Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2023) XXV/2

The paper provides a succinct introduction to the special issue of Ethics and Politics dedicated to the book Seven Essays on Populism. For a Renewed Theoretical perspective written by the Argentine duo Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia. To this purpose, it firstly outlines the growing scholarly tendency to conceptualise populism as an ontological phenomenon. Secondly, it pro-vides some basic information about the scope of the text under analysis. Finally, it introduces two of the most discussed issues of the book, ie. the choice to consider populism as being inherently emancipatory based on a different way to conceive ontology and the connection between popu-lism and feminism, with a brief overview of the contributors’ positions involved in this critical exchange.

The University of Luxembourg's “WARLUX” project focuses on studying the biographies of young Luxembourgers who were conscripted into German forces during World War II under the Nazi German occupation. Through participatory contributions and crowdsourcing, the research team has created a unique collection that is typically inaccessible through official institutions. This citizen science endeavour emphasises the involvement of families and the public in collecting historical data, reshaping historiography and providing a fresh understanding of the war. The interaction between researchers and contributors, particularly the families, has mutually benefited both parties, amplifying voices and uncovering fascinating personal histories. This collaborative approach contributes to a comprehensive exploration of the war's impact.

The guest editors’ preface to the special issue of Etica&Politica/Ethics&Politics “Citizen Science with and within the Social Sciences and the Humanities” discusses the background of citizen science development in Europe with a specific focus on the social sciences and the humanities. It traces the challenges faced in giving visibility to the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in the citizen science field, and highlights the advantages of using an “umbrella term” to unify citizen science and participatory research practices across disciplines.

From different latitudes across the globe, the study of the link between feminism and populism has been entangled in approaches that not only mistrust the possibility of the relationship itself, but also constantly reveal incompatibilities in their findings that shadow the reflection on their productive coexistence. Against this background, Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia's book, Seven essays on populism, represents a breath of fresh air. The joint work of these Latin American political theorists opens up a line of research which proposes a new form of theorizing populism alongside feminism. In the following sections we focus on this dismantling process that underpins Biglieri and Cadahia's effort to open up and imagine a possible articulation between these phenomena, but alongside this analysis, we will also polemicize with their ideas, by bringing out the temptation of closure that eventually lurks in their analytical endeavours.

We all, all of us, without exception, consist of nothing more than property owned by other people: the sperm from our fathers, the egg and nine month’s worth of sustenance from our mothers. That being the case, how is it that we come to own ourselves? The present paper attempts to wrestle with this conundrum.

Seven essays on Populism: For a Renewed Theoretical Perspective, written by the duo of Argentine philosophers Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia, is an audacious, lucid, and urgent book. It is also a text traversed by an unresolved tension between two approaches: a first, ontological approach, indebted not only to Martin Heidegger's thinking of ontological difference but also to the mobilisation of this difference in political theory in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Jorge Alemán; and a radically different, historical or conjunctural approach, for which the authors find inspiration in the evidential or indexical paradigm of Carlo Ginzburg. This review discusses the advantages and shortcomings of these two approaches, reading Biglieri and Cadahia's book, as it were, against itself.

In recent years, the phenomenon known as citizen science, that shows citizens collaborating side by side with experts in the process of producing scientific knowledge, has exploded in various forms. Born mainly in the field of natural sciences, it rapidly expanded to social sciences and humanities: today we also speak of citizen humanities. However, what about philosophy? Lately, public philosophy, that is a philosophy for and with everyone, has redefined the role of philosophy in society and the relationship between professionals and citizens. Public philosophy brings the discipline everywhere and to anyone who is willing to welcome it. The object of this contribution is to understand if, and possibly under which conditions, public philosophy produces an advancement for the discipline itself, thereby becoming a form of citizen science, or, as I suggest calling it, a form of citizen philosophy . To understand this, it will first be necessary to clarify the respective definitions of citizen science and public philosophy. I will discuss whether, and possibly in what terms or under what conditions, the scientific statute of philosophy opens up to citizen science practices and what challenges this poses to the philosophical community.

