Governing proper talk: Governmental bioethics as a social technology to
manage science controversies?
Kathrin Braun, LSE
The paper will explore whether bioethics, or more exactly governmental bioethics,
can be understood as a social technology to manage science controversies. The
term governmental bioethics refers to the range of bodies, discourses and
procedures such as national ethics councils, parliamentary ethics commissions, or
public consultations on “ethical issues”, that are meant to inform and guide political
decision-making with respect to “ethical concerns”. The paper will examine the
emergence and the operating principles of governmental bioethics as one of the most
salient manifestations of a new understanding of science governance.
Theoretically, the paper will draw from governmentality studies and the concept of
reflexive government on the one hand, and the sociology of critique, as presented by
Boltanski and Chiapello in “The New Spirit of Capitalism”, specifically their concept of
neomanagerialism on the other. It considers governmental bioethics as an outcome
of discourses that evolved since the late 1970s and problematized science and
technology and the forms through which they were governed. The paper will discuss
governmental bioethics as a form of reflexive government that grew out of these
problematizations, in particular the problematization of elitist and expertocratic forms
of science governance. In analogy to Boltanski and Chiapello’s concept of
neomangerialist forms of organization, we discuss governmental bioethics as a
neotechnocratic form of governance, integrating elements that originate in the
critique of technocratic science governance. Governmental bioethics emphasises
value pluralism as opposed to claims to universal truth, learning, public participation,
dialogue, the importance of values in contrast to a strict facts-values dichotomy, and
even the need to address emotions and subjectivity. These elements are integrated
in an overarching framework that enables speakers to voice certain concerns but not
others, particularly it forecloses more political debates, if by ‘political’ we mean
debates that address questions of interest, power and not least the fundamental
values that should govern the social order at large. In that sense, we conceptualize
governmental bioethics as neotechnocratic. In contrast to older forms of science
governance, we argue, it is concerned with the management and the organization of
processes rather than with substantial interventions into the development of science
and technology. New procedures in this context, marked by openness, transparency
and participation, can be understood as neotechoncratic technologies of conflict
management and conduct. They do not tell people directly what to think or to do but
advise them in the ways of proper talk, that is the proper way to talk about the issues
at stake which is one that leaves out politics in the above mentioned sense. Rather
than understanding ethics and public participation as per se forming a challenge to
government’s commitments to techno-scientific innovation and national
competitiveness, governmental bioethics serves the stabilization of these
commitments through inclusion, involvement and mobilization. Provided it takes
place within the framework of ‘proper’ ethical talk, ethics and public participation can
be employed to pursue rather than oppose system stability.