Conflicting Discourses of Knowledge: Understanding the Policy Adoption of Pro-Burning Knowledge Claims in Cape York Peninsula, Australia DAVID OCKWELL* & YVONNE RYDIN** *Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy (CELP), Environment Department, University of York, UK, **Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance (CEPG), Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK ABSTRACT Using as a case study the dominant pro-burning policy paradigm in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia, this article examines how knowledge claims become adopted in environmental policy. Stakeholder views in Cape York are polarised between pro and anti discourses regarding anthropogenic burning, each with their own contested knowledge claims. This article carries out a discourse analysis of stakeholder views on the use of fire and enhances this with detailed stakeholder consultation and policy analysis. Through this it demonstrates how an examination of the discursive nature of the conflicts and alliances among different knowledge-holders within an environmental policy debate can provide a powerful heuristic approach to fully understanding how contested knowledge claims become accredited and established in policy. Discourses of Knowledge The days of seeing knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, as unproble- matic are long gone. The insights of the sociology of scientific knowledge have shown us over the last two decades or so that knowledge is socially constructed and shaped by the institutional contexts within which it is generated and accredited. This has given rise to calls for a more democratic engagement with the processes of accrediting knowledge, particularly where it is influential within environmental policy processes. Irwin coined the phrase ‘citizen science’ to describe this prospect (Irwin, 1995). In particular there has been an emphasis on creating policy spaces for deliberative processes in which to debate the role of scientific knowledge in policy (Bloomfield et al., 2001; Petts, 2001; Smith, 2001). This has been accompanied by a recognition that different kinds Correspondence Address: David Ockwell, Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy (CELP), Environment Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK. Email: dgo102@york.ac.uk Environmental Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3, 379 – 398, June 2006 ISSN 0964-4016 Print/1743-8934 Online/06/030379–20 Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09644010600627659