Facilitator: The Emancipatory Boundary Critique is a tool to challenge an expert solution to a problem. If experts develop solutions to a problem, they have to set boundaries, they have to decide consciously or unconsciously what parts of the world they take into account and what they exclude. And the Emancipatory Boundary Critique provides a set of questions that helps non-experts to challenge those boundaries set by the expert. So those boundaries might be parts of the world that were excluded, it might be stakeholders, winners or losers that were not excluded or included. It might be that expertise of certain people was included; expertise of others was excluded. All those aspects can be challenged by particular questions of the Emancipatory Boundary Critique.
PRACTICE-BASED EXAMPLE OF THE EMANCIPATORY BOUNDARY CRITIQUE
Co-Facilitator: And just to set the stage, let’s assume that Irina [the expert] has been invited to the Swiss Federal Office to present her solution to the problem and the problem is….
Expert: ….how to best communicate earthquake information during and after an earthquake in order to increase society’s resilience. And with society’s resilience I mean their ability to take informed actions during and after the earthquake. Before I present you my solution, I would like to start with the problem statements. Push-notification via multi-hazard apps is the solution because people are already familiar with such apps. Of course, not all people have a smartphone but when only one person in a room has a smartphone, she or he can be a multiplicator and forward information to the other people in the room.
QUESTIONS ROUND 1: SOURCES OF MOTIVATION
These questions clarify the goal, the stakes that were included or excluded and the idea behind ‘improvement’.
Participant 1: So how would you measure the success of this measure?
Expert: Our aim is that really the people see the information and then they also take informed decisions or actions and so the first quantitative measure could be that we measure the rate of access or the forwarding rate so if they have forwarded the message to other friends, families.
Participant 2: I might be a little bit devil’s advocate here. So, what ought to be the method of evaluation because you’re focusing the evaluation on the sharing of information and I ask shouldn’t you focus for instance on the incorporation of the information? So how many lives do you save?
Expert: So, we aim to do a risk benefit analysis but there in the model it’s always tough to say okay how many people can be safe now because they have received a message. So, the assumptions there are quite tough.
QUESTIONS ROUND 2: SOURCES OF POWER
These questions clarify who is in power to decide about the proposed solution and conditions needed to make it a success.
Expert: ...Yes?
Participant 2: Maybe going back to the questions of sources of power. Who is the decision maker?
Expert: So, we from the SED the Swiss Seismological Service, we can make a proposal to the LAINAT. This is the association which combines all the natural hazard institutions in Switzerland and then they will decide whether it’s a good idea to also include push notifications for example on the app. And then it also has to be in accordance with the Federal Office for Civil Protection because then they would also need to communicate further information or to relate to this information that is spread via the MeteoSwiss app. So, these two instances are able to take the decisions.
QUESTIONS ROUND 3: SOURCES OF LEGITIMATION
These questions clarify how those who can’t speak for themselves were taken into account and whether those affected could freely voice their concerns.
Participant 1: But what if there is a community of people who doesn’t have smartphones and I’m thinking of the elderly population who may have less access to digital technology and at the same time be maybe less mobile in a physical sense. Did you include you know this group of stakeholders?
Expert: The solution now on the app is really for people wo are using a smartphone. We aim to have not only a written message but also an audio so people that cannot read still hear the audio.
Participant 3: I mean it was already discussed that elderly people need help but what about non-human animals like dogs, cats.
Expert: So, we focused on humans, what they have to do inside the building, outside the building or when they are driving in a car. But we also provide some behavioral recommendations for animals on the website or for pets. For example, when you have birds or budgies then you have to have a carton at home so that you can put your birds inside the carton and then go outside with them or then the dog and the cats.
The participants formulated the questions in their own words as the key of it are the boundaries they address and not the formulation.
As a rule of thumb, the checklist should be seen as a tool to trigger impactful questions.
Facilitator: In a way, those questions help non-experts to challenge the solution suggested by the expert and the framing that he or she makes on equal footing. So, they can really challenge questions where the expert is not more expert than the layperson.
The transdisciplinary crowd and the expert found thee questions helpful to examine the boundaries of research projects.
Participants report that the four sources motivation, power, knowledge, legitimization, enabled them to quickly touch fundamental aspects of the expert’s work.