The article presents the research performed by an Italian multi-disciplinary team jointly with a group of citizen scientists. The research was part of the project CitieS-Health (Citizen Science for Urban Environment and Health) funded by the EU under the Horizon2020 Programme. Aria di Ricerca in Valle del Serchio , one of the project five pilot studies, was performed in eight municipalities of Valle del Serchio (Lucca, Tuscany) and addressed the prevalence of chronic kidney diseases in the context of potential industrial pollution on health and, in particular, the presence of heavy metals in the environment. Since long, health and environmental issues have been of concern for the local residents who over the years promoted many initiatives to ensure adequate monitoring and appropriate policy interventions. Inspired by the PNS (Post-Normal Science) approach, and in particular the idea of Extended Peer Community, the study addressed local concerns and expectations integrating a multiplicity of competences, knowledges and perspectives. Researchers from Social Sciences and Humanities – namely history, sociology and ethics – collaborated with others from the health sector – epidemiology in particular – and with citizens in all the phases of the work: from the definition of the research objective to the collection, analysis and dissemination of the research results, and the suggestion of policy recommendations.

This essay contains the responses given by Carmelo Vigna to some critics regarding their respective contributions published in the book "Essere in relazione" (Orthotes, 2022) on the topics of fundamental ontology and intersubjectivity. In the background, there is criticism of Emanuele Severino's neoparmenidism.

This essays discusses Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cahadia’s intervention concerning the relationship between populism and feminism, agreeing with the authors that the articulation of progressive populism and anti-essentialist feminism is necessary. The most pressing related issues, it argues, are i) the book’s seeming understanding of feminism as necessarily being a ‘smaller’, perhaps even more particularistic, movement than populism; ii) its strong emphasis on the ontological necessity of one leader; a question which the essay argues is an ontic/empirical one, as well as one which might be one of the most serious obstacles for a successful articulation of the populism and feminism, and; iii) that the book’s proposal of a ‘ruptural institutionalism’ offers a promising route for further political and theoretical investigation, which might help feminism to steer an alternative route between current hegemonic (neoliberal) feminist articulations on the one hand, and neoconservative opposition to ‘gender’ on the other.

Citizen science (CS) projects typically have citizen scientists with different levels of expertise and agency contributing data or knowledge. Every contribution leaves traces of their involvement, including metadata such as locations or emails. Through four case studies this paper explores the generation, use, and publication practices of CS projects’ metadata. We use a mixed-method approach combining document reviews, interviews, and an online survey, to generate insights into current metadata practices and perceptions of project contributors and organisers. We identify several weaknesses in CS projects’ data collection practices: Participants have only limited awareness of the metadata they contribute, and the privacy implications it can have. Matching expectations between project contributors and organisers regarding acknowledgement is crucial - and metadata play a key role. Projects need data processes and documentation aligned with open science principles, and clear communication to contributors about the data they collect and use. Finally, projects need to consider the mental models of contributors in relation to personal data and associated risks. We derive key considerations that data-intensive CS projects should make in their initial design phase, to generate consistent metadata in line with their participants’ expectations, which in turn increases transparency and thus can increase data reuse.

Broadening citizen participation in scientific knowledge production has become a priority of national and supra-national institutions and research agencies. Out of their interest for scientific research and public learning, citizen science projects are often presented as offering a unique opportunity to involve more directly the public in policy-making. However, despite twenty years of flourishment of participative scientific research, making citizen science a tool to foster participatory democracy remains a challenge. Political outputs of citizen science are indeed often restricted to its role in the production of data to inform policy making processes. In this paper, we propose an innovative theoretical model of democratization through citizen science, in which participative data collection is associated with public online deliberation. Drawing both on online political deliberation research and citizen science literature, we argue that citizens’ engagement in contributory science could help create the conditions of good-quality public deliberations. We then present a technical device (an online platform) that put this model into practice in the context of the regulation of public lighting in two French municipalities.

The article aims to focus on the problem of the "difference of Manners" in the eleventh chapter of Leviathan. Through the analysis of the text, it emerges how the problem posed here by Hobbes seems to recall in some way what emerges in Montaigne’s Essais, when he speaks of the diversity, or of the variety, of the mœurs. It is therefore a question of asking whether what Hobbes is talking about are ways of being individuals capable of reacting with greater or less pertinence to a given situation. Or if it is instead a question of rigidly codified behaviors, customs proper to a certain group or a certain population. It is therefore necessary to understand what role instruction and education by the public authority have in Leviathan in regulating and discipli-ning the conduct of the subjects and their ways of life, in order to ensure the maintenance of the political order.

