed international treaties (Local Agenda 21; Aarhus Convention) that placed public engagement ¹ as a central value for environmental decision-making and EU Directives were issued with the same goal (2003/35/EC). This legislation moved biodiversity governance into a new phase that conjured in experts an ‘imaginary of highly politicized publics’, as in Welsh and Wynne’s (2013) third phase.

In Portugal, engagement exercises fostered by the new legislation started late and have been mostly consultative (Fidelis and Pires, 2009; Schmidt et al., 2006). Directly relevant for our goals is the fact that, in the region of the study, there were in the last years several opportunities of contact between residents and expert-systems. In the region, there are presently (1) local conservation offices, bringing biodiversity experts to the everyday life of communities; (2) several conservation projects and management plans, which resorted in the last years to variable formats of public consultation – workshops, interviews or surveys (Castro and Mouro, 2011; Schmidt et al., 2006) – and some Local Agenda initiatives (Fidelis and Pires, 2009). Predominantly consultative, not deliberative, these exercises have nevertheless offered Natura residents opportunities for (1) experiencing how expert-systems of biodiversity governance imagine them and (2) being positioned in situations in which they have had to imagine themselves as participating publics. It was the intersection of these experiences that we sought to reach by conducting the focus groups here under analysis.

3. Representations of the public: Normative and epistemic dimensions

As implied above, several reviews organize in phases the literature on how experts view publics (Bauer et al., 2007; Welsh and Wynne, 2013). Studies and reviews show that throughout these phases, two dimensions are prominent in how experts imagine their ‘Lay persons’ (Maranta et al., 2003): the epistemic and the normative dimensions. They also show that the publics are most often found lacking in both (see Batel and Devine-Wright, 2014). Regarding the epistemic dimension, the public has been described as ignorant, insufficiently informed and thus hostile to innovation, or mis-informed and unwilling to become more knowledgeable (Batel and Devine-Wright, 2014; Castro and Batel, 2008; Entradas, 2015 (2016); Stilgoe et al., 2014). In other words, representations of the publics in this dimension reflect what Maranta et al. (2003) call ‘the epistemic asymmetry’ conferring epistemic authority to experts.

Regarding the normative dimension, publics emerge as uninterested, uninvolved, indifferent, passive, unengaged; in the context of laws supporting the value of engagement, they thereby emerge as the carrier of rights they do not use or mis-use (Barnett et al., 2012; Castro and Batel, 2008; Maranta et al., 2003). In the three phases identified by Bauer et al. (2007), the epistemic dimension is more prominent in the first (science illiteracy) and second (PUS) phases, in which the public is seen as lacking in knowledge and information. The normative dimension is more central in the third phase of science in society, in which negative depictions of publics highlight how they fail to contribute to the advancement of certain values a society should achieve, some of which inscribed in laws, such as participation. Yet, as Welsh and Wynne (2013) clearly underline, these phases are only about the prominence of a certain dimension in a certain period: the less prominent one does not disappear but instead continues, that is, keeps returning.

4. Reproduction and resistance: The role of hegemonic representations

Representations, models or ‘imaginations’ – in sum, meaning-systems – that are not only highly shared in a society but also keep returning even when there are efforts to change them, can be called hegemonic (Moscovici, 1988). In social theory, there is a long tradition of analysis of hegemony (Gramsci, 1971; for example, Fairclough, 1993; Foucault, 1982; Unger, 1997), and studying hegemonic representations in the context of this tradition is crucial for extending our comprehension of their societal role. Gramsci’s notion expressed the premise that meaning-systems – not just formal or state structures and institutions – play a role in the maintenance of social orders and their inequalities. In Unger’s (1997) summary, ‘institutional arrangements and enacted beliefs sustain and reproduce the social grid’ made of divisions and hierarchies, with laws and regulations ‘freezing’, albeit always temporarily, this grid (p. 4). Hegemony’s unstable equilibrium rests then on the complementary forces of coercion and consensus and could not be maintained without dominated groups subscribing to some core beliefs, thus reducing the need for coercion.

