Gwendolyn Blue
Biographic Data
| ID | 154990 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gwendolyn Blue |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gwendolyn |
| FAMILY NAME | Blue |
| SIGNATURE | BLUE G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Calgary |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3510-3248 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 69 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Risk as Infrastructure: Animal Biotechnology, Governmentality, and the (Bio)politics of Risk-based Regulation
Previously relegated to laboratory and research spaces, genetically modified (GM) animals – those in which genes have been transferred from other species – are slowly entering public spaces as national governments approve entry into commercial markets for agricultural, pharmaceutical, and entertainment purposes. In 2016, the Canadian federal government approved the first GM food animal commercialised in Canada, known by its tradename AquAdvantage…
The need for more inclusive deliberation on ethics and governance in agricultural and food biotechnology
An inclusive and socially legitimate governance structure is absent to address concerns over new agricultural biotechnologies. Establishing an agricultural bioethics commission devoted to inclusive deliberation on ethics and governance in agricultural and food biotechnology is urgent. Highlighting the social and ethical dimensions of current agricultural bioengineering disputes in the food system, we discuss how a nationally recognized policy for…
Getting democracy wrong: How lessons from biotechnology can illuminate limits of the Asilomar AI principles
Recent developments in large language models and computer automated systems more generally (colloquially called ‘artificial intelligence’) have given rise to concerns about potential social risks of AI. Of the numerous industry-driven principles put forth over the past decade to address these concerns, the Future of Life Institute’s Asilomar AI principles are particularly noteworthy given the large number of wealthy and powerful signatories. This…
Jurisdictional imaginaries as contested geographies: A metaphor analysis of reference cases about Canada's Impact Assessment Act
Jurisdictional imaginaries, defined as constitutive and productive fictions with real world effects, serve a distinct purpose in the context of debates over Canadian environmental impact assessment. Metaphors are one way in which jurisdictional imaginaries are maintained and contested. In creating associations between entities, metaphors mark storytelling about jurisdiction with the imprints of history and place, and shape thinking about arrangem…
Uncertainty talk for bio-digital technologies: Expert conceptions of uncertainties in genomic selection for forestry
The burgeoning literature on uncertainty analysis shows the need for accessible and transparent information about the limitations of knowledge associated with predictive models for environmental decision-making. Using qualitative analysis, we examine how experts involved in the development of genomic selection (GS) for Canadian public forestry conifer breeding assess and communicate uncertainty. GS is a bio-digital technology characterized by big…
Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order
This article unpacks the logic of the equivalence invoked by the Government of Canada between Indigenous consent and the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledges in impact assessment. We situate the logic within the politics of recognition in Canada-a politics that aims to shore up national unity in the face of regular challenges to it. We use the Canadian results from a recent scoping review on conceptions of environmental justice in impac…
From the smart city to urban justice in a digital age
The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept …
Expectations of Genomic Selection for Forestry: Expert Narratives of Anticipation and Legitimation
Discourses of expectation shape technology development and uptake in subtle and profound ways. While STS research tends to view discourses of expectation in aggregate, disarticulating expectation into distinct narratives of anticipation and legitimation offers insights into the contradictory symbolic forces that inform novel technological applications. Interviews with forest science experts discussing the adoption of genomic selection as a respon…
Co-producing uncertainty in public science: The case of genomic selection in forestry
Co-production can inform analysis and communication of the uncertainties associated with novel forms of science and technology. Genomic selection—a relatively novel management tool consisting of predictive modeling based on associations between genetic and phenotypic data—holds many unknowns, particularly when used as a climate adaptation strategy. Approaching genomic selection as an example of public science, we examined beliefs about uncertaint…
Beyond distribution and participation: A scoping review to advance a comprehensive environmental justice framework for impact assessment
Healthy publics as multi-species matters: Solidarity with people’s pets in One Health promotion
Climate change is contributing to local disasters, and pets increasingly figure in mediated views and responses. By theorizing such responses, we expand on the conceptualization of “healthy publics”. In our view, healthy publics can arise from multi-species entanglements, out of which enactments of solidarity may emerge. Such enactments may encompass people with pets, as well as the pets themselves. Such enactments are selective, however, because…
Advancing a transformative social contract for the environmental sciences: From public engagement to justice
Taking as a starting point Jane Lubchenco’s call for a renewed social contract for environmental science, this paper advances a framework for science’s place in society in which justice is central. A social contract is a desired vision of social order that distributes rights, responsibilities, and obligations among political actors. The magnitude of global ecological change, our collective inability to address ecological crises, and populist chal…
