Citizen(s') Science. A Response to "The Future of Citizen Science"

Citizen science is fundamentally about participation within and for communities. Attempts to merge citizen science with schooling must call not only for a democratization of schooling and science but also for the democratization of the ways in which science is taken up by, with, and for citizen participants. Using this stance, along with critical studies of place, I build on the criticisms of citizen science outlined in "The Future of Citizen Science" to argue for the centrality of place. Using a case of urban youths working toward transparency and cross-cultural dialogue regarding energy production in their community, I complicate the proposed immersion model to suggest a further reconstruction of citizen science in ways that account for youths' deep and critical connections to the geohistorical and sociocultural dimensions of place.