Team:UCL/Humans/Soci/6

Scientific uncertainty is considered an inherent characteristic in the governance of synthetic biology. According to risk society theorists, this uncertainty also has to do with a setting in which the standards of typical modern institutions such as conventional science and politics fail to accommodate to the concerns relating to rationality and security. They have been treated by the public as suspects causing the risk instead of being considered the trustees who are usually expected to manage them. A decline in the confidence in these institutions and others is what led to a form of modernization that is reflexive in nature, meaning that new arrangements have prompted new institutional reforms for environmental and social objectives. Nevertheless, technological transformations contributed to this evolution, helping to reconfigure the institutional makeup of scientific, political and economic practice (Mol and Jänicke 2009; Beck 2009: 54).

The ‘erosion of trust’ toward science and technology has manifested itself through the disintegration of this fixed and self-perpetuating institutional set-up. As a result, producing and making use of the acquired knowledge, as well as the expert authority that came with it, had to be shared now with opposing expert voices. A new heterogeneity started to emerge in scientific knowledge production where public trust in the authority of expert knowledge was no longer unconditional (Barry 2007: 246-247). Moreover, when it comes to the environmental risks of genetic engineering, experts are increasingly confronted with the difficulty and uneasiness of communicating the constraints of scientific practice and the limits of knowledge when attempting to address and mitigate the controversy. Social convention dictates that their expertise would be required to address factual matters which are sometimes impossible to answer from the available scientific evidence. Nevertheless, the concerns and questions conveyed by the lay public remain legitimate political questions. Consequently, the ‘transscientific’ questions, as van den Daele (1999) characterizes them, help to demarcate between acquired knowledge and what lies beyond (van den Daele 1999: 69-70).

In the case of synthetic biology as a discipline, environmental movements can come forward easily to counter the discourse of technological optimism and expert authority that the community of synthetic biologists might have. The reason for this is that an apparent kinship exists with a similar controversy surrounding genetic modification (GM). Despite that is sometimes described as ‘extreme genetic engineering’, ‘genetic engineering on steroids’ (Friends of the Earth et al. 2012: 2; Voosen 2013), or captioned with the notion of ‘creating’ or ‘tinkering with’ life (Kera 2014: 28; Torgersen and Hampel 2012: 143), synthetic biology however has not yet been the subject of widespread public debate similar to the heavily deprecated GM crops antecedent. This is because the existence of synthetic biology is still largely considered to be uncommon knowledge among the wider public. Yet, based on the current environmentalist attitude towards GM crops, future efforts of synthetic biology may become prone to similar displays of distrust (Pauwels 2013; Torgersen and Hampel 2012). Besides the intrinsic scientific uncertainty, the governance challenges of synthetic biology exhibit a considerable degree of what Zhang et al. (2011) call ‘cross-borderness’. This cross-borderness as governance strategy entails not only bridging nations through transnational action, but most of all, bridging the trust gap through public engagement initiatives and bridging disciplines through interdisciplinarity. We now examine how the Goodbye AzoDye Project exhibits these cross-border properties as a way of demonstrating how the iGEM competition acts as an incentive and model for governance strategies.

Implications for Governance Measures

Both the scientific uncertainty and the cross-borderness are indicative of three specific challenges for the (inter)national governance of synthetic biology: Governing knowledge and non-knowing, cultivating external accountability, and the fragmentation of social authorities. The uncertainty and cross-borderness are “only one thread in a tangled and mutually constituent web of scientific practices” which also means that their effect on these governance challenges are not manifestly evident (Zhang et al. 2011).

The aspect of scientific uncertainty challenges synthetic biology governance in relation to the salience of knowledge and non-knowing. This has, for instance, led to the growing importance of the precautionary principle in governing emerging technologies. This principle states that regulation should intervene in the further development of a technology when there is good reason to think that it may be dangerous. Precaution should then be the guiding principle until there is sufficient scientific evidence or knowledge to prove that it is not, or ways can be found to assure safe use. So, in other words, regulating scientific uncertainty becomes a matter of gaining more knowledge. However, as is the case with modern technologies such as synthetic biology, more knowledge generally means more uncertainties coming from the newly acquired knowledge. Therefore, a policy of precaution may not be as effective as would have been thought intuitively when considering the scientific trajectory. Furthermore, the technologies of hubris tend to leave out uncertainty when setting up policies, and instead narrowly focus on what can be managed as a risk. Hence, the implications for governance will rather be about including non-knowing as an essential governance aspect of synthetic biology so that uncertainty can ‘open up’ the ways we think about science policy. In the end, governance of uncertainty is about the negotiation of ambiguity in knowledge, where evidence can be discussed in relation to the acknowledgement of the complexities causing the uncertainty. Therefore, opening up governance measures also means that compromises will have to be made and knowledge will be a matter of perennial brokerage (Zhang et al. 2011).

