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Browsing by Person "Escobar, Oliver"

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    Dialogue and science: Innovation in policy-making and the discourse of public engagement in the UK
    (Oxford Journals, 2012-09) Pieczka, Magda; Escobar, Oliver
    This paper examines the way in which innovation in science policy in the UK over the last 25 years has been built around a discourse of changing preferences for modes of communication with citizens. The discussion, framed in debates and developments that deal with deliberative democracy and public engagement, draws on discourse analysis of key policy documents, statements made by members of the science policy network, and on interviews with public engagement practitioners. The relationship between science and society emerges as a 25-year old project of crisis management organised into three distinct models: public understanding of science,public engagement, and public dialogue. The analysis questions the existing narrative of progress and evolution constructed around key switch points, highlights the overwhelming influence of public understanding of science approaches, and attends to the question of the viability of public dialogue as the mainstream activity in science communication and policy-making.
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    Dialogue in Scotland?: A forum with communication practitioners.
    (Centre for Dialogue, Queen Margaret University, 2010) Pieczka, Magda; Wood, Emma; Escobar, Oliver
    On the 2nd of June 2009 a group of 30 communication practitioners, organisational leaders, academics and policy makers met at Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh) to explore the role of dialogue in Scotland. What follows is a review and commentary of the practical and theoretical issues that emerged during the Forum.
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    Involving communities in deliberation: A study of three citizens' juries on onshore wind farms in Scotland
    (The University of Edinburgh on behalf of ClimateXChange, 2015-05-01) Roberts, Jennifer; Escobar, Oliver; Pamphilis, Niccole; Thompson, Andrew; Elstub, Stephen; Lightbody, Ruth; Mabon, Leslie; Aitken, Mhairi; Pieczka, Magda; Hagget, Claire
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    Public engagement in global context: Understanding the UK shift towards dialogue and deliberation
    (Centre For Dialogue, Queen Margaret University, 2010) Escobar, Oliver
    This paper attempts to contextualise the public engagement agenda in the UK. It is an introductory review of literature on citizen participation, deliberative democracy and dialogue studies, as well as of key policy statements and initiatives globally and in the UK. Let me explain the motivation behind this simplified synthesis of such a vast field. The more I speak to public engagement practitioners the more I realise that there is a remarkable disconnection between different areas of practice. For instance, those who work in the area of science public engagement often ignore the wealth of expertise available in other fields (i.e. local community engagement). Those who work in community engagement, for instance, ignore what researchers and practitioners of deliberative democracy are doing. You get the picture; there is a remarkable disconnection between fields that could work in synergy. This situation creates missed opportunities. Public engagement practitioners face similar challenges and often struggle without knowing that sometimes they may be trying to reinvent the wheel. For instance, science engagement practitioners currently face normative dilemmas that have been already addressed by deliberative scholars (i.e. inclusion; legitimacy). Accordingly, this review introduces the broad context of public engagement by outlining key theoretical debates, as well as drawing global and UK trends in terms of policy ad practice. It should serve as an invitation to further reading (thus the exhaustive referencing), but also as a quick introduction that connects diverse areas of public engagement, inscribing them into their wider context, namely, democratic practice in the 21st century.
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    The dialogic turn and management fashions
    (2010) Pieczka, Magda; Escobar, Oliver
    This paper examines Dialogue as a managerial fashion that has emerged since the early 1990s. While the early parts of the paper rely on well-tried approaches to and arguments about the phenomenon, the middle part of the paper attempts to define dialogue as a fashion, and offers a discussion of the dynamics of fashion-setting. Finally, we attempt to extend the theoretical framework by paying particular attention to the synchronic and diachronic dimension of a management fashion.
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    The dialogic turn: dialogue for deliberation
    (2009) Escobar, Oliver
    Much of current debate on deliberative democracy verses on the difficulty of bridging the gap between normative theory and practical development. This article argues that, in order to bridge that gap and facilitate deliberative scenarios, more attention must be paid to the sociological core of deliberative democracy, namely, interpersonal communication. Dialogue scholarship has gained momentum over the past decade, offering a way forward in terms of enlarging the concept of deliberation while enriching its processes. This article proposes some reflections towards an integrated model of dialogue and deliberation (D+D) for collaborative policy making scenarios. The purpose is to explore, from a pragmatic and post-empiricist orientation, this particular crossroads of political science and communication scholarship.