Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Epistemological pluralism and the ‘politics of

choice’

S. Healy

∗

School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052,

Australia

Abstract

This paper argues that the destructive effects of the hegemony of scientific rationality on

society, culture and politics can be countered by an approach of ‘epistemological pluralism’
that legitimises and deploys other ways of knowing. Originally proposed as a matter of prag-
matic theory choice in the context of risk decisions (S.A. Healy, Journal of Risk Research, in
press) this paper discusses the ramifications of ‘epistemological pluralism’ for wider ‘knowl-
edge politics’ emphasising how it facilitates choice over the futures available to us. ‘Epistemo-
logical pluralism’ rests on the contention that epistemology is a matter of practice in which
issues of context, process and procedure and not metaphysical or ontological abstractions take
precedent. The focus on practice centres attention on the means by which knowledge is gener-
ated, disseminated and applied, and due process is then readily characterised in terms such as
those of openness, transparency and participation. The concluding discussion explores the
political implications of the legitimation of difference involved in a politics of knowledge
conceived along these lines.

“I would be tempted to say that we might be shifting slowly from an ideal of calculability

to a new ideal of descriptibility. Calculations allowed [us] to shortcut politics by ignoring
all of the externalities that were shed outside of the realm of what is to be calculated.
Capitalism itself, in this view, is one among many of the powerful ways of distributing
what is to be calculated—internalities—and what is not to be calculated—externalities. The
limits of capitalism as a mode of calculation—not as a mode of production—is that it
renders itself voluntarily very inefficient at calculating what it has left aside: unintended
consequences, entanglement, due process, externalities.” (B. Latour, Concepts and Trans-
formation 3 (112) (1998) 97–112).



2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

∗

Tel.:

+

61-2-9385-1597; fax:

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61-2-9385-8003.

E-mail address: [e-mail] (S. Healy).

0016-3287/03/$ - see front matter



2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00022-3

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

1. Introduction

Critical perspectives on science and of the impact of scientific rationality on

society, culture and politics are increasingly common and incisive. While such per-
spectives were a constant of post-enlightenment thought (e.g. Romanticism,
Nietzsche) and a significant factor in 20th century intellectual life (e.g. Weber, Heid-
egger, Habermas), the rapid post-WWII growth of humankind, human-made entities
and the accompanying deluge of impacts and ideas has generated quite distinctive
explanations of the contribution of science and scientific rationality to contemporary
problems. One set of these understandings, the environmental critique of industrial-
ism, provides a key motivation for this study. Another significant element in them,
the poststructuralist critique of the universalist and totalising claims of enlightenment
thought, provides another. While both these critiques share a common understanding
of the challenge created by the western intellectual tradition’s insistence on strictly
demarcating nature from culture (and more notably in the postructuralist tradition
fact from value, subject from object, male from female, etc.), much work remains
to be done in exploring the significance of the common ground they share [2]. In
particular, I adopt environmentalism’s commitment to fundamental structural change,
while from poststructuralism I take an emphasis on the significance of difference.
In this paper I aim to develop a perspective promoting positive structural change
that not only accommodates but positively encourages difference.

Encouraging difference, however, means far more than simply ‘freeing the voices’

in the sense of liberating the perspectives and interests currently stifled or repressed
by the status quo. Frameworks as diverse as post-normal science [3,4] and the risk
society [5] emphasise this necessity for a democratic approach to the generation
and application of knowledge. However they do this by uncritically reproducing
enlightenment inspired notions of knowledge that implicitly constrain and inhibit
pluralism. Among the most significant of these notions is the idea that knowledge
is representational in character. This gives substance to two key problematical fea-
tures of these frameworks. First it reinforces the notion that ‘democratic knowledge’
involves little more than the addition of democratic oversight and input to current
practices, and secondly that the application of the resultant knowledge is primarily
an instrumental matter. The challenge then becomes to optimally ensure desired out-
comes within democratic constraints. To this end we have ‘extended peer communi-
ties’ [3,4] and ‘reflexive scientisation’ [5]. Missing from these formulations, however,
is an appreciation of how knowledge doesn’t so much reflect a state of the world
but acts to shape it in ways that both facilitate and constrain action. Yes, “science
is indeed politics pursued by other means” [6, p. 111], but not so much, or only,
because of how it embodies particular, narrow social interests but because of how
it facilitates the exercise of power. Power, in this Foucauldian view, is not simply
something imposed from above by the powerful—to be readily dispersed by sharing
it among societal interests—but an effect of relations, which under contemporary
conditions are critically shaped by knowledge. The contemporary relations of sig-
nificance are rarely, however, merely inter-human but also crucially, and in addition,
embrace non-humans. This is not, although I support the notion, to simply promote

