Ian Barns

“What Do You Think about Genetic Medicine?” Facilitating Sociable Public Discourse on Developments in the New Genetics:

An important aspect of any meaningful public discussion about developments in gene technology is the provision of opportunities for interested publics to engage in sociable public discourse with other lay people and with experts. This article reports on a series of peer group conversations conducted in late 1996 and early 1997 with sixteen community groups in Perth, Western Australia, interested in gene therapy technology. With the case of cystic fibrosis as a particular focus, and using background resource material as a stimulus for discussion, the participating groups explored a range of value issues arising from the new genetic medicine. This more discursive context enabled participants to express a number of background or life-world concerns about genetic medicine, concerns that are often obscured by the dominant biomedical and bioethical discourses.

Post-fordist people?: Cultural meanings of new technoeconomic systems

Abstract This article applies Langdon Winners concept of technologies as ‘forms of life’ to the task of interpreting the cultural meanings of a (possibly) emerging ‘post-Fordist’ social order. The particular focus of interest is on the kinds of persons and communities that a post-Fordist society might produce. The four writers examined—Morton Schoolman, Stuart Hall, David Harvey and Donna Haraway—reflect a wide diversity of views about the emancipatory potential opened up by a new order resulting from the diffusion of new technologies. Despite their differences, these writers do help us to see the importance of a form of moral discourse which on the one hand takes seriously the significance of technoeconomic changes in shaping human identities, and on the other tries to articulate a vision of human meaning which can shape technological change for just and emancipatory social purposes.

Debating the Theological Implications of New Technologies

In a recent report on focus group discussions of GMOs in Britain, Celia Deane Drummond et al. observed that public anxieties about emerging biotechnologies often reflect concerns that are ultimately theological in nature. Such concerns (whether in relation to biotechnology or other areas of technological development) may be easily dismissed as peripheral or irrelevant to the core secular issues of health, safety, environmental impacts, the politics of commercialization and research integrity. However, I shall argue that theological questions are actually integral to the ongoing development of technology and that there is a need for a public discourse that enables such questions to be articulated and debated.