Andrew Balmer

Left to their own devices: Post-ELSI, ethical equipment and the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition.

In this article, we evaluate a novel method for post-ELSI (ethical, legal and social implications) collaboration, drawing on ‘human practices’ (HP) to develop a form of reflexive ethical equipment that we termed ‘sociotechnical circuits’. We draw on a case study of working collaboratively in the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) and relate this to the parts-based agenda of synthetic biology. We use qualitative methods to explore the experience of undergraduate students in the Competition, focussing on the 2010 University of Sheffield team. We examine how teams work collaboratively across disciplines to produce novel microorganisms. The Competition involves a HP component and we examine the way in which this has been narrowly defined within the ELSI framework. We argue that this is a much impoverished style of HP when compared with its original articulation as the development of ‘ethical equipment’. Inspired by this more theoretically rich HP framework, we explore the relations established between team members and how these were shaped by the norms, materials and practices of the Competition. We highlight the importance of care in the context of post-ELSI collaborations and report on the implications of our case study for such efforts and for the relation of the social sciences to the life sciences more generally.

Five rules of thumb for post-ELSI interdisciplinary collaborations

In this paper we identify five rules of thumb for interdisciplinary collaboration across the natural and social sciences. We link these to efforts to move away from the ‘ethical, legal and social issues’ framework of interdisciplinarity and towards a post-ELSI collaborative space. It is in trying to open up such a space that we identify the need for: collaborative experimentation, taking risks, collaborative reflexivity, opening-up discussions of unshared goals and neighbourliness.

Synthetic Biology : A Sociology of Changing Practices

This book explores the emergence of a new scientific field, synthetic biology, and the many bold promises its proponents have made to change the future of science, industry and humanity. It explores how people tried to change their practices to bring engineering and biology together and to realise such promises from within their everyday lives

Bacterial cultures: ontologies of bacteria and engineering expertise at the nexus of synthetic biology and water services

In this paper we report on ethnographic work developed over two years, working as social scientists within a project on synthetic biology (SB), which aimed to use engineered bacteria as solutions to water industry problems. We were asked to help solve the ‘barrier to innovation’ by our engineering colleagues who believed that industrial and public ignorance would block their innovations. Instead of orienting around ‘ignorance’ we chose to explore the different ontologies of bacteria that were adopted in the various practices of the many sites involved in the project. We describe our observations in microbiological laboratories and compare them to a waste water treatment facility. Engineers in the lab understand bacteria as controllable but also vulnerable, thus their ability to manipulate and protect bacteria becomes important in their claims to expertise. In contrast, engineers in the water facility understand bacteria as dangerous, but they become skilled in protecting their bodies, make sense of their relation to bacteria through immunological narratives and claim expertise through an olfactory epistemology. Overall, we conclude that the ontologies of ‘engineer’ and ‘bacteria’ are interrelated through context-specific practices. Finally, we argue that this account is instructive for current policy and engagement discussions around SB.

Broadening the debate on creativity and dementia : A critical approach

In recent years there has been a growing interest in person-centred, ‘living well’ approaches to dementia, often taking the form of important efforts to engage people with dementia in a range of creative, arts-based interventions such as dance, drama, music, art and poetry. Such practices have been advanced as socially inclusive activities that help to affirm personhood and redress the biomedical focus on loss and deficit. However, in emphasizing more traditional forms of creativity associated with the arts, more mundane forms of creativity that emerge in everyday life have been overlooked, specifically with regard to how such creativity is used by people living with dementia and by their carers and family members as a way of negotiating changes in their everyday lives. In this paper, we propose a critical approach to understanding such forms of creativity in this context, comprised of six dimensions: everyday creativity; power relations; ways to operationalise creativity; sensory and affective experience; difference; and reciprocity. We point towards the potential of these dimensions to contribute to a reframing of debates around creativity and dementia.

Digital technologies as truth-bearers in health care

In this paper, we explore the idea of digital technologies as truth-bearers in health care and argue that devices like SenseCam, which facilitate reflection and memory recall, have a potentially vital role in healthcare situations when questions of veracity are at stake (e.g., when best interest decisions are being made). We discuss the role of digital technologies as truth-bearers in the context of nursing people with dementia, as this is one area of health care in which the topic of truth-telling has been hotly debated. People with dementia have been excluded from research studies and decisions that affect their lives because they are not regarded as truth-bearers-that is, as being capable of giving truthful accounts of their experiences. Also, considerable research has focused on the ethics of lying to and deceiving people with dementia. Given their increasing prominence in healthcare settings, there has been surprisingly little discussion of what role digital technologies might play in relation to these questions of truth and deception. Drawing on theories from science and technology studies (STS), we explore their possible future role in some of the truth-making processes of health care. In particular, we discuss the potential value of constraints on use of SenseCam to support the accounts of people with dementia as part of their care.

Situating anticipation in everyday life: Using sensory methods to explore public expectations of synthetic biology

Public involvement in technological anticipation is a common feature of contemporary sociotechnical innovation. However, most engagements abstract sociotechnical futures, rather than situating them in the everyday practices in which people are routinely engaged. Recent developments in synthetic biology have established the potential for ‘drop in’ replacements for ingredients in consumer products, particularly in flavour and fragrance markets. This article explains how a sensory methodology can be used to explore citizens’ everyday experiences and how these can be used to ground anticipation of possible sociotechnical futures. The article uses a socio-historical approach to analyse and compare two practice domains – caring for families and hygiene and personal care – to show how biosynthetic futures can disrupt existing relations between people, objects and ideas. The implications for conceptualising publics in synthetic biology and for approaches to public engagement and participation are discussed more broadly.

Investigating interdisciplinary collaboration: theory and practice across disciplines

The editors of Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration contribute to an admittedly rather bloated literature on interdisciplinarity by showcasing empirically rigorous examinations of the acad...

Enacting Ontologies, Failure and Time

In Chapter 1 we made a case for understanding synthetic biology, as we put it, ‘in situ’. By this we meant that what the field is, how people try to do synthetic biology and with what consequences are importantly shaped by the situation in which it is enacted. We highlighted some sensitising themes on every day practices, promises and ontology, arguing that by understanding synthetic biology at the level of everyday practices we might be better equipped to moderate the bold promises made by the field’s core proponents, and to see more clearly how ontologies are reconfigured practically as people try to bring about change.

Synthetic Biology in Situ

1. Quotation from an interview with a project participant. Andy Balmer: You say you’re working on a synthetic biology project. Why do you call it that? Academic Molecular Biologist 1: Why do I call it that? Partly because that is where the idea [for my work] came from. The network I got involved with was badged as a synthetic biology network and the idea came out of that. But it may have equally come out of a network that wasn’t badged as synthetic biology. It would have just been called biotechnology or something in the past. Would we have called it synthetic biology five years ago? Probably not. We would have just said it was a kind of microbial biotechnology approach or something.