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p. 690). However, others (e.g., Wynne, 1992a,b) suggest that the full implications
of uncertainty remain under explored in environmental management, where many
problems are essentially indeterminate. This is particularly evident in policy-related
research where non-uniqueness originates from a combination of uncertainty and
multiple perspectives on what policy should achieve. In such cases, decisions may
depend largely on the values of the experts involved (Rowe et al., 2005). Further-
more, contemporary environmental risks may be 'trans-scientifi c' (Weinberg, 1972)
in that the scientifi c inputs to 'hard' policy decisions are irredeemably 'soft', uncer-
tain, contested, and extremely complex (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993).
Another assumption behind the IDM is that science and scientifi c experts are
inherently trusted by the public, and that a wider exposure to scientifi c thinking
will encourage its acceptance (Szerszynski et al., 1996). Here, a lack of public dissent
to scientifi c information is equated with public acceptance. However, this 'accep-
tance' may be explained by a failure of science to address public concerns and to
the social conditions of its consumption and negotiation, including feelings of res-
ignation and a lack of power to effect change (Irwin, 1995). In practice, public
attitudes may be intimately connected with attitudes to institutions and political
control. Eden (1998) notes that lay people are not passive in the face of scientifi c
knowledge, but actively construct their own knowledge (and their own ignorance).
Therefore, the very notions of 'expert' and 'public' are fl exible and contingent,
contrary to their representation in general frameworks of risk understanding and
perception.
More recent research has recast the notion of public understandings of risk in
several important ways. The fi rst concerns lay assessments of risk, which are tradi-
tionally viewed as ignorant and irrational. Commentators such as Wynne (1996)
have argued that public risk assessments, far from being ignorant, have their own
rationality, which may differ from the 'expert', but is not always inferior. As such,
the public can play an important role in generating new understandings of risk
(e.g., O'Connor, 1999). Indeed, in certain cases (such as through the expression of
smaller scale, locally embedded contextual knowledges), public understandings of
risk can be at least as robust and well informed as expert understandings, despite
differences in status and power between the two groups. Of course, citizen knowl-
edge is not necessarily better than expert knowledge. Rather, in accepting the pos-
sibility of a rational public, it follows that no unique understanding of risk is
available in any given context, not least because tolerance to risk varies between
individuals and groups of people (Irwin and Wynne, 1996a,b; Lash et al., 1996).
There is evidence that diverse understandings of uncertainty and risk are being
increasingly accepted by policymakers. Indeed, in a recent report on environmental
standards, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) asserted that
'better ways need to be developed for articulating people's values and taking them
into account from the earliest stage in what have been hitherto relatively techno-
cratic procedures' (RCEP, 1998, para. 8.37). Taking account of alternative and
complementary knowledges in policy and decision-making processes has been
termed the 'deliberative' model by social scientists. This model stresses the interac-
tion between scientists and the public (Burgess, 2005). It is argued that such interac-
tions will support publicly defensible decisions in the face of seemingly irreducible
uncertainties and risks. Lay understandings are argued to usefully complement more
traditional scientifi c input into the policy process, especially at the local scale. In
this way, the traditional 'top-down' hierarchy of knowledge can be recast in favour
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