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

inter-species solidarity but to indicate how many of our most pressing matters of
concern centre on complexes of people, politics, technologies and other ‘things’.
Whether these ‘things’ are prions, greenhouse gases or genetically manipulated
organisms, our world is shaped, and rapidly being shaped, by the decisions and
actions we take involving them. Crucial among the choices to be made about knowl-
edge then—if only we can bring ourselves to engage with them—are those about
which of these constellations of people and things, reflecting which relations of
power, we should bring into being.

While representational conceptions of knowledge are a constant of intellectual

history, it is with the development of modern science that they attained dominance.
From this time scientific knowledge was understood to reflect, and its content to
represent, an enduring, external material reality. Analogously, following this exemp-
lar, other knowledge has been similarly interpreted with the social sciences and
humanities, for example, widely conceived to reflect a social or cognitive reality.
The veracity of knowledge is then reduced to a simplistic and misleading notion—
that of truth. Either our knowledge accurately reflects reality—and is thus true—or
it doesn’t, and is thus rejected. Further if true, the reflection of an enduring, underly-
ing reality becomes proof of universality, such that our knowledge can be taken to be
applicable, perhaps with a little tinkering to account for context, just about anywhere,
anytime. Encouraging difference then becomes simply a matter of facilitating the
involvement of all legitimate stakeholders in existing processes for the production
and application of knowledge. However, if we grant that our knowledge doesn’t so
much reflect our world but acts to make it the way we take it to be, encouraging
difference becomes far more complex and challenging. Encouraging difference then
becomes not only a matter of involving all with a legitimate interest, but also cru-
cially of facilitating processes in which all relevant perspectives and insights, whether
conceived representationally or not, are accounted for. Before exploring the ‘knowl-
edge politics’ this might involve a Foucauldian account of scientific knowledge and
a related account of the interdependence of people and ‘things’ are briefly out-
lined below.

The philosopher of science Joseph Rouse has elaborated Foucault to describe how

the practical success and apparent universal validity of science result from an exten-
sion of the form and content of laboratory micro-worlds to the macro-world [7, ch
7].

1

In this account the veracity of science results not from its privileged access to

an enduring external reality but rather from its success in extending, and in effect
universalising, local constraints. Rouse graphically describes the way the imposition
of scientific discipline upon our macro-world structures and constrains the practical
choices available to us. Much of this discipline centres on taken for granted matters
such as the imposition of universal quantification via standardised measures and the
pervasive use of artificial and purified substances, never previously found in ‘nature’.
Rouse explains how this results in increasingly complex technical constructions

1

There is an interesting parallel in Beck’s [5] discussion of the contemporary proliferation of risk

arising from how the world has now become a laboratory.

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

transplanted into simplified and controlled external environments with a constraint
of ‘natural buffering and self-regulation’ as a key consequence. This analysis illumi-
nates many of the challenges that confront us. The maintenance of both these techni-
cal constructions and simplified external environments requires human actions tied
closely to their demands and these ‘complex organised actions’ must be sustained
within narrow bounds. In some cases, such as with nuclear power, error or non-
compliance with these demands can have catastrophic consequences. This helps clar-
ify Beck’s paradox that ever more stringent scientific efforts at risk management act
to compound and proliferate risk rather than lessen it. While the systemic effects
Rouse describes remain largely opaque to representative understandings, and our
institutions that rely upon them, they produce a multiple intensification of risk. Risk
is compounded by: the increased instability of simplified environments and the tech-
nical constructions they contain; from non-compliance with their need for ‘complex
organised actions’; and in the necessity for ‘tight coupling’ [8] between them. How-
ever, while the status quo remains blind to the ‘normal accidents’ [8] to which this
all gives rise they not only persist but with ever greater consequence (e.g. Challenger,
Chernobyl,

2

BSE).

