Readings on social movements and citizen science
Recommended by dr. Anna Lora Wainwright, Oxford University
1. Irwin, Alan and Brian Wynne. (1996).
Misunderstanding science? The public reconstruction of science and technology.
Cambridge University Press.
2. Leach, M, Scoones, I, and Wynne, B. (2005).
Science and Citizens: Globalization and the Challenge of Engagement.
London and New York: Zed Press.
Available at:
3. Leach, M. and Scoones, I. (2007).
'Mobilising Citizens: Social Movements and the Politics of Knowledge'
IDS Working Paper 276.
Brighton: IDS.
Available at:
4. Leach, M., Sumner, A. and Waldman, L.
(2008).
Discourses, Dynamics and Disquiet: Multiple Knowledges in Science, Society and Development.
Journal of International Development, 20. 6:727-738.
Available at:
5. B. Wynne. (2007).
Risky Delusions: Misunderstanding Science and Misperforming Publics in the GE Crops Issue
in (I. E. P. Taylor ed.) Genetically Engineered Crops: Interim Policies, Uncertain Legislation, Haworth Press.
or
D. Winickoff, S. Jasanoff, L. Busch, R. Grove-White and B. Wynne. (2005).
Adjudicating the GM Food Wars: Science, Risk and Democracy in World Trade Law.
The Yale Journal of International Law, Vol 30:81.
6. Waldman, L. and Simpson, N. (2010).
Mobilization through Litigation: Claiming Health Rights on Asbestos Issues in South Africa in Thompson, L. and Tapscott, C. (eds).
Citizenship and Social Movements: Perspectives from the Global South.
London: Zed Books.
Available at:
On Evidence
7. Waldman, L. (2009).
“Show me the Evidence”: Mobilisation, Citizenship and Risk in Indian Asbestos Issues.
IDS Working Paper 329.
Brighton: IDS.
Available at:
8. Lambert, H. (2006).
Accounting for EBM: Contested notions of evidence in medicine
Social Science and Medicine 2006; 62(11): 2633-2645
(part of a special issue including a general introduction to social science approaches: Lambert, H., Gordon E, Bogdan-Lovis L. (eds), Special Issue on Evidence-Based Medicine and Practice, Social Science and Medicine2006; 62(11): 2613-2916).
9. Lambert, H. (2009).
Evidentiary truths? The evidence of anthropology through the anthropology of medical evidence.
Anthropology Today. 25(1): 16-20.
10. Engelke M. (ed). 2008.
The objects of evidence: Anthropological approaches to the production of knowledge.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), Special Issue.
11. Mayer, Brian. (2009).
Blue-Green Coalitions. Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities.
New York: Cornell University Press.
(on coalitions between workers and environmentalists, and examines the assumptions behind both movements, which often make them incompatible, and how this incompatibility is overcome).
12. Petryna, A. (2002).
Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
(useful for its definition of biological citizenship in a post-Communist context)
13. Rose, N. and Novas, C. (2005).
Biological Citizenship, in A. Ong and S. Colliers (eds.)
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, 439-63.
Oxford: Blackwell.
14. Brown, Phil. (2007).
Toxic exposures: contested illnesses and the environmental health movement.
New York: Columbia University Press
(the article defines popular epidemiology and it is useful as a possible model for studying the rise of contestation in EH, public participation in “traditional” (or formal) epidemiology, often through lay advocacy to highlight hitherto ignored environmental hazards or risks such as toxic waste)
15. Davison C, Davey Smith G, Frankel S. (1991).
Lay epidemiology and the prevention paradox: the implications of coronary candidacy for health education.
Sociology of Health and Illness. 13:1–19.
16. Frankel S, Davison C, Davey Smith G. (1991).
Lay epidemiology and the rationality of responses to health education.
British Journal of General Practice, t41: 428–30.
(for an alternative definition of lay epidemiology as “a scheme in which individuals interpret health risks through the routine observation and discussion of cases of illness and death in personal networks and in the public arena, as well as from formal and informal evidence arising from other sources, such as television and magazines” (p.428).
Available at:
17. Kirby, Peter. (2004).
Getting Engaged: Pollution, Toxic Illness, and Discursive Shift in a Tokyo Community.
In J. G. Carrier (ed.), Contesting Environments: Local Understanding in a Globalizing World.
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. 97-117.
18. Kirby, Peter. (2009).
Toxins Without Borders: Interpreting Spaces of Contamination and Suffering. In Peter Wynn Kirby (ed.),Boundless Worlds: An Anthropological Approach to Movement.
Oxford and New York: Berghahn.
