Science, Policy & Social Inequity Workshop

Papers

Abstracts and Papers will be posted here as they are submitted

"Forms of Participation in Forecast Dissemination & Use"

Kenneth Broad & Nicole Peterson

*Please contact Kenneth at k.broad@miami.edu for a copy of the paper.

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss the benefits and limitations of communicating climate information to varied decision-makers through participatory processes, which include group discussions and joint decisions about the forecast and its implications. We ask how participation might be understood as very different processes for various individuals, and how this affects the dissemination and use of climate information. Participation has been studied extensively in studies of natural resource management, and we consider their insights in discussing the possibilities and constraints – with a focus on equity - of applying a participatory framework to forecast dissemination.

Participatory processes in natural resource management have evolved over time from initial interests in community compliance to more elaborate recommendations which recognize multiple perspectives and unequal power structures. However, in reviewing the literature on participation, we find that most studies share several underlying assumptions about what participation looks like, including attendance at formal meetings, speaking roles, and contribution to final decisions. Comparing these characterizations to ethnographic data gathered in several locations, we suggest that multiple social processes are often occurring simultaneously and that these may conceal participation. To understand the range of involvement, we need to look beyond formal meetings and explicit statements valued by non-governmental organizations and academics to catalogue the entire range of activities that both support and undermine participatory resource management.

Paper Available: "Can Science Serve Social Justice? The Consequences of Cutting Relevant Social Groups Out of Science and Technology Policy"

Nancy Campbell

Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to bring about a convergence between those who think well about social reproduction and the gendered division of labor, and those who ask why we have the sciences—and the scientists—we do. This paper replies most directly to the workshop’s goal of locating the sources of inequity that are inherent in the social organization, behavior, and outputs of the R&D enterprise. Processes of social reproduction—the reproduction of social structures stratified along axes of socioeconomic class, gender, racial-ethnic formation, and sexuality—determine not only the social structure of technoscience but the questions considered relevant within it and the outcomes that emerge from it. Yet those who study social reproduction mainly inhabit educational policy and feminist economics, ranging far afield from those who think about science and technology policy, even those who call for its “democratization.” Reasonable explanations for gender and race differentials in technoscientific social worlds range from childhood socialization to structural patterns to the cultural manifestations of the “hidden curriculum.” However, these explanations beg the question of the continued social organization of technoscientific enterprises in ways that “cut out” relevant groups whose work might meaningfully redirect research trajectories. The social organization of scientific workplaces serves also to “cut off” scientists from those whose problems they are trying to solve. These relatively silent but “implicated actors” haunt the corridors of the R&D enterprise. Until relevant social groups can meaningfully participate in research priority setting and have a say in guiding research trajectories, it is likely that science will serve social justice ends only where they are commercially compelling.

Paper Available: "How Much Justice Can Technology Afford?The Impact of Scientific and Technological Developments on Equal (Criminal) Justice"

Simon Cole

Abstract:  Criminal justice systems have been famously inequitable, tolerating obvious discrepancies in outcome that appear to result from unequal access to resources. At the same time, the systems’ tolerance for inequality has limits; the right to counsel, for example, constitute a sort of minimal “safety net” that mitigates the most blatant inequalities. Though striving to avoid techno-enthusiast hyperbole, this paper will begin from the premise that recent scientific and technological developments are poised to wreak significant changes in the delivery of criminal justice in the United States and, indeed, the world and that these changes may indeed mitigate – or exacerbate – the inequities our criminal justice systems currently tolerate. In this paper, I will focus on rapid recent advances in forensic science, principally but not limited to forensic DNA profiling, and the development of criminal identification – or, as they are increasingly called, criminal intelligence – databases. These development have the potential to significantly “scientize” and “technologize” the pursuit of criminal justice. Conventional policing methods – and budgets – may increasingly give way to white-coated laboratory technicians and “CSIs.” Whether such developments will provide more or less equal justice is a question that has received fairly little serious attention. We live at an interesting historical moment in which the ongoing wave of post-conviction DNA exonerations symbolizes the use of science to mitigate some of inequities and prejudices of criminal justice as conventionally practiced. At the same time, I am hardly the first to observe that this discourse serves to valorize the use of DNA technology in criminal justice, facilitating its use in streamlining the processing of criminal suspects. And yet, the historical record of inequity in the criminal justice system is disturbing enough that even those who tend toward suspicion of science and technology might welcome such a shift. This paper will explore the discourse surrounding these issues and ask whether science and technology can afford more equitable justice.