Furthermore, the problem of external accountability and the fragmentation of social authorities as governance challenges play a key role in the context of eroding trust. As science could not deliver certainty, the scientific authority of expertise had to be shared with other knowledge holders in society. The legitimacy of knowledge sources hence became a claim many could always partially deliver, leaving the knowledge landscape fragmented. External accountability, then, is directly connected to the cross-borderness of synthetic biology. It concerns bridging gaps with various ‘others’, namely between scientists and engineers, scientists and societal actors from civil society and business, and between scientists and the ill-defined ‘general public’. These are all ‘external’ actors which synthetic biologists are expected to forge ties with and target engagement initiatives at. The aim of this is to “feed information into one acting entity […], with all initiatives evolving around one central actor”, but if this would happen on an institutional level, information would be communicated to create mutual trust between the concerned institutional actors (Zhang 2011: 17, 20).

Regaining Trust in the Post-Traditional Society

Despite the unfavourable conditions of uncertainty in the public sphere, the crumbling scientific tradition remains an important focal point for the expectations of the reluctant and vigilant public. Therefore, as Giddens and Pierson (1998) argue, “[t]rust offers security in the face of future contingencies” (Giddens and Pierson 1998: 109), but in a post-traditional setting, experts are given the benefit of the doubt considering that they have not ceased in their attempts to provide certainty nonetheless (Beck 1999). With regard to the use of synthetic biology, the team also confirms that there is a problem of trust. They attribute this primarily to the lack of knowledge and familiarity with how synthetic biologists operate, and that this drives a misrepresented perception of the risk involved. The challenge, then, in terms of governance measures is to embrace trust and make it ‘active’ through the merits of “equality, discursiveness, reciprocity, [and] substantiation” (Beck 1999: 116). One of the ways this can be done, in other words finding a method to recuperate trust, is through public engagement (Stebbing 2009). From that perspective, it makes sense for iGEM to bring forward an operational framework, or even a philosophy to include public engagement as an important element in the competition. In that way, students become familiarised with “navigating both inside and outside the Ivory Towers” as they become part of the synthetic biology community (Kuldell 2007: 2; McLennan 2012). The motivation or idea behind this is that when students become acquainted with what occupies the minds of the public, and learn how to effectively communicate the methods and intentions of their efforts, they will be able to provide better guidance to the further development of synthetic biology in the light of various external pressures (Kuldell 2007). While reflecting on the importance of public engagement, most team members have interpreted its necessity not only in terms of an educating responsibility they are expected to hold, but also as an act of scientific persuasion towards the lay public:

[Daniel] “There is a lack of information I would say. The thing is, it is our job to like to show people it is not sorcery that it is like actual science […]”
...
[Yan-Kay] “[…] we still need to convince the public that it is safe and that it is a viable option. And I think we need this form of communication between scientists and the public about this so that they know”
...
[Georgia] “[…] I think that there is not enough public engagement to get them to understand what genetically modified organisms are, or what they do, or are they dangerous. Everybody kind of like, if I talk to people who don’t do science […], [they are] like “can’t that give you cancer or something?”, you know”?

Besides raising public awareness about synthetic biology, with Goodbye AzoDye the team also seeks to bring attention to a relatively unknown and overlooked environmental issue. This meant that the team had to reach a target audience that could be both for and against their project considering the technology they are using for a beneficial cause. The central aspect of their public engagement exercise constitutes the #UncolourMeCurious campaign, which was developed as a way to sensitize the public on “the carcinogenic nature of AzoDye waste products” through the use of “a striking video campaign” to gain the attention. This would “culminate in a beautiful short film to explain the dangers of the ‘azodumping’ […]”, followed by a stakeholder debate, a concept art competition and the creation of ‘textile-based BioArt’ leading up to a grand three-day exhibition (UCL iGEM 2014). The stakeholder debate can be seen as a form of ‘upstream engagement’, which is a way of showing responsiveness to the concerns that live in society in order to make suggestions to rethink scientific practice. Such dual-use engagement, then, can help to promote a process of democratisation which subsequently becomes a normative value for which to strive for in designing policy (Calvert and Martin 2009; Edwards and Kelle 2012).

Interdisciplinarity

In the process of regaining trust in order to mediate concerns of risk and uncertainty, questions are raised regarding the nature of the knowledge selected for the assessment of synthetic biology as an emerging technology. This implies that society engages in some reflexive action as a response to ongoing technological innovation. The reflexivity comes forth from the assumption that the shaping of knowledge will affect the way late-modern society will be conceived. Keeping the complex implications of this New Biology in mind, post-traditional science thus needs to look for a politics of knowledge that can account for uncertainty issues. From that perspective, the fragmentation of scientific disciplines, and the organisation of how these disciplines produce knowledge, hence does not appear to match broader concerns of dealing with the “misty real-world problems of our society” (Schmidt 2009: 1-2). Therefore, a knowledge politics of the potential synthetic biology controversy requires compatible and hence a diverse set of legitimate knowledge claims. Consequently, interdisciplinarity is considered to be key in late-modern society so that uncertainties that epitomise this time period can be dealt with through various interdisciplinary safety nets from which problematic issues can be approached.

