Cluster 3: Tensions Involving Ways of Knowing

A third cluster of tensions is associated with different ways of knowing. These epis­temological tensions are addressed in Bohm’s (1996) conceptualization of dialogue ten­sions associated with knowing and discovery.

Experiential and Analytical Knowledge. One way to conceptualize the dualities associated with ways of knowing is to consider experi­ential knowledge and analytical knowledge. Analytical knowledge tends to be used by sci­entific, industry, and government experts and is characterized by technical and scientific judg­ments of probability, costs, and trust in technol­ogy; whereas experiential knowledge tends to be used by members of the public and is char­acterized by social and value judgments based on psychological, cultural, and social trust factors (Elliot, 2003; Fiorino, 1990; Plough & Krimsky, 1987). The key issue concerned with this tension is “What knowledge counts as acceptable?” (Moore, 2008; Wynne, 1992). A classic example of this tension is reported in Wynne’s (1992) study following the Chernobyl nuclear accident, when sheep farmers used their local knowledge about typical sheep behavior to adjust incorrect expert assumptions about the presence of radioactive material in the envi­ronment. Given this duality, Leong et al. (2007) note a paradox of public participation about environmental issues—that citizens want the best science but not without their input.

An important dimension of analytical and experiential knowledge considers the degree to which knowledge is a lived, embodied experi­ence. For example, Wang’s (2003) work with photovoice and community participation illus­trates a positive example of how photographs taken by homeless persons can be incorporated into the prioritization of local policymakers. Photographs can contextualize people as fully embodied persons in their lived experiences— in contrast to typical representations in deper­sonalized symbols like statistics (Taylor, 1997). Moore’s (2008) study of the conflict between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a Native American community regarding water cleanup at a Superfund site provides another example of how lived experience can be inte­grated with analytical knowledge. The groups were at an impasse until a woman named Maya began creating a map of local knowledge about the watershed in terms of homes, fishing, camping, and other experiences. This stood in direct contrast to how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state officials under­stood the watershed in scientific terms. The coordination of this tension required an experi­ence of taking a field trip so that officials could understand and “know” the river in person— not just on a map or as abstract technical terms. The juxtapositions of embodied and analytical knowledge embrace decentralizing properties of discourse—leading to greater opportunities to increase voice—by constructing these two distinct ways of knowing as participating in a “dance of affect and reason” (Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2004) where they play off each other as opposed to being in opposi­tion. However, such juxtapositions rarely occur in conventional participatory spaces (Taylor, 1996; Wang, 2003).

Humans and Nature. A second conceptual­ization of the knowing tension addresses the relationship between humans and nature: the physical existence of nature and the human construction of the meaning about nature (Cox, 2007; Peterson, Peterson, & Grant, 2004).