Paper Available: "The Distributional Ethics of Science and Technology Policies: Exploring Equity, Equality, and Community"

Susan Cozzens

Abstract: The paper will review the options for application of several prominent theories of distributional ethics in science and technology policies. The dominant ethics of the field is utilitarian (we grow the pie; someone else divides it up). Approaches that focus on reduction of poverty are generally Rawlsian (justice as fairness). But communitarian ethical applications are also possible, that is, those that work towards reducing inequality for the sake of sustainable community.

Paper Available: "Popular Technology: Exploring Inequality in the Information Economy"

Virginia Eubanks

Abstract: Engagement with people’s struggles for social equality—such as feminism, civil rights and anti-poverty movements—is what marks critical science and technology studies as divergent from more traditional fields such as the philosophy of science and the history of technology. This engagement enlivens the discipline and increases its social and political relevance by making it possible to engage with normative questions, that is, not just how technology came to be as it is and what it means, but what kinds of technology we should be making. However, I suggest that our understanding of expertise, experience, power, and participation could be significantly enhanced if brought into conversation with the participatory practices -- like popular education and participatory action research -- common in other disciplines and in people’s movements for social change. Engagement with participatory research, education, and design methods allow us to question how that technology should be made, and with whom.

In this paper, I describe the “popular technology” methodology I used in participatory projects with women living in transitional circumstances at the YWCA of Troy-Cohoes in upstate New York. Because it privileges social learning, redistributes the risks and benefits of research, focuses on dissensus rather than consensus procedures, and offers a problem-posing rather than problem-solving orientation, popular technology is particularly well-suited to exploring and developing forms of critical technological citizenship necessary to attain social justice in an age of rapid technological change. In addition, I suggest that attention to “technologies of citizenship” and to our own constitution as researchers is necessary if Science and Technology Studies is to eschew weak, extractive and non-binding forms of participation in favor of more emancipatory and effective approaches to engaged scholarship and practice.

"'Ready-to-Recruit' or 'Ready-to-Consent' Populations?:

Informed Consent and the Limits of Subject Autonomy"

Jill Fisher

*Please contact Jill at jill.a.fisher@asu.edu for a copy of the paper.

Abstract: This paper describes the privatization of pharmaceutical drug development: outsourcing clinical trials to for-profit research centers and physicians' private practices. Based on fieldwork in the United States, this research examines the creation of "ready-to-recruit" populations. The paper's emphasis is on study participants to show how "ready-to-recruit" populations are differentially gendered, raced, and classed. Analyzing who participates in clinical trials reveals that the pharmaceutical industry has taken advantage of disenfranchised populations by offering the poor a source of income and by offering the un(der)insured "access" to the medical establishment. In order to see the problems inherent in the current systems of regulation, social scientists must challenge the prevailing bioethics paradigm that fetishizes the presumed autonomy of individuals.
By way of offering an alternative, this paper proposes a re-conceptualization of informed consent that considers the structural conditions that limit subjects' autonomy in making decisions about their participation in clinical trials.

Paper Available: "ResIST - Researching Inequality through Science and Technology"

Peter Healey

Abstract: In December 2004 the James Martin Institute, along with all other host institutions for the major UK ESRC funded activity, was invited to submit proposals for small grants which would cover the costs of developing proposals for the last call of Priority 7 of the sixth framework programme (FP6). Drawing on a number of existing collaborative links, notably with Susan Cozzens of Georgia Tech and Johann Mouton of Stellenbosch, the Institute submitted a proposal for funds to develop a bid to FP6 on science, technology and inequality. In January 2005 we learned that this pump-priming application had been successful, and so between January and April the ResIST partnership was built and a proposal to the Commission developed.

