Stuttering as a boundary object: reflections on the development of a collaborative device

Abstract

STS have shown the virtues in moving from Public Understanding of Science to Public Engagement with Science, from the communication of scientific knowledge to a lay homogeneous public to the promotion of co-production of knowledge experiences through the involvement of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in research projects. “Collaborative participatory research” or “community based participatory research” reveal some of the complexities of science and society relations. Throughout this paper I will reflect on how these projects could stimulate a radical co-presence among different epistemic actors in order to overcome the deficit model and the related power/knowledge relations. To this purpose, the promotion of an ecology of knowledge (Santos, 2006), based on a non-disqualifying relationship of mutual recognition between knowledge will frame this reflection, thus testing the hypothesis that these research models allow the emergence of “nonscientists” as active participants in scientific research projects The collaboration between the Portuguese Stuttering Association (PSA) and the Centre for Social Studies (CSS) being held under the Biosense project will be at the core of this article.