Team:UCL/Humans/Soci/3

In order to gain a better understanding of the challenges related to the sustainable governance of an emerging technology, and synthetic biology in particular, the study in Sociological Imaginations has focussed extensively on the case study method. The singular nature of this method allows the researcher to isolate a specific instance within its wider context in order to explain how social relationships are interwoven in a specific case. Here we have chosen to take a look at our own team, UCL iGEM 2014, so that we are able to see how this team’s work and environmental discourse is related to broader societal developments. In other words, why does the team choose to do the project that they have chosen to do in the light of the characteristics of the times we currently live in? The topic that is developed here involves the ways in which our environments are under the influence of scientific human practice and technological innovations. These are issues that necessitate questions of sustainability as the environmental implications and discourses surrounding the production and application of knowledge imply that there are positive and negative effects of the latter when it comes to the state of the environment. A case study about sustainability research entails therefore a search for models and practices that appear to pave the way to achieve sustainable outcomes. Furthermore, it also means that the researcher has to be engaged with a topic that requires interdisciplinary interaction and processing data that are potentially unfamiliar to the eye of the social scientist. Nevertheless, sustainability research is ultimately about how the social factor interrelates or manifests itself in relation to other spheres, where a variety of disciplines can have differing perspectives on how a solution might be devised. When making an attempt to explore why iGEM and this team can provide an insight in understanding, and thus enhancing sustainable practice and outcomes, it is key to consider the complex (social) world as something that is unmistakeably beyond our control. Regardless whether the use of multiple variables can keep track of intricate changes, these complexities cannot be definitively reduced to the models of social phenomena we seek to create in the meantime (Evans 2011).

In social scientific research, the case study method is often not made explicit when researchers explore its methodological need because a predetermined case implies that the scope of the research is already a given. However, the motivation to answer a carefully constructed question on a sustainability issue, is juxtaposed with the kind of empirical work of a case study that would suffice to answer that question. Its rigour, scientific validity and appropriate use are therefore especially important when it comes to sustainability research considering that the multiple potentialities of actions, influences and outcomes require the simplicity and particularity of a case to demonstrate the scientific validity of the case in question (Evans 2011). A case study delineates the parameters of the subject in which the researcher is interested but does not disclose how it should be executed. To examine and analyse the UCL iGEM team of students or scientists in the making, it is important to actually look at what they do and say as practitioners of sustainability. Therefore, conducting an ethnographic study of this team can uncover some indications ‘about the ways sustainabilities are created, practiced and held to be true. Or they can tell us how the ‘ideal’ versions of sustainable living fail to take hold in the communities to which they affect’ (Enticott 2011: 39).

The ethnographic method in this case study primarily consists of conducting participant observation as a team of UCL iGEM 2014, in which I, the author of Sociological Imaginations takes part in the case study itself while still maintaining a semi-outsider position. The idea of combining ethnography and participant observation came in first instance from an e-mail conversation with previous contestant Sara Aguiton, from the iGEM Paris 2009 team, who demonstrated the use of this method in the iGEM competition of that year. While she primarily applied it to ethical issues, I have attempted to focus on how to use it for sustainability research (Aguiton 2009). Being a participant of the team entails various channels of observation. The team convenes on an almost daily basis during the summer of 2014, usually in the Biosciences Common Room of UCL, initially handling specific issues of the project on specific days of the week. During the month of June, I attended meetings about two times a week to discuss Human Practice topics as they were the most relevant to my work. When I eventually noticed that the level of saturation was reached in the covered topics and themes, I started focussing more on online presence, primarily to the general public. Media such as Facebook – both internal communication and public communication, Twitter, e-mails and plenty of material on the team’s collective Google Drive folder. In addition to the offline and online ethnographic material, I conducted an extensive focus group with ten members of the team with the support of Alberto.

The qualitative data collected from these previous methods subsequently needs to be subjected to a method of analysis. This research will draw on Maarten Hajer’s (2000) conception of discourse analysis to answer the stated research questions through the lens of an environmental controversy. The issue of how synthetic biology is constructed and understood in relation to solving an environmental problem, in this case the leaching of azo dyes into the environment, has to be discussed by considering the contexts, social practices and contents attributed to the discourse. As a consequence, it will constitute 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). Coherence is here not necessarily seen as a prerequisite to a discourse considering that the complexity and uncertainty of environmental problems usually engender a multitude of possible statements coming from different pockets of knowledge. For instance, synthetic biology for the prevention of azo dye pollution, consists of not only of the dual discourses of innovation versus security, but also of questions regarding its economic and ecological implications, its (bio)ethics, and the sophistication of the technical features (Hajer 2000). For this study, I will consider the UCL iGEM team as an actor that produces a particular discourse within environmental politics. Notwithstanding this specific 'mode of talking', they somehow need to learn to communicate with a wide variety of actors who force them to diversify their discursive practices in order to gain prominence within the iGEM competition. And so this implies that they have to fully engage themselves with their project on a highly 'inter-discursive' level. (Hajer 2000: 46).