In September 2005 we learned that the ResIST proposal had been successful and that the Commission was willing to commit €1.3 million to the research over three years. At February 2006 our contract negotiation was completed and the contract is about to be signed. ResIST funding will run from April 2006 – March 2009.

The ResIST partnership consists of Germany (ISI FhG, Karlsruhe), Malta (University of Malta), Mozambique (University of Maputo) , the Netherlands (University of Amsterdam), Norway (NIFU-STEP, Oslo), Portugal (CES, University of Coimbra), South Africa (CREST, Stellenbosch University), Turkey (Ankara Branch of the Middle East Technical University), the United Kingdom (Universities of Oxford and Leeds) and the United States (Georgia Institute of Technology). The James Martin Institute at Oxford is the coordinating institution.

The starting point for ResIST is recent research which has established that S&T do not merely cause or alleviate inequality, but are more profoundly implicated in social relations of distribution and access. The most pervasive and obdurate sources of social distribution are enshrined and entrenched in S&T systems.

ResIST’s objective is to understand processes that contribute to the increase in inequalities through the role of S&T, but also to understand processes that contribute to mitigate inequalities through S&T. The enhanced role of S&T in the global knowledge economy gives such understanding urgency. ResIST will:

    • Analyze how global policy contexts for key S&T processes affect the distribution and      

      redistribution of knowledge resources, and the scope for alternative framings (Work  

      Package [WP] 1 – led by Susan Cozzens of Georgia Tech and Egil Kallerud of NIFU-

      STEP)

    • Identify the features of effective policies and programmes to build S&T human capital

      and institutional capacity in disadvantaged populations and places (WP 2 – led by

      Louise Ackers of Leeds and Johann Mouton of Stellenbosch )

    • Critically assess new initiatives to construct S&T priorities reflecting the needs of the

      disadvantaged, and review current constraints and future opportunities for their full

      realization (WP 3A – led by João Nunes of Coimbra)

    • Map structures of accountability in the distribution of technological risks, and propose

      effective accountability channels to protect the poor from such risks (WP 3B – led by

      Steve Woolgar of Oxford)

    • Model the impact of new research-based technologies on the poor through dynamics

      such as employment, lowering costs, and impact on public services (Work Package 4  

      – led by Susan Cozzens of Georgia Tech and Aris Kaloudis of NIFU STEP)

    • In a horizontal activity, involve policymaker and practitioner stakeholders in three

      representative world regions – in Europe, in Southern Africa and in the Caribbean and

      Latin America - in the process of developing and implementing options identified in the

      Project. In particular we will use the insights developed in WPs 1-4 to test with

      stakeholders the opportunity to develop and apply tools to assess: 1. S&T policy

      options to achieve wider social inclusiveness for developed and developing countries

      and 2. the possible distributional impacts of research programmes.

 "Beyond Tuskegee: Exploring the pitfalls and possibilities of scientific

research with - and for - vulnerable populations"

Paul Hirsch & Barry Bozeman

*Please contact Paul at paul.hirsch@pubpolicy.gatech.edu for a copy of the paper.

Abstract: As we seek to direct more scientific research towards alleviating social inequalities, we must confront an ethical paradox:  when researchers focus their sights on problems disproportionately affecting a particular disadvantaged social group, their methodologies often call for the inclusion of subjects from those same groups.   While this makes sense from the standpoint of research design and social problem solving, it also means that members of vulnerable populations now must face not only the original problem, but also the risks – real or imagined - of serving as “guinea pigs” in research.  In addition to risks to vulnerable subjects, there is also the potential that scientists who might otherwise direct their research towards ameliorating social problems will shy away for fear of legal entanglements or bad press. In this presentation, we argue that ethical research with and for vulnerable populations can best be advanced through increased participation.  The trick with participation, of course, is including the right people in the right way at the right time.  After reviewing current forms of participation in institutionalized human subjects protection, we argue for participation in reviewing and vetting research proposals, via "Participant Review Boards" by groups of persons who are eligible, according to protocols of the research in question, to serve as subjects. This provides a level of legitimacy and face validity that cannot be obtained by current methods of Institutional Review, even with the inclusion of "external representatives."  In making these points, we review a recent science ethics controversy, the KKI/Johns Hopkins lead paint study.

