Warriors against the ‘War on Drugs’: Lay experts in Norwegian drug policy

International drug policy is undergoing change, and certain types of lay experts, those who have experienced problems with drug use, are getting a more important role. By drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with representatives from drug users’ organizations, bureaucrats and researchers, we explore the rise of lay experts in Norwegian drug policy. We show how these lay experts’ personal credibility is based on a history of serious drug problems, in particular injecting amphetamine or heroin, as well as the ensuing stigma. On an organizational level, lay experts’ roles as service users or patients generate credibility, even if the background is often the users’ experiences of pain and stigma. We document how lay experts have been included and have influenced the Norwegian drug policy process. However, a problem with representativeness remains, as some groups of drug users, for example, young persons, those who mainly use cannabis or benzodiazepines, those involved in crime and those who belong to ethnic minorities, have not been included to the same extent. Thus, the increasing role of lay experts in the Norwegian drug policy process poses some unexpected challenges in terms of the democratization of expertise. This lack of representativeness may be part of the reason why the initially successful reform movement now seems to face a setback.

How to make sense of citizen expertise in participatory projects?

This article proposes a pragmatist theorising of different repertoires of valuation as an analytical grid to understand how actors of participatory projects assess the value of citizen expert participation. It conducts justification analysis on interview data from 21 projects that engage citizens as lay experts in Finland to illustrate how this analytical approach helps explain the contradicting meanings assigned to the concept as well as the resulting possibilities for participation. The article identifies two main conflicts in which different justifications for citizen expertise become explicit: debates over who can be a citizen expert and what the scope of their participation should be. Our results show how in the Finnish context, industrial justifications are often used to bolster claims for the right to participate. However, the industrial value-base is also the most reoccurring object of critique, suggested to create a narrow and above-defined role of a citizen-engineer for the citizen experts. The article illustrates how the diverse justifications might lead to contradicting constructions of citizen expertise, contributing to conflicting expectations, ambiguous and tokenistic participation, and feelings of exclusion among policy actors. It argues for justification analysis as a tool to identify and compare these undergirding valuations across policy fields and contexts.

Le débat sur l'extension de l'obligation vaccinale en France: analyse discursive et argumentative d'une parole "éclatée"

French vaccination policy has recently been the subject of much debate on the advisability and risks of extending the vaccination obligation. The legal provision introducing 11 compulsory vaccines on January 1, 2018 called for the mobilization of different groups of actors (institutional representatives, doctors, researchers, parents’ associations, representatives of pharmaceutical companies, citizens, etc.) often speaking in different arenas. Indeed, if political debates and parliamentary committees are invested by institutional actors and experts, discussion forums and social networks constitute the privileged place of expression of non-institutional actors or lay-experts, who use this space for discussion above all to express their scepticism or their reluctance over vaccines. The objective of this contribution is to analyse on the one hand the forms and mechanisms put in place in the construction of the debate on this social issue and, on the other hand, to highlight the linguistic and argumentative specificities of the discourse of pro-vaccinalists and of the anti-vaccinalists, categories which bring together different actors.

Le débat sur l'extension de l'obligation vaccinale en France: analyse discursive et argumentative d'une parole "éclatée"

French vaccination policy has recently been the subject of much debate on the advisability and risks of extending the vaccination obligation. The legal provision introducing 11 compulsory vaccines on January 1, 2018 called for the mobilization of different groups of actors (institutional representatives, doctors, researchers, parents’ associations, representatives of pharmaceutical companies, citizens, etc.) often speaking in different arenas. Indeed, if political debates and parliamentary committees are invested by institutional actors and experts, discussion forums and social networks constitute the privileged place of expression of non-institutional actors or lay-experts, who use this space for discussion above all to express their scepticism or their reluctance over vaccines. The objective of this contribution is to analyse on the one hand the forms and mechanisms put in place in the construction of the debate on this social issue and, on the other hand, to highlight the linguistic and argumentative specificities of the discourse of pro-vaccinalists and of the anti-vaccinalists, categories which bring together different actors.

