recent biomed, conferences, museum and knowledge politics
Do emerging technologies for human enhancement pave the way for a new kind of knowledge governance?
I’ve just read a call for papers to a workshop in Brussels, 6-7 May 2008, organised by the research project ‘Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies: A Social Science Perspective’. The aim of the project –which is funded under EU’s 6th Framework RTD Programme for three years, from April 2006 to March 2009, and is run by a consortium co-ordinated by Nico Stehr at the newly established Zeppelin University – is to study the knowledge production and anticipated social consequences emerging from the nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) field.
The call for workshop papers is interesting, because it raises an issue relevant for understanding the major changes in research and university regulatory frameworks that are taking place these days. Governments all over Europe have gradually restricted academic freedom and imposed new forms of research governance (Denmark is, by the way, one of the most afflicted countries in this respect; see this Danish blog).
There is of course no simple explanation to this historical change in the university system. However, the call for papers suggests that one explanatory factor could in fact be the rise of the NBIC-field:
Knowledge politics delineates the field of activities designed and implemented for the purpose of monitoring, regulating or even controlling the production and application of new knowledge gained through science and technology. Such activities are not new but have gained importance in the course of the 1990s with the rise of biotechnology and life sciences more generally. In view of its promise to enhance human performance through even greater interventions in the body, mind, and environment, converging technologies promises to become another virulent field of knowledge politics. Knowledge politics with respect to converging technologies is evidently one of those fields that is difficult to engage in – even as a researcher – without becoming enthralled in normative argumentation. The argument in favour of knowledge politics is that contemporary (and future) knowledge is intrinsically different from knowledge of earlier times because it will enable us to manipulate not only the human and built environment but also ourselves and fellow human beings. Therefore, new knowledge entails a potential for physical and social engineering that can be neither dismissed nor relayed to ad-hoc regulatory procedures, but rather calls for the development of new processes and tools. (my emphasis)
What Nico Stehr and his colleagues actually say is that emerging NBIC-technologies for human enhancement call for a closer monitoring, regulation and control of the production and application of new knowledge. In other words, the anticipated consequences of nano- and biotechnology is one important driving force behind the new policies for more controllable and managed universities!
I hardly need to say that this perspective also has implications for the way we understand the future role of STM (science, technology and medical) museums. I will have to think about this – will be back a.s.a.p. In the meanwhile comments would be appreciated.
Read more about the workshop here.
21 Dec 2007 Thomas
I think really this is interesting, and I appreciate your bringing up this coupling, Thomas, between the emerging nano-bio-info-cogno field and the new forms of research governance we have seen to such an embarrassing degree in Denmark.
Yet I must admit that I don’t precisely grasp in what sense - to quote the quote - “contemporary (and future) knowledge is intrinsically different from knowledge of earlier times because it will enable us to manipulate (…) ourselves and fellow human beings” - especially in a context of medicine and medico-techniques. Manipulating ourselves and fellow beings have always been a burdensome task of doctors.
Maybe what is lurking here is ideas of posthumanity and the futuristic transhumanist movement?
Best regards,
Claus
“Maybe what is lurking here is ideas of posthumanity and the futuristic transhumanist movement?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking of — see the post of 19 December (”Transhumanism and ‘converging technologies’ …”).
My interpretation is that the medical profession never has — and still isn’t — interested in manipulating the human body in the sense of enhancing it, making it better. Medicine is rather about restoring the body (and the mind) to its ‘normal’ state, in other words to cure pathologies.
Historically, medical doctors have almost always shied away from making humankind ‘better’. This gulf between ‘normalizing’ and ‘making better’ is, I think, the great difference between medicine until recently and the new ‘converging’ biotechnological visions on the other hand. The NSF/Dept of Commerce report Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance (2002) is an indication of how the gulf is narrowing.
Admittedly Nico Stehr and his colleagues are vague about this. Maybe I should ask him to join the discussion?