Withholding consent
How citizens resist expert responses by positioning themselves as ‘the ones to be convinced’
This paper examines public meetings in the Netherlands where experts and officials interact with local residents
on the human health effects of livestock farming. Using Conversation Analysis, we reveal a ‘weapon of the weak’: a practice by
which the residents resist experts’ head start in information meetings. It is shown how residents draw on the given
question-answer format to challenge experts and pursue an admission of, for example, methodological shortcomings. We show how the
residents’ first question functions as a ‘foot-in-the-door’, providing them with a strong basis for skepticism. By systematically
challenging the expert responses, the residents exploit the interaction’s sequential organization, with the effect that the goal
becomes them being convinced rather than being informed. Consequently, the withholding of
consent becomes the residents’ ‘weapon’. Finally, we argue that in an age where expertise is increasingly contested, it is crucial
to understand how, and to what end, this contestation may occur.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Questions as challenges
- 3.Data and method
- 4.Analysis
- 4.1“Foot-in-the-door”: Setting up skepticism
- 4.2In further pursuit of an admission
- 4.3Retroactively positioning oneself as already knowing the answer to the question(s)
- 5.Concluding comments
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
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