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| If uncontrolled, human influences on the climate system may generate changes that will endanger various aspects of life on Earth. The precise implications of the scientific claims about climate change, and the extent to which they pose dangers to various populations, are becoming intensely debated at many levels in relation to policy. How 'danger' is interpreted will ultimately affect which actions are taken. In this paper, we examine how climate change is conceptualised by publics in Europe and in the USA. Although there is widespread concern about climate change, it is of secondary importance in comparison to other issues in people's daily lives. Most individuals relate to climate change through personal experience, knowledge, the balance of benefits and costs, and trust in other societal actors. We analyse these factors through findings from various surveys and studies, including quantitative data collected under the ESRC Science in Society Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance', which highlight both the distinctiveness and some shared perspectives at a generalised level. We reflect upon these in relation to trust and responsibility for climate change action, and risk communication, supporting the call for discourses about climate change to also be situated in people's locality, as a means of increasing its saliency. | Lorenzoni, I. and Pidgeon, N.F | Climatic Change, 77, 73-95 | Last Updated - 16th October 2006 |
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| This paper evaluates the GM Nation? public debate which occurred in Britain during the summer of 2003. We discuss the value of the GM Nation? outcomes by comparing them with data obtained from a representative sample of British public opinion (n=1,363), obtained shortly after the debate was concluded. The debate Steering Board had concluded that 7 broad findings, or 'messages', could be drawn from the public engagement exercise. Our empirical comparison lends at least some additional corroboration to these wider outcomes of the debate process. In particular, in relation to the finding of widespread public concern about GM, mistrust of government and business, people's desire for further information, and the value placed on the principles of public engagement and deliberation. However, where our representative survey results diverge from the Steering Board's report is the finding of widespread ambivalence about agricultural GM across a range of measures. | Nick Pidgeon and Wouter Poortinga | In P. Glasner and P. Atkinson (Eds) New Genetics, New Social Formations, Routledge, | Last Updated - 31 August 2006 |
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Climate change poses significant risks to societies worldwide, yet governmental responses differ greatly on either side of the North Atlantic.
Risk perception studies have shown that citizens in the United States and Great Britain have similar risk perceptions of climate change: it is considered a distant threat, of limited personal importance. Engaging the public on this issue is thus challenging. Affect, the positive or negative evaluation of an object, idea, or mental image, has been shown to powerfully influence individual processing of information and decision-making. This paper explores the affective images underlying public risk perceptions of climate change through comparative findings from national surveys in the USA and in Great Britain (the latter collected under the ESRC Science in Society Phase I project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance').
American and British respondents predominantly referred to generic manifestations and impacts of climate change or to a different environmental problem (ozone depletion). The terms ''global warming'' and ''climate change'', and their associated images, evoked negative affective responses from most respondents. Personally relevant impacts, causes, and solutions to climate change, were rarely mentioned, indicating that climate change is psychologically distant for most individuals in both nations. The paper concludes that the role of affective images in risk judgements and individual decision-making deserves greater study. | Lorenzoni, I
Leiserowitz, A
de Franca Doria, M.
