A social science project dealing with possibilities of understanding in the Coronavirus crisis

Karen Kastenhofer is a scholar in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and holds a PhD in biology. Her area of work encompasses the reconstruction of (techno)epistemic cultures, the analysis of public controversies and the discussion of potential governance approaches in the realm of the life sciences and biotechnologies.
Born in 1974 in Vienna, Karen Kastenhofer studied biology and human ecology at the Universities of Vienna and Brussels. Since 1999 her focus lies in Science and Technology Studies (University of Vienna; Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Education, IFF). Her doctoral thesis (2005) addresses the epistemic culture of biology.
From 1999 to 2004, Karen Kastenhofer was employed as a researcher at the department for the analysis of culture and science at the IFF (research project “Science as Culture”; academic curricula “Studium Integrale” and “Science Communication” led by R. Fischer and M. Arnold). From 2005 to 2007, she contributed to the research project “Nichtwissenskulturen” at the University of Augsburg (S. Böschen, J. Söntgen, P. Wehling). Since 2007, she has been working in the area “Governance of Controversial Technologies” at the ITA.
In 2010, she was visiting scholar to the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR). In 2011/12 she did research for the project THCL at the University of Hamburg’s BIOGUM (director: R. Kollek). In 2016, she held a guest professorship at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna.
Karen Kastenhofer’s work has been co-funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and the City of Vienna. She is founding member of STS Austria (board member 2015-2020) and editorial board member of TATuP - Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice.
Numerous peer-reviewed papers in international journals, like: Science, Technology, and Human Values; Ecological Economics; Futures; Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research; Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences; Poiesis & Praxis; GAIA; Technological Foresight and Social Change; TATuP - Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice; several edited volumes, book chapters and project reports.
Over past decades, the notion of policy advice in technology assessment (TA) has widened, going beyond traditional advice in the form of expert opinions by adding a broad range of brokerage activities. Concomitantly, the roles of scientific policy advisors have diversified.Based on an empirical study of advisory practices at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, we ask which advisory roles TA practitioners adopt. Our study shows that practitioners take up multiple roles: the decisionist advisor, the deliberative practitioner, the governance facilitator, the engaged academic, and the agenda-setter. These roles vary, inter alia, in the dominant modes of policy advice and the aspired function in politics and society and correlate with specific project and advisory constellations but also with paradigmatic beliefs of TA practitioners. Our analysis further exemplifies how these roles differ in a) the reference to and interpretation of core principles such as scientificity, neutrality and relevance and b) their strategies of managing the boundary between science and politics. Thus, the article goes beyond the mere statement “TA has politics” by illustrating how the politics of TA manifests in distinct ways in different roles of TA practitioners in policy advice.
Systems and synthetic biology both emerged around the turn of this century as labels for new research approaches. Although their disciplinary status as well as their relation to each other is rarely discussed in depth, now and again the idea is invoked that both approaches represent ‘two sides of the same coin’. The following paper focuses on this general notion and compares it with empirical findings concerning the epistemic cultures prevalent in the two contexts. Drawing on interviews with researchers from both fields, on participatory observation in conferences and courses and on documentary analysis, this paper delineates differences and similarities, incompatibilities and blurred boundaries. By reconstructing systems and synthetic biology’s epistemic cultures, this paper argues that they represent two ‘communities of vision’, encompassing heterogeneous practices. Understanding the relation of the respective visions of understanding nature and engineering life is seen as indispensible for the characterisation of (techno)science in more general terms. Depending on the conceptualisation of understanding and construction (or: science and engineering), related practices such as in silico modelling for enhancing understanding or enabling engineering can either be seen as incommensurable or ‘two sides of one coin’.
Systems biology and synthetic biology are said to represent ‘two sides of the same coin,’ with systems biology focussing on understanding and synthetic biology on construction. This notion is based on the implicit assumption that understanding and construction (or science and engineering) are, in themselves, ‘two sides of the same coin.’ Moreover, synthetic biology has been framed as an approach that encompasses understanding as well as control, construction, and creation. In the’ talking’ and ‘doing’ of synthetic biology, one can discern a contemplative, interventionist, constructionist, and creationist stance. It is the aim of this paper to illustrate these stances in detail and to discuss more generally their techno-epistemic and socio-political implications.
Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways.
This paper addresses the new (techno-) sciences’ power “to change the world.” It refers to Bacon’s program to combine “light-bearing” and “fruitbearing” in scientific research and traces this program in current scientific contexts, especially nanotechnoscience and synthetic biology. To allow for a more differentiated analysis, three modes of power are discerned: interventionist, constructionist and creationist power. Against this background, the paper describes the emergence of a late-modern technology that relates to a convergence of biology, physics and engineering as well as a distinct (techno-)science-power constellation. The conclusion calls for a technoscience assessment that goes beyond traditional technology assessment.
Kastenhofer, K., 2011, Risk assessment of emerging technologies and post-normal science. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 36(3), 287-306
Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It comprises not only a focus on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. This paper addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ‘wicked problem situation’, i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such challenges include (a) epistemological problems intrinsic to the task of proving the absence of risk, (b) problems related to the multi-sited production of evidence and the multitude of epistemic cultures involved, (c) the incompatibility of the various implicit objectives and (d) the complex actor constellations, that shape not only the way scientific knowledge is translated into action, but also which kind of knowledge is produced and which experts are listened to. To illustrate and discuss these characteristics, the paper draws on an empirical study of risk research in the fields of agri-biotechnology and telecommunication technology in Germany. It concludes that although some aspects of PNS are already part of current epistemic practices in these fields, a state of ‘functional post-normality’ depends upon a meaningful co-evolution between post-normal science and post-normal governance that has not yet been achieved.
The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields such as ecological economics, human ecology or technology assessment can be interpreted as a logical consequence of striving for new sustainability sciences that address current global, multi-dimensional and multi-scale challenges. They set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere, between scientific analysis and societal action. This papers aims at re-assessing the contribution of established inter-disciplines to sustainable development. Journal articles of ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies are analysed and compared along several proposed features of sustainability science. The results converge in two crucial aspects. (1) Concise societal or political recommendations are not part of present day 'normal science', be it a disciplinary or an explicitly interdisciplinary research context. (2) Participatory exercises are rarely applied as a socio-politically embedded practice, despite a high interest in such exercises as an object of study and discussion.
Systems and synthetic biology can be understood as newly emerging technosciences. Both constitute phenomena shaped by promises and visions, a certain logic and function of labelling, specific forms of social organisation, an embedding in specific regimes of funding and innovation as well as a characteristic matrix of orientations within research practice. This general characterisation of systems and synthetic biology has fundamental consequences for scientific practice, its analysis and its governance
In past technology controversies, aspects such as risk or ethics have played a major role, apart from economic arguments. Public debates on agricultural biotechnology or biomedicine differed in the dominant aspect they addressed, respectively. This article specifies such aspects as discursive frames being tacit agreements over what is relevant and which arguments count. It investigates the role of frames in past debates and the relation between frames and issues relevant for technology governance such as policy advice, public participation and the political legitimation of decisions. For a newly emerging technology such as synthetic biology, the framing of a debate to come is often expected to follow patterns known from previous debates, and to influence governance in a foreseeable way. However, new frames might emerge that could change both the debate on and the governance of emerging technologies.
Die Systembiologie zielt darauf ab, biologische Prozesse und Organismen in ihrer Gesamtheit zu verstehen. Theoretisch und forschungspraktisch werden entsprechende Ansätze seit knapp zwei Jahrzehnten verfolgt. Als Weiterführung der Genomforschung haben sie bereits viele Bereiche der biomedizinischen Forschung durchdrungen. Allerdings ist bisher wenig über die weiterreichende Bedeutung systemorientierter Ansätze für die modernen Lebenswissenschaften bekannt. Auch ihre normativen, sozialen und rechtlichen Implikationen sind weitgehend unerforscht. Dieser Artikel beschreibt Hintergrund, Ziele und Forschungsstrategie eines binationalen Verbundprojekts, das die Systembiologie in Deutschland und Österreich aus Perspektive der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung empirisch untersucht. Partner sind der Forschungsschwerpunkt Biotechnik, Gesellschaft und Umwelt (BIOGUM) der Universität Hamburg und das Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung (ITA) der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien.
