Emergent Orders in the Governance, Institutions and Knowledge Economies of Genome Editing Technologies - III

Abstract

In the wake of the rapid development of novel genome editing technologies for manipulating DNA, most notably the CRISPR-Cas9 system, a wide variety of actors are vying for influence and access over their governance, development and use. Scientists, biohackers, patients, regulators, bioethicists, disability justice advocates, venture capitalists, biopharma and agriculture firms, among others, are contributing to and contesting the development of institutions for governing these biotechnologies. Key to these dynamics are the discourses, processes and practices through which existing scientific, social, political, economic and ethical orders are disrupted, co-produced, and stabilized to form emergent orders, and how and why some possibilities are opened while others are constrained.

This paper session invites research that examines and explores the intertwined development of genome editing technologies and social institutions from diverse perspectives and contexts, and across different applications (e.g. agriculture; health and biomedicine; environmental management and gene drives). What discourses, processes, practices and norms are important for governing these novel biotechnologies? How is increased access to and expanded use of these biotechnologies reconfiguring existing social and institutional orders, and leading to new ones? How can we imagine and enact more democratic forms of engagement with and governance of novel biotechnologies? Overall, we are interested in developing a comparative and critical picture of the emergence of new social orders as the ability to modify DNA becomes commonplace, and in doing so, identify sites where existing inequalities or asymmetries of power are reproduced and can be addressed.

Chair

• Dan Santos, Monash University (Australia)

Individual Presentations

• Promissory Ethical Regimes: Publics And Public Goods In Genome Editing For Human Health - Matthias Wienroth, Northumbria University; Jackie Leach Scully, Newcastle University

• “DNA Of The Country”: Situating Genomic Technologies Within Archival Praxis - Madeleine Mendell

• Sexuality and Biodigital Publics - Kate O'Riordan, University of Sussex; Sandra Nelson, University of Sussex, UK

• Extra-Institutional Science: Navigating Do-It-Yourself Biology in Great Britain, Germany and Canada - Anna Verena Eireiner, University of Cambridge

• The Dearth of "Disability" in Experts' Discussion of Human Genome Editing - Dorit Barlevy, Baylor College of Medicine; Haley Manley, Baylor College of Medicine; Christopher Thomas Scott, Baylor College of Medicine

Session Organizers

• Dan Santos, Monash University (Australia)

• Santiago J Molina, University of California Berkeley