Dissertation Research: The Co-Production of Knowledge and Legitimacy in Bioethics

这篇论文的研究项目将考察美国当代学术生物伦理学如何在指导生物医学研究和实践的愿望与成为社会上一股制度性合法力量的需要之间取得平衡。自三十年前创立以来，生物伦理在多大程度上使生物医学更具社会责任感？与此同时，生物伦理学在多大程度上已经成为学术和企业生物医学的公关工具？该项目将通过审查生物伦理学家在三个专业领域的活动来调查生物伦理学学术领域的合法性和学术内容的共同产生：建立和促进一个学术生物伦理学单位、生物伦理学专家证人在司法论坛上的证词以及联邦生物伦理学委员会的审议和建议。生物伦理学家将其领域合法化的努力被视为与其他专业人士的竞争和合作，以确定标志性的专业知识，然后将其提供给各种社会客户。将对一个学术生物伦理学单位进行案例研究，以揭示该单位为确保物质资源和组织合法性而做出的努力如何塑造该中心的智力输出，利用该单位的档案文件和对该单位主任、教职员工和研究生的采访。将使用话语分析来探讨生物伦理学家和其他专业人员如何利用生物伦理学案件的法庭程序和国家生物伦理学咨询委员会与人类干细胞研究辩论有关的程序，寻求使其各自的专业知识合法化和受限制。这项关于近期生命伦理学智力和组织基础的社会层面的研究将新兴的生物伦理学社会学的注意力从临床转移到了学术生物伦理学，并突出了生物伦理学和公共政策之间的制度和权力关系。这项研究还将有助于高等教育研究和科学技术研究领域，在这些领域，伦理以及合法性和知识含量之间的关系尚未得到充分探索。该项目的发现将为生物伦理学家在培养具有社会责任感的生物医学科学和技术方面面临的挑战和机遇提供有益的见解。

This dissertation research project will examine how contemporary academic bioethics in the U.S. balances the aspiration to guide biomedical research and practice with the need to become an institutionally legitimate force in society. Since its inception three decades ago, to what extent has bioethics made biomedicine more socially accountable? At the same time, to what extent has bioethics been made into a public-relations tool for academic and corporate biomedicine? This project will investigate the co-production of the legitimacy and intellectual content of the academic field of bioethics by examining theactivities of bioethicists in three professional arenas: the establishment and furtherance of an academic bioethics unit, the testimony of expert bioethics witnesses in the judicial forum, and the deliberations and recommendations of a federal bioethics commission. Bioethicists' efforts to legitimize their field are viewed as competition and collaboration with other professionals to stake out an emblematic expertise, which is then tendered to various societal clients. A case study of an academic bioethics unit will be conducted to reveal how the unit's efforts to secure material resources and organizational legitimacy shapes the center's intellectual output, drawing on the unit's archival documents and interviews with the unit's director, faculty, staff, and graduate students. Discourse analysis will be used to explore how bioethicists and other professionals seek to legitimize and circumscribe their respective expertise, making use of courtroom proceedings in bioethics cases and the proceedings of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission related to the human stem cell research debate. The proposed research on the social aspects of the intellectual and organizational basis of recent bioethics shifts attention in the budding sociology of bioethics from clinical to academic bioethics, and highlights the institutional and power relationships between bioethics and public policy. This study will also contribute to the fields of higher education studies and science and technology studies, where ethics, and the relationship between legitimacy and knowledge content, have not been sufficiently explored. The findings of this project will provide useful insight into the challenges and opportunities bioethicists face in cultivating socially responsible biomedical science and technology.