The politics and imaginary of 'autonomous vehicles': a participatory journey.

The Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) pilot project set out to explore the alternative mobility imaginaries of participants. These imaginaries challenged the automated vision of the future presented by vehicle and technology companies. This paper takes a post-normal science and digital anthropology approach to the question of automated technology and the role that citizens have in shaping mobility future(s). Through narrative analysis, interviews with stakeholders, and Futures Making Ateliers, this citizen engagement journey deconstructs the technological promises of CAVs, as well as their plausibility and desirability from the point of view of the participants of the participatory journey. Our findings suggest that the technology is solving a different problem than the mobility problem as articulated in policy documents. By investigating the matters of concern of participants, the problem of mobility was redefined in their own terms, and alternative futures were explored. We use the concept of MacGuffin as means to explore the wider relevance of CAVs in mobility futures.

Resilient futures of a small island: A participatory approach in Tenerife (Canary Islands) to address climate change.

Adaptation to climate change has been considered to be crucial to current societies, especially for small islands. In this paper the case of Tenerife (in the Canary Islands) is analysed. Tenerife is a small island located northwest of the African continent, in the Atlantic Ocean. Tenerife presents a high vulnerability to heatwaves and Saharan dust events as a consequence of its closeness to the Saharan desert. In fact, increasing frequency of heatwaves and Saharan dust events has been reported and could worsen in the future due to global warming. An exploration of adaptation strategies to an increase of the frequency and intensity of these phenomena is therefore needed. Different social actors have been engaged in a participatory process aiming at exploring pathways for adaptation to extreme weather events. Resilience was argued as the relevant framing to address those hazards. Four focus group sessions were carried out in order to explore key transformative elements necessary to make resilient futures for Tenerife. The results highlight the need for broader climate-based policies across all sectors to assure that the island becomes resilient to climatic and non-climatic shocks.

'Do-It-Yourself' Healthcare? Quality of Health and Healthcare Through Wearable Sensors.

Wearable sensors are an integral part of the new telemedicine concept supporting the idea that Information Technologies will improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare. The use of sensors in diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients not only potentially changes medical practice but also one's relationship with one's body and mind, as well as the role and responsibilities of patients and healthcare professionals. In this paper, we focus on knowledge assessment of the online communities of Fitbit (a commercial wearable device) and the Quantified Self movement. Through their online forums, we investigate how users' knowledge claims, shared experiences and imaginations about wearable sensors interrogate or confirm the narratives through which they are introduced to the publics. Citizen initiatives like the Quantified Self movement claim the right to 'own' the sensor generated data. But how these data can be used through traditional healthcare systems is an open question. More importantly, wearable sensors trigger a social function that is transformative of the current idea of care and healthcare, focused on sharing, socialising and collectively reflecting about individual problems. Whether this is aligned with current policy making about healthcare, whose central narrative is focused on efficiency and productivity, is to be seen.

Post-normal institutional identities: Quality assurance, reflexivity and ethos of care.

This paper suggests adopting a 'post-normal science' (PNS) style and practice in scientific advice, and motivate the urgency of this methodological stance with the increasing complexity, and polarisation affecting the use of science-based evidence for policy. We reflect on challenges and opportunities faced by a 'boundary organisation' that interfaces between science and policy, taking as example the European Commission's Directorate General Joint Research Centre, whose mission is stated as that to be the "in-house science service". We suggest that such an institution can be exemplary as to what could be changed to improve the quality of evidence feeding into the policy processes in the European Union. This paper suggests how an in-house culture of reflexivity and humility could trigger changes in the existing styles and methods of scientific governance; at the JRC, taken as example, this would mean opening up to the existing plurality of norms and styles of scientific inquiry, and adopting more participatory approaches of knowledge production, assessment and governance. We submit that the institutional changes advocated here are desirable and urgent in order to confront the ongoing erosion of trust in 'evidence based policy', anticipating controversies before they become evident in the institutional setting in which institutions operate.