In the article I briefly discuss four important interventions from Biglieri and Cadahia’s Seven Essays on Populism: (a) against anti-institutionalist readings of populism, they make a plea for a ‘populist institutionality’; (b) they defend a plebeian version of republicanism; (c) they seek to rehabilitate the nation-form while, at the same time, arguing for a transnational populism, and (d) they argue in favour of the feminization of populism and an ‘antagonism of care’. However, while it is argued in the article that their main intervention, i.e., their ontological claim about the intrinsically emancipatory nature of all populism, remains ultimately unconvincing, it could be interpreted as a productive political incantation to make use of the human faculty of imagination and start imagining populism differently.

This paper contributes to the discussion around the epistemic foundations of citizen social science (CSS) by drawing from participatory communication. We argue that the latter’s long history reflecting on the ethical and political challenges that emerge from its dialogical perspective to empowerment and social change, could enhance the nascent CSS concept. In establishing that relation we also explore how CSS can further develop participatory communication. To that end we look into YouCount, an ongoing CSS project that, from its inception, has understood dialogical communication as inextricably linked to the research process. Our main findings are that: (i) old challenges related to the instrumental use of participatory communication are relevant to CSS; (ii) CSS offers a space to transcend entrenched narratives around knowledge production and communication that hindered the participatory communication paradigm; and, (iii) CSS has the potential to expand participatory communication’s scope through its use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) but faces important challenges related to research control of personal data and disclosure.

While the Italian Parliament ruled on the Advance Directives (ADs) in December 2017, Albania has not yet adopted a specific law regulating end-of-life situations. This scientific contribution studies the Albanian legal system and the documents published by the two main public health advisory bodies National Bioethics Committee and the National Health Committee as well as the national medical jurisprudence and the Code of medical ethics. After examining the im-portance of ADs and having considered the national and international literature that emphasized the patient's right to self-determination, this paper provides some suggestions while also taking into consideration the rules adopted by the Italian Parliament in December 2017. In the conclu-sions, this research highlights the importance of the ad hoc rules governing the ADs based on the findings of the investigation of the Italian model. Furthermore, in light of the current pan-demic, an innovative interpretation of the Albanian penal code is proposed.

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In this article we offer a response to each of the authors who participated in the exchange. But instead of responding to each one separately, we decided to organise our writing around three themes. In the first place, we propose an intellectual, militant and biographical description that helps to put the original motivations of our book Seven Essays on Populism into context. Secondly, we offer a reflection on the role of ontology in our text, paying special attention to the critiques made by Barros & Martínez Prado, Bosteels and Marchart. Thirdly, we conclude with a deepening of the link between populism and feminism, paying special attention to the lucid observations of Barros & Martínez Prado and Gunnarsson-Payne.

There is a heated debate about what citizen science is and is not. We argue that instead of aiming at a definition of citizen science, we should reflect upon its ethical starting points. Based on our practical experiences with citizen science initiatives, we come up with an ethical framework that consists of two core values (respect and justice), five ethical desiderata (relationship between equals; recognition of each other's capacities, knowledge, and agency; reciprocity; openness for different goals; and openness for different research methods and paradigms) and two fundamental qualities (symmetry and transparency). The desiderata reflect ethically problematic practices, such as the use of citizens by academic scientists as mere sensors, and biases in the existing literature, such as labelling the projects that are initiated and led by citizens as “extreme”. The desiderata are supported by two ethical theories: care ethics and the capabilities approach. The aim of our ethical framework is to stimulate and facilitate reflection upon what needs to be considered when co-creating or assessing a citizen science initiative. Fundamentally, citizen science ought to be a humanizing endeavour unlocking the investigative capacities of humans. The ethical framework is meant to help reflect on this endeavour.

The Glossary of the Patois of Western Switzerland is a pioneering citizen science project in the field of linguistics and dialectology: born at the end of the 19th century, it has been continuously funded, and active, ever since. The Glossary is based on the collection and analysis of the local variants of the French-speaking patois, which were threatened by rapid extinction, through the written exchange of questionnaires, instructions, data and feedbacks with a network of dedicated “correspondents”. In this article, we analyse this project with a modern reading grid by looking at how citizen participation in a research project was conceived and designed more than a hundred years ago. We examine three types of questions: the scientific objectives of the project and its historical context; the design and organisation of citizen collaboration in the project, in particular the nature of the tasks entrusted to citizens and the strategies for controlling the quality of the data; and finally, the various communication tools of the project, which allowed citizen participation during a long (10 years) data collection process, as well as the continuous engagement of the political funders (French-speaking Cantons and the Swiss Confederation) during 125 years so far.