Critiques from within. A modest proposal for reclaiming critique for responsible innovation

ABSTRACT

How can critique in responsible innovation (RI) become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations between science, technology and society, at the core of science and technology studies, have led to the development of different repertoires of critique. None of them fitted the configurations in the biomedical practices we came to study. There, biomedical experts presented us with an analysis of the power relations perpetuated through the mainstream practices in their fields and had built socio-material alternatives to the common forms of practicing biomedicine. The paper suggests conceptualising critical observations voiced by experts embedded into socio-material alternatives as ‘critique from within’ yielding collateral goods and bads. Rather than asking how to foster responsibility conditions in RI, the paper suggests modestly reclaiming critique by articulating already existing forms of responsibility practices developed by experts themselves and analysing the ambivalent effects they engender.

KEYWORDS:

• Critique, biomedicine, alternatives, reflexivity, science and technology studies

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our informants for gently, but thoroughly disturbing our research agendas and Tanja Schneider, Giada Danesi, Aline Stehrenberger and Cristina Greuter for comments on, caring and challenging the manuscript. The data collection was carried out in the context of ‘PARED  – Parental Responsibility, Epigenetics and DOHaD’ (Swiss National Science Foundation-SNSF Grant N.162873) and ‘The Vitality of Disease – Quality of Life in the Making’ (ERC-2014-STG-639275-VITAL). The analytical work and writing were funded through two Ambizione projects from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (Grants N.201962 and N.185822).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We build on the definition of R(R)I proposed by von Schomberg as ‘a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of an innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society).’ (Von Schomberg 2013, 19) We are using the acronym R(R)I without any specific commitment to rival definitions of responsible innovation. We consider it the most inclusive version representing both Responsible Innovation and Responsible Research and Innovation.

2 The Kuhnianization and/or Latourization of STS (we owe the formula to Lynch 2012) has been the hallmark of the field for several decades. However, in the last two decades, it has admittedly run out of steam, as Latour deplores in his later work (2004). These radical anti-realist stances fuel too often into strategies to adverse ‘truth’, instead of constituting critique of an idealistic version of science. Thus, Latour's later work is an invitation to re-orient STS critique away from these matters of fact towards so-called matters of concern.

3 Jörg Niewöhner (2015) has distinguished ‘collaborations’, in which the aim is an interdisciplinary shared outcome, from ‘co-laborations’ in which joint, non-teleological epistemic work produces disciplinary reflexivity. In contrast, Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald (2015) have introduced the notion of ‘experimental entanglement’ to emphasize the openness and, thus, excess that engagements with natural scientists hold. For an overview over the debates on interdisciplinarity, STS and critique see Callard and Fitzgerald (2015).

4 Following Swiss regulation, the project did not require any specific ethics approval, besides the validation of a data management plan (approved by the Swiss National Science Foundation).

5 A previous publication by Luca reports more extensively on this bit of fieldwork (Chiapperino 2021). The publication documents how scientists navigate the tension of doing a post-genomic science (i.e. a science that studies openness to the environment and the plasticity of biology) while feeding into problematic individual-oriented representations of body-environment traffic, biology and health.

6 Following Austrian law, an ethics approval was deemed exempt.

7 For a detailed analysis, drawing on a care-in-practice approach, on the ways in which in mundane goings-on in a dialysis unit quality of life is improved, see Mann (2021).

8 We refer to the original publication firstly reporting on these observations (Chiapperino 2021) for considerations about the artificiality and language slippages that belong to the practice of studying complex psychosocial phenomena, such as human stress in the highly artificial and controlled conditions of the behavioural epigenetics lab. For the complex relations between words and practices, see Mann and Mol (2019).

9 This is one definition of ‘reflexivity’ next to many others that have been developed in STS. For a discussion of forms of ‘reflexivity’ in responsible innovations, see Stirling (2006); science and technology studies more generally, see Lynch (2000).

10 The distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘emic’ and ‘etic’, is itself not stable. For an analysis of the relation between the social scientific observer and the world she observes, arguing for attention to the ever-shifting relations between the two, an ‘emetic’ position, see Bruun Jensen (2019).

11 As we are going to explore in the second intermezzo, critique from within crucially adds to the productive and generative affordances of STS scholarship.

12 While Marie Dupont exemplifies how a biomedical expert leading a group in a prestigious institution voices critique, Eva Doblinger, as will become clear in the next section, shows how a practitioner who neither works in a distinguished place nor heads an entire department is equally able to question mainstream practices. How biomedical experts enrol others for the enactment of alternative socio-material practices is, thus, a question to investigate empirically. For an analysis of the case of Eva Doblinger, see Mann (forthcoming).

13 For a kin analysis of (what we call here) the collateral effects of the use of environmental enrichment in the UoS lab, the reader can consult Chiapperino 2021, 61–63.

Additional information

Funding

The analytical work and writing were funded through two Ambizione projects from Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [PZ00P1_201962 and N.185822].

Notes on contributors

Anna Mann

Anna Mann is Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Ambizione Fellow at the Technology Studies Department of the University of St.Gallen. After her PhD thesis on ‘Tasting in Mundane Practices. Ethnographic Interventions in Social Science Theory’ at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. Annemarie Mol, she worked as a PostDoc researcher in the ERC-funded project on ‘The Vitality of Disease – Quality of Life in the Making’ led by Prof. Ayo Wahlberg at the Anthropology Department at Copenhagen University. Currently, Anna leads the project‘(Im-)Possibilities of Letting Life End. An Ethnography of Medical Practices’ (Grant N. 201962). Anna works at the intersection of science and technology studies and medical sociology. Through detailed case studies, her work investigates the emergences, negotiations and enactments of ‘good care’ in medical practice at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Her work, thus, contributes to current debates on care, values and valuation practices, critique, and the medical profession. It has been published in the Nordic Journal or Science and Technology Studies, Ethnos, and HAU.

Luca Chiapperino

Luca Chiapperino is Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Ambizione Lecturer at the STS Lab, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (SSP), University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Following his PhD in ‘Foundations of the Life Sciences and their Ethical Consequences’ at the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM) and the University of Milan (main advisor: Prof. Giuseppe Testa), he co-led several SNSF projects with professors Francesco Panese (UNIL) and Umberto Simeoni (CHUV). He is currently the Principal Investigator of the Ambizione project ‘Constructing the Biosocial: an engaged inquiry into epigenetics and post-genomic biosciences’ (Grant N. 185822). Luca's research interests are situated at the crossroads of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and applied philosophy, a position from which he studies the mutual shaping of the epistemic and socio-political dimensions of biomedical research. His work has appeared in numerous specialised STS and philosophy journals, book collections, as well as in interdisciplinary and life sciences publications.