Critical Life Science Research on Human Diversity: Social Reflexivity as a Means for "Good Science"

• In Event: Reflecting on Reflexivity in Practice: Responsible Innovation, Engagement, and Governance - I

Abstract

My contribution focuses on the question of forms of reflexivity in life science research dealing with categories of race/ethnicity and sex/gender. In particular, I focus on projects that distance themselves from the common paradigms in the respective fields of research and use innovative non-binary and more fluid or context-specific categorizations of human biological diversity. Several of the actors I examined describe themselves as reflexive, responsible, and as at least partially critical. In investigating the particular of such research projects, I am interested in how this reflexivity is generated. Therefore I look at reflexivity 1) as an empirical object of inquiry with which scientific actors describe their actions, and 2) as an analytical concept with which the specific of the respective research projects can be grasped. Using examples from my research on 'critical life science', I would like to present in which aspects the researchers present themselves as divergent to the mainstream of their research discipline, to which concepts and theories they relate to, and to what kind of conflicts this leads to within the scientific community. For an analysis of these forms of reflexive research, I would like to propose a preliminary concept, which I call 'social reflexivity'. In the talk I will relate this concept to existing ‘varieties of reflexivity’ (Woolgar 1991), will reconsider overlaps with some of them such as 'strong reflexivity' (Harding 1992) and 'diffraction' (Haraway 1997, Barad 2007) and like to discuss possibilities and limitations of this approach.

Author

• Tino Pluemecke, Institute for Sociology, University of Freiburg, Germany