Philosophies and Sociologies of Bioethics

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.

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.

The first book to cover both philosophical and sociological work in bioethics

1. Hauke Riesch and Steven Wainwright (editors' introduction): Social identity and interdisciplinarity: some lessons from sociology and philosophy of science.- Part 1: Interdisciplinarity in ethics.- 2. Steven Wainwright: STS & Ethics: Distinction, Boundary Work and the History of Human Geography.- 4. Nathan Emmerich: Rethinking Bioethical Expertise: From a Philosophical to a Social Theoretical Perspective.- Part 2: New theoretical approaches.- 3. Oliver Feeney: Normalising the Enhancement Discourse: Genetics, Social Structures and Moral Generalisations.- 6. Brian Rappert: Meeting in the Missing? A 'Non-' as a Strategic Topic for Conversing the Divides.- 7. Katie Kendig: Scientific practice and the heterogeneous construction of distributed agency.- Part 3: Interdisciplinary research.- 5. Angela M. Filipe: 'Is ADHD real?' or how ethnography might bring sociology and the philosophy of medicine together.- 8. Hauke Riesch: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, public health advice, and the prevention paradox.