Theme Articles: Mujerismo and The Two Kin‐doms: Distinction and Reconciliation

Abstract : The theological ethics underlining mujeristas' theological praxis and Luther's Two Kingdoms doctrine may seem to be contradictory to some. Mujerista theology calls for active engagement in the public sphere. Despite its utilization to the contrary, Luther's Two Kingdoms doctrine calls for that same active engagement of the Christian in civic matters. As a Lutheran Latina, I posit that the theological ethics of mujeristas and Luther's Two Kingdoms are distinct but reconcilable.     

The Historical Effect of Habermas in the Chinese Context: A Case Study of the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

The main purpose of this essay is not to give a full-scale and systematic exploration of the historical process concerning the acceptance of Habermas’ works in the Chinese-spoken world but to examine the historical effect of Habermas in the Chinese-spoken context and try to find a proper way to establish a good relationship between Habermas and the Chinese-spoken world by discussing the introduction, study, and application of Habermas’ most famous work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, by Chinese scholars in recent years. Translated from Xiandai zhexue, 2005:1     

A New Methodology for Reporting the Status of Community Health Improvement in the United States

Objective To assure that Healthy Communities are achieved, a tracking methodology is proposed using four health improvement categories. Methods Counties are classified as having met or not met nine HP2010 mortality targets and as improving or not improving, creating four categories of community health improvement – static, progressing, exemplary, and maintaining. Results Exemplary counties make up 1.7%32.7% of counties, counties have both improved and met the HP2010 target during the period. Across all indicators, a large proportion remains of counties that have neither met the HP2010 target nor improved (33.572.8%). Conclusions Understanding why, how, and in what ways communities move from static to maintaining categories is necessary to guiding every local public health system to community health improvement.     

The UK Hybrid Embryo Controversy: Delegitimising Counterpublics

The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 was revised in 2008 in response to legal challenges, societal changes and clinical advances since 1990. A provision permitting the creation of animal–human hybrid embryos was the subject of an extremely effective public relations (PR) campaign by embryo scientists and other supporters of such experimentation. In response, science correspondents of the ‘serious’ or ‘quality’ press commented favourably on these PR activities; this validation supplemented key messages in their press releases. The approval conferred on attempts to shape public opinion was explicitly contrasted with the public consultation exercise conducted by the UK Department of Health in 2005. Press coverage of the campaign demonstrated asymmetrical framings of the representativeness of public opinion and scientists' accounts of their proposed research. Scientists' views were represented as objective and therefore a legitimate basis for policymaking, in contrast with subjective views of putatively uninformed or opposed publics. Such opponents were cast as a counterpublic. The public interest was limited to evaluating the science on its own terms, thus pre-empting consideration of the possibility that public interests and scientists' interests may not coincide.     

Dis-inviting the Unruly Public

Abstract

Recently, Welsh and Wynne have argued that policy efforts to include ‘the public’ in dialogue about technoscience have been accompanied by a simultaneous rise in control over uninvited publics, particularly protestors. Research with a group of knowledge-based activists in the UK suggests a further category between invited and uninvited. The concept of an ‘unruly public’ functions within the sociotechnical imaginary to disinvite those whose response is unwanted or unpredictable, while still appearing to be engaging with ‘the public’ as a whole. Listening to the unexpected questions of the unruly public may in fact support, rather than hinder, efforts to incorporate social concerns into frameworks for responsible innovation at both national and European levels.     

Shooting Genes,Distributing Credit: Narrating the Development of the Biolistic Gene Gun

Using oral histories with scientists, technology transfer managers and other collaborators who were involved with the development of the biolistic gene gun, I investigate how actors narrate their experiences of technology transfer. The individuals who worked on the gene gun draw on two different interpretive repertoires for describing the innovation process: a ‘localized’ repertoire that highlights defined moments and the conceptual contributions of a few individuals; and a ‘distributed’ repertoire that emphasizes longer time frames, the process of technical implementation and the importance of a network of collaborators. Each of these repertoires identifies a different assemblage of actors as deserving of credit and reward for the development of the gene gun. Examining how scientists employ these modes of describing the innovation process offers a way of thinking about how university inventors negotiate tensions around novel features of academic capitalism, such as personal profit arising from the commercialization of university technologies.     

