Evocation and Contestation of Expert Knowledge in Water Legislation, Finland 1960–2010

Heikki Mikkonen, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
Jukka Syväterä, University of Helsinki

Water is an essential substance. Rights to use water have been determined by detailed legislation for centuries. In this article, we focus on Finnish water legislation reforms and protection acts from 1960 until 2010. We use parliamentary debates and newspapers to analyze how expert knowledge was evoked and contested in the context of water legislation reforms. The article analyses how these developments are reflected in parliamentary arenas and media coverage, including legislators’ ways of conceptualizing individuals and organizations as producers of expert knowledge. Theoretically, the paper draws from epistemic governance framework with a purpose of making sense of politicians’ practice of evoking and contesting expert knowledge and scientific authorities. We contribute to the historiography of the so-called environmental turn of the 1960s by analyzing receptions of environmental expertise in public discourses.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 141. Social Science Histories of Expertise (2): Twists and Turns in Paradigms of Expertise