The Co-production of Science, Ethics, and Emotion

TitleThe Co-production of Science, Ethics, and Emotion
Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsPickersgill, Martyn
JournalScience, Technology & Human Values
Volume37
Issue6
Pagination579-603
ISSN0162-2439, 1552-8251
AbstractThe concept of “ethical research” holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a variety of countries. Some commentators have viewed this “new” means of governance positively; others, however, have been resoundingly critical, regarding it as restrictive and ethics bodies and regulations unfit for the task they have been set (or have set themselves). Regardless, it is clear that science today is an “ethical” business. The ways in which formal and informal ethical discourses and practices—what might be called “regimes of normativity”—structure scientific work and the meanings it is ascribed with have, however, been underexplored. This article attends to how science and ethics articulate; how they are, in many ways, co-produced. Exploring these processes of co-production casts into sharp relief the essential emotionality of science; the relationships investigators have with their colleagues, work, and research participants pulse with emotion, potentially shaping in important ways the very kinds of knowledge that laboratories produce.
URLhttp://sth.sagepub.com/content/37/6/579
DOI10.1177/0162243911433057