Introduction: participatory knowledge co-production

This special Forum presents three articles that demonstrate efforts at participatory knowledge co-production. The three experiences were successful in the modest sense that they provided meaningful agency for participants and their knowledge roles, though in different ways. All three articles comment on the participatory turn that emphasizes an increasing role in public participation in scientific and policy data knowledge production and acknowledge that participation can have diverse meanings, contingent on the interests of the groups involved. This can mean a performative participation with coercive means to achieve particular goals with the participants or the groups that they represent; alternatively, participation can mean liberatory approaches that are designed to remove oppressive structures from disenfranchised populations and shift power to them. The cases here add nuance to critiques of power. Two cases demonstrate how participants are molded to conform to institutional power structures, though at least some participants find that shift (and recognition of their contribution) legitimizing and desirable. While each considers the relevance of participation for democracy, they highlight differences in values related to democracy, as regards whether participation is the endpoint value in democracy, or else whether democracy is a larger process towards redistributing power towards achieving equity and justice.