Poortinga, W
Pidgeon, N F | Journal of Risk Research 9(3):265-281 [April 2006 issue] | Last Updated - 26th April 2006 |
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| Human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community. These concerns have increasingly become manifest in a new strand of political debate around energy policy, which reframes nuclear power as a potential 'solution' to the need for low-carbon energy options. Integrating focus group data with quantitative data collected under the ESRC Science in Society Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance', a mixed-methods analysis of citizen's views of climate change and radioactive waste is presented. The data allows us to explore how UK citizens might now and in the future interpret and make sense of this new framing of nuclear power – which ultimately centers on a risk-risk trade-off scenario. Our analysis shows that people do interpret nuclear energy in a different way when it is positioned alongside climate change. In effect, people in the focus groups became more ambivalent and less antagonistic about nuclear power as an energy source. Despite this, few of our participants actively and wholeheartedly supported climate change mitigation through new nuclear build as an acceptable policy position. However, a greater number did arrive at the conclusion, usually after some debate, that there was little or no choice. In effect, pursuing the nuclear option was judged by many in the groups as the lesser of two evils. This discourse, of what we have termed a 'reluctant acceptance', was a common response to the explicit reframing of nuclear power in terms of climate change mitigation: indeed, many in the groups actively resisted this risk-risk tradeoff, and the framing of the problem implied by it. In the concluding section of the paper we reflect on societal and policy implications, and point to the need for future research regarding the (re)framing of the nuclear energy debate in the UK and beyond. | Bickerstaff, K
Lorenzoni, I
Pidgeon, N F
Poortinga, W
Simmons, P |
Public Understanding of Science , 15, 1-25. | Last Updated - 3rd March 2006 |
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| In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and millions of farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 e-mails to a children's BBC (CBBC) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by foot and mouth disease. | Brigitte Nerlich, Sam Hillyard, Nick Wright | Children & Society
19:5 348-359 | Last Updated - 2 November 2005 |
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| In the realm of risk management, and policy-making more generally, 'public engagement' is often advocated as an antidote to pathologies associated with traditional methods of policy making, and associated deficit model-driven communication strategies. The actual benefits of public engagement are, however, difficult to establish without thorough evaluation of specific engagement processes. Unfortunately, rigorous evaluation is difficult, and, perhaps for this reason, it has rarely been undertaken. In this paper we highlight a number of these difficulties in the light of our experiences in evaluating a major engagement initiative, namely the GM Nation? public debate on the possible commercialisation of transgenic crops, which took place in Britain in 2003. The difficulties we identify seem likely to be relevant to many, if not most, engagement evaluations. They are concerned with both theoretical/normative (how one should evaluate) and practical (how one does evaluate) issues. We suggest a number of possible solutions to these evaluation difficulties. | Rowe, G.
Horlick-Jones, T.
Walls, J
Pidgeon, N.F. | Public Understanding of Science, 14, 331-352. | Last Updated - 8th September 2005 |
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| The consequences of controversies surrounding organs removed and retained from children after postmortem examination in the United Kingdom have been felt in diverse areas. The most obvious of these is pathology. Morale and recruitment of pathologists have been adversely affected, and rates of autopsy have fallen from already declining rates. Beyond pathology, levels of organ donation for therapeutic purposes such as transplantation have also fallen.Such effects may occur because, fuelled by mass media reporting, the public does not readily distinguish between organ retention and other uses of human tissues. Might there be links between media reporting and donation of tissues from children for ethically approved scientific research? | Clive Seale
Debbie Kirk
Martin Tobin
Paul Burton
Richard Grundy
Kathy Pritchard-Jones
Mary Dixon-Woods | BMJ, 331, pp401-403 | Last Updated - 18 AUgust 2005 |
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| This paper considers the dynamics of the claims and counterclaims offered to support contentions about the acceptability of the employment of weaponry and thereby justify certain control regimes. As argued, when faced with fundamental difficulties and dilemmas associated with offering determinations of where unacceptability rests, actors engage in various strategies to deny, defer, and deflect having to resolve the complicated issues at stke. Alternative characterisations and definitions involve alternative ways of shifting the burden of proof for resolving intractable problems. The paper proposes the notion of 'disposal strategies' as a useful way of characterising the process of ordering, whereby actors attempt to manage persistent problems and dilemmas. | Dr Brian Rappert
