ABSTRACT
Whilst this book builds on the experiences of a particular case, the Citizen Science for Sustainability (SuScit) project, it has been important also to establish a certain analytic distance to this project and develop a distinct theoretical framework setting the perspectives on the issues at stake. The particular value of such theoretical approach is that it holds a certain potential for making the invisible visible, to illuminate certain attributes of a more general order emerging from empirical experience. The danger in doing so is the easiness of simply extrapolating theoretical assumptions onto empirical experience. Doing so neither adds scientific value nor validity. Working theoretically with empirical insights addresses two principal challenges: first, the necessity to question one’s own theoretical assumptions, as well as what empirically tends to be taken for granted, in order to address questions from which substantial new insights might emerge. Secondly, there is the high-wire act of substantially letting new insights emerge from the synergy between theoretical and empirical approaches. In the following I shall seek to make transparent my methodological approach to theoretical and empirical work, and in particular the interdependence between the two as the basis for gaining new insight.
