Citizen Science, Anthropology, and Intercultural Transdisciplinarity

Connecting School Students in Greenland and Austria on the Topic of Snow

Bibliographic Data

ID3637876
AuthorsSophie Elixhauser (0009-0005-6748-4622, corresponding author), Theresa Gusenleitner
Year2025
Volume73
Issue2
Pages1-22
Publication date2025-06-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociologus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0377 • E-ISSN: 1865-5106
PublisherDuncker & Humblot GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.3790/soc.2025.1461401
OpenAlexW4411070190
LanguageEN
References cited43

Citizen science is research conducted with the participation of the public with a view to democratising academia and facilitating large-scale and long-term research. Citizen science is currently gaining popularity, particularly in the natural sciences, yet the relationship between citizen science and anthropology is less clear-cut. This can be attributed to anthropology’s long experience in working with non-academic stakeholders and to the democratic and ontological turns resulting in various similar and sometimes overlapping participatory methods. Drawing on the authors’ anthropological engagement in an interdisciplinary citizen science project collaborating with climatologists and school students from Greenland and Austria, we explore the value of citizen science for anthropology, and vice versa. While some of the basic premises of citizen science are not new, we argue that anthropology stands to benefit from citizen science in two ways. First, citizen science offers elaborate methods to facilitate the involvement of a potentially wider public and may further discourses about public anthropology. Second, it can be of great value in interdisciplinary projects, providing a shared framework for both the social and natural scientists involved. Anthropology in turn may refine citizen science with its reflective perspective on epistemic and ontological questions

Cultural anthropology · Geography · Meteorology · Snow · Social science · Sociology · Transdisciplinarity · Anthropology · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration · Service-Learning and Community Engagement · Sustainability in Higher Education

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