Paper Available: "Equity in Forecasting Climate: Can Science Save the Poor"

Maria Carmen Lemos

Abstract: Recent progress in the science of climate forecasting has encouraged the idea of decisionmaking tools based on the ability of models to predict—in some cases with a lead time of up to a year—seasonal climate variations in different parts of the world. Such models have been particularly salient concerning the effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), especially flooding and drought, in regions historically plagued by these phenomena such as Northern Peru (flooding) and Northeast Brazil (drought). In principle, the ability to forecast climate has the potential to affect decisionmaking in some crucial policy areas such as disaster prevention and relief, agriculture and food security, and water use and management. Armed with climate forecasts, decisionmakers would be able to plan and, rather than react as usual, prevent or mitigate potential negative effects of climate related events. Despite early optimism, recent empirical studies suggest that the capacity of different policy systems to use seasonal climate information in decisionmaking can be constrained by a number of factors such as access to information, communication, and comprehension of probabilistic information, availability of alternative technologies, and in particular, the institutional environment that shapes decisionmaking. One issue especially sidestepped in the literature has been the impact of climate information on issues of equity in resource access and availability to stakeholders. Equity implications of climate information production and use are twofold. First, at the enduser scale, the unequal distribution of knowledge (both in terms of availability and “usability”) can result in power differentials between those with access to the information and those without. Unequal power in this case can result in an advantageous position vis-à-vis the market for specific products (e.g. the ability to play with future markets in agriculture and fisheries) or the upper hand in negotiating for resource allocation (e.g. water management). This is true both in terms of knowledge production (countries and systems with more resources will be able to produce better “customized” information) and use (better-informed systems and users will be able to use information more efficiently). Second, at the policymaking scale, access to climate information can potentially affect equity by improving decisionmaking processes (e.g. by creating better informed decisionmakers) and build adaptive capacity to climate variability and change (e.g. by allocating and distributing resources among regions and systems with differential level of vulnerability). Conversely, the control of climate knowledge by experts can exacerbate technocratic insulation and alienate stakeholders. Finally, investment and reliance in climate technology can entail high opportunity costs for policy systems, especially in less developed countries where resources are limited. Here “technical” fixes may compete for resources with other more effective and equitable—but less politically feasible—policy alternatives to build adaptive capacity to climate variability and change.

Paper Available: "Genetic Admixture, Diabetes and Mexicano/a Ethnicity: How Inequality Gets Into and Out of Genetic Science"

Michael Montoya

Abstract: This paper examines the scientific search for the genetic causes of type 2 diabetes.  Recently, researchers have proposed a single nucleotide based susceptibility profile that purportedly explains an estimated 14% of the cases of diabetes in Mexican Americans.  Using DNA from the US/Mexico border, this complicated model of risk draws upon the Native American ancestry of Mexicanas/os as fundamentally important to the genetic epidemiology of the disease.  By deploying the ideology of admixture and hereditary disease etiology as the rationale for Mexicana/o DNA sampling, instead of the profound poverty and social inequality characteristic of the US/Mexico border region, researchers construct Mexicanas/os as genetic carriers in a manner that places a premium on ethnic purity through claims of Mexicana/o genetic homogeneity.  An anthropologically informed alternative and related policy implications are proposed.