While this Foucauldian perspective usefully elucidates the dynamic and relational

nature of knowledge Actor Network Theory (ANT) goes further in clarifying the
ways in which people and things structure our world. In ANT entities both “..take
their form and acquire their attributes as a result of their relations with other entities”
[10, p. 3]. So distinctions, such as those of nature/culture and fact/value, that rep-
resentational perspectives take to reflect the order of things are understood in ANT
to result from the operation of relationships. Following Law [10, p. 3], we can dis-
tinguish two major features of ANT: ‘relational materiality’, which refers to the
notion that entities of all forms are maintained through their relations with other
entities, and ‘performativity’ that refers to how entities are “performed in, by, and
through those relations” [10, p. 4]. Reality then is constituted by the performance
of the relationships maintaining the entities that go to make it up. So, reinforcing a
correlating insight of Rouse [12,25], it is the practices constituting these relationships
that demand our attention rather than the entities themselves. Intrinsically partial
perspectives, such as those guided by traditional representational perspectives that
affirm either natural/material or human/social entities, engage only partially with
reality highlighting some aspects and downplaying or ignoring others. The ANT
theorist Bruno Latour [6] has argued that problems such as Ozone Depletion and
BSE proliferate today because the complex mixing and interplay of human and non-
human entities that constitute them are opaque to traditional perspectives. These
perspectives explain such problems by reference to either an underlying material
reality or the interests, political or otherwise, of those involved. However the most
noteworthy features of such problems centre upon complex mixtures of people and
‘things’. No wonder then, as Latour argues [6], that problems whose very essence
involves combinations we systematically deny continue to compound and proliferate.

2

Anticipated by Funtowicz and Ravetz [9] in their discussion of the Ch-Ch Syndrome.

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

We should also not be surprised that, as Beck points out [5], their continued misdiag-
nosis as technical problems resolvable by narrow technical means results in further
‘unintended consequences’.

Facilitating informed involvement, choice and consent in the generation, dissemi-

nation and utilisation of knowledge is thus far more challenging than it is commonly
conceived to be. Recognition of the ways in which knowledge acts to shape our
world, culture, institutions and actions, and embroil us in complexes of both people
and things paints a complexity remote from the certainties conveyed by represen-
tational understandings. A key question then is if we do not have the guarantee of
a correlation to an underlying reality, that representational insights were intended to
deliver, how best can outcomes meeting the requirement for both functional effec-
tiveness and democratic legitimacy be delivered? This question provides the focus
of the following discussion. The following section explores the notion of ‘epistemo-
logical pluralism’, which was conceived to meet this challenge, while the choices
that its exercise might facilitate are taken up in the ensuing section.

2. Epistemological pluralism

The notion of ‘epistemological pluralism’ [11] was inspired as a counter to the

stance of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ advanced by Rouse [12,25] to describe the way
representational perspectives both maintain their authority and deny legitimacy to
rival perspectives. The thoroughly entrenched nature of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ is
graphically illustrated by how Beck in his prescriptions to counter some of ‘epistemic
sovereignty’s’ worst excesses in effect embodies and reflects it:

“Only when medicine opposes medicine, nuclear physics opposes nuclear physics,
human genetics opposes human genetics or information technology opposes infor-
mation technology can the future that is being brewed in the test tube become
intelligible and evaluable for the outside world” [5, p. 234]

3

‘Epistemic sovereignty’ not only depicts the prevalent contemporary culture of
expertise but also the way it lends itself to political purposes. Political decisions
legitimating the agri-industrial practices that resulted in BSE/vCJD, Nuclear Power,
and Genetically Manipulated Crops and Foods all depend upon a validation by
expertise. The continuing pervasiveness of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ thwarts attempts
to democratise knowledge and decision-making because the presumption of ‘sover-
eignty’ unavoidably marginalises other perspectives and views, embedding the power
relations underpinning the status quo. ‘Epistemological pluralism’ is intended as a
step in the direction of reconceptualising knowledge and, consequently, reconfiguring

3

Beck has since altered his position most notably with his espousal of pragmatic theory choice (which

has some correlations with ‘epistemological pluralism’) [13].

