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Goodbye Azodye UCL iGEM 2014

Sociological Imaginations - Reconciling Environmental Discourses

Policy & Practices Team

Explore Sociological Imaginations

Overview | Introduction | Methodology | Glossary
Conceptual Framework: The Governance Challenges of Synthetic Biology | Theoretical Framework: Opposing Paradigms in the Face of Environmental Decline
Chapter 1: Synthetic Biology for Environmental Reform | Chapter 2: UCL iGEM 2014 in the Risk Society | Chapter 3: Transcending Multifaceted Borders
Chapter 4: The Playful Professional and Sustainable Governance | Conclusion | List of References

Glossary

Anticipatory socialisation: Adopting norms, values, standards and behaviour of a group, which non-members of the group aspire to join. Through social interactions and experience, these individuals learn to take on the role they have yet to assume in order to facilitate their assimilation and eventual participation in the group (Marshall 1998).
Black-boxing: Ignoring or not paying attention to the internal workings of a scientific or technological achievement, or as Bruno Latour describes it, "the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become" (Latour 1999).

Commodification: Making a commodity out of goods, services, ideas or other entities that are usually not considered as salable things. This concept from Marxist political theory describes a process where market values are attributed to something that did not have such economic or commercial value before, and therefore sometimes replace certain social values.

Cross-borderness of synthetic biology:The simultaneous crossing of borders of scientific disciplines, industrial sectors and geopolitical areas. Various difficulties may arise from this as different notions of what knowledge is, come together and encounter various challenges in governance measures.

Deskilling synthetic biology: Making synthetic biology more accessible as practitioners do not need some of the skills in molecular biology to work on it. This has given rise to 'Do It Yourself' biology as an expression of citizen or amateur science (Calvert 2013).

Discourse: "A specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorisations that are produced, reproduced, and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities" (Hajer 2000: 44)

Dual-use technology: Technologies which can be used for more than one goal, usually having both civilian or peaceful purpose and military aims. They imply a dilemma "because it is difficult to prevent their misuse without forgoing beneficial applications. [...] [M]any of the emerging technologies with the potential to do the most good are also capable of the greatest harm" (Tucker 2012 :1).

Ecological modernisation: Optimistic theory "that aims to harness the power of human ingenuity for the purposes of harmonising economic advancement with environmental improvement" (Cohen 1997:108; Huber 1985; Jänicke 1985; Simonis 1988).

Ethnography: The study of people's actions in everyday contexts, which means that the research takes place in the field. Data collection usually occurs unstructured through participant observation or through informal conversations. The researcher focusses on a small group of people to facalitate in-depth study. The subsequent analysis of the data "involves interpretation of meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and institutional practices, and how these are implicated in local, and perhaps also wider, contexts. What are produced, for the most part, are verbal descriptions, explanations and theories; quantification and statistical analysis play a subordinate role at most" (Atkinson and Hammersley 2007: 3)

External accountability: (for synthetic biology) Accountability to the people outside the community of practising synthetic biologists, whose lives are affected by the implications of the technology. As a social actor, this community provides external accountability by acknowledging that there are concerns from others with regard to their actions within their scientific discipline. Internal accountability, on the other hand, refers to already existing chains of command within an institution (Zhang et al. 2011).

Governance: Refers, in its broadest sense, to the various ways and processes in which social life is coordinated. Therefore, alongside markets, networks and hierarchies, conventional governments are one of the modes in which institutions can be involved in governance, meaning that many heterogeneous actors are involved. Hence, the distinction between state and society has blurred so that new ways of governing are introduced, whether is be beyond the territoriality of the nation-state, or networks between government and other entities, or even by making adaptations to the way governments themselves work. The term governance, however, usually denotes how politics became less about governmental mechanisms of 'command and control', and more about procedures of 'consultation and deliberation', which sometimes favours an increasing presence of market mechanisms (Heywood 2002: 6).

Ignorance: Knowing that the knowledge is limited in a certain area. It increases with every state of new knowledge.

Interdisciplinarity: Combining two or more academic disciplines into one activity, which implies thinking and working across disciplinary boundaries.

Late modernity: The continuation of modernity as it is today, which is characterised by the way we have strongly developed into a global society. This is in contrast with the idea that we instead live in postmodern times and therefore have left modernity. Authors of the risk society theory and reflexive modernisation rather believe that modernity still aptly describes the times we currently live in, despite various technological and social changes that have emerged in late modernity.

Modernity and modernisation: Modernity refers to the contemporary historical period that is characterised by a rejection of tradition, the emergence of individualism, freedom and formal equality; an optimisitic belief in progress on social, scientific and technological levels; rationalisation and professionalization. The period is preceded by medieval feudalism and makes a transition to capitalism and the market economy, accompanied by industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisation; the development of the nation state and its institutions.