Paper Available: "Poverty, Technology, & Disaster: Building Resilience and Recovery through Diversity"

Steve Rayner

Abstract: On one level, the links between poverty and disaster are intuitive. Many of the world’s poor live in areas subject to disaster, which depletes assets, increases debt burdens, erodes capacity and returns people to poverty. Things are, in reality, more complex. The links between vulnerability, poverty and disaster are conditioned by the degree to which groups have access to institutions and the social and physical technologies on which livelihoods depend. There are “different types of poor people, who follow different strategies in coping with or overcoming their condition.” Furthermore, the poor aren’t always the most vulnerable. Often, the wealthy-poor and middle-class become impoverished when disasters occur. The process of transitioning out of poverty is not smooth: certain stages are more vulnerable than others.

At the bottom there is destitution. People have few strategies to choose between and few resources. At the next level up, people are resource poor but often employ diverse livelihood strategies (migration, wage labor, agriculture). Yet more “wealthy” poor, though commanding more resources, tend to be less diversified as they specialize in trade, crafts or agriculture. Those in the middle class are again able to diversify by accessing insurance and the public sphere. The two “weak points” in the process, therefore, are where resilience – the ability to switch strategies – is lowest: from destitution to survival and from wealthy poor to middle class.

The ability to switch strategies is fundamental to resilience and adaptive capacity. Social, political and economic systems that deny access to physical or institutional technologies reduce the ability to switch strategies and make groups disproportionately vulnerable to extreme events. Vulnerability is also influenced by how technological choices are made. Whether the technology is a system for flood control or an institutional safety net, selection and design depend on whether decision makers are subject to pressure from diverse voices within society. The degree to which diverse voices “can be heard” -- that is the presence of democracy in action – influences whether or not technologies will be accessible to different groups. As a result, the role of disaster as a causal element underlying poverty can only be interpreted within frameworks that address the links between social exclusion, technological choice and institutional pluralism. Our focus is not on “democracy” as a form of government but on the concept of democracy as rooted within pluralistic societies.

The frequency and intensity of disasters are likely to increase with climatic change and the growth of socio-economic activity in vulnerable regions. Strategies that treat post-disaster reconstruction processes as a window of opportunity for developing resilient livelihood and infrastructure systems could contribute to sustained reductions in poverty and vulnerability.

Paper Available: "Is Race-Based Medicine Good for Us?: African-American Perspectives on Race, Biotechnology, and Equality"

Dorothy Roberts

Abstract: The scientific debate about the use of “race” in medical research and pharmaceuticals is occurring in the sociopolitical context of an equally heated contest over colorblind and race-conscious approaches to racial equality.  There is no consensus among African Americans about the significance and utility of race consciousness in medicine for addressing health inequities based on race.  On one hand, some African American scholars, scientists, and advocates have condemned the development as a scientifically flawed and commercially corrupted misuse of biomedical research on health inequities that threatens to reinforce dangerous biological understandings of race.  On the other hand, others have supported racial therapeutics precisely to redress past discrimination and fulfill longstanding demands for science to attend to the health needs of African Americans.  For example, the trial to test the efficacy of BiDil to treat heart failure in African Americans was cosponsored by the Association of Black Cardiologists and supported by the National Medical Association and members of the Black Congressional Caucus.  This paper explores these differing perspectives among African Americans on the relationship between race-based medicine and racial equality.  My purpose is to critically interrogate how the rejection of race as a scientific category is complicated by some African Americans’ support for biotechnologies that incorporate biological definitions of race in the name of racial justice. 

"Power, profit or equity in science and technology? : Voices of the people"

Ramesh Singh

Abstract: Poor and excluded people and communities (and countries) are at the receiving end of science and technology. At best they are consumers of the end product and at worst they are the subjects of experiments. Science is not for the poor, whether in the school or in the shops. The paper captures the voices of the poor and excluded people and others in the civil society working with them. Based on a sample of communities (both of localities and of interest/identity) in Asia and Africa, the paper explores the nature and extent of inequity and how poor and excluded people and community do their best with the crumbs of science and technology they are able to collect from the floor. It is not only the market that keeps citizens- particularly poor and excluded people- out of any conversation about science and technology, the inherent elitism and insulation of the science and technology community too that shuts the poor and excluded people out.

Paper Available: "Which inequality matters?"

