Buying into the Linear Model? Hypocrisy and Heterogeneity in the Governance of Synthetic Biology

• In Event: Heterogeneity, Humility and Hegemony: Reflections on Engineering Life

Abstract

In many ways synthetic biology has been a gift for those wishing to examine interdisciplinarity between the natural and the social sciences. Over a decade of funding has provided STS scholars with a rich source of empirical material upon which to experiment, theorise, and publish. Quite conflicted academic accounts are often produced from these interventionist settings; STS frequently bristles from labouring under banners of ELSI and (more recently) RRI. In this provocation we will draw on a series of experimental collaborations with public administrators building synthetic biology research programmes, to suggest that these close encounters with power and authority might also be useful to rethink our relationships to the fields we study, the people we work with and the kinds of practices we sustain. In particular, we are concerned with the trade-offs made when our ideals of 'diversifying and democratising' encounter the mundane realities sustaining our bureaucratic colleagues' institutional spaces. For instance, we have found it necessary to actively mobilise aspects of scientific practice that have, elsewhere, been the subject of our own critique: linear models of research, mono-dimensional distributions of labour, precarious professional positions, visions of a bio-based economy and technocratic models of governing have all played vital roles in getting work done. Are these deceits representing a subconscious embrace of systems-thinking and rational decision making? Or (in addition to bristling with discomfort) might they be a spark to enliven the expectations we bring to, the relationships we have with, and the stories we tell of governing synthetic biology?

Authors

• Robert David Jonathan Smith, University of Edinburgh

• Thokozani Kamwendo, University of Edinburgh