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Student Spotlight: Douglas Bushey
Student Spotlight Directory
ERG PhD student, Douglas Bushey. |
Biomass and lighting use interviews in rural Eritrea. |
"Knowledge Politics in International Governance"
Douglas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). His research in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) focuses on science advising and the structure of expert bodies in international agreements. He has written extensively on advising processes in the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the Clean Development Mechanism. As a Master’s student at ERG Douglas designed woodstove-efficiency and wind-powered rural electrification systems in Eritrea.
Douglas’ dissertation research employs a discursive analysis to better understand the politics of knowledge production within international expert advisory bodies. Understanding the process by which knowledge is produced in international expert advisory bodies is important because this knowledge defines and frames problems, while simultaneously enabling and constraining the range of possible solutions. This "productive power" is not coercive, but instead acts by shaping understandings, norms, and social identities that in turn define both the problem and the range of possible responses.
Research at FAO headquarters in Rome.
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Testing the wind resource on an Eritrean mountaintop--looks good so far! |
Drawing from democratic theorists and the knowledge politics literature in STS, Douglas traces the emergence and evolution of the discourses of sound science, trust, and representation on expert advisory bodies to the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the Clean Development Mechanism. He finds that as knowledge producers are increasingly understood to be acting as policymakers, the rules and operating procedures of international scientific advisory bodies have become important sites of negotiation and conflict between states seeking to exercise productive power. While this phenomenon has been observed extensively in domestic politics, the asymmetric ability of Northern and Southern nations to produce what is viewed as legitimate science has led to advisory bodies with unique practices that reflect a hybridity of democratic and scientific norms.
Douglas is also a writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), the reporting arm of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (http://www.iisd.ca/). This means that in addition to traveling to Bonn and Rome to conduct field research for his dissertation, he also regularly travels to the negotiations for other international environmental agreements to report on their progress.
In addition to his Ph.D. dissertation and Masters project, in his time at ERG, Douglas has also studied climate change policy in California, and biofuels farming in Kenya. He is indebted to professors David Winickoff, Alex Farrell, and Richard Norgaard for their guidance, and to ERG in general as a place that has fostered independent, interdisciplinary work and always unquestioningly granted the freedom to pursue his own unique combination of interests.
Douglas holds a B.A. in Mathematics with a minor in Forestry and Resource Management from the University of California, Berkeley, and has received generous financial support from the John L. Simpson Memorial Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Science and Technology Center, and the Energy and Resources Group.
11/1/07
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