Collaboration Talk: The Folk Theories of Nano Research

The nano initiative in the US and elsewhere encourages and promotes various forms of multi-stakeholder activities, such as industrial collaborations. Forming part of the discourse of expectations around emerging technologies, collaboration is an important resource holding together different practices of knowledge production. In the conversations between policy and science, collaboration becomes a measurable entity and a measure in itself, figuring in the evaluations of the performance of individual faculty and research centres; however, the policy metaphor of ‘collaboration’ stands for a variety of different forms and shapes of interactions between university and industry. From a discourse analysis perspective, ‘folk theories’ of nano collaboration help to explore the dynamics of the university/industry boundary in the scientific organisational discourse as in a recent series of interactions with scientists, university officials and technology transfer officers in a number of US universities. What does the introduction of the new entity (nano) mean for scientists, and for university practices of technology transfer and commercialisation, in terms of trying to accommodate individual ‘nano’ cases into university regulations and procedures? How are these practices and experiences discussed in terms of collaboration? Assessments of value of collaboration ranged between polarised views, raising questions about occasions, audiences and communities of assessors invoked in the construction of acceptable accounts of nano collaboration. Metaphors and analogies were used to mobilise specific meanings in the discourses of the innovative potential of emerging fields. As such, assessments of the potential of terms pertinent to the emerging discourses, such as collaboration, would be better based on the assumption of shared meanings, not fixed and given, but actively achieved.     

Lost in Translation? The Need for ‘Upstream Engagement’ with Nanotechnology on Trial

Nowadays, the criticism of the so-called ‘deficit model’ and the need for ‘upstream engagement’ in science and technology are becoming part of the master narratives of public policies in many countries, especially concerning nanotechnology. This may be considered as a major success for STS scholars, whose research results have largely contributed to this change, especially those concerning the GMO controversies. Some STS scholars thus move from a position of distant and critical observers to the role of experts in social engineering or advisers of policy-makers. However, in their enthusiasm concerning the expected benefits of upstream engagement, institutions, TA practitioners and social scientists seem to ignore some important limitations as well as the implicit framing assumptions of the concept. Based on an experience made by a group of social scientists in the Grenoble area—one of the major ‘nanodistricts’ in Europe—our paper shows that the ‘upstream engagement’ concept is still embedded in a linear model of innovation and is not very useful to anyone pursuing the co-production of innovations. It is especially true when socio-technical networks are already aligned by powerful actors and a worldwide agenda as in the case of nanotechnology. In order to give an opportunity for public engagement to have a larger impact on decision-making, we propose an alternative approach, which combines Actor–Network Theory (ANT), as an analytical tool, with the reflexive and ongoing implementation of public participation. Public engagement is probably one of the critical loci where STS scholars must reflect on the articulation between the knowledge they produce and public policies in action.     

A Substantivist Construal of Discourse Ethics

Abstract

This paper presents a substantivist construal of discourse ethics, which claims that we should see our engagement in public deliberation as expressing and elaborating a substantive commitment to basic moral ideas of solidarity, equality, and freedom. This view is different from Habermas’s standard formalist defence of discourse ethics, which attempts to derive the principle of discursive moral justification from primarily non‐moral presuppositions of rational argumentation as such. After explicating the difference between the substantivist and the formalist construal, I defend the former by showing that it is not only intuitively compelling, but also particularly well equipped for addressing four important objections recently levelled against discourse ethics and its political applications (Rawls’s concern that it lacks substantive guidelines, Gunnarsson’s challenge that it has not been proven to be superior to alternative moral conceptions such as utilitarianism, Scanlon’s complaint that it lacks an account of moral motivation, and Galston’s and Young’s worries that it could lead to political practices of cultural imposition). I conclude by pointing out some consequences of the previous discussion for the future of Critical Theory.     

人乳头瘤病毒疫苗带来的伦理问题

人乳头瘤病毒疫苗的问世使宫颈癌的预防进入崭新的时代,自其问世以来便饱受伦理争议.通过分析目前全球医学文献中比较重视和争议的伦理问题,如Gardasil与Cervarix哪种更为有效,能否在发展中国家顺利推广,应当“强制接种”还是“自愿接种”,男性是否应常规接种等.基于伦理学的基本原则,提出正确的宣教是解决的经由之路.