Situated Ethics and Normativities in Knowledge Making and Communities of Practice - I

Abstract

Science and technology studies have recurrently discussed questions of norms and normativity. Following the innovative rationale of an empirical ethics (Pols 2015) this panel take as its entrance point empirical work to discuss questions of ethics and norms in knowledge making and communities of practice. This means focusing on the doings in practice, scrutinizing the various notions of good that may exist within the same practice. The panel welcomes contributions analyzing for example conflicts of different notions of what is good within the same practice, or comparisons between similar modes of doing good in different practices. The panel is also interested in what Puig de La Bellacasa has called situated ethics. Attending to permaculture ethics as situated ethics she contends that “The actualization of principles of caring are always created in an interrelated doing with the needs of a place, a land, a neighborhood, a city, even when a particular action is considered with regards to its extended global connections” (Puig De La Bellacasa 2017: 150). In situated ethics it is therefore not the principles governing the action but rather the “action makes them relevant or not” (Hennion et al 2017: 742). The panel asks what is considered good for example in new forms of organizing healthcare and in scientific knowledge making practices such as the lab. (How) are these goods in conflict? What principles of doing good are made relevant?

Individual Presentations

• Developing an Ethical Framework for Robots for Care in a Children’s Hospital - Núria Vallès-Peris, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Miquel Domenech, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Doing Good: Normativities in the Margins of Welfare - Doris Lydahl, University of Gothenburg; Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand, University of Gothenburg

• Making Good Days Happen: Unpacking Versions of the “Better” in Living with Sickle Cell Disease - Clément Dréano, University of Amsterdam - AISSR

• Troubling the Uncertain Boundary between Research and Clinical Care: What Role Should ELSI Research Play? - Jennifer James, University of California, San Francisco; Galen Joseph, University of California, San Francisco

Session Organizer

• Doris Lydahl, University of Gothenburg