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Linking literature from the sociological study of the apocalyptic with the sociology and philosophy of science, Apocalyptic Narratives explores how the apocalyptic narrative frames and provides meaning to contemporary, secular and scientific crises, focussing on nuclear war, general environmental crisis and climate change in both English and German speaking cultural contexts. In particular, the book will use social identity and representation theories, the sociologies of risk and Lakatos' philosophy of science to trace how our cultural background and apocalyptic tradition shape our wider interpretation, communication and response to contemporary global crisis. The set of environmental and other challenges that the world is facing is often framed in terms of apocalyptic or existential crisis. Yet apocalyptic fears about the near future are nothing new. This book looks at the narrative connections between our current sense of crisis and the apocalyptic. The book will be of interest to readers interested in environmental crisis and communication, the sociology and philosophy of science and existential risk, but also to readers interested in the apocalyptic and its contemporary relevance

"Linking literature from the sociological study of the apocalyptic with the sociology and philosophy of science, Apocalyptic Narratives explores how the apocalyptic narrative frames and provides meaning to contemporary, secular and scientific crises, focussing on nuclear war, general environmental crisis and climate change in both English and German speaking cultural contexts. In particular, the book will use social identity and representation theories, the sociologies of risk and Lakatos' philosophy of science to trace how our cultural background and apocalyptic tradition shape our wider interpretation, communication and response to contemporary global crisis. The set of environmental and other challenges that the world is facing is often framed in terms of apocalyptic or existential crisis. Yet apocalyptic fears about the near future are nothing new. This book looks at the narrative connections between our current sense of crisis and the apocalyptic. The book will be of interest to readers interested in environmental crisis and communication, the sociology and philosophy of science and existential risk, but also to readers interested in the apocalyptic and its contemporary relevance"--

Intro -- Contents -- Contributors -- Introduction: Crossing the Divides -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Philosophical and Sociological Approaches in Bioethics -- 3 Interdisciplinarity as a Sociological Phenomenon -- 4 Understanding Bioethics: Towards Interdisciplinarity -- 5 The Essays Contained in This Volume -- 6 Conclusion -- References -- Elective Modernism and the Politics of (Bio)Ethical Expertise -- 1 Introduction -- 2 A Socio-logical Account of (Bio)Ethical Expertise -- 3 Elective Modernism -- 4 (Bio)Ethical Expertise and Elective Modernism -- 5 Conclusion -- References -- Grounding Knowledge and Normative Valuation in Agent-Based Action and Scientific Commitment -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Categories of Epistemological Activity in Synthetic Biology -- 3 The Tangle of Modularity -- 3.1 Assembly Methods Affecting Modularity -- 3.2 Modularity and Modularizing -- 4 Evolvability -- 4.1 How Can Engineered Metabolic Pathways Be Maintained? -- 4.2 Is Semisynthetic Evolvability Still Evolvability? -- 5 The Social Aspect of Scientific Investigation -- 5.1 Extended Agency Ethics -- 5.2 Bridging Philosophy of Science and Sociology of Science -- 6 Concluding Remarks -- References -- Ethics and Citizen Participation in the uBiome Institutional Review Board Debate: Some Reflections on Social and Normative Analyses -- 1 Citizen Science and Crowdsourced Biomedicine -- 2 The Debate on uBiome Ethical Review -- 3 Crowdsourcing Research in the Contemporary Bioeconomy -- 4 Science and Technology Studies as Ethical Analysis -- References -- Minding the Gaps: Sensitivities in Pursuing Empirical Ethics -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Missing Matters -- 3 Disciplinary Engagements -- 4 Empirical Ethics Revisited -- 4.1 The Determination of the Problem -- 4.2 The Description of the Problem -- 4.3 Effects and Alternatives -- 4.4 The Normative Weighing.

The "Open Air Laboratories" (OPAL) is a large, England-wide environmental public engagement (PE) project based on the "citizen science" model. It is designed to involve people of all backgrounds and abilities in the production of environmental science and in the process to educate and raise awareness and enthusiasm about nature and its importance. This article draws on a series of interviews with scientists and science communicators involved in the project to explore their motivations and aims for the project and what they see as the goals of public engagement generally. We find a varied and nuanced array of motivations and aims that interviewees cite for taking part in the project, pointing toward a reevaluation of traditional ways of understanding the value of public engagement, policy relevance, and dialogue within public engagement. Especially relevant in relation to thinking about the policy relevance of PE is our conclusion that there are many different ways of thinking about the value of PE, characterized in this article as "the neglected middle."

On 22 April 2017, 10,000 people joined the March for Science London, one of 600 events globally asserting the importance of science against post-truth. Here we report an online and on-the-ground observational study of the London event in its distinct, post-Brexit referendum context. We analyse the motives for marchers' attendance, and their collective enactment of what science is and why and by what it is threatened. Drawing upon Interaction Ritual Theory and the concept of civic epistemology, we develop the notion of populist knowledge practices to capture the 'other' that marchers defined themselves against. We detail how this was performed, and how it articulated a particular vision for science–society relations in Britain. In closing, we argue that the March for Science is one in a chain of anti-populist activist events that retains collective effervescence while transcending specific framings.

In April 2017, scientists and science sympathizers held marches in the United Kingdom as part of a coordinated international March for Science movement that was held in over 600 cities worldwide. This article reports from participant-observation studies of the marches that took place in London and Cardiff. Supplemented with data from 37 interviews from marchers at the London event, the article reports on an analysis of the placards, focusing on marchers' concerns and the language and images through which they expressed those concerns. How did the protesters articulate their concerns and objectives, and how were these articulations used to build a community? The placards did not represent a clear, focused, and unifying message; they instead illustrated disparate concerns ranging from human-induced climate change, Trump and "alternative facts," and local UK specific political issues concerning the country's exit from the European Union. Our analysis shows that placards gave a playful and whimsical character to the march, with slogans displaying significant amounts (and moments) of humor, often formulated through insider jokes, scientific puns, or self-deprecating appropriation of negative stereotypes about scientists. We analyze the march through the social movement literature and as a collective identity-building exercise for an (emergent) community of scientists and sympathizers with long-term aims of establishing a louder voice for scientists, and experts, in public discourse.