University of Exeter | Social Studies of Science 35 (2) 211-240 | Last Updated - 5th May 2005 |
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| Social Anthropology is used to terrains shifting under its feet. Things observed from afar suddenly become near, and the knowledge economy is an example. This lecture considers the place of anthropology as a discipline in a world where creativity becomes an adjunct of productivity, interdisciplinary collaborations a paradigm for innovation and everyone is valued for their expertise. How to lead a critical life emerges as a new kind of problem. | Marilyn Strather | | Last Updated - 27 April 2005 |
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This is a comment on how environments apparently favourable to open-ended and exploratory research, as across disciplines, can turn out to be rather otherwise. Social Anthropology is the discipline in question here, and the current rhetoric of interdisciplinarity the source of some (new) problems. | Marilyn Strathern | Economy and Society (special issue) 33 (4) pp550-61 | Last Updated - 27 April 2005 |
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| Interdisciplinary practice has become well entrenched in any number of scientific disciplines, or disciplines from the humanities or from social science for that matter. This does not deter current rhetoric, which sees new opportunities in new combinations of interests. One arresting strand is the promise that in a strong form -- transdiciplinarity -- 'science' might thereby be brought into into 'society'. This short collection of working papers addresses some of the background to early twenty-first century interests in interdisciplinarity. The anthropologist's questions include the challenge that notions of property ownership pose to the expected flow of knowledge. A Cambridge seminar series on Social Property translates some of these challenges into debates, and the collection is designed to accompany that process. Equally well, the papers may be taken as independent pieces that reflect a particularly interesting era in the development of disciplines. They are left as open, unfinished, statements. | Marilyn Strathern | Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing | Last Updated - 27 Aoril 2005 |
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| This paper takes as its case-study the GM Nation? public debate, a major participation process on the commercialisation of agricultural biotechnology which occurred in Britain during the summer of 2003. We investigate possible self-selection biases in over 36,000 open questionnaire responses on the risks and benefits of genetically modified crops and food obtained during GM Nation? A comparison sample of equivalent responses from a statistically representative sample (n=1,363) of the British general public obtained shortly after the conclusion of the debate is reported. This comparison shows that the GM Nation? open responses were indeed not fully representative of British 'public opinion' regarding agricultural biotechnology. Rather such opinion is not a unitary whole, but fragmented with considerable ambivalence co-existing alongside outright opposition to GM agriculture. The methodological implications for multi-stage participation processes are discussed: in particular the need to anticipate outcomes of complex design decisions, and to include representative public surveys as standard where measures of broader public attitudes to risk are an important objective. | Pidgeon, N.F., Poortinga, W., Rowe, G., Horlick-Jones, T., Walls, J. and O'Riordan, T. | Risk Analysis, Vol 5, number 22, 2005 | Last Updated - 11 March 2005 |
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| This report documents a major evaluation of the GM Nation? public debate which took place during the summer of 2003. The report draws upon a multi-method evaluation utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods. Specifically, participant questionnaires, structured observation of the debate itself, ethnographic techniques, in-depth interviews with stakeholders, analysis of media coverage of the debate, and finally a major survey of lay opinion (the latter co-sponsored by ESRC). Despite an uneven performance, there were a number of positive aspects to emerge from the debate. The experience of the GM debate now offers a wealth of potential lessons for implementing such initiatives more effectively. There is now a need for a concerted effort to develop a 'tool-kit' of processes and techniques, and the means to characterise problematic decision situations so as to target suitable forms of deliberative engagement to support their resolution. | Horlick-Jones, T., Walls, J., Rowe, G., Pidgeon, N.F., Poortinga, W., O'Riordan, T. (2004) | A deliberative future? An independent evaluation of the GM Nation? Public Debate about the possible commercialisation of transgenic crops in the UK, 2003. | Last Updated - 11 March 2005 |