Gregor Wolbring

Abstract: Science and technology usage, research and development are human activities which are often articulated in terms of human betterment in general or in terms of better and/or more sustainable health care, better health, more wellness, more efficient health systems and health care delivery in particular.

However intentions, purposes and actions which shape direction, advances and policies regarding science and technology usage, research and development in general and health-focused science and technology usage, research and development in particular embody the perspectives, purposes, prejudice, particular objectives and cultural, economical, ethical, moral, spiritual and political frameworks of different social groups and society at large of any given society in which these human activities take place.

On the one hand science and technology usage, research and development follows social norms, expectations and markets on the other hand science and technology usage, research and development changes and influences the quality of our lives, our perception as to what is a 'good life' and our ability to pursue 'the good life'.

This presentation looks at:

    • the ever increasing ability of science and technology research and development 

      products to modify the appearance and functioning of the human body beyond existing  

      norms and species typical boundaries;
    • the impact of new and emerging technologies on the secular and theological,

      spiritual concept of health, disease, disability, wellbeing;

    • the appearance of a third generation model and determinants of health, disease,        

      disability and well being (transhumanist/enhancement model) which incorporates,   

      condones even supports human performance enhancement beyond species typical  

      boundaries;

    • the impact of the concept of health, disease, disability, wellbeing on the direction of  

      research and development of science and technology;

    • the line drawing between therapy and enhancement in general and therapeutic and

      non therapeutic enhancement in particular;

    • the dynamic around medicalization; and

    • the new field of enhancement medicine.

Paper Available: "Science Policies for Reducing Societal Inequities"

Ned Woodhouse & Dan Sarewitz

Abstract: Major trends in national and global R&D, such as the increasing ratio of private to public investment, the increasing importance of knowledge-intensive innovation in economic growth, and the continued divergence between the research and innovation needs of well-off versus poor people, suggests that a variety of social inequities are closely tied to the organization of the global S&T enterprise.  We thus start with the assumption that, on the whole, science and technology preferentially benefit the more affluent and powerful sectors of society, and therefore that different S&T policies than the ones currently operating could be necessary to redress this imbalance. 

Most fundamentally, we note that there are five general ways in which S&T investments are likely to benefit the less-well-off as much or more than more privileged people:  1)  When research is aimed at specific problems that are disproportionately borne by people who are economically or politically disenfranchised (e.g., diseases of tropical regions); 2) When research is used to create or enhance certain public goods; 3) When continuing innovation leads to reduced prices for goods that are mass consumed, such as food, common appliances, and basic utilities; 4) When continuing innovation leads to reduction of health and environmental risks that are already disproportionately borne by the less-well-of; 5) When innovations create risks, inconveniences, or other problems that are preferentially borne by affluent and powerful sectors of society.

We will consider these five categories in terms of past and existing science policies, and we will present some science policy approaches that could help redress current and anticipated inequities for each of the categories.

Paper Available: "African Traditions Meet the Digital World: How Information Technologies Reinforce Regional and Class Inequalities in West Africa, While Promoting Greater Equity Through an Expansion of Individual Freedom"

G. Pascal Zachary

Abstract: The Internet and mobile telephony are spreading rapidly through tropical Africa, bringing vast pools of information and powers of communication to many millions of people who until recently had never heard a dial tone or written email. These new technologies, while welcome, are reinforcing inequalities in tropical Africa in ways unanticipated by their advocates. Investment in Internet and mobile telephony has turned attention away from two critical, but still undeveloped information technologies, broadcast radio and electricity. Three quarters of tropical Africans live without electricity, for instance, and Africa's failure to master this foundational technology remains the single biggest barrier to equitable development in Africa. In this paper, I examine the African experience with four important technologies, drawing chiefly on the case of Ghana and Cameroon, in order to suggest that the benefits of technological change, while undeniable, remain highly unequal, largely reinforcing existing patterns of inequality and promoting an exodus of talented people from Africa. The paper also will outline new approaches to public policy and support for science and technology that would promote greater fairness and equity in the spread of information technology in Africa.