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STS Circle at Harvard: March 3 (Monday), 2008
Science, Subjectivity, and the Structure of
"Ethical Problems" in the Environmental Health Sciences
Sara Shostak
(Department of Sociology, Brandeis University)
12:15-2:00 p.m. at 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106
Abstract:
Historically, environmental health scientists
worked primarily with animal models and focused
on producing knowledge that would inform the
regulation of chemicals in the ambient
environment (e.g., air, water, soil).
Consequently, neither individual human beings
nor genetically demarcated subpopulations
traditionally have been subjects of
environmental health research. In contrast, as
environmental health scientists increasingly
take up genetic/genomic modes of knowledge
production, they "bring the human in" to
environmental health governance in novel ways.
This paper describes the efforts of
environmental health scientists to use
molecular technologies to focus their research
inside the human body, ascertain human genetic
variations in susceptibility to adverse
outcomes following environmental exposures, and
identify individuals who have sustained DNA
damage as a consequence of exposure to
chemicals in the environment. Each of these
scientific practices and their proposed
applications in biomedical and regulatory
settings instantiates specific notions of the
human subject and its agency, possibilities,
and responsibilities vis-à-vis health and illness.
Many environmental health scientists
believe that these new modes of knowledge
production have "ethical, legal, and social
implications" (ELSI). As has been the case with
other emergent genetic/genomic projects,
scientists and policy makers have turned to
bioethics for help in creating knowledge and
guidelines to govern such
"implications." However, in this paper, I
contend that the limitations in the bioethical
and scientific notions of the human subject
make it difficult to identify or address
adequately the broader social factors that
shape the consequences of molecularization in
the environmental health sciences. In contrast,
I highlight the contribution of approaches
developed in sociology and STS for
investigating the relationships between
scientific knowledge, forms of subjectivity,
and dimensions of the social organization that
structure the "ethical implications" of science.
Biography:
Sara Shostak is Assistant Professor of Sociology
at Brandeis University. Dr. Shostak's research
centers on emerging relationships between
science, medicine, subjectivity and social
organization. Her current book project Defining
Vulnerabilities: Genes, the Environment, and the
Body Politic examines the emergence of
genetic/genomic disciplines in the environmental
health sciences and their consequences for the
wider arena of environmental health in the
United States. Her analysis draws on data from
in-depth qualitative interviews, ethnographic
participant observation, and historical
materials, enabling consideration of the
perspectives of environmental health scientists,
risk assessors, policy makers, and environmental
health and justice activists. Dr. Shostak is
currently working on a study that examines
whether and how genetic information enters into
the experience of having epilepsy or of being
the family member of a person with epilepsy.
Another current project looks at how people make
use of "nature" and "nurture" in their accounts
of inequalities across outcomes such as health,
intelligence, and success in life. Prior to
coming to Brandeis, she was a Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University.
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