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

the relations of power of which it is part. It’s important to emphasise that these
power relations do not only reflect sets of socio-material relations, or complexes of
people and things, but also embody matters commonly regarded as narrowly political.

Although enlightenment science was originally a decisive element in freeing polit-

ical culture from religious and feudal dogma, today this no longer holds. While much
of science, and many scientists, remain progressive in outlook the success of science
now underpins a broader cultural ubiquity that far outstrips that of the dogma it
replaced. While Beck effectively captured the paradox, resulting from this, that the
narrow scientific application of science to remedy problems in which science is
implicated tends to compound them, his remedies are less convincing. This is because
he failed to recognise the interdependence of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ and the broader
political culture it underwrites. The epistemological insistence on one true, all-
encompassing universal vision finds resonance in an equally constrained politics,
which while outwardly democratic, is in practice retrogressive, backward looking
and pathologically intolerant of difference. This diagnosis not only helps explain our
counterproductive captivation by ‘technical fixes’ in the face of matters like climate
change, but also the myopia of ‘the war on terror’ (although this ‘McWorld’ vision
is paralleled by the equally myopic ‘Jihad World’ vision of its opponents), and any
number of related matters such as the impoverished, and impoverishing, vision of
society and humankind embodied by contemporary economics. ‘Epistemological
pluralism’ concurs with the original enlightenment prescription of pluralism but
argues that rather than being underwritten by science today the ‘epistemically sover-
eign’ form of contemporary science denies it. A contemporary pluralist politics
requires, as a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition, a pluralist knowledge
politics. The ongoing necessity to regulate the complexes of people and things that
make up our world requiring an implicit scientifically infused knowledge politics as
a fundamental feature of broader politics.

‘Epistemological pluralism’ surmounts the constraints imposed by adherence to

narrow representational perspectives, and the methods that attach to them, by legi-
timating and facilitating the deployment of other relevant perspectives and methods
in parallel with them. This liberation centres upon a recognition of the fundamental
significance of the context of the production, dissemination and application of knowl-
edge by focusing upon the critical role of practices, methods and their institutional
manifestation. This should not be interpreted as a denial of the veracity of scientific
insights but is rather to highlight their partiality and how, consequently, they are
best deployed in contexts not structured and determined by science and that allow
other knowledge to complement it. Two brief examples will serve to illustrate matters
central to ‘epistemological pluralism’ and their contemporary significance. When in
1998 routine monitoring of Sydney’s drinking water detected contamination by the
potentially lethal Cryptosporidium parvum and less threatening Giardia micro-
organisms the institutional response was predictable [14]. A series of expert panels
were convened with the expressed intention of resolving the matter. In practice they
served to compound the problem by highlighting the inadequacies of current epide-
miological knowledge and the institutional procedures based upon it. While heads
rolled and blame was apportioned the local media and political leaders responded as

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

if resolution was a matter of isolating ‘natural causes’ and resolving them. Eventual
resolution came with the implementation of the recommendations of the Sydney
Water Inquiry established by the NSW Government. The fifth and Final Report of
this inquiry both noted that:

“The present level of scientific knowledge makes it impossible to identify all the
factors which have contributed to the contamination events and to meaningfully
predict the likelihood of its recurrence.” [15, p. 10]; and that,

“Many of the issues have now been resolved” [15, p. 1].

