Our method is based on problematization. Problematization means putting the issue in problem form and identifying it as a problem for politics (cf. Foucault, 1997, 114). It follows Paul Rabinow, who suggested not to take descriptions of a current âsituation as givenâ (cf. Rabinow, 2003, 15ff.), referring to Michel Foucaultâs suggestion to examine discourses using multiple methods and perspectives. Critical normative interactions with stem cell research, undertaken in philosophical epistemology and ethics as well as in empirical Science and Technology Studies (STS), ask and give accounts of both the problematizations that inform which âfactsâ about a science are presumed as given and not spelled out or questioned, as well as focussing the analysis on the power relations in and around stem cell research.
Terminologically, we chose the matrix term not least as a nod to Thomas Kuhnâs âdisciplinary matrixâ, defined in the postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as: âthe entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given communityâ (Kuhn, 2012, 174). Like Kuhn, we explore the constitutional conditions for the development, contents, and constellations of science. But we move beyond looking at science as if it developed largely âinsulatedâ from society (Kuhn, 2012, 163). We widen the term to include analyses of the power relations, with the socio-economic, political, cultural, and epistemic dynamics and forces in stem cell research discourses and practices.
Political governance, funding policies, and organizations of research are comparatively transparent societal conditions shaping science. Furthermore, public funding arguably entails a responsibility put upon science with the aim of benefitting the public good (e.g. European Commission, 2009). The social, economic, and intellectual conditions of science are, we propose, not additions on top of the ârealâ intra-scientific developments. They are an integral part of scientific development. In stem cell research this is particularly readily apparent, given the public debates about the ethical acceptability of hESC (human embryonic stem cell) research still in force in many countries, and the legal and regulatory limitations established to restrict conduct of stem cell clinical trials (Hauskeller, 2017).
Insights articulated in the philosophy and sociology of science followed and expanded on Kuhn, such as the Mode 2 concept by Helga Nowotny and colleagues. Mode 2 conceptualizes science as inextricably interwoven with past and current social practices as well as future plans and expectations, as a complex collaborative endeavour that generates knowledge in the context of application. âScience could no longer be demarcated from the âothersâ of society, culture and more arguably economyâ (Nowotny et al., 2001, 1). Including these dimensions in the study of a science better captures the dynamics we want to highlight, opening up reflective and constructive studies of life science developments. What is missing is a similar inclusivity and subjection of the social sciences and humanities to said analysis of, for example, stem cell research.
The common metaphor âfieldâ, as used widely in the history and philosophy of science, suggests that a research area can be identified through reference to its object or method. The field metaphor suggests that a distinguishable science develops in a logic of its own, driven largely by immanent factors and with definable boundaries. Yet the conduct of research is cross-sectional in and between the life sciences, humanities, and social sciences, not confining itself to integrate into a neat order.
Stem cell science represents itself as unified by the object from which it gets its name: stem cells. Stem cells, however, embody an obscure and transient empirical object. Plus, stem cell research has commonalities with many other life sciences in its methods and social embeddedness. Concerning its methods, stem cell research is not a distinct âfieldâ but a cross section relating to various disciplines with shared routines and knowledge.
Conflicting and mutually re-enforcing engagements between many pre-existing or accompanying developments in social and scientific practices and institutions are often not reflected in the narratives scientists and journals use to explain science. We problematize the marginalization of these influences in order to portray stem cell research as shaped in and by the socio-political and ethical conflicts in society.
The matrix does not require the notion of a field or similar metaphors. It emphasizes that disciplines, institutions, practices, and interests that contribute to the life sciences are shared across life science specialisms. For example, particular applications as well as moral norms and laws apply to genetics, reproductive medicine and stem cell research, which among one another exchange materials and build on one anotherâs laboratory techniques and objects. The matrix is a discontinuous, multi-institutional, and multidisciplinary space of knowledges, interests, norms, and practices. Social, economic, and other conditions are not weighted as secondary to developments in the laboratory and clinic. They are inextricably part of the stem cell science and its objectives, as elements of its matrix. Ethics and philosophy, historical narratives and journalistic accounts, too, are constitutive and representative parts of stem cell science â they are not external to it.