The idea of dominated groups taking part in their own domination has not ceased to be contested (Scott, 1990). But it is possible to say that neither has it ever been entirely dismissed. Foucault (1982), for instance, although arguing for a fluid and fragmented notion of hegemony and power, views resistance as equally fragmented and fluid, having difficulties fighting the ‘naturalizing’ meaning constantly produced in our societies by scientific systems. For him, these ‘naturalizing’ discourses presenting certain meaning categories and hierarchies as ‘just the way the world is’ are incorporated in our sense of self and others. This prevents a simple, binary division between dominated and dominant discourses (Foucault, 1982). Yet, a rendering of the specific discursive formats that in concrete instances express hegemony or resistance, and of how (and whether) they convey non-binary relations, is absent from Foucault’s work (Fairclough, 1993).

Scott (1990) also rejects the strong (Gramscian) thesis of hegemony and accepts the weak thesis of ‘naturalization’, acknowledging the stabilizing role played by the depiction of certain inequalities as ‘the way the world is’. At the same time, his analyses offer evidence that even social orders where domination was rather monolithic (e.g. the slave society in southern United States or serfdom in Russia) were unable to erase resistance. Yet, they also show how resistance in these societies happens mostly in hidden contexts (Scott, 1990), where hidden transcripts, or discourses, thrive beyond direct observation by power-holders, and a vocabulary of resistance is kept alive.

The societies Scott (1990) examines are close to those Durkheim described using the concept of collective representations, that is, societies with one main centre of authority and meaning. According to SRT, ours are instead polycentric and ‘thinking societies’ (Moscovici, 1988), where multiple social representations sustain a constant and complex battle of ideas (Moscovici and Marková, 2000: 275). In this battle, the level of consensus of different representations varies, as does their capacity to exclude and dominate competing ones (Howarth, 2006). The typology of social representations (Moscovici, 1988) captures this dynamic; from less to more consensual, representations can be polemic, emancipated or hegemonic, the latter being highly shared and uniform across a structured group (Moscovici, 1988: 221), as collective representations were seen to be (Howarth, 2006).

Such a typology makes sense only in regard to a specified reference context. This can be an informal group; yet it is when the reference context is a society that the typology becomes fully instrumental for understanding domination and resistance in social orders, and better expresses its critical potential (Howarth, 2006). At the societal level, the theoretical connection of hegemonic social representations to the Gramscian notion is clear, as they are incorporated and objectified in formal institutions (e.g. laws and regulations or school curricula), reproduced anew in instantiations of their procedures (Castro, 2012; Howarth, 2006) and taken to be the reflection of an external reality (Vala et al., 1998).

At this level, the typology has, for example, illuminated the battles of meaning linked to climate change (Jaspal et al., 2012). Analyses of science–public relations also recognize the role of institu-tional arrangements in perpetuating hegemonic meaning (Engdahl and Lidskog, 2014; Maranta et al., 2003). They highlight how, because of the ‘hegemonic assumptions’ ascribing epistemic authority to experts (Maranta et al., 2003), these can present complex issues to the public in simplified, pre-defined packages, thus exerting ‘hegemonic control over their meaning’ (Engdahl and Lidskog, 2014: 706). Others even suggest that the material arrangements of the engagement processes experts organize, incorporating negative representations of the public, might be a central factor in constraining ‘the desire and ability of publics themselves (…) to engage’ (Barnett et al., 2012: 48).

Yet, and importantly, SRT also highlights how hegemonic representations are maintained by individuals – through interpersonal and mediated communication and in inner dialogue – and not just reproduced by institutions and material arrangements. This incites further investigation into how dominant and dominated representations are expressed in everyday discourse, as a form of taking to empirical scrutiny the premises of SRT that there is ‘no cut between the individual and the collective’ (Moscovici, 1988) and that meaning is elaborated with and for an Other (Moscovici, 1972). If the individual-collective continuity is assumed, it becomes crucial to know more about how the specific representational contents and discursive formats individuals employ contribute to the collective phenomenon of hegemony.

In this regard, research shows that hegemonic representations can remain under-discussed and even unopened for debate for long periods (Marková, 2008), communicated in implicit, non-reflexive ways (Mouro and Castro, 2012) that allow them to emerge as natural (Howarth, 2006; Vala et al., 1998). Another central aspect is their normative character (Howarth, 2006; Moscovici, 1988; Welsh and Wynne, 2013): prescribing what individuals can and should say in order to be seen as valuable members of a certain society (Castro, 2012) provides them with a positive social value that contributes to their repetition. In this sense, hegemonic representations are in fact not ‘quiet things’ (Howarth, 2006), although they may work in quiet ways, perpetuating social orders through what remains naturalized, under-debated, un-reflexive and normative in the constitution of subjectivities and institutions.