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| Although there is ample empirical evidence that trust in risk regulation is strongly related to the perception and acceptability of risk, it is less clear what the directions of these relationships are. This paper explores the role of trust in the context of genetically modified (GM) food in Britain, using three separate datasets on public perceptions of GM food, the first of which was being collected under the ESRC Science in Society Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance'. As a principal objective, the analysis compares two models of trust. More specifically, we investigate whether trust is the cause (causal chain account) or the consequence (associationist view) of the acceptability of GM food. The results in all three studies are more supportive of the associationist view than of the causal chain account of trust. Secondly, we examine whether the 'affect heuristic' can be applied to a wider number of risk-relevant concepts than just perceived risk and benefits. In line with the associationist perspective, 'affect' accounts for a large portion of the variance between perceived risk, perceived benefit, trust in risk regulation, and acceptability. The implication of these results for risk communication and policy are discussed. | Wouter Poortinga
University of East Anglia
Nick Pidgeon
University of East Anglia | Risk Analysis 25 pp197-207 | Last Updated - 11 March 2005 |
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| This report is of a major national survey of the potential impacts upon public opinion of the UK GM Nation? public debate. The survey was administered in England, Scotland, and Wales by MORI between 19 July and 12 September 2003, just after the GM Nation? debate was concluded. A nationally representative quota sample of 1,363 people aged 15 years and older was interviewed face-to-face in their own homes. The results relate to a number of issues. Firstly, perceptions of GM food and agricultural biotechnology in general. Second, possible shifts in public attitudes to GM Food risks in comparison to baseline data collected in 2002 as part of the ESRC Science in Society Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance'. Third, on awareness of the GM debate process itself. And finally, to possible regional differences (England, Scotland, Wales) in attitudes towards GM food and crops, and the GM Nation? debate process. The report presents initial descriptive results under the following headings: GM Food in context: attitudes towards GM Food and comparisons with the 2002 findings; specific attitudes towards GM crops and food; governance and trust in relation to GM Food; and awareness and evaluation of the GMNation? Debate process. | Wouter Poortinga
Nick Pidgeon | Centre for Environmental Risk, School of Environmental Sciences. University of East Anglia, pp1-54 | Last Updated - 11 january 2005 |
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| This report presents the main findings of a detailed empirical survey of British public attitudes towards science, risk and forms of governance. The survey that has been conducted jointly with the support of ESRC's Science in Society programme under the Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance', together with the Programme on Understanding Risk supported by the Leverhulme Trust. A national quota sample of 1547 people aged 15 years and older was interviewed face-to-face by MORI between 6 July and 31 July 2002. The quantitative survey covered five core issues: Climate Change; Radiation from Mobile Phones; Radioactive Waste; Genetically Modified Food; and Genetic Testing. The study was designed to provide theoretical progress and integration in the field of risk perception and representation, facilitating advances in our theoretical understanding of public framings and attitudes towards science and risk issues. It was also intended to provide scientists and policy makers with an understanding of how the public views and characterises science and scientific procedures in settings where risk and policy interact. This report gives an overview of the preliminary descriptive findings of the study. | Wouter Poortinga
Nick Pidgeon | Centre for Environmental Risk, School of Environmental Sciences. University of East Anglia, pp 1-60. | Last Updated - 11 January 2005 |
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| This evidence paper was presented to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee session on the GM Farm Scale Trials. A first general finding of risk attitude research is that it is a misnomer to talk of 'the public' as if this is a single undifferentiated entity. Civil society within Britain today comprises a myriad of attitudinal positions, cultural diversity and interests in relation to risk issues. A second clear finding is that concerns about risk do not stem from any simple deficit of knowledge about the science or an 'ignorance' of uncertainty and probability. 'Public' concerns about risks are often based upon a range of arguments, which often take into account a range of factors (such as trust in regulation) not ordinarily incorporated into traditional risk assessments. Turning to the specific issue of GM Food, the combined evidence from the data generated by the ESRC Science in Society Phase 1 project 'Public Perceptions of Risk, Science and Governance', as well as elsewhere, indicates that attitudes towards this issue, and the more general issue of 'biotechnology', are complex. While GM Food is not an issue that is at the very top of everyone's list of everyday worries, the distribution of attitudes currently across the UK towards GM Food is predominantly sceptical: showing considerable ambivalence but in addition being heavily skewed towards the negative. | N F Pidgeon
W Poortinga and
T O'Riordan. | Second Report of the 2003-2004 session pp EV128-EV131 | Last Updated - 11 January 2005 |
