Citizen Social Science in Germany—cooperation beyond invited and uninvited participation

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents an overview of characteristics of Citizen Social Science (CSS) in Germany. CSS is defined as scientific research in the humanities and social sciences, carried out in cooperation between professional and non-professional researchers. The study draws on an online survey and semi-structured interviews with project coordinators and co-researchers. It finds that participatory research activities in the humanities and social sciences are very diverse in their disciplinary traditions and organisational settings. Key features of CSS activities initiated inside as well as outside academic institutions are analysed to understand patterns of participation and cooperation. The results show that CSS activities are frequently realised in heterogeneous consortia of academic and non-academic partners. These consortia influence interactions between professional and non-professional researchers. To investigate these observations further, the article extends the analytical gaze from participation of individual volunteers to various forms of cooperation in consortia. This shift in attention brings to sight additional actors and activities that are usually not, or only marginally, considered in discussions about C(S)S. Staff of civil society organisations, municipalities, schools or cross-sectoral initiatives as well as university students are involved in making CSS work. In addition to research tasks, CSS rests on science communication, project management and intermediation activities. This extended perspective captures more diverse constellations of knowledge production in participatory research in the social sciences and humanities than the common focus on participation. In this way, the article aims to lay the groundwork for understanding the functioning of CSS beyond aspects described by the concept of invited and uninvited participation. It shows that CSS activities are not limited to capacitating lay people for participation in science. A more adequate description is that such projects are concerned with facilitating cooperation with co-researchers and other partners in consortia inside and outside of academia. On this basis, the article introduces the notion of cooperation capacity as a heuristic device to propose new prompts for research on CSS as well as for supporting CSS practice.