However, in the battles of ideas of the polycentric societies of our time, hegemonic meaning also encounters counter-representations (Jaspal et al., 2012), and resistance is a reality, although it can be kept more or less hidden (Castro and Mouro, 2011; Scott, 1990). At this point, however, the literature still lacks detailed analysis of the variety of representational contents and discursive formats employed by those who are the object of negative hegemonic representations for either contesting or reproducing them. These constitute our interest in this work.

5. Overview of assumptions and specific goals

We approach the above questions with a synthetic perspective on meaning-making, communication and discourse that draws from SRT, and is also inspired by Scott’s (1990) and Fairclough’s (1993) analyses. This perspective has the following premises: (1) meaning is elaborated with and for an Other; (2) the Other is both our interlocutor in a specific interactional context and the cultural Other of a society (Moscovici, 1972); (3) for taking both context and culture into account when analysing discourse, it is necessary to focus both on the content of the culturally available social representations they draw from and on the concrete discursive formats – repetitive forms of organizing utterances (Castro and Batel, 2008) – used for conveying that content (Fairclough, 1993; Jaspal et al., 2012). In sum, we adopt a synthetic approach in which the macro-meaning-systems and the micro-discursive formats are taken into account (Jaspal et al., 2012; Mouro and Castro, 2012).

Given the above assumptions, we had the following specific goals for the qualitative analysis of the groups: (1) exploring if and how self-imaginations of residents reproduced or resisted the experts’ imaginations in the epistemic and the normative dimensions, (2) illustrating the variety of representational contents and discursive formats expressing reproduction and resistance within each dimension, (3) understanding whether resistance was conveyed by blatant/open protest and/or by hidden discourse (Scott, 1990) and (4) investigating whether forms of reproduction and resistance were non-binary or hybrid.

6. Method

7. Analysis and discussion

Conclusion

Taking experts’ representations of the public to be of hegemonic character, in this article we explored examples of how ‘self-imaginations’ of residents in Natura sites reproduced or resisted them. We focused on residents’ discussions along two dimensions: the knowledge/epistemic and the involvement/normative (Maranta et al., 2003). We wanted to explore whether contestation and reproduction assumed hidden, and non-binary, or hybrid, forms (Castro, 2012), and, as summarized below, our analysis of nine focus groups offers a complex portrayal of self-imaginations in the context of negative hegemonic representations.

First, regarding the normative dimension, we found clear reproduction of the negative representations with which experts operate. Both farmers and the residents less directly affected by Natura regulations mentioned lack of involvement in the region and attributed it to abstract and generic actors (‘people’). The discursive format I/we(do)/people(don’t) employed also distanced the Ego (collective or individual) from this ‘people’. In some examples, farmers extend this format to other (abstract) fellow farmers, highlighting their lack of cooperation with farmers’ Associations. This reproduction format resorts to hegemonic cultural material (experts’ views as well as representations of Alentejanos) and naturalizes (Vala et al., 1998) the lack of engagement of abstract ‘people’ by characterizing it as the result of stable traits, that is, as ‘just the way the world is’. The use of a ‘void’ category is useful for dealing with self-devaluating representations: As the actors are abstract, the concrete Ego (individual and collective) is exempted from the negative representation.

Yet there are also examples of resistance within the normative dimension; these are conveyed through first-person arguments with concrete actors. The conjugation of these two formats – reproduction pushed away from the Ego and resistance as a first-person discourse – both performs normativity and allows resistance in this dimension to emerge as fragmented and as linked to specific groups, in this case farmers. It is a conjugation that by drawing a contrast between the involved Ego (individual or collective) and the abstract and generic uninvolved Others (‘people’) situates and maintains the ‘negative’ Other within the community, producing a fragmented, heterogeneous image of it. As a result for the ‘battle of meaning’, while this format reproduces negative hegemonic ideas in a rather non-reflexive way, it also paves the way for the resistance discourse to emerge as non-inclusive.