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| This evidence paper was presented to the House of Commons Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committee session on the Conduct of the 2003 GM Public Debate. The paper argues that the GM Nation? public debate was, for the UK, an innovative initiative in participatory democracy. However, both its strengths and difficulties needed to be assessed in the light of the inevitable constraints and practicalities of running a major experiment in public engagement of this nature. Important constraints on the process were the failure to define an adequate level of funding for the debate at the outset, and some ambiguity over the purposes of the exercise. Whilst we also concur with the debate's key conclusion, that significant levels of concern about certain aspects of GM exist among the British population, we recognise the need to qualify this finding in the light of the high levels of ambivalence in public attitudes about the technology (evidenced from our own survey work supported by ESRC's Science in Society programme, as well as other research), and the need to more fully assess, and critique, the debate's methodology. The conclusion strongly endorses the view of the GM Nation? Debate Steering Board that the evaluation of the debate should be allowed to continue beyond the formal end of the debate process in order to fully measure its outcomes. This work should also investigate the long-term articulation of the GM debate with the science and economic strands, and its influence on Government decision-making both on GM issues specifically and more generally on other areas of science and policy-making, including science and technology. | T Horlick-Jones,
J Walls,
G Rowe,
N F Pidgeon
W Poortinga and
T O'Riordan | Eighteenth report of the 2003-2004 session ppEV50-EV59 | Last Updated - 11 January 2004 |
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| In recent risk research here have been many debates on what constitutes and what contributes to trust. This paper investigates possible differential levels of trust in government regulation across five different risk contexts and the relationship between a number of concepts that might be thought of as comprising distinctive 'dimensions' of trust. It appeared that how people perceive government and its policies towards risk regulation was surprisingly similar for each of the five risk cases. A principal component analysis showed that the various trust items could best be described two dimensions: a general trust dimension, which was concerned with a wide range of trust-relevant aspects, such as competence, care, fairness and openness, and a scepticism component that reflects a sceptical view regarding how risk policies are brought about and enacted. Again, the results were surprisingly similar across the five risk cases, as the same solution was found in each of the different samples. It was also examined whether value similarity has an additional value in predicting trust in risk regulation, compared to the more conventional aspects of trust. The results suggest that value similarity may not contribute universally to people's conceptualisations of risk regulation. Based on the two independent trust factors that were found in this study, a typology of trust is proposed that ranges from full trust to a deep type of distrust. It is argued that for a functioning society it could well be more suitable to have critical but involved citizens in many situations. | Wouter Poortinga
University of East Anglia
Nick Pidgeon
University of East Anglia | Risk Analysis 23 pp961-972 | Last Updated - 11 January 2005 |
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| This article examines the increasing attention to non-lethal weapons in police and military agencies, with particular reference to biochemical weapons. | Brian Rappert
University of Exeter | Science and Public Affairs October 6-7 2002 | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| Recent terrorist attacks in the United States have generated significant attention in many countries to the threats posed by biological weapons. In response to these events and the specter of future attacks, bioscientists and professional organizations have begun or intensified asking questions about the possible malign applications of their research. Part II of this two-part article examines the emerging responses initiated by biomedical organizations and spokespersons in the US and the UK. In doing so it considers how scientific and medical research communities are defining and policing notions of professionalism, responsibility and accountability in the responses made. Through an examination of these issues, suggested lines for future social analysis are offered. | Brian Rappert
University of Exeter | New Genetics and Society 22(3) | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| Recent terrorist attacks in the United States have generated significant attention in many countries to the threats posed by biological weapons. In response to these events and the specter of future attacks, bioscientists and professional organizations have begun or intensified asking questions about the possible malign applications of their research. As Part I of a two-part article, this paper surveys how genetics might contribute to the development of novel forms of weaponry. It is further argued that the dilemmas and difficulties facing bioscientists pose pressing and thorny questions for the hitherto agendas and orientations of those concerned with the social, ethical and political implications of genetics. Part II will examine the emerging responses initiated by biomedical organizations and spokespersons in the US and the UK. This will be done with a view to asking how scientific and medical research communities are defining and policing notions of professionalism, responsibility and accountability.
