Beyond Balance: An Ethnography of Validity and Engagement in Citizen Science Practice

Citizen science (CS) is often characterized as involving inherent trade-offs between scientific validity and public engagement. While existing literature has documented these competing imperatives, less is known about the concrete organizational mechanisms that enable their coexistence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the Israel Center for Citizen Science (ICCS), this article examines how hybrid knowledge production is sustained not by resolving this tension, but by structuring it. ICCS functions as a unique scientific site where the primary ‘instruments’ are communities of human participants. Through analysis of validation processes (mechanical objectivity, standardized protocols) and engagement practices (role-switching, boundary work), I demonstrate that the validity-engagement tension acts as a mechanism rather than a hurdle. The analysis reveals a structure of ‘fractal biopower’—nested power/knowledge relations where the division between subject and object repeats at every scale: Nature is subject to participants’ observation, participants to institutional management, and institutions to scientific evaluation. This recursive structure allows contradictory logics to operate simultaneously, suggesting that contemporary science increasingly functions through the management, rather than the purification, of hybrid tensions.