By this time the Inquiry and its Interim reports [16] had been instrumental in a
number of reforms including the establishment of a new Sydney Catchment Auth-
ority; a review of Sydney Water’s incident management procedures, and a revision
of the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding relating to Incident Management
between Sydney Water and NSW Health. The Final Report [15] also strongly under-
lined an earlier recommendation for an independent testing laboratory for “health
and regulatory purposes”; emphasised the need for continuing education and trans-
parency with regard to information on Sydney water quality; reinforced earlier rec-
ommendations concerning contractual provisions and requirements for water treat-
ment plants; and recommended an increase in the accountability of Sydney Water
and the new Sydney Catchment Authority. There had also been resignations of senior
personnel over this period.

This matter was thus resolved by way of changes to institutions, structures, pro-

cedures, regulations and personnel. So contrary to Sydney’s media and decision-
makers assessment of this event as a problem of ‘external nature’, it proved rather
to be a fundamentally organisational, institutional or even political one. Correlating
observations are pertinent to some of our most pressing current concerns. The
recently released International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment
Report [17] attempted to integrate four ‘cross-cutting issues’ into the reports of its
three Working Groups including that of “development, sustainability and equity”. It
is reported that this “...triggered considerable controversy, with some authors object-
ing that the analysis of such concepts lacked scientific precision and involved value
judgements” [18, p. 2]. The same report [18, p. 8] discusses the establishment of a
‘process’ to deal with these matters in the IPCC’s upcoming fourth assessment report.

These examples underline how a focus on the processes and practices of knowl-

edge making, knowledge dissemination and knowledge use, and on the take up and
reflection of these by institutions

4

enable ‘epistemological pluralism’. While Syd-

ney’s media and politicians were consumed by, a representationally inspired, per-
ceived necessity to isolate and eliminate external ‘causes’ (see [18, p. 1]), Sydney’s
water crisis was resolved primarily by changes and modifications to practices, pro-

4

Beck anticipates this insight in his discussion of ‘relations of definition’ reflecting how technical

norms are embedded in policy, and thence into legislation and institutions [19].

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

cesses, procedures and institutions (reflecting precisely the prescriptions that Rouse’s
insights or those of ANT might suggest). Similarly it has been proposed that, in
order to counter the ‘epistemic sovereignty’ underlying the charge that matters of
“development, sustainability and equity” lack scientific credibility, they may be inte-
grated into the IPCC’s fourth assessment report by way of a ‘process’.

The thoroughly ingrained nature of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ is well attested by

Beck, Sydney’s media and decision-makers reaction to Sydney’s water crisis, and
objections at the IPCC to “concepts lack[ing] scientific precision and involv[ing]
value judgements” (see note [18] above). However while ‘epistemic sovereignty’
directs attention to ‘external nature’ and the traditional methods and procedures
attaching to this view, the complexity and indeterminacy of contemporary problems
necessitates more sophisticated responses that involve structuring alternatives into
our practices and institutions. It is only by these means that the power relations
implicit in current knowledge structures can be changed. This is underlined by recent
experience with participatory processes and I elsewhere elaborate upon how the
facilitation of collective mutual learning involving not only discursive but also meta-
discursive means

5

may facilitate ‘epistemological pluralism’. While the logic of the

analysis presented here suggests an urgent appraisal of the processes and procedures
of science itself, the hold of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ on expert culture currently pro-
vides a significant impediment to moves of this kind, a matter taken up in the follow-
ing section.

Since the enlightenment science’s claim to stand for an enduring, underlying non-

human reality has legitimised a divorce between science and the considerations of
due process embodied by other human activities. Processes of scientific knowledge
creation and utilisation have, as a result, become a law unto themselves, focusing
ever more narrowly on methodological matters and denying a place for broader
human concerns. ‘Epistemological pluralism’ reinstates these concerns recognising
that not only is the claim to represent an enduring, underlying reality unsound but
also that the reality that endures is very much a matter of human choice. The nature
of this choice and the ways it might be exercised are explored below.

