Search

Although there is an extensive literature on public engagement on the use of new and emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, there is little evidence of the participation of marginalised indigenous communities in processes of such engagement. How do particular cultural values and worldviews shape the perceptions of new technologies among such indigenous peoples? This article addresses this question through an analysis of the deliberations of an indigenous Māori citizens’ panel on nanotechnology in Aotearoa New Zealand. An active process of public engagement with the nation’s Māori stakeholders, and their conversations with nanotechnology experts, sustainability activists and Māori researchers, helps map an alternative, culture-based architecture of public engagement on policies around new technologies. The analysis is grounded in a concept of active citizenship that we term ‘sustainable citizenship’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating the notion of sustainability is the biggest challenge for citizenship in a technological era. Existing conceptions of citizenship have not been able to grapple with compounded ecological, economic, cultural, and moral threats facing modern technology-infused societies. Nor has increased public participation, engagement, and dialogue resolved polarized positions on issues such as what constitutes quality of life or what is meant by the integrity of nature. This paper draws on the scholarship of both sustainability and citizenship to propose a framework of sustainable citizenship that seeks to emphasize shared values through a deliberated clash of ideas. Such a framework involves a negotiation of the dialectics of rights and responsibilities, state and non-state, public and private, human and non-human nature, universal and particular, and democracy and capitalism. The paper illustrates how sustainable citizenship can be applied to deal with contentious political and policy issues of new and emerging technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]