This original edited collection explores the value of public engagement in a wider social science context. Its main themes range from the dialogic character of social science to the pragmatic responses to the managerial policies underpinning the restructuring of Higher Education. The book is organised in three parts: the first encourages the reader to reflect upon the different social and political inflections of public engagement and offers one university example of a social science café in Bristol. The following sections are based upon talks given in the café and are linked by a concern with public engagement and the contribution of social science to a reflexive understanding of the dilemmas and practices of daily life. This highly topical book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and students interested in critical social issues as they impact on their everyday lives.
123 NINE The development of public engagement in Taiwan Mei Jen Hung Introduction Active citizen participation is essential to a living democracy. Democratic governments use many mechanisms to solicit public input, ranging from one-way top-down communication to dialogue and two-way information exchange (Rowe and Frewer, 2000, 2004). Participation usually entails granting citizens the rights and opportunities to express their opinions, mobilise people and resources, and ultimately shape government decisions that have taken their interests and perspectives
57 THREE Race critical scholarship and public engagement1 The ways that academic scholars conceive of, analyse and debate race and racism are matters of theoretical deliberation within and across disciplinary boundaries, but such discussions, however abstract and rarefied, are rarely done just for the sake of speaking to other scholars. Their purposiveness may be far removed from aiming at policy relevance or even social action, but they commonly have a critical edge or intent directed at the demise, or at least the reduction, of racism in a world shaped
241 Conclusions: Managing public engagement Stella Maile and David Griffiths In the Conclusion, we revisit some of the key issues raised in the Introduction and developed throughout the book. In Part One, we outlined how changes within higher education had problematised the idea of the university as a public good, while noting how, at the same time, there are mounting pressures for universities to be more accountable to their putative publics. Public engagement, sifted through a variety of managerialist and top-down approaches, is now a central part of
types of knowledge. In this article, we aim to address precisely this gap, exploring how individuals working within three organisations at distinct levels of UK policy, describe using evidence and data, on the one hand, and insights into public engagement, on the other. First, we describe each organisation’s approach to evidence and data, and to public engagement, arguing that there are strong similarities across organisations. Next, we explore how individuals dealt with the potential tension between these types of knowledge, identifying four distinct clusters: (1
9 ONE Enabling conditions for communities and universities to work together: a journey of university public engagement Marina Chang and Gemma Moore Introduction Within the current climate, UK higher education institutions are facing a challenging time operating against a backdrop of financial, cultural and political change. One thing we know for certain is that universities will need to work more closely than ever with policy, business, non-governmental organisations and the multiple communities that make up the society we live in. Now more than ever it
415 Policy & Politics • vol 47 • no 3 • 415–436 • © Policy Press 2019 Print ISSN 0305-5736 • Online ISSN 1470-8442 • https://doi.org/10.1332/030557319X15579230420117 Accepted for publication 25 April 2019 • First published online 16 July 2019 article Parliamentary petitions and public engagement: an empirical analysis of the role of e-petitions Cristina Leston-Bandeira, c.leston-bandeira@leeds.ac.uk University of Leeds, UK Legislatures around the world are experimenting with online petitions as a means of enabling the public to express policy preferences. In
29 TWO Social Science in the City™: reflections on public engagement Stella Maile This chapter provides a discussion of the location and relative worth of public engagement initiatives in the current political and economic climate, one that is dominated by neoliberalism and the market. It is suggested that we need to retain a sense of the different values and imaginaries brought to bear on public engagement, along with the dynamism and creativity of people in dialogue with each other. The chapter focuses on one example of a public engagement initiative
