Paper long abstract:

The inclusion of heterogeneous actors into practices of knowledge production has become increasingly important in STS debates as well as in science policy and research practices in recent years. Starting with debates about Mode 2, Post-Normal Science or the Triple Helix model more recently issues concerning more inclusive forms of knowledge production have been addressed in the context of 'responsible innovation'. A central goal in these debates is to think about new ways of producing knowledge in order to deal with the 'grand challenges of our time' (Lund Declaration). The demand for knowledge about potential future developments is thereby linked to imaginations about collaborative ways of producing knowledge. One way of doing so is by transcending common boundaries between science and society and to include heterogeneous actors into processes of knowledge production.

My talk builds on material gathered in a case study of the Austrian funding scheme proVISION that focused on transdisciplinary sustainability research. Exploring 'futuring' practices in transdisciplinary research projects I am interested in the simultaneous production of various forms of anticipatory knowledge and social, epistemic and moral re-orderings of science-society relations. This means exploring questions concerning the mutual constitution of research practices and particular knowledge producing communities as well as entities like 'science' and 'society'. Additionally I am interested in performances of inclusion and exclusion and in the particular futures that are produced in the situated research settings of transdisciplinary sustainability research.

For doing this analysis I draw on interview transcripts, ethnographic observations, program documents and related policy documents.