3. The ‘Politics of choice’

I owe the recognition that human choice is pivotally implicated in which reality

endures to Mol’s elaboration of ‘ontological politics’ [20]. ‘Ontological politics’
emphasises the multiplicity of potential realities and how we exercise choices over
which of these prevail. However, whereas Mol articulates this choice in individual
terms I believe it is more constructively conceived of as a collective matter. Conceiv-
ing of the ‘politics of choice’ in collective terms serves to highlight how it may

5

Elaborated further in: Healy S. Public Participation as the Performance of Nature, scheduled for

publication in Szerszynski B. Heim W. and Waterton C. (Eds.), Nature Performed: environment, culture
and performance. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review, in 2003.

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

encompass matters of organisational process or procedure that might, for example,
be embodied in institutional design. The privileged access to an enduring, underlying
reality that ‘epistemic sovereignty’ insists upon delimits available futures by
restricting choice to that dictated by whichever ‘sovereign’ perspective dominant
interests deem legitimate. A particularly pervasive contemporary manifestation of
this is provided by the popularity of a variety of determinisms. While the determinism
implicit in Marxist historical materialism is rapidly losing favour, technological
determinism and neo-Schumpetarian ‘cyclical determinism’

6

retain significant fol-

lowings. ‘Epistemological pluralism’ serves to illuminate potential futures and open
up the choices they involve for deliberation, rather than dictate them. Such a ‘politics
of choice’ is predicated on not just the recognition but the positive encouragement
of difference.

An underpinning assumption of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ is that facts and values

are independent and so choices, informed by values, can be made functionally dis-
crete from fact selection. However, while conventional logic suggests that Cryptospo-
ridium, Giardia or the average global temperature resulting from a certain atmos-
pheric concentration of CO

2

exist distinct from our choices

7

, it is clear that the details

of their occurrence and the way they combine with our broader affairs do not. Our
choices created and resolved Sydney’s water crisis and have certainly created, and
may hopefully resolve, human induced climate change. In each case the choices
involved are complex and many, while the certainties that attach to them are few.
This is a long way from the comfortable assumption of predictability underpinning
‘epistemic sovereignty’, and perhaps one reason why we are so loathe to jettison it.
The discussion of the previous section suggests that choice can be institutionally
enabled by emphasising processes, procedures and practices designed to open up
lines of communication, deploy a diverse range of perspectives and that emphasise
accountability and transparency. The discussion here suggests also that due process
of this form must transcend the constraints imposed by the many binary oppositions
such as fact/value

8

implicit in ‘epistemological sovereignty.

‘Epistemic sovereignty’ is predicated on the routine ascendancy of a single per-

spective, or body of knowledge, most typically science or economics, over others
whereas ‘epistemological pluralism’ involves promoting the deployment of all rel-
evant knowledge, perspectives and viewpoints (refer to footnote 5). The ascendency
of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ in expert culture, however, currently creates a significant
impediment to pluralism. Both the privileged self-understanding it generates, and
privileged status it grants expert knowledge, act to segregate expert knowledge and
to marginalise other insights. In addition the emphasis on representation, combined
with an ever more myopic tendency to greater and greater specialisation, significantly
constrains the development of the inter- and trans-disciplinary practices and skills

6

Still influential in innovation and broader economic theory. See e.g. refs [21,22].

7

This logic is, however, countered by many of the insights discussed here such as those of Rouse

and ANT. See e.g. refs [1,2,6,7,10,12,20].

8

Closely relating to many others such as: nature/culture, subject/object, expert/lay, inert and

manipulable/subjective and decisive. For further elaboration see ref [2].

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

that effective ‘epistemological pluralism’ requires. While there are a number of
recent developments in science that engage with these concerns

9

. they not only

remain marginal to mainstream practice but, while advocating a sensitivity to broader
society and politics, retain the problematical representational model of scientific
knowledge that implicitly impedes the achievement of their more progressive aims.

Reflecting the post-normal concern with high stakes and uncertainties climate

change science is an area in which concerns correlating to those aired here are evi-
dent. However, as the account of the preparation of the IPCC’s Third Assessment
Report above attests progress is often measured by setback. There are better grounds
for optimism external to expert culture, where evidence suggests that pluralist rather
than sovereign attitudes and practices are more widespread and generally accepted.