Not only is synthetic biology inherently interdisciplinary, iGEM teams are also made out of students from very diverse academic backgrounds who now work together in a way that requires a considerable amount of knowledge exchange (Robbins 2009; Schmidt 2009). Furthermore, what is particularly reflexive about iGEM and synthetic biology in general, is the use of BioBricks because demonstrate this interdependence between disciplines. By bringing an engineering approach to biology, the construction of BioBricks for genetic circuits enables an operational linkage between engineers and biologists. Both have to work together constructively so that this new and hybrid technology can be developed and which would not have emerged within the constraints of autonomous scientific disciplines. The concept of BioBricks is even a metaphor for this connection between engineering and biology as synthetic biology is often described in terms of ‘building’ and ‘designing’ of ‘standardised, hierarchical parts, devices and systems’ (Finlay 2013: 27). These subsequently produce a genetically engineered ‘machine’ (Robbins 2009: 1). Moreover, this iGEM interdisciplinarity has been stretched beyond biology and the applied sciences into the social sciences and humanities when ‘Human Practices’ became an award teams could compete for, and which is now called ‘Policy & Practices’. More is discussed on this topic in the next chapter.

Political Modernisation and Cross-border Collaborations

New developments in the global governance of science and technology have been sparked by the growth of transnational initiatives in synthetic biology. Moreover, it is the iGEM competition that seems to be spearheading this development as a result of cross-border practices and scientific uncertainty in synthetic biology as explained in previous chapters (Zhang et al. 2011). What is specifically noteworthy here in relation to the tandem of theories central in Sociological Imaginations, is how this relates to redefining the role of the state when it comes to environmental reform. The theory of ecological modernisation, for example, has questioned the position of the state vis-à-vis the re-assessment of production and consumption patterns. Although the state remains of great importance, and even continues to be the preeminent policy actor, in terms of environmental policy-making, governmental involvement has been urged to take a step back. Instead, it chooses to accommodate for measures of prevention, participatory politics and decentralisation. This eco-modernist view is also fuelled by the notion that the void that has been created as a result, is subsequently taken up by market forces.

The eco-modernist twist to the notion that uncertainty drives social change in the risk society, has been described by Pellizzoni (2011) in terms of ‘disorder’. The instability and incalculability of risks generated by late-modern society give rise to disorderly conditions but they are rendered manageable or governable because of the way the ‘ecologised’ neoliberal market shapes new institutional opportunities to handle the contingencies of emerging complexities. This approach to the nature of risks hence breaks with the idea of seeing them merely as a source of fear morphing into the trust deficit that grew out of it. Therefore, from this market perspective, the biotechnological practices that engender uncertainty become manageable through commodification (Pellizzoni 2011; Sonnenfeld and Mol 2011). With the open-source Registry of Standard Biological Parts, BioBricks are increasingly acquiring the status of commodity in the synthetic biology community. It is therefore not surprising that the iGEM competition also fosters the non-monetary value in the exchange of biological parts through the Registry. When iGEM teams also make it part of their project to develop a BioBrick themselves, they become eligible to win higher-level medals and thus gain prominence in the competition. At the same time, however, this incentive helps to grow synthetic biology as a discipline considering that their contribution to the Registry also promotes the economy of biological parts so that others in the community can work out other ways of using the parts. Sometimes these projects can turn into something that has real-world implications in terms of new product developments and spin-off companies. From then on, the monetary market takes over, creating potential for lucrative applications. This however still happens very rarely at this point. Nevertheless, teams are encouraged to set up networks and collaborations to make their project as realistic as possible. The competition can therefore become more than just playing around and being creative as their work always suggests a potential real-world contribution to the discipline (Balmer and Bulpin 2013; Frow 2013; Kera 2014).

While the theory of ecological modernization envisages a continuing role for government to remain a central figure in politics, an alternative view of late-modernity would state that “the truly political disappears in and from the [formal] political system and reappears, changed and generali[s]ed […] as sub(system)politics” (Beck 1997: 52). The challenges imposed by the industrial society have brought new uncertainties to the fore to which the traditional modern approach to politics could not adequately respond to. Consequently, other sections of society have attempted to counter the environmental crisis, which provided leeway for further technological development. Therefore, Beck (2001) notes that, in these conditions, the discourse of ecological modernisation will start to prevail as an umbrella concept for practical alternatives of pre-crisis politics, and hence promote new societal configurations. As a result, the reflexive approach in late modernity prompts the political landscape to break with its own rigid pre-existence. Nonetheless, the promise of industrial and democratic modernity to bring welfare remains unchanged as decision-makers continue to exercise their power within the context of government since the regulatory framework originates from it (Beck 1999).

The uncertainty brought forward by the world risk society can therefore be equated with an institutional crisis that feeds into new structural arrangements in non-governmental enterprises. These arrangements are now confronted with new novel ways of constituting the social realm because of the new ‘open industrial politics’. In the process of moving away from the myopic self-referential tradition to perpetuate an existing industrial system, this new approach has gained prominence in its political dimensions. So, notwithstanding the pre-eminence of economic values in industrial entrepreneurship, leadership performance in this business increasingly depends on the amount of public trust in relation to ecological concerns and responsibilities. This becomes even more pertinent when the technology is utilised to engender the aspired economic progress as it is tailored for increased industrial performance, hence understating environmental and social legitimacy (Beck 1999).