The Development of the DDads Questionnaire: Awareness, Knowledge and Attitudes of the General Population Towards Paternal Depression

Objectives: Paternal perinatal depression affects ~10% of new fathers and is known to have a negative impact on men's relationship with their partner as well as with their baby. The attitudes of the general population toward paternal depression have received scant attention in the scientific literature. A better understanding of paternal depression might improve the health literacy of the population and also assist professionals and policy makers to adequately address this issue, to ultimately refine the existing health care alternatives for them. This paper describes the Belgian development, face and content validation of the DDads (Depression in Dads) questionnaire. Its focus is to identify the awareness, knowledge and attitudes of the general population toward paternal perinatal depression.Study Design: The DDads was developed using a three-step model with the following phases: (1) identification of the content domain, (2) item generation and (3) construction of the questionnaire. For the DDads validation a (a) Delphi method with content experts (n = 17) and (b) a cognitive debriefing method with lay experts (n = 20) were used to assess the clarity, relevance, wording and layout.Results: The questionnaire consists of three main components comprising: (1) three questions on awareness, (2) three questions on knowledge and (3) one question on attitudes and beliefs. After round one validation, all questions were considered content valid for relevance (I-CVI 0.94–1.00), and six questions for clarity (I-CVI 0.65–1.00). Scale content (S-CVI/Ave 0.93) and face validity (Face Validity Index 1.00) was obtained. One question was revised and split into two questions in a second round. For one of these questions, item content (0.80–0.93), scale content (0.92) and face validity (1.00) was reached. The one question, exploring the causes of paternal perinatal depression, remained inappropriate and was removed from the DDads. One last question was removed after interviews with lay experts.Conclusions: We developed an instrument to establish awareness, knowledge and attitudes of the general population toward paternal perinatal depression in Belgium. The DDads can be valuable in identifying knowledge gaps. It can help to inform policy makers and health professionals to identify gaps and predisposed attitudes in society toward paternal depression which may hinder appropriate management.

Scientific-technical revolution — important lessons of unimportant concept

This paper focuses on the concept of the scientific-technical revolution. This concept is relevant today most of all in the context of historiographic studies of the Soviet period or the reflection of contemporary technological transformation from the Marxist position. The article demonstrates its relevance in the context of important contemporary issues. For a conceptual framework, the author uses the works on the social history of science by J. D. Bernal, the contemporary studies of science, technology and society, and the critical theory of technology, which seeks to integrate the philosophy of science and technology into topical socio-political discussions. The author reveals the concept of the scientific-technical revolution as describing the radical transformations taking place since the beginning of the 20 th century in science, society, and technology. These transformations manifest the essential social and technological character of science and its previously hidden contradiction. The social character of science involves an increasing number of participants of these transformations, but the technological character leaves them passive objects of the efficiency requirements. However, the scientific-technical revolution offers a lesson in overcoming this contradiction, creating conditions for the activity of various participants — scientists, nature, lay experts, and technologies themselves. The emphasis on the radical revolutionary changes that have occurred with science allows us to keep in the spotlight the foundations of modern problems and how to solve them.

The Mind of the Censor: Girolamo Rossi, a Physician and Censor for the Congregation of the Index

Girolamo Rossi (1539-1607) was a historian, physician, and prolific censor for the Catholic Church. This article examines Rossi’s manuscripts in Ravenna and the Vatican to explore how a physician contributed to the expurgation efforts of the Congregation of the Index in the years following the publication of the Clementine Index (1596). I argue that participating in these censorship efforts trained physicians and other lay experts to read like censors, repurposing the humanist tools of reading, excerpting, and note taking to accomplish the censorship goals of the Counter-Reformation Church.

Citizen Participation as Political Ritual: Towards a Sociological Theorizing of ‘Health Citizenship’

This article examines citizen participation in health research, where funders increasingly seek to promote and define ‘patient and public involvement’ (PPI). In England, the focus of our study, government policy articulates a specific set of meanings attached to PPI that fuse patients’ rights and responsibilities as citizens, as ‘consumers’ and as ‘lay experts’. However, little is known about the meanings those who take part in PPI activities attach to this participation. Drawing on ethnographic data of PPI in three clinical areas (stroke, cancer and pre-term birth) we investigate citizen participation in health research as political ritual. We identify tensions between policy-driven and ground-level performance of citizenship, and use ritual theory to show how such tensions are accommodated in participatory structures. We argue that the ritual performance of PPI neutralizes the transformational potential of citizen participation, and we draw wider sociological implications for citizen participation beyond the health arena.