UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies

Playfulness and Collaboration: Reflections on Work between Social Scientists and Synthetic Biologists in Post-ELSI ContextsSpeaker: andrew Balmer (University of Manchester)

Abstract: In this paper I reflect on two years of ethnographic experience in synthetic biology, and on other sociologists’ accounts as developed through the ESRC Seminar Series on Social Science and Synthetic Biology. I am interested in the ways in which social scientists and natural scientists/engineers work together, or fail to do so. In particular, I propose that we need novel theoretical articulations of these collaborative spaces and relations in order to think about the ethics of working together. I develop one theory centred on ‘playfulness’ that highlights the ‘work’ of playing. I argue that orienting ourselves towards playfulness provides one possible mode of discussing collaboration that might help us focus on social dynamics of collaboration and to venture out of the instrumental obsession with the objects of collaborative work. Importantly, it may help refocus some attention on the practices of working together and on self-constitution in these contexts.