Matthias Wienroth - Knowing New Biotechnologies: Social Aspects of Technological Convergence

Knowing New Biotechnologies

The areas of personal genomics and citizen science draw on and bring together different cultures of producing and managing knowledge and meaning. They also cross local and global boundaries, are subjects and objects of transformation and mobility of research practices, evaluation and multi-stakeholder groups. Third, they draw on logics of convergence: new links between, and new kinds of, stakeholders, spaces, knowledge, practices, challenges and opportunities.

This themed collection of chapters from nationally and internationally leading scholars and commentators advances and widens current debates in Science and Technology Studies and in Science Policy concerning converging technologies by complementing the customary focus on technical aspirations for convergence with the analysis of the practices and logics of scientific, social and cultural knowledge production that constitute contemporary technoscience. In case studies from across the globe, contributors discuss the ways in which science and social order are linked in areas such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing and do-it-yourself biotechnologies.

Organized into thematic sections, Knowing New Biotechnologies explores:

ways of understanding the dynamics and logics of convergences in emergent biotechnologies;

governance and regulatory issues around technoscientific convergences; and

democratic aspects of converging technologies lay involvement in scientific research and the co-production of biotechnology and social and cultural knowledge.

Matthias Wienroth is Research Fellow at the Northumbria University Centre for Forensic Science and Visiting Researcher at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences research centre, Newcastle University. He studies sciencesociety relationships and the opportunities of cross-disciplinary knowledge production for socially responsible technology development.

Eugnia Rodrigues is Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Trained in sociology at the Universities of Coimbra (Portugal) and York (UK), her research interests lie at the intersection of environmental sociology and STS with a particular interest in contemporary expertlay relations and their implications for knowledge democratization.

Genetics and Society

Series Editors: Ruth Chadwick, Director of Cesagen, CardiffUniversity, John Dupr, Director of Egenis, Exeter University, David Wield, Director of Innogen, Edinburgh University, and Steve Yearley, Director of the Genomics Forum, Edinburgh University.

The books in this series, all based on original research, explore the social, economic and ethical consequences of the new genetic sciences. The series is based in the Cesagen, one of the centres forming the ESRCs Genomics Network (EGN), the largest UK investment in social-science research on the implications of these innovations. With a mix of research monographs, edited collections, textbooks and a major new handbook, the series is a valuable contribution to the social analysis of developing and emergent bio-technologies.

Series titles include:

New Genetics, New Social Formations

Peter Glasner, Paul Atkinson and Helen Greenslade

New Genetics, New Identities

Paul Atkinson, Peter Glasner and Helen Greenslade

The GM Debate

Risk, politics and public engagement

Tom Horlick-Jones, John Walls, Gene Rowe, Nick Pidgeon, Wouter Poortinga, Graham Murdock and Tim ORiordan

Growth Cultures

Life sciences and economic development

Philip Cooke

Human Cloning in the Media

Joan Haran, Jenny Kitzinger, Maureen McNeil and Kate ORiordan

Local Cells, Global Science

Embryonic stem cell research in India

Aditya Bharadwaj and Peter Glasner

Handbook of Genetics and Society

Paul Atkinson, Peter Glasner and Margaret Lock

The Human Genome

Chamundeeswari Kuppuswamy

Community Genetics and Genetic Alliances

Eugenics, carrier testing and networks of risk

Aviad E. Raz

Neurogenetic Diagnoses.

The power of hope and the limits of todays medicine

Carole Browner and H. Mabel Preloran

Debating Human Genetics

Contemporary issues in public policy and ethics

Alexandra Plows

Genetically Modified Crops on Trial

Opening up alternative futures of Euro-agriculture

Les Levidow

Creating Conditions

The making and remaking of a genetic condition

Katie Featherstone and Paul Atkinson

Genetic Testing

Accounts of autonomy, responsibility and blame

Michael Arribas-Allyon, Srikant Sarangi and Angus Clarke

Regulating Next Generation Agri-Food Biotechnologies

Lessons from European, North American and Asian experiences

Edited by Michael Howlett and David Laycock

Regenerating Bodies

Tissue and cell therapies in the twenty-first century

Julie Kent

Gender and Genetics

Sociology of the Prenatal

Kate Reed

Risky Genes

Genetics, breast cancer and Jewish identity

Jessica Mozersky

The Gene, the Clinic, and the Family

Diagnosing dysmorphology, reviving medical dominance

Joanna Latimer

Barcoding Nature

Shifting cultures of taxonomy in an age of biodiversity loss

Claire Waterton, Rebecca Ellis and Brian Wynne

Negotiating Bioethics

The governance of UNESCOs bioethics programme

Adle Langlois

Breast Cancer Gene Research and Medical Practices

Transnational perspectives in the time of BRCA

Edited by Sahra Gibbon, Galen Joseph, Jessica Mozersky, Andrea zur Nieden and Sonja Palfner

Science and Democracy

Making knowledge and making power in the biosciences and beyond

Edited by Stephen Hilgartner, Clark A. Miller and Rob Hagendijk

Knowing New Biotechnologies

Social aspects of technological convergence

Edited by Matthias Wienroth and Eugnia Rodrigues

Forthcoming titles include:

Controlling Pharmaceutical Risks

Science, cancer, and the geneticization of drug testing

Edited by John Abraham and Rachel Ballinger

Scientific, Clinical and Commercial Development of the Stem Cell

From radiobiology to regenerative medicine

Alison Kraft

Knowing New Biotechnologies

Social aspects of technological convergence

Edited by Matthias Wienroth and Eugnia Rodrigues

First published 2015

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Matthias Wienroth and Eugnia Rodrigues

The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.