Genomic trans-biopolitics: Why more-than-human geography is critical amid the Covid-19 pandemic
The rapidity of technological change underpins the centrality of genomes in framing COVID-19 problems and proposals for remedies. We counter such framings through a critical perspective that seeks to infuse more-than-human geographies into public health
Science Communication Is Culture: Foregrounding Ritual in the Public Communication of Science
This commentary demonstrates the relevance of James Carey’s ritual view of communication for the field of science communication. A ritual view of communication invites examination of the geographical, historical, and material dimensions of communication where dialogues, bodies, public spaces, and comestibles provide enabling conditions for democratic engagement. This is an opportune time for science communications scholars to engage with Carey’s …
In the Corporate Interest: Fossil Fuel Industry Input into Alberta and British Columbia’s Climate Leadership Plans
Background This article examines the narrative strategies used by fossil fuel industries in responding to and shaping Alberta and BC’s climate leadership plans. Analysis This article makes inferences about fossil fuel industry influence by examining submissions of industry players to both regions’ public consultation processes. Conclusions and implications Key themes include: a need to take a leadership stance, a balance between environmental pro…
Framing and power in public deliberation with climate change: Critical reflections on the role of deliberative practitioners
Drawing on the experiences of a deliberative practitioner and critical social scientist involved in the planning, production and implementation of a deliberative initiative on climate change, this paper reflects on nuances of framing and power in practical settings. Decisions about framing, some of them more conscious than others, influence the process of opinion formation among participants as well as the outcomes of the deliberation. Framing en…
Reasoning Together about Climate Change: Coproducing Science and Public Reason in a Global Citizen Panel
Citizen panels convene a small segment of the population to engage in intensive, structured conversations about particular policy issues with the view to inform policy makers. These initiatives provide participants with the opportunity to reason together by examining justifications for policy choices before coming to informed collective judgements about which avenues to take. While most citizen panels take place within individual nation-states, r…
Public Attunement with More-than-Human Others: Witnessing the Life and Death of Bear 71
This analysis draws theoretical and political lessons from the experiences of Bear 71, a female grizzly bear who lived and died next to one of Canada’s flagship tourist destinations, Banff National Park. What makes this bear’s story remarkable are the ways in which her daily actions were rendered perceptible, visible, and public through a complex network of digital technologies that record, store, and transmit information. In witnessing the life …
Public Engagement with Climate Change as Scientific Citizenship: A Case Study of World Wide Views on Global Warming
World Wide Views (WWViews) is an innovative participatory methodology that scales up formal public engagement in response to global environmental issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state. In September 2009, WWViews on Global Warming enrolled 4,400 lay participants from across 38 countries to discuss global climate policy. The most remarkable outcome was how consistently people from across different political regions and social gro…
Animal Publics: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Political Life
To what extent do non-human animals participate in that particular political configuration known as a public? While conventional wisdom about publics is predicated on a vision of political agency that privileges discursive and deliberative processes, recent scholarship situated in the material turn in the social sciences and humanities challenges the notion that publics are purely human and constituted exclusively through language. With these the…
Toward stronger theory in critical public health: Insights from debates surrounding posthumanism
The ‘posthumanist turn’ in critical theory comprises efforts to recognize and analyze the interdependence of human existence with non-human entities, including other animals, spaces, and technologies. Scholarship aligned to and debating posthumanism pertains to public health, but has yet to be clearly articulated for a public health audience. This commentary and an appended glossary illustrate the relevance of these ideas for enhancing critical t…
Trans-biopolitics: Complexity in interspecies relations
This article introduces the concept of trans-biopolitics to account for complexity in the intermingling of animal and human bodies, with particular attention to diseases capable of crossing the species divide from animals to humans. While zoonotic diseases never disappeared, they had re-emerged as pressing concerns by the 21st century. The concept of trans-biopolitics takes into account the power relations inherent in human and nonhuman lives in …
Food, publics, science
This paper draws attention to food as a site around which a historically particular form of public engagement has emerged. In the past decade, some of the most lively debates and policy actions for science and publics have focused on food related issues: first with BSE and subsequently with genetically modified organisms. Even though much of the literature surrounding publics and science acknowledges that the very definition of “publics” is shift…
Embodied Politics: Tourism as Activism
