Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies

Tim Seitz, Design Thinking and the new spirit of capitalism. Sociological consideration on an innovation culture, Transcript, 2017

Paolo Volonté — 2019-01-31

Sarah Pink, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Roxana Morosanu, Val Mitchell and Tracy Bhamra, Making Homes. Ethnography and Design, Bloomsbury, 2017

Alvise Mattozzi — 2019-01-31

Damon Krukowski, The New Analog. Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, MIT Press, 2017

Paolo Magaudda — 2019-01-31

Elisa Giomi and Sveva Magaraggia, Brutal relationships. Gender and violence in media culture, Il Mulino, 2017

Tiziana Piccioni — 2019-01-31

Beyond the Formal Mechanisms of Public Engagement. Communicating Biobanking Research with Other Means

Lorenzo Beltrame — 2019-01-31

In this contribution we explore novel, different ways of promoting public engagement in biomedical research using biobanks. Starting from a discussion about the limits of traditional formal procedures of engaging participants in biobanking activities, the contribution proposes two approaches to public involvement that use the Science Museum as an agora for communicating and representing the complex scientific, societal and ethical issues involved in contemporary biomedical research. The role of museum exhibitions, metaphors and languages of art and theater, as well as other forms of dialogues, are discussed as a way of shaping popular imaginaries about scientific research, in order to complement mechanisms of public engagement with novel forms of stimulating public understanding of scientific research using tissues and genomic data.

Collective Biopolitic. The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Genetic Research

Ibrahim Garba — 2019-01-31

This essay considers issues implicated in biobanking with indigenous peoples, a population increasingly recognized as having a collective right to participation under international law (e.g., the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)). In contrast, prevailing notions of participation within the field of human rights (including the right to health) presuppose an individualist notion of citizenship. This essay compares the indigenous collective right to participation with “molecularized biopower”, the theory that biopolitics in modern democracies is becoming increasingly individualized in an unprecedented way. Using a US biobanking case study, this essay argues that two aspects of the indigenous collective right to participation (i.e., self-determination and the “empowerment” framework), not only counter the claim for a pervasively individualized biopolitics, but also demonstrate the importance of collective rights for indigenous participation in genetic research generally.

Hybrid Zones, Bio-objectification and Microbiota in Human Breast Milk Banking

Carmen Romero-Bachiller — 2019-01-31

This paper critically examines hybridity and complexity in human biobanking, focusing on current forms of human milk banking in Madrid (Spain). We present and analyze three practices where human breast milk is stored and circulated: the “12 de Octubre” human milk bank, set in a neonatology unit and based on altruistic donations; informal human milk sharing among mothers; and drug-development practices that use donated human milk as a source of probiotics. Our analysis show that these practices rely on complex socio-technical assemblages, which are also characterised by hybrid zones and points of intersection between them. By understanding bacteria as a boundary object, we analyze the entanglements, disentanglements and re-entanglements of microbiota in the mechanisms of human milk bio-objectification that each of these biobanking practices entails. The distinctions or confusions between “virtuous” and “wicked” bacteria are part of a complex choreography where political, technical and sociocultural aspects get entangled.

Contours and Constraints of an Autism Genetic Database. Scientific, Social and Digital Species of Biovalue

Jennifer S. Singh — 2019-01-31

This paper examines the scientific, social and digital processes that shape multiple forms of biovalue evident in the development, participation and use of the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC), the largest autism genetic databases in North America. Based on interviews with SSC study participants and investigators, as well as a content analysis of a range of SSC materials, this empirical study makes visible the various contours of biovalue that are entangled between scientists who use this data for autism research, families who donate their blood and medical information to gain access to needed resources, and digital networks of exchange that make hybrid connections between and among these emergent biosocial communities. By examining the production of and interactions between scientific, social and digital forms of biovalue this paper highlights the constraints embedded within this heterogeneous assemblage to offer a critical account of the limits of the SSC and subsequent knowledge production. I contend that while the multi-dimensionality of biovalue built into the fabric of the SSC structure creates various contours of biovalue, it structurally constrains the types of production and knowledge flows that are allowed to be conceived and generated.