A comprehensive whole of stem cell research cannot be captured because of these open boundaries and the many connections to other practices. The matrix approach opens up and includes interconnecting partial perspectives that can be held to account for their viewpoint and methods. They contribute situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988) to the stem cell discourse, for empirically informed and conceptually reflective ethics and philosophy of science.
The advantage of the matrix approach is that it can conceptualize the epistemic convergence and divergence that characterize recent life sciences (Andersen, 2016). It can recognize and attend to the tensions between plural norms and values in the moral, epistemological, and economic sense (cf. Rajan, 2006; Gottweis et al., 2009; Beltrame and Hauskeller, 2018). In the matrix we find multiple and changing loci of power and gravity. It is in flux, a multi-intersectional web of ways of knowing, doing, laboratory and governance technologies, and modes of evaluation.
The understanding of a problem affects and is affected by normative debates about different kinds of values enmeshed in it. If the object, in this case the stem cell, is itself overdetermined with conflicting value judgements and contentious in society, then commentary and judgement cannot style themselves as from the outside or the margins. Ethicists, too, often take positions implicitly, when and through choosing what they accept to be facts and decide to emphasize, thus privileging one perspective over others. Because the social science, humanities, and media debates also influence the perception and understanding of stem cell research in wider society and even to some extent in science itself, it matters that they are critically aware and reflective in their interactions and judgements. In the matrix, normativity and ethics enter at different points and in diverse ways that normative ethics especially must reflect, in view of its own role. An examination of the multiple factors shaping the development of stem cell research also has a heuristic function for ethics. Many ethical issues in the broadest sense fall into the chasm between different disciplines and tend to be overlooked by common bioethical approaches. Moral norms and values, often implicit in acts that seem not to discuss normativities beyond those directly at stake, reach further and actually build on a whole set of societal premises and conditions as well as material conditions for scientific practice. Complex implicit and explicit values that create conditions for laboratory research or legal discourse, for example, are mobilized and weighted. If certain forms of stem cell research cannot actually come into the clinic via the approved channels of scientific medicine because regulatory hurdles and conditions have aligned to form major obstacles, then research pathways dry up â whilst the unproven use flourishes in private hospitals (see Chapter 2, in this volume; Hauskeller, 2018).
Building on critiques of bioethics (Haimes, 2002; Hedgecoe, 2004; De Vries et al., 2007), the matrix approach provides a reflexive framework for responsible ethical and normative examinations of the life sciences. It can also encompass analyses of their roles in societal power and knowledge dynamics. To advance ethical reflection that can keep pace with the complexity of the tasks, the ethics within and relating to stem cell and adjacent research needs to be considered also in the context of the socio-economic interests, political influences, and value orders, and in the epistemological configurations organizing it.
In what follows we first discuss different ways of representing stem cell science in different disciplines and discourses and examine the implications of these representations for the ongoing critical discussions and ethical reflections. This section develops the matrix perspective by drawing out how it differs from existing approaches of making sense of stem cell research. In step two, we explain briefly how this perspective is illustrated across the book chapters â most of which report findings from analyses of specific practices in stem cell research, some from within, most from without the laboratory.
The chapters in this volume present different aspects within the matrix â some accepting or challenging directly the conventional definition of stem cell research as a field, others studying how the practices employed and produced in this research are adopted, reflected, and used by different professional or academic groups such as lawyers, theologians, patients, or economists. In the matrix of diverse, intersecting elements, biology and medicine are prominent, but they do not feature as the mutually interdependent but epistemically and socially independent producers of the gestalt and trajectory of the research and its uses. What we hope to show is that the conditions in and responses from different parts of society to that research have become constituent parts of its specific configurations and practices in different research projects, different laboratories and clinics, and in different countries. We believe that this characterizes the life sciences more generally, but argue for this perspective especially in relation to stem cell research.
