Philosophies and Sociologies of Bioethics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction: Crossing the Divides

   • Hauke Riesch, Nathan Emmerich, Steven Wainwright

   Pages 1-22

3. Elective Modernism and the Politics of (Bio)Ethical Expertise

   • Nathan Emmerich

   Pages 23-40

4. Grounding Knowledge and Normative Valuation in Agent-Based Action and Scientific Commitment

   • Catherine Kendig

   Pages 41-64

5. Ethics and Citizen Participation in the uBiome Institutional Review Board Debate: Some Reflections on Social and Normative Analyses

   • Lorenzo Del Savio

   Pages 65-75

6. Minding the Gaps: Sensitivities in Pursuing Empirical Ethics

   • Brian Rappert

   Pages 77-91

7. ‘It’s Not Just About Having Babies’: A Socio-bioethical Exploration of Older Women’s Experiences of Making Oncofertility Decisions in Britain

   • Alexis Paton

   Pages 93-105

8. ‘Can Someone Please Decide?’ How the Media Represent the Risk of Drinking During Pregnancy

   • Hauke Riesch

   Pages 107-125

9. The Ethical Framework for the Use of E-Cigarettes

   • Nancy Tamimi

   Pages 127-147

10. Performing Risk & Ethics in Clinicians’ Accounts of Stem Cell Liver Therapies

    • Steven Wainwright, Mike Michael, Clare Williams

    Pages 149-169

11. Outroduction

    • Hauke Riesch, Nathan Emmerich, Steven Wainwright

    Pages 171-173

This book is an interdisciplinary contribution to bioethics, bringing together philosophers, sociologists and Science and Technology Studies researchers as a way of bridging the disciplinary divides that have opened up in the study of bioethics. Each discipline approaches the topic through its own lens providing either normative statements or empirical studies, and the distance between the disciplines is heightened not only by differences in approach, but also disagreements over the values, interpretations and problematics within bioethical research. In order to converse across these divides, this volume includes contributions from several disciplines. The volume examines the sociological issues faced by interdisciplinary research in bioethics, the role of expertise, moral generalisations, distributed agency, and the importance of examining what is not being talked about. Other contributions try to take an interdisciplinary look at a range of specific situations, fetal alcohol syndrome in the media, citizen science, electronic cigarettes and bioethical issues in human geography.

• philosophy of science
• science and bioethics
• sociological approaches in bioethics
• philosophical approaches in bioethics
• social identity
• interdisciplinarity in ethics
• history of human geography
• sts and ethics
• the enhancement discourse
• moral generalisations
• ethnography
• philosophy of medicine
• fetal alcohol syndrome
• the prevention paradox
• biomedical ethics
• empirical bioethics

• Department of Sociology and Communications, Brunel University, London, United Kingdom

  Hauke Riesch

• School of History, Anthropology, Politics and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom

  Nathan Emmerich

• Department of Social & Political Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

  Steven Wainwright

Nathan Emmerich is a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast and at the Institute of Ethics in Dublin City University. In 2017 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at DCU to work on an European Research Project focused on ethics at the end of life. He will shortly be taking up a position in the ANU Medical School. Nathan holds degrees in Philosophy and the History and Philosophy of Science (BA) and Healthcare Ethics (MA) from the University of Leeds. Following an M.Res, his PhD was supervised by a medical sociologist and focused on the ethics education delivered to UK medical students and its relation to broader process of moral socialisation and professional reproduction. Nathan has published a variety of work in and around bioethics. Topics include: end of life issues, organ donation, death, social science research ethics, and the question of (bio)ethical expertise. His work is interdisciplinary and informed by the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, science and technology studies, and the sociology/ anthropology of ethics and morality.

Prof. Wainwright is a qualitative (medical) sociologist with an unusual background in the social, earth and biomedical sciences and in the world outside academia. He worked in intensive care (Charing Cross Hospital, London) and taught intensive care nursing (Royal Free Hospital, London) before joining King’s College London in 1995, where he held posts as Lecturer, Research Fellow, Senior Lecturer and Professor. He worked outside academia for around 15 years between his BSc and his first post as a University Lecturer. For instance, between his Geography degree and my Nurse training, Prof. Wainwright spent two years with the electrical retailer Dixons PLC as a Graduate Management Trainee and Assistant Branch Manager. He joined Brunel University London in 2011 as Professor of Sociology of Science, Health & Culture, and was previously Professor of Sociology of Medicine, Science & the Arts at King’s College London.



After completing a PhD on scientists' views on philosophy of science at University College London, Dr. Riesch worked as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge on the public understanding of risk and energy policy, and more recently at Imperial College London on public understanding of environmental change.

Policies and ethics