If It Ain't Alberta, It Ain't Beef: L ocal F ood , R egional I dentity , (I nter ) N ational P olitics
This paper examines the emergence of Alberta beef as a defining feature of Albertan identity. Contrary to dominant public discourse, cattle production and beef consumption are not natural, inevitable nor politically neutral features of Alberta's history and culture. Rather, they have been established as such by tourist marketing, industrialization and market globalization. The emergence of BSE in Alberta's cattle herd in 2003 served to galvanize …
Trans-biopolitics: Complexity in interspecies relations
This article introduces the concept of trans-biopolitics to account for complexity in the intermingling of animal and human bodies, with particular attention to diseases capable of crossing the species divide from animals to humans. While zoonotic diseases never disappeared, they had re-emerged as pressing concerns by the 21st century. The concept of trans-biopolitics takes into account the power relations inherent in human and nonhuman lives in …
Public Attunement with More-than-Human Others: Witnessing the Life and Death of Bear 71
This analysis draws theoretical and political lessons from the experiences of Bear 71, a female grizzly bear who lived and died next to one of Canada’s flagship tourist destinations, Banff National Park. What makes this bear’s story remarkable are the ways in which her daily actions were rendered perceptible, visible, and public through a complex network of digital technologies that record, store, and transmit information. In witnessing the life …
From the smart city to urban justice in a digital age
The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept …
Public Engagement with Climate Change as Scientific Citizenship: A Case Study of World Wide Views on Global Warming
World Wide Views (WWViews) is an innovative participatory methodology that scales up formal public engagement in response to global environmental issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state. In September 2009, WWViews on Global Warming enrolled 4,400 lay participants from across 38 countries to discuss global climate policy. The most remarkable outcome was how consistently people from across different political regions and social gro…
If It Ain't Alberta, It Ain't Beef: L ocal F ood , R egional I dentity , (I nter ) N ational P olitics
This paper examines the emergence of Alberta beef as a defining feature of Albertan identity. Contrary to dominant public discourse, cattle production and beef consumption are not natural, inevitable nor politically neutral features of Alberta's history and culture. Rather, they have been established as such by tourist marketing, industrialization and market globalization. The emergence of BSE in Alberta's cattle herd in 2003 served to galvanize …
Expectations of Genomic Selection for Forestry: Expert Narratives of Anticipation and Legitimation
Discourses of expectation shape technology development and uptake in subtle and profound ways. While STS research tends to view discourses of expectation in aggregate, disarticulating expectation into distinct narratives of anticipation and legitimation offers insights into the contradictory symbolic forces that inform novel technological applications. Interviews with forest science experts discussing the adoption of genomic selection as a respon…
Animal Publics: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Political Life
To what extent do non-human animals participate in that particular political configuration known as a public? While conventional wisdom about publics is predicated on a vision of political agency that privileges discursive and deliberative processes, recent scholarship situated in the material turn in the social sciences and humanities challenges the notion that publics are purely human and constituted exclusively through language. With these the…
Genomic trans-biopolitics: Why more-than-human geography is critical amid the Covid-19 pandemic
The rapidity of technological change underpins the centrality of genomes in framing COVID-19 problems and proposals for remedies. We counter such framings through a critical perspective that seeks to infuse more-than-human geographies into public health
Reasoning Together about Climate Change: Coproducing Science and Public Reason in a Global Citizen Panel
Citizen panels convene a small segment of the population to engage in intensive, structured conversations about particular policy issues with the view to inform policy makers. These initiatives provide participants with the opportunity to reason together by examining justifications for policy choices before coming to informed collective judgements about which avenues to take. While most citizen panels take place within individual nation-states, r…
Getting democracy wrong: How lessons from biotechnology can illuminate limits of the Asilomar AI principles
Recent developments in large language models and computer automated systems more generally (colloquially called ‘artificial intelligence’) have given rise to concerns about potential social risks of AI. Of the numerous industry-driven principles put forth over the past decade to address these concerns, the Future of Life Institute’s Asilomar AI principles are particularly noteworthy given the large number of wealthy and powerful signatories. This…
Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order
This article unpacks the logic of the equivalence invoked by the Government of Canada between Indigenous consent and the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledges in impact assessment. We situate the logic within the politics of recognition in Canada-a politics that aims to shore up national unity in the face of regular challenges to it. We use the Canadian results from a recent scoping review on conceptions of environmental justice in impac…
If It Ain't Alberta, It Ain't Beef: L ocal F ood , R egional I dentity , (I nter ) N ational P olitics