Modularity in synthetic biology: The premise that, at the level of nucleic acids, proteins and biochemical pathways, biology can be understood as made out of components that can be functionally separated ans recombined as they possess their own properties regardless of the context that they are put in, much like Lego bricks. In synthetic biology, these modules are made synthetically to fit into a range of different biological circumstances. The principle of modularity helps biological parts to be predictable in their function, making them prone to blackboxing, i.e. not requiring knowledge about how a particular module or biological part has been constructed.

Non-knowing: A type of ignorance with "knowledge about what is not known but taking it into account for future planning" (Gross 2010: 68).

Open-source biology: Collaborative practices in the biological sciences where tools are made freely available to enable new discoveries to spur innovation.

Oversight: Control and surveillance by an external authority, usually the government, in the practices of a certain professional group in society.

Professionalization of synthetic biology: A governance strategy for synthetic biology where regulation is combined with the advantages of self-governance so that scientific progress can occur in agreement with public values. This would mean that the synthetic biology community would be given delimited authority over synthetic biology practices, granted by statutory legislation. Practitioners would therefore have to be licensed in order to practice it. The concept makes an attempt to overcome the seeming dichotomy between a self-governing community of synthetic biologists ('bottom-up') and external regulation imposed by government ('top-down') (Weir and Selgelid).

Reductionism: A philosophical position which analyses and describes a complex phenomenon as representing a simpler or more fundamental level than the intricacies of the system appear to indicate. According to this position, the complexity of a system can thus be reduced to explanations of its individual constituents.

Reflexive modernisation: Process of modernisation that manifest itself in the risk society whereby reform and adaptations of already existing institutions (i.e. politics, science, economy) are essential to accomplish progress. The role of science and technology here is instrumental in re-evaluating such institutions like science itself, as technology is also considered to be the cause of the new hazards in this risk society. Science and technology are thus used in a reflexive manner to manage the risks of technologies developed in the process of modernisation. The adaptations and reforms are hence found in the way science, politics and business operate, thereby generating strategic concepts such as sustainability and precaution with which they can set out a new trajectory. On a political level, this reflexivity has expressed itself through subpolitical forms of non-governmental organisation and new social and environmental movements.

Risk: A situation of uncertainty in which some of the possible outcomes involves an undesirable outcome. In this case, the way a system operates and behaves is well-known so that one can anticipate the outcome and quantify the distribution of risk probabilities. As a result, assessing risk can be calculated objectively and rationally under conditions of controlled uncertainty (Gross 2010: 61).

Risk society: A society increasingly preoccupied with the distribution of (technological) risks, and "dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation itself" (Beck 1992:21). These risks differ from other times because "(1) they are undetectable by direct human sensory perception; (2) they are capable of transcending generations; (3) they exceed the capacity of current mechanisms for compensating victims" (Cohen 1997: 107) a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation itself.

Self-governance and self-regulation: A people or group that is able to autonomously exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any other authority. This bottom-up approach excludes other social actors from controlling future scientific practices, which motivates the criticism that self-governance goes against democratic principles.

Socialisation: The process of learning throughout life in which norms, values, customs and ideologies are inherited and disseminated so that individuals acquire the necessary skills and habits to participate in society. The result is that socialisation makes sure that there is contuinity in the cultural and social configurations of a society.

Sociology: The study of the origins, development, structure, functioning and organisation of social relationships and institutions in society. It is a scientific attempt to understand social agency in order to make (causal) explanations about social order and the effects of and changes in social relationships using empirical research methods and critical analysis.

Subpolitics: Expression of political modernisation where new stakeholders emerge and take on roles of leadership to drive institutional reform. This is especially the case in environmental governance where environmental movements, non-governmental organisations, businesses, and other stakeholders are increasingly present in political decision-making of environmental policy.

Tacit knowledge: Knowledge that is highly implicit when transferring it from one person to another, making it more difficult to acquire this knowledge. It cannot just be learned by written or verbal communication, but often requires (intensive) practice and/or talent. In the case of synthetic biology, it usually requires years of training to use a certain skill to complete a complex task in molecular biology or biotechnology. Because of the deskilling trend, the necessary tacit knowledge is considerably reduced making it more accessible for non-experts.

Technologies of hubris: The over-reliance on science and technology in the innovation policy agenda where aspects of uncertainty are excluded from analysis. This concept is in contrast with technologies of humility where unforeseeable consequences and social implications are taken into account (Maynard 2008).

Transnationalism: The contemporary evolution of greater interconnectivity between nations of people accompanied by the receding significance of nation states on a economic and social level.

Uncertainty: "A situation in which, given current knowledge, there are multiple possible future outcomes" (Gross 2010: 3).

Upstream: "Public participation before significant research and development has taken place and before establishment of firm public attitudes or social representations about an issue" (Pidgeon and Rogers-Hayden 2007)