On the basis of this, suggested lines for future social analysis will be offered. | Brian Rappert
University of Exeter | New Genetics and Society 22(2) pp169-182 | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| Since 11 September 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed in the US, public and policy concerns about the security threats posed by biological weapons have increased significantly. With this has come an expansion of those activities in civil society deemed as potential sites for applying security controls. This paper examines the assumptions and implications of national and international efforts in one such area: how a balance or integration can take place between security and openness in civilian biomedical research through devising professional codes of conduct for scientists. Future attempts to establish such codes must find a way of reconciling or at least addressing dilemmatic and tension-ridden issues about the appropriateness of research; a topic that raises fundamental questions about the position of science within society. | Brian Rappert
University of Exeter | Science and Engineering Ethics 9 (4) | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and 6.5 million farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 emails to a CBBC (BBC childrens' channel) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by FMD. | Brigitte Nerlich
Samantha Hillyard
Nick Wright | Children & Society (in press) | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| This article applies some of the insights from framing studies in policy research, metaphor analysis and the history of medicine to a cultural understanding of agriculture, using the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK as a case study. The article will show how metaphors of war were used as a 'rhetorical frame' by the media and as an implicit 'action frame' by policy makers. It will be argued that although the war frame might initially have been useful in rallying support for the slaughter policy, the metaphor later backfired, when a metaphorical war turned into a literal holocaust. This might have encouraged the public to perceive the policy as medieval, brutal and misguided, thus potentially undermining the willingness of sections of the public to support the slaughter policy in future outbreaks. If, on the other hand a vaccination policy were adopted in the future, care would need to be taken to avoid metaphorical linkages with other controversies over vaccination in other domains. | Brigitte Nerlich
University of Nottingham | Agriculture and Human Values, 21 (1), pp15-25 | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| The chapter is based on a small corpus of newspaper articles published at the height of the FMD crisis and which discussed the topics of 'cheap food' and commented on the causes for the disease and its spread. The main finding that emerged was how quickly and consistently the whole FMD debate enrolled the issue of 'cheap food', explicitly blaming the move towards efficiency in the entire food chain for the outbreak of FMD and implicitly blaming the individual consumer for initiating a chain of (food) events that lead to FMD. This was in spite of the fact that most cases of FMD occurred in rurally deprived areas in the northeast and southwest of the country (such as Cumbria, Northumberland and Devon) and on smaller farms, not in places where the symptoms of industrialised farming would be expected to be felt, such as the East Midlands for example, where only two cases were reported. Four reasons for this focus on the 'cheap food' issue were identified: rhetorical ones, cultural ones, historical and semantic ones – reasons that interacted with the scientific uncertainties surrounding the cause of FMD in the UK in 2001. | Brigitte Nerlich | In 'The Politics of Food, Berg, Oxford, 2004 | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| Capable of connecting human bodies to abstract nations and techno-science to moral concerns, food has become one of the most contested fields of our time. It is high on the political agenda throughout the world. With disease, contamination, famine, hunger and imbalanced food markets all unfortunate realities, a book that interrogates the politics of food is long overdue. From the BSE outbreak in the 1990s through to cultural taboos and the genetic modification of produce and livestock, this timely book raises provocative questions about how we relate to food in the 21st century. Recent food scandals and GMO controversies have shattered the idea that 'food is food' as we have always known it and exposed fundamental dilemmas related to risk and control. Taking as its starting point the premise that food is politicized in arenas not commonly thought of as political, The Politics of Food explores issues surrounding the development of global food markets in underdeveloped nations and addresses recent events that have had a profound impact on how consumers feel about what they eat. The epidemic of Foot-and-Mouth disease that swept through the UK in 2001 spawned a series of questions concerning the real costs of cheap food. What lessons have been learned? And how are food choices linked to the politics of food markets? With globalization, food has increasingly become entangled in webs of political significance. Through ethnographic case studies, this book reveals how food has come to serve a key role in political resistance, grassroots activism and nation-building. Anyone interested in globalization, food safety, or what food choices say about food politics will find this book essential reading. | Marianne Lien (ed)