This is one of four sections of the Project Report on “Making Perfect Life?”, carried out on behalf of STOA. It describes the framing of the field of Synthetic Biology and its scientific-technological context, describes how particular visions guide the field and flags up streams of development. It investigates the underlying engineering perspective as well as the problem of fulfilling promises, and it defines novelty in the sense of ‘disruptiveness’, providing an overview over major projects in Europe. Ontological and ethical aspects and implications such as risk mitigation, benefit distribution and governance are discussed, as well as conceptualisations of living machines and artificial life.
Inter- und Transdisziplinarität wurden einstmals dem Randbereich wissenschaftlicher Praxis zugerechnet. Heute gelten sie als Normalfall, sowohl im Forschungsbetrieb wie auch in der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung. Beispiele für diesen Wandel finden sich in der Nachhaltigkeits- und Sicherheitsforschung, der Technikfolgenabschätzung und der Kommissionsethik. Der Fokus des Bandes liegt auf der empirischen Untersuchung dieser Praxisfelder aus der Perspektive der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung. Im Vordergrund steht die kritische Analyse aktueller Potenziale und Probleme von Wissenschaft jenseits disziplinärer Grenzen.
This report is embedded in the larger research project ‘Towards a Holistic Conception of Life? Epistemic Presumptions and Socio-Cultural Implications of Systems Biology’, conducted jointly by the Institute of Technology Assessment at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Research Centre for Biotechnology, Society, and the Environment (FSP BIOGUM) at the University of Hamburg.
It gives a first overview of the state of establishment and institutionalisation of systems biology in Austria in 2011. It is based upon a methodical investigation of scientists, institutions, research projects, university courses and publications making use of the term ‘systems biology’ in this national context and puts an emphasis on the completeness and reproducibility of the reported results. The most relevant institutions are enlisted along three categories and shortly characterised.
Overall, the state of establishment of systems biology is much less advanced than in Germany, the United Kingdom or Switzerland. It takes place on a smaller scale and is driven by a more cautious attitude. Also, it takes place in a more diverse and fragmented mode. Only a few, small institutes carry the label in their name and systems biology is (at least as a label) almost absent in university curricula.
The rightful attribution or meaning of the label ‘systems biology’ is not questioned at this point; rather, different configurations of doing systems biology are addressed tentatively by co-authorship analyses, discipline-based categorisations, historical timelines and geographical analyses. Moreover, general problems relating to such an early onwards assessment of the state of a new scientific field are discussed in the introduction.
-> Electromagnetic fields have already been considered a potential health risk with previous generations of mobile radio communication. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified mobile phone radiation as “possibly carcinogenic”. To this day, experts continue to discuss this topic with much controversy. -> 5G, the latest generation of mobile phone networks, promises to transmit larger amounts of data with lower latency. Industry 4.0, augmented reality games or the Internet of things rely on such higher performance. -> The assessment of risks and gaps of knowledge enables precautionary regulation and a prudent approach to 5G
-> Thanks to a new technology, genetic alterations of organisms are now simpler, more precise and quicker than before.
-> Taboos such as human germ line intervention are up for discussion again as are the foundations of how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are regulated.
-> In the future, genetic engineering might become more ubiquitous, which could bear potential for conflict whilst the need to reach political decisions is becoming more urgent.
-> Eine neue Methode macht gentechnische Veränderungen einfacher, präziser und schneller.
-> Tabus wie der Eingriff in die menschliche Keimbahn stehen ebenso zur Debatte wie die Grundlage für die Regulierung von gentechnisch veränderten Organismen.
-> Gentechnik könnte in Zukunft eine viel weitere Verbreitung finden; das birgt Zündstoff und der Druck, politische Entscheidungen zu treffen, wächst.
AutorInnen: Helge Torgersen, Karen Kastenhofer
Tel.: +43 (0)1 515 81-6580
Fax: (+43-1-) 515 81-6570
Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 Vienna
kkast(at)oeaw.ac.at
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