This paper examines the emergence of Alberta beef as a defining feature of Albertan identity. Contrary to dominant public discourse, cattle production and beef consumption are not natural, inevitable nor politically neutral features of Alberta's history and culture. Rather, they have been established as such by tourist marketing, industrialization and market globalization. The emergence of BSE in Alberta's cattle herd in 2003 served to galvanize …
Embodied Politics: Tourism as Activism
Food, publics, science
This paper draws attention to food as a site around which a historically particular form of public engagement has emerged. In the past decade, some of the most lively debates and policy actions for science and publics have focused on food related issues: first with BSE and subsequently with genetically modified organisms. Even though much of the literature surrounding publics and science acknowledges that the very definition of “publics” is shift…
Trans-biopolitics: Complexity in interspecies relations
This article introduces the concept of trans-biopolitics to account for complexity in the intermingling of animal and human bodies, with particular attention to diseases capable of crossing the species divide from animals to humans. While zoonotic diseases never disappeared, they had re-emerged as pressing concerns by the 21st century. The concept of trans-biopolitics takes into account the power relations inherent in human and nonhuman lives in …
Toward stronger theory in critical public health: Insights from debates surrounding posthumanism
The ‘posthumanist turn’ in critical theory comprises efforts to recognize and analyze the interdependence of human existence with non-human entities, including other animals, spaces, and technologies. Scholarship aligned to and debating posthumanism pertains to public health, but has yet to be clearly articulated for a public health audience. This commentary and an appended glossary illustrate the relevance of these ideas for enhancing critical t…
Public Engagement with Climate Change as Scientific Citizenship: A Case Study of World Wide Views on Global Warming
World Wide Views (WWViews) is an innovative participatory methodology that scales up formal public engagement in response to global environmental issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state. In September 2009, WWViews on Global Warming enrolled 4,400 lay participants from across 38 countries to discuss global climate policy. The most remarkable outcome was how consistently people from across different political regions and social gro…
Animal Publics: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Political Life
To what extent do non-human animals participate in that particular political configuration known as a public? While conventional wisdom about publics is predicated on a vision of political agency that privileges discursive and deliberative processes, recent scholarship situated in the material turn in the social sciences and humanities challenges the notion that publics are purely human and constituted exclusively through language. With these the…
Framing and power in public deliberation with climate change: Critical reflections on the role of deliberative practitioners
Drawing on the experiences of a deliberative practitioner and critical social scientist involved in the planning, production and implementation of a deliberative initiative on climate change, this paper reflects on nuances of framing and power in practical settings. Decisions about framing, some of them more conscious than others, influence the process of opinion formation among participants as well as the outcomes of the deliberation. Framing en…
Reasoning Together about Climate Change: Coproducing Science and Public Reason in a Global Citizen Panel
Citizen panels convene a small segment of the population to engage in intensive, structured conversations about particular policy issues with the view to inform policy makers. These initiatives provide participants with the opportunity to reason together by examining justifications for policy choices before coming to informed collective judgements about which avenues to take. While most citizen panels take place within individual nation-states, r…
Public Attunement with More-than-Human Others: Witnessing the Life and Death of Bear 71
This analysis draws theoretical and political lessons from the experiences of Bear 71, a female grizzly bear who lived and died next to one of Canada’s flagship tourist destinations, Banff National Park. What makes this bear’s story remarkable are the ways in which her daily actions were rendered perceptible, visible, and public through a complex network of digital technologies that record, store, and transmit information. In witnessing the life …
In the Corporate Interest: Fossil Fuel Industry Input into Alberta and British Columbia’s Climate Leadership Plans
Background This article examines the narrative strategies used by fossil fuel industries in responding to and shaping Alberta and BC’s climate leadership plans. Analysis This article makes inferences about fossil fuel industry influence by examining submissions of industry players to both regions’ public consultation processes. Conclusions and implications Key themes include: a need to take a leadership stance, a balance between environmental pro…
Science Communication Is Culture: Foregrounding Ritual in the Public Communication of Science
This commentary demonstrates the relevance of James Carey’s ritual view of communication for the field of science communication. A ritual view of communication invites examination of the geographical, historical, and material dimensions of communication where dialogues, bodies, public spaces, and comestibles provide enabling conditions for democratic engagement. This is an opportune time for science communications scholars to engage with Carey’s …
Healthy publics as multi-species matters: Solidarity with people’s pets in One Health promotion
