Misfits of science and creatures of habitus : ecological expert witnesses across water resource management fields : a thesis submitted to Massey University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
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2024-11-01
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Massey University
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Abstract
This thesis applies Bourdieusian field-theory to investigate the way scientific knowledge is converted into evidence to inform decision making across four key fields central to the development and enforcement of water resource management law in New Zealand: the New Zealand Environment Court, the Environmental Protection Authority, regional councils plan hearings, and ministerially appointed science and technology advisory groups. The New Zealand publicly funded science system now exhibits most of the characteristics of a “neoliberal science regime” (Lave, 2012), a regime constituted by an extensive and influential science "consultocracy" (Hodge and Bowman, 2006) a marketplace of expertise which encompasses the seven Crown Research Institutes, hybrid scientific research institutes and significant aspects of the university sector. This regime has structurally entrenched a series of contradictions across New Zealand’s publicly funded science system which have a decisive influence on 1.) scientific habitus across institutional settings, 2.) the production of ‘public good' environmental expert knowledge claims, and 3.) the way that ecological expertise is converted into evidence to inform decisions on RMA law and policy.
While the autonomy of New Zealand’s publicly funded science system has been greatly diminished, the New Zealand Environment Court has developed a set of procedures and rules that are designed to reconstruct the idealised or ‘pure’ autonomous scientific community inside the juridical field. Some of these procedures and rules, most significantly those that relate to the still developing practice of expert-conferencing, have been replicated within regional authority plan hearings and science and technology advisory groups.
These procedures function relatively effectively inside the Environment Court. Within quasi-juridical fields like the EPA, councils and STAGs however, politics and power have a significant influence in the process of converting scientific knowledge into evidence to inform actions and judgements, as well as the evidentiary burden that is placed on ecological and biophysical evidence versus other forms of expertise. The neoliberal regime favours agents with the greatest economic capital to engage experts, primarily industry and local and regional authorities. Aside from a small number of highly active ‘misfit' individuals, university-based experts are not major players in the Environment Court, which points towards the powerful authority assigned to expert-knowledge claims produced outside academia. Within this context, mātauranga Māori increasingly represents a corrective to the technocratic, ecological modernisation project embodied in the New Zealand RMA. Ecological misfits see mātauranga Māori as the most powerful articulation of 'public good' environmental values in Aotearoa today. However, the most vocal champions of mātauranga Māori tend to argue around the contradictions produced by the neoliberal science regime, rather than challenging them directly, arguably blunting its transformative potential.
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Resource Management Act, freshwater ecology, expert witness, New Zealand environment court, sustainability, field theory, Bourdieu, expertise, political ecology, regulatory capture, environmental consulatancy, field theory, habitus, science and technology studies, neoliberalism, neoliberal science regime, New Zealand science reforms, Crown Research Institutes, Mātauranga Māori universities, research autonomy, commercialisation, New Zealand. Environment Court, New Zealand. Resource Management Act 1991, Fresh water, Law and legislation, Environmental policy, Decision making, Environmental sciences, Evidence, Expert, New Zealand