The Flexible Boundaries of Academia: Citizen Science’s Struggle for Legitimacy

Abstract

This study offers an integrated theoretical framework to explain how citizen science renegotiates epistemic authority in contemporary research governance. Synthesizing four Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives—Gieryn’s boundary-work, Merton’s institutional norms, Foucault’s power-knowledge nexus, and Latour’s actor-network theory—we conceptualize citizen science as a practice operating under contradictory institutional pressures within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and Responsible Research and Innovation frameworks. The study’s primary theoretical contribution is the concept of “legitimacy double bind,” developed through engagement with Collins and Evans’s extension-legitimacy trade-off, Jasanoff’s co-production framework, and Frickel and Moore’s undone science. This analytical tool addresses a fundamental question: Why does epistemic authority fail to be systematically redistributed despite explicit policy orientations supporting participation and democratization? Our framework posits that this structural incompatibility manifests through three core mechanisms: (i) objectification, wherein citizens are positioned merely as data sources whose contributions gain validity only through professional verification; (ii) epistemic drift, the systematic shift of research agendas from community priorities toward academic priorities; and (iii) technocratic governance, where expertise claims are mobilized to centralize decision-making authority. These mechanisms represent concrete manifestations of the structural tension between policy-level legitimacy demands (democratization, participation, inclusivity) and academic-level legitimacy demands (boundary maintenance, validation control, epistemic authority). The analysis also identifies boundary conditions under which these mechanisms intensify or weaken. Short-term funding cycles, narrow evaluation criteria, and competitive grant environments strengthen these mechanisms, while long-term community partnerships, pluralistic validation criteria, and community resource control attenuate them. By extending existing STS theories on participatory knowledge production to neoliberal research governance contexts, this framework offers an original contribution to the literature.