Climate change is contributing to local disasters, and pets increasingly figure in mediated views and responses. By theorizing such responses, we expand on the conceptualization of “healthy publics”. In our view, healthy publics can arise from multi-species entanglements, out of which enactments of solidarity may emerge. Such enactments may encompass people with pets, as well as the pets themselves. Such enactments are selective, however, because…
Advancing a transformative social contract for the environmental sciences: From public engagement to justice
Taking as a starting point Jane Lubchenco’s call for a renewed social contract for environmental science, this paper advances a framework for science’s place in society in which justice is central. A social contract is a desired vision of social order that distributes rights, responsibilities, and obligations among political actors. The magnitude of global ecological change, our collective inability to address ecological crises, and populist chal…
Genomic trans-biopolitics: Why more-than-human geography is critical amid the Covid-19 pandemic
The rapidity of technological change underpins the centrality of genomes in framing COVID-19 problems and proposals for remedies. We counter such framings through a critical perspective that seeks to infuse more-than-human geographies into public health
Co-producing uncertainty in public science: The case of genomic selection in forestry
Co-production can inform analysis and communication of the uncertainties associated with novel forms of science and technology. Genomic selection—a relatively novel management tool consisting of predictive modeling based on associations between genetic and phenotypic data—holds many unknowns, particularly when used as a climate adaptation strategy. Approaching genomic selection as an example of public science, we examined beliefs about uncertaint…
Beyond distribution and participation: A scoping review to advance a comprehensive environmental justice framework for impact assessment
From the smart city to urban justice in a digital age
The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept …
Expectations of Genomic Selection for Forestry: Expert Narratives of Anticipation and Legitimation
Discourses of expectation shape technology development and uptake in subtle and profound ways. While STS research tends to view discourses of expectation in aggregate, disarticulating expectation into distinct narratives of anticipation and legitimation offers insights into the contradictory symbolic forces that inform novel technological applications. Interviews with forest science experts discussing the adoption of genomic selection as a respon…
Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order
This article unpacks the logic of the equivalence invoked by the Government of Canada between Indigenous consent and the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledges in impact assessment. We situate the logic within the politics of recognition in Canada-a politics that aims to shore up national unity in the face of regular challenges to it. We use the Canadian results from a recent scoping review on conceptions of environmental justice in impac…
The need for more inclusive deliberation on ethics and governance in agricultural and food biotechnology
An inclusive and socially legitimate governance structure is absent to address concerns over new agricultural biotechnologies. Establishing an agricultural bioethics commission devoted to inclusive deliberation on ethics and governance in agricultural and food biotechnology is urgent. Highlighting the social and ethical dimensions of current agricultural bioengineering disputes in the food system, we discuss how a nationally recognized policy for…
Getting democracy wrong: How lessons from biotechnology can illuminate limits of the Asilomar AI principles
Recent developments in large language models and computer automated systems more generally (colloquially called ‘artificial intelligence’) have given rise to concerns about potential social risks of AI. Of the numerous industry-driven principles put forth over the past decade to address these concerns, the Future of Life Institute’s Asilomar AI principles are particularly noteworthy given the large number of wealthy and powerful signatories. This…
Jurisdictional imaginaries as contested geographies: A metaphor analysis of reference cases about Canada's Impact Assessment Act
Jurisdictional imaginaries, defined as constitutive and productive fictions with real world effects, serve a distinct purpose in the context of debates over Canadian environmental impact assessment. Metaphors are one way in which jurisdictional imaginaries are maintained and contested. In creating associations between entities, metaphors mark storytelling about jurisdiction with the imprints of history and place, and shape thinking about arrangem…
Uncertainty talk for bio-digital technologies: Expert conceptions of uncertainties in genomic selection for forestry
The burgeoning literature on uncertainty analysis shows the need for accessible and transparent information about the limitations of knowledge associated with predictive models for environmental decision-making. Using qualitative analysis, we examine how experts involved in the development of genomic selection (GS) for Canadian public forestry conifer breeding assess and communicate uncertainty. GS is a bio-digital technology characterized by big…
Risk as Infrastructure: Animal Biotechnology, Governmentality, and the (Bio)politics of Risk-based Regulation
Previously relegated to laboratory and research spaces, genetically modified (GM) animals – those in which genes have been transferred from other species – are slowly entering public spaces as national governments approve entry into commercial markets for agricultural, pharmaceutical, and entertainment purposes. In 2016, the Canadian federal government approved the first GM food animal commercialised in Canada, known by its tradename AquAdvantage…
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Environmental ethics (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (6 works)