Brigitte Nerlich (ed) | 2004, Berg, Oxford | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| The images and metaphors used in debates about the risks and benefits associated with cloning, genetically modified (GM) food and genomics have been relatively well researched. There have been less detailed studies of the metaphors and images used in the debate about agriculture and the environment. To fill this gap this article will explore how the 1960s book and the metaphor silent spring (Carson 1962) were rhetorically and politically exploited in British environmental, ecological and agricultural discourses between 1998 (a date that coincides with the height of the debate over cloning and GM food) and 2002 (a date that coincides with the height of the debate over the human genome, as well as the debate over sustainable agriculture). The first part of this article will be devoted to discussing the significance of silent spring in its past and present political, scientific and literary contexts. The second part will analyse the rhetorical and argumentative uses made of silent spring in British broadsheets and scientific journals in three types of debates: the debate about pesticides and their threats to birds and humans (where environmental and agricultural discourses intersect); the debate about GM food (where genetic, agricultural and environmental discourses intersect); and the debate about foot and mouth disease (where agricultural and environmental discourses intersect). This article closes with an appeal for an ecological study of metaphor.
Quoted in Alex MacGillivray: Words That changed the World: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Barron's, 2004: 87): "Brigitte Nerlich of the University of Nottingham, England, has carefully studied the power of the Silent Spring metaphor in the United Kingdom. 'Over four decades the book Silent Spring has permeated public consciousness,' she concluded. 'The image of a 'Silent Spring,' which its title conjures up, has been used repeatedly as a rhetorical resource in debates about the impact of science on society and on the environment.'"
| Dr Brigitte Nerlich
University of Nottingham | metaphorik.de | Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| In this article we study the socio-cultural conceptualisation of foot and mouth disease (FMD), which raged in the United Kingdom in 2001. Farming myths and metaphors of war and disease were strong points of reference in the political and media discourse about this epidemic and they also interacted with potent visual images of death and destruction. Analysing FMD as a social and cultural phenomenon allows us to go beyond the single-sentence analysis method, which still prevails in cognitive linguistics, and focus instead on metaphors as part of stereotypical narratives and as used in the context of wider semantic and historical fields of imagery. We argue that metaphors are not only cognitive but also cultural and social phenomena. They tap into a nation's cultural imagination, they reinforce cultural stereotypes, they naturalise social representations and they shape social policy. | Dr Brigitte Nerlich
University of Nottingham
C Hamilton
V Rowe | metaphorik.de
| Last Updated - 10 January 2005 |
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| This article seeks to construct a comparitive investigation of the role and application of militaristic metaphors in three contested areas of science-society discourse (invasive species, foot and mouth disease, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
It examines differences in the uses of metaphors, and the role played by the emergence or neglect of critical linguistic engagement in these areas of public concern. It contributes to debates about the relation between language use, policy and the public understanding of science and technology. It demonstrates that militaristic metaphors are still part of a pervasive, but by no means inevitable, mode of science and policy communication. | Brendon M H Larson
University of California, Santa Barbara
Brigitte Nerlich
University of Nottingham
Patrick Wallis
London School of Economics | Science Communication
Volume 26, no 3
pp1-26 | 10 January 2005 |
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