Does the public always know best?
'Engagement' has become a key word in public life, from politics, the media, and policy making, through to art and academia. For its supporters, this turn to public engagement marks a progressive move to more responsive, more democratic and less elitist forms of public life.
Critics, however, fear the erosion of important traditions of detachment in various public arenas. They highlight how policy makers use focus groups to find out what people want, assuming this to be the same as what is best; how journalists seek the opinions of their viewers and readers, presenting this back to them as 'news'; how in the medical professions, 'patient choice', increasingly challenges therapeutic authority; and how scientific authority has itself come under threat in a drive towards 'socially responsive' and 'publicly useful' knowledge.
In this context the forum, will ask: are professional claims to objectivity outdated barriers to the democratisation of public life? Or does an obsession with public engagement misunderstand and undermine beneficial forms of expertise? We will ask how the idea of 'detachment' has shifted and what the effects of this have been. To debate these issues, the event brings together a variety of people who in different ways relate to a public through their own forms of expertise, knowledge and skill.
We hope that the event will act as a lively forum for the exchange of ideas on issues of common concern to individuals working in a range of professional contexts."
In this context the forum, will ask: are professional claims to objectivity outdated barriers to the democratisation of public life? Or does an obsession with public engagement misunderstand and undermine beneficial forms of expertise? We will ask how the idea of 'detachment' has shifted and what the effects of this have been. To debate these issues, the event brings together a variety of people who in different ways relate to a public through their own forms of expertise, knowledge and skill.
We hope that the event will act as a lively forum for the exchange of ideas on issues of common concern to individuals working in a range of professional contexts."