10

Experience with participatory processes suggests that pluralist procedures and an
emphasis on practice come readily to lay people particularly where these engage
with local or placed based concerns (see footnote 5). Elsewhere I discuss how such
processes that exploit the interdependence of local community practices and behav-
iours and the state of the local environment outperform processes informed by tra-
ditional perspectives alone. ‘Bottom-up’ exercises of this nature thus suggest one
near-term domain in which ‘epistemological pluralism’ might be explored and elab-
orated.

11

. Analogous recognition of the significance of wider lay involvement is

reflected in recent high profile institutional assessments of science

12

although the

degree to which these yet flag substantive change remains doubtful [23].

A future in which a ‘politics of choice’ was acknowledged and facilitated would

be implicitly diverse with decisions and outcomes varying from case to case, com-
munity to community, place to place, and time to time. A community may decide
that markets and economic instruments provide a good solution to a particular prob-
lem but reject these means for other matters. Another community may reject markets

9

See e.g.: O’Riordan’s espousal of Civic Science described in: O’Riordan T. Civic science and global

environment change. Scottish Geographical Magazine. 110 (1) (1994), 4-12. A variety of participatory
approaches to Integrated Environmental Assessment/Management embody both pluralism, the need to
engage with knowledge making practices, and a concern with institutional engagement. See e.g.:
http://www.landcare.cri.nz/science/social/; http://nrm.massey.ac.nz/changelinks/ Cohen S.J. Scientist-
stakeholder collaboration in integrated assessment of climate change: lessons from a case study in Northw-
est Canada, Environmental Modelling and Assessment 1997; 2: 281–293. Margerum R. D. Integrated
Environmental Management: The Foundations of Successful Practice. Environmental Management 1999;
24: 151–166. Recently Sustainability Science has become an influential model promoting also the need
for

place/local

based

engagement

and

a

requirement

for

institutional

reform.

See:

http://sustainabilityscience.org.

10

This emerges strongly in the work of Irwin and Wynne. See e.g.: Irwin A. Risks in Context: The

Local Construction of Environmental Issues. In Irwin A. Sociology and the Environment. Cambridge:
Polity, 2001. See also: Irwin A. Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Develop-
ment. London: Routledge, 1995. Irwin A. and Wynne B. Misunderstanding Science? The Public Recon-
struction of Science and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

11

Although ‘sovereign’ attitudes can be a significant constraint. For an elaboration of this argument

see footnote 5.

12

Most notably: UK House of Lords. Science and Society. Report of the Select Committee on Science

and Technology. London: The Stationery Office, 2001.

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

for the same problem and adopt a collective, socialised response to it. Difference
then becomes not a difficulty to be resolved by the homogenising tendencies of
‘epistemic sovereignty’ but rather a source of strength. The idea that difference and
diversity grant strength and resilience, particularly in the face of change is a well
established one. This, for example, is a central argument for the preservation of
biodiversity. Yet, in the broader politico-cultural sphere, this lesson has yet to be
learned. From the ‘End of History’ vision of economic globalisation to the analogous
tendencies implicit in the current war on terrorism the rich and powerful line up
behind a common homogenising vision, predicated on and legitimated by ‘epistemic
sovereignty’. While underpinned by the pervasiveness of the notion that science is
the exemplary agent of progressive change, political hegemony and ‘epistemic sover-
eignty’ turn out to be two sides of the same coin with the pre-eminence of vision
assumed granted by the latter a key to the legitimation assumed by the former.

There are indications of broader emergent community intimations of these insights.