Participation in the BioResource. Biobanking and Value in the Changing NHS

David Wyatt — 2019-01-31

The National Institute for Health Research BioResource is not a typical biobank. It banks biological samples and other data, but also volunteer commitment to potential future research participation. Researchers can then, using the BioResource as an intermediary, invite volunteers who meet specific genotypic or phenotypic criteria to participate in studies. Using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with those involved in recruiting new and engaging existing volunteers, this paper explores how participation is understood and cultivated, and how (bio)value is produced in routine BioResource work. We contribute insights into a different configuration of biosocial participation where the engaged individual, as opposed to biological sample, is the site of value. Foregrounding the often ignored work of biobank staff, we demonstrate the iterative and reflexive way value is created and maintained through staff activity, and the different way actors make sense of the site and stability of this value.

Banking on Participation. Exploring the Co-production of Population and Public in Swiss Biobanking

Nolwenn Bühler — 2019-01-31

This paper explores enactments of participation in two Swiss biobanking configurations, a cohort biobank and a general biobank. It sheds light on the role of Personalized Health endeavours, in which biobanks play a crucial role. In order to contribute to the understanding of the role of participation in biomedical research dynamics, the analysis focuses on the processes of co-production of identity and biobanks (Tupasela et al. 2015). It documents the overlaps between the population – providers of biological samples – and the public, the collective who is expected to give its opinion on issues raised by the reconfiguration of the research/healthcare interface. It shows that modalities of participation impact the potential scientific value derived from the biobank’s population, but also that the reconfiguration of the research/healthcare interface at the core of biobanking contributes to the current blooming of discourses and practices of participation. It argues that the forms of collective identity shaped through participation as population and/or public, exceed formal strategies of participatory governance and may play an even more important role in the shaping of biobanking configurations.

“It’s Actually Part of Clinical Care”. Mediating Biobanking Assets in the Entrepreneurial Hospital

Martin French — 2019-01-31

A core aspect of the entrepreneurial hospital is the mobilisation of the means of care beyond care itself. In previous work, we showed how the entrepreneurial hospital uses its unique access to patient populations, whose health needs make them available, in order to facilitate research into therapeutic, diagnostic, or service delivery innovation. It ‘entrepreneurialises’ care, we argued, to meet research needs. What may be less obvious in this process, however, is that research, too, is entrepreneurialised to meet care needs. That is, the entrepreneurial hospital not only constitutes its patient populations and care infrastructure as distinctive assets that serve its entrepreneurial aims, but also positions its entrepreneurial aims as a decisive element in the service of care. This article develops the concept of the entrepreneurial hospital to help theorise biobanking. It foregrounds the views of biobankers – drawing from our ethnographic research and especially our interviews with key-informants (2008-2009) who work in some relation to biobanking in a Canadian province – thereby providing a window onto an important, yet under-examined, set of rationales motivating the entrepreneurial integration of care and research through biobanks.

NoArk (Cover’s Comment)

Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr — 2019-01-31

Assets, Commodities and Biosocialities. Multiple Biovalues in Hybrid Biobanking Practices

Lorenzo Beltrame — 2019-01-31

Biobanks are crucial institutions in the infrastructure of contemporary life sciences. They depend on the participation of donors who give tissues and data. Through their participation, donors can build identities and form biosociality. Biobanks are key sites in the current bioeconomy, that enable the generation of value from those tissues and bioinformation, transformed into assets or commodities. We define biobanks as hybrid zones of heterogeneous practices that blur the boundaries between institutional sectors and ways of producing economic values. On that basis we introduce a novel empirical, realist approach to the analysis of biobanking economies, explaining the different economic and social biovalues that emerge from the practices of valuing and interacting between the researchers, biobank staff and donor participants in specific banking activities. We discuss why STS studies on biobanking should explore the concrete practices through which multiple biovalues as well as biosocialities are produced simultaneously and in configurations of mutual interdependence.