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Template:Team:UC Berkeley/Notebook/MT anthropological narrative
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Revision as of 05:56, 29 October 2008
Summary:
This year’s UC Berkeley iGEM team includes a human practices component. It is the second Berkeley team to include one, and the 2007 UC Berkeley iGEM team was the first of any to address human practices issues (read Kristin Fuller’s notebook [http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/Kristin_Fuller_Notebook here]). In relation to research being conducted under the banner of synthetic biology, human practices, which is the fourth thrust or branch of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), proposes to:
-PROBLEMATIZE critical domains of human life, such as energy, health, security, and environment.
-RAISE THE QUESTION of the good life (eudaimonia) in contemporary forms.
-CALL FOR COLLABORATION in the recognition of shared problems, stakes, challenges, and evolving norms. [1]
This year’s HP component differs from last year’s in its focus not on a delineated controversial topic but instead on the attempt to facilitate these three proposed goals within multiple problem spaces and venues.
My work focused on these three goals through the following modes of inquiry: (1) situating research done in the lab within a larger cultural context and distinguishing the assumptions on which proposed research and research organization was founded (e.g.: how are standards made, who has the power to change them, and how are habits changed to herald them in?); (2) complicating the terms which give meaning to work in the lab and to other projects under the synthetic biology header in the United States (e.g.: what conditions are established to designate that a rhetorically separated “public” is benefiting from synthetic biology research?); and (3) aiding in the search for an appropriate and effective forum for collaboration between the many actors and stakeholders of synthetic biology (e.g.: seeking a space where discussion about synthetic biology is multi-facetted and unfettered by power structures). To achieve these goals, I became a participant observer of research done in the iGEM lab and maintained a blog ([http://blogs.coe.berkeley.edu/igem linked here]); maintained an on-line lab notebook (“My Notes” in this wiki [linked here]); conducted filmed interviews of many actors of the research and organization; and generated and edited content for, as well as helped conceptually design, the preliminary version of the website Ars Synthetica ([http://www.ars-synthetica.net linked here]) with the purpose of creating an engaging space of education, collaboration, and discussion between those who have an interest in synthetic biology.
Narrative:
References:
[1] Rabinow, Paul and Gaymon Bennett, “Conceptual Addition: From SynBERC through Weber to the Three Modes and Human Practices,” Powerpoint Given in UCB Anthropology 112 Lecture, Fall 2007.