Increasing, widespread popular global opposition to globalisation from above is a
good example. The loose, pluralist coalition that characterises this movement, bring-
ing development, labour, social justice and environmental interests together,
embodies an outlook and set of values antithetical to ‘epistemic sovereignty’. Central
to these values are equity and a celebration of difference, with globalisation regarded
not as a homogenising imposition from above but a process in which learning to
live with complexity, heterogeneity and difference are pivotal. ‘Epistemological
pluralism’ is an embodiment of the knowledge politics reflecting such values. The
legitimation of difference implied by such developments doesn’t deny common stan-
dards or criteria but does dispute many of the universalist prescriptions with which
we are familiar. Pluralist standards or criteria to be acceptable across heterogenous
domains are likely to focus on meta-communal norms such as those of equity, rigour,
coherence and consistency, with specific communities translating these into more
detailed contextually specific principles.

The promotion of difference, choice and a pluralist vision for how these might

be articulated resonates with an analogous vision put forward by the political theorist
Douglas Torgeson [24]. Torgeson advances the notion of a pluralist green public
sphere as the centrepiece of a green politics whose conception echoes the concerns
of this paper. This green public sphere is distinguished by a performative form of
debate, which values not only divergent opinions but also uncertainty, ambiguity and
paradox. Torgeson is particularly concerned to unseat the hegemony of the instru-
mental rationality of technocracy (the institutionalised form of which he subsumes
by the term ‘administrative mind’) by opening up administrative and policy dis-
courses to broader, critical debate and opinion. The performative style of debate he
promotes echoing the meta-discursive means I promote elsewhere as central to the
mutual learning involved in effective participatory processes (see footnote 5). He
also discusses a ‘dynamic of power and insight’ [24: pp. 65, 73, 82] reminiscent of
the arguments made here about knowledge and power. Ultimately Torgeson shares
with this paper a view that the choices that confront us are implicitly political but
need to be valued as such. That is valued as the exercise of human judgement in
the face of what today is commonly irredeemable uncertainty. Only a pluralist poli-

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S. Healy / Futures 35 (2003) 689–701

tics freed from the shackles of ‘epistemological hegemony’ and accordingly enabled
to engage all relevant insights, practices and their embodiment by institutions is
adequate to this challenge.

4. Conclusion

The production and application of knowledge are currently secured by the notion

of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ that grants, notably scientific, perspectives unique access
to an enduring, underlying reality. This unique access is taken to confer universal
standing to scientific knowledge and to legitimate it as a primary determinant of
politics. ‘Epistemic sovereignty’ thus acts to delimit the perspectives encountered in
decision-making and condition which knowledge and associated relations of power
are put into effect. However the access of scientific knowledge to ‘reality’ is qualified
and the reality that endures is very much a matter of human choice. Informed choice
and consent thus require processes and procedures ensuring ‘epistemological plural-
ism’, in which all relevant knowledge, perspectives and viewpoints are employed.
Whereas ‘epistemic sovereignty’ eliminates the considerations of due process
embodied by other human activities ‘epistemological pluralism’ reinstates them by
a focus on practices and their manifestation in institutions.

The facilitation of ‘epistemological pluralism’ illuminates future choices facilitat-

ing deliberation over them. Expert culture is currently a bastion of ‘epistemic sover-
eignty’ that impedes not only non-expert involvement in knowledge creation but
also the development of the inter- and trans-disciplinarity ‘epistemological pluralism’
requires. Recent experience of participatory processes indicates, however, that non-
experts more readily adopt pluralist perspectives and that these are facilitated by an
emphasis on due process. While expert culture generally is an impediment to plural-
ism, broader institutional change can be detected in how science is conceived and
used, away for example from predictive tasks to those of assessment. However, it
is perhaps in the political sphere that a move toward pluralism is most evident.
Witnessed both in practice where global civil society’s opposition to the homogenis-
ing ‘End of History’ vision of globalisation that the rich and powerful are attempting
to enforce from above, and in theory by pluralist understandings of the public sphere.
Crucial to these moves is a complicit, parallel shift in how knowledge is conceived.
‘Epistemic sovereignty’ is central to the assumed pre-eminence of vision under-
pinning conventional notions of globalisation, and of the capitalism underpinning it,
while pluralist understandings emphasising equity, difference, diversity, practices and
choice are central to the alternatives.

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