Dr Brian R. Cook, Department of Resource Management and Geography, School of Land and Environment, University of Melbourne,

Larry Saha Seminar Room 2175, Level 2, Haydon-Allen Building, The Australian National University,

Amongst debates over the management of environmental risk, an important theme has been the involvement of publics (Irwin, 1995) and the legitimacy of public knowledge (Collins and Evans, 2002). In terms of flood management in Bangladesh, public knowledge has informed critiques of dominant practices by demanding the democratisation of the knowledges deemed legitimate. To date, the ramifications of this situation have gone unexplored. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty decision-making experts, this analysis finds that public knowledge has been accepted as legitimate, seemingly capitulating to a long-standing criticism. Local and expert knowledges are now commonly incorporated within flood management, blurring any distinction between the two. Unfortunately, in a somewhat absurd twist, the informal knowledge and experiences shaping flood management appear to be the recollections, opinions, and anecdotes of the power-holding experts. The experts have re-established their authority by deploying their own lay knowledges-experiences as a way of including lay knowledge without including ‘others’. In terms of the democratisation of governance, the flood management case study suggests that power-holders have been re-empowered by arguments designed to make flood management more representative.

Bio:  Brian's research explores the topics of water, risk and sustainable development, and is situated at the science-society interface. He explores the often hidden power embedded in the knowledges that inform governance. He is an applied social scientist with interest in the geographies of risk, culture, development and cross-disciplinarity. He uses environmental controversies as entry points to examinations of the prevailing or dominant knowledges that inform policy and practice.