Second, regarding the epistemic dimension, the representational contents and discursive formats produce a less fragmented discourse, unified around vibrant claims of local knowledge that markedly resists experts’ representations. Farmers are the protagonists of this discourse, but remarkably there are examples where knowledge is extended to the community. The Ego in the discourse of local knowledge is concrete, present and makes numerous and strong knowledge claims. These are voiced in turns and are actively corroborated, re-affirming local knowledge as something possessed not only by farmers but also by the community (even the ‘humblest persons’ are included). They also explicitly and implicitly criticize and even ridicule experts’ ignorance – not ignorance in general, but of what participants claim to know: the land, soil, plants and animals in their region.

When we compare the variety of examples within the two dimensions it is remarkable that the ‘void’ format that achieved reproduction in the normative dimension is largely absent from the epistemic one. In the examples gathered, it was always ‘experts’, that is, concrete actors, not abstract ‘people’, that were presented as ‘ignorant’. While we are unable to come to any firm conclusion as to why this is the case, we advance the hypothesis that residents, especially farmers, face the other side of the dilemma faced by experts. The expert’s problem is ‘to maintain their epistemic asymmetry and corresponding authority while providing expertise that makes sense also for the lay person’ (Maranta et al., 2003: 163–164). The strong claims of local knowledge found may thus reflect the other side of that dilemma, particularly felt by farmers: how to accept expertise without devaluing their local knowledge and sense of mastery over the territory. A united ‘community front’ in epistemic matters – from which generic, ignorant, local Others (‘people’) are absent – can be important for resisting such devaluation of local knowledge, and its negotiation value.

A further hypothesis for understanding the differences within the two dimensions regards the fact that when, how and what to negotiate depend on different groups’ and sub-groups’ projects and values. This multiplicity of values and projects for the future (Bauer and Gaskell, 2008) is apparent in the more fragmented and less reflexive discourses around normative aspects. It shows that in matters of values and projects, the Other is also within the community, not only outside, and from it farmers emerge as the group more capable of resistance, but also as an heterogeneous one.

A third, final, conclusion is the observation that claims of local knowledge can be maintained as hidden discourse, in a context where lack of communication is a common complaint (they do not talk to us, we find it useless to talk to them). We can read here an extension of Barnett et al.’s (2012) suggestion that present-day institutional arrangements may constrain the desire of publics to engage. In our case, it is the everyday expert–public lack of communication in the community that is invoked by residents as a constraint to engagement. This lack of communication of course not only makes local knowledge a (at least partially) hidden discourse but also feeds back into the notion of an indifferent public (one that does not even engage to share knowledge), helping perpetuate it. And yet exposure to thus far unseen or partially unrevealed dimensions of imagined lay persons – their detailed knowledge of the territory, for example – could be instrumental in helping experts to ‘rethink the epistemic asymmetry’, recognizing the plurality of competences that people in modern societies are equipped with (Maranta et al., 2003: 164). Lack of communication can instead only maintain as polemic the idea that local knowledge is knowledge.

As a contribution to research on PUS, the comparison this work affords between the epistemic and normative dimensions and the findings it yields have the important consequence of bringing to the fore that, from the perspective of Natura residents, two tensions are subsumed in engagement. One is the tension between not offering/offering our knowledge to them, while the other is the tension between not engaging/engaging for negotiating for us a bigger share in decision-making (different laws, other values and goals). The first tension, strongly brought forward by farmers, opposes we here to experts and shows a rather concerted and inclusive resistance discourse. The second opposes different groups in the community to experts, but it also opposes different groups within the community to one another. In synthesis, then, our examples illustrate that these Natura residents imagine themselves in a more unified and positive way in epistemic matters, and in a more fragmented and negative way in normative matters, and this is in itself a relevant finding that both communities and experts can take into account for their future relations.

Particularly relevant for a better understanding of hegemonic representations is the fact that no pure forms of communicating reproduction or resistance can be said to have emerged. In the normative dimension, the non-binary character of situated reproduction/resistance is expressed through the non-reflexive format (Marková, 2008), attributing lack of involvement to ‘people’. In the epistemic dimension, it is evident in the content of affirmations that local knowledge is often kept as a hidden discourse. We see these conclusions as an incitement for research to continue seeking to understand today’s non-binary, hybrid forms of communicating hegemonic meaning.