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Prediction plays a vital role in every branch of our contemporary lives. While the credibility of quantitative simulations through mathematical modeling may seem to be universal, how they are perceived and embedded in policy processes may vary by society. Investigating the ecology of quantitative prediction tools, this article articulates the cultural specificity of Japanese society through the concept of Jasanoff's "civic epistemology." Taking COVID-19 and nuclear disasters as examples, this article examines how predictive simulations are mobilized, contested, and abandoned. In both cases, current empirical observation eventually replaces predictive future simulations, and mechanical application of preset criteria substitutes political judgment. These analyses suggest that the preferred register of objectivity in Japan—one of the constitutive dimensions of civic epistemology—consists not in producing numerical results, but in precluding human judgment. Such public calls to eliminate human agency both in knowledge and in policy-making can be a distinct character of Japanese civic epistemology, which may explain why Japan repeatedly withdraws from predictive simulations. It implies the possibility that Western societies' faith in human judgment should not be taken for granted, but explained.

AbstractHow do we know things? The question of epistemology – which drives both the sociology and philosophy of science – is also a crucial question for political sociology. Knowledge is essential to even the most basic and foundational of political processes and institutions. In 2000, for example, the transition of power in the US presidential election hung for 36 days on uncertainty over a seemingly simple question of fact: who won the most votes in Florida? A few years later, disputed factual claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction unraveled, calling into question key justifications of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and significantly weakening perceived US legitimacy. Yet, surprisingly, sociologists and political scientists know relatively little about how knowledge gets made in political communities, nor how the making of knowledge is tied to other key aspects of political life, such as identity, authority, legitimacy, and accountability.

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.

This study statistically explored public perceptions of the risks and benefits of the agricultural application of gene editing to food crops using online surveys in the US ( n = 2,050), Japan ( n = 1,842), and Germany ( n = 1,962). US participants exhibited the most positive attitudes toward this emerging technology. Japanese participants demonstrated similar attitudes to German participants regarding risk perceptions and demonstrated closer attitudes to US participants regarding benefit perceptions. Further, US participants did not highly differentiate between gene-edited and conventionally bred foods when compared to German and Japanese participants. Presentation of information using either animal or plant illustrations did not have any impact on risk perceptions toward gene-edited crops in the three countries, but the German and Japanese people who were given information with plant illustrations showed higher perceptions of benefit than those who were given the same information but with animal illustrations. The study results empirically indicate that despite receiving the same information under the same experimental conditions, perceptions can vary among countries. Our survey and provision of contrasting information illustrations, as well as including participants from an Asian country—Japan—in addition to Americans and Germans broadens the framework of civic epistemology.

This article contributes to comparative environmental politics by integrating comparative analysis with debates about ontological politics as well as science and technology studies. Comparative environmental analysis makes two tacit assumptions: that the subject of comparison (e.g., an environmental policy framework) is mobile and can be detached from its contexts; and that studying this subject in more than one location can identify its diffusion and implementation anywhere. These assumptions are sites of ontological politics by predetermining (or restricting) environmental outcomes. Environmental analysis needs to consider how its own comparative acts might reify supposedly global frameworks rather than acknowledging how different localities appropriate and give meaning to them in diverse ways. The concept of civic epistemologies illustrates how domestic politics are organized around supposedly global concepts, rather than how global concepts diffuse around the world, as illustrated here by a comparative analysis of the United Nations' Green Economy Initiative.

The article examines whether reflectivist approach to epistemology in the study of warfare can amend some weaknesses of the rationalist/positivist canon of mainstream International Relations (IR) theories. The author argues for the existence of a new epistemic situation for the IR researcher: an ontological transformation of the military profession in post-industrial societies that has created a sacralised civic duty to fight in war. The research of warfare is becoming more focused on the individual – who is either a reluctant combatant or a civilian victimised by military operations, but protected by international norms. The author hypothesises that the advantages of reflectivist epistemological viewpoint – embracing standpoint epistemology, situated knowledge, the concept of embodiment, Cynthia Enloe's claim that "the international is the personal" – may provide a plausible alternative path in the quest for an answer to the question of how we learn about warfare as the central problem of international relations. The analysis shows how reflectivism encourages researchers to identify new, previously "hidden" or marginalised questions and thus expand the scope of inquiry of mainstream IR. The author concludes that, when it comes to the study of warfare in the early twenty-first century, the largest contribution of reflectivist approach to epistemology of IR is in overcoming the shortcomings of the traditionally rigid mainstream epistemological framework of the discipline, providing the grounds for future counter-hegemonic actions.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to facilitate the understanding of the theoretical and analytical foundations of state-society-citizen relations by addressing the concepts of "social security," "social behavior," and "civic engagement" within recent integrative approaches. Methods: The article uses a two-step research method: (a) a conceptual analysis, and (b) a VOSviewer bibliometric analysis using the PubMed database to test applicative-analytical individualizations regarding the three terms and related keywords over the last two decades, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic within the applied social research. Results: The study provides a pluralistic epistemology of conceptual and relational representations, together with the radical transformation of the researched concepts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions: The study contributes to the multidimensional analysis of the state-society-citizen nexus. It integrates recent implications of social security, social behavior, and civic engagement to facilitate good governance and social integration.