Author Archives: admin

Väitöskirjatutkija haussa: Teknologia, etiikka ja lisääntyminen: kiistanalaisuus normalisaation aikakaudella

Haemme Koneen Säätiön rahoittamaan monitieteiseen hankkeeseen Teknologia, etiikka ja lisääntyminen: kiistanalaisuus normalisaation aikakaudella (Technology, Ethics and Reproduction: Controversy in the Era of Normalisation) väitöskirjatutkijaa neljäksi vuodeksi. Hankeen kotipaikka on Tampereen yliopiston Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta. Hankkeessa tutkitaan lisääntymisteknologioiden etiikkaa: eettistä arviointia, jota tarvitaan lisääntymisteknologioiden hyväksymiseen, sääntelyyn, markkinoistamiseen ja käytön yleistymiseen. Hanke koostuu viidestä alahankkeesta, joissa tarkastellaan erilaisia teknologisia käytäntöjä, joita pidettään vaihtelevasti normalisoituneena osana hoitoja tai eettisesti kyseenalaisina teknologioina. Rekrytoitavan väitöskirjatutkijan tehtävänä on toteuttaa väitöskirjatutkimus etnisten vähemmistöjen lisääntymiseen liittyviä huolia ja lisääntymiseen liittyviä hoitoja käsittelevässä alahankkeessa. Tarkemmin kyse on joko saamelaisten tai romanien lisääntymisterveyden ja -hoidon tutkimisesta etnografisten menetelmien avulla. Väitöskirjatyötä tulee ohjaamaan hankeen johtaja YTT, dosentti Riikka Homanen sekä etnisten vähemmistöjen alahankkeesta vastuussa oleva tohtori Mwenza Blell. Hanke on kansainvälinen, joten sen kielenä on englanti.

Tehtävä alkaa sopimuksen mukaan vuoden 2020 alussa (päivämäärä on joustava).

Väitöskirjatutkijalta edellytetään:

  • Soveltuvaa maisterin tutkintoa (myös maisterin tutkintoa viimeistelevä voi hakea) sosiaalitieteiden tai humanististen tieteiden alalta
  • Kykyä ja motivaatiota itsenäiseen tutkimustyöhön tutkimusprojektissa
  • Kokemusta laadullisesta tutkimuksesta (esim. pro gradu -työssä)
  • Erinomaista Suomen kielen taitoa
  • Vahvaa englannin kielen taitoa
  • Perehtyneisyyttä joihinkin tai kaikkiin seuraavista tutkimusalueista: terveys, terveydenhuolto, lisääntyminen, lisääntymisteknologiat, sukupuolentutkimus, postkolonialistinen/etnisten suhteiden tutkimus, intersektionaalinen tutkimus, tieteen ja teknologian tutkimus, etiikan ja moraalin tutkimus

Lisäksi eduksi katsotaan:

  • Etnografisten ja haastattelumenetelmien tuntemus
  • Kokemus toimimisesta monitieteisissä yhteisöissä
  • Saamentutkimuksen tai (Suomen) romanien tutkimuksen ja kulttuurin/kielen tuntemus

Apuraha

Väitöskirjatutkijalle maksetaan kuukausittain Koneen Säätiön jatko-opiskelijalle määrittämää kuukausiapurahaa 2400 euroa/kk. Lisäksi hankkeessa on varoja tutkimuksen liittyviin muihin kuluihin.

Hakuohjeet

Lähetäthän hakemuksesi Riikka Homaselle, riikka.homanen@tuni.fi. Hakuaika tehtävään päättyy 10.12.2019 klo 23:59 mennessä. Työhaastattelu valituille hakijoille järjestetään 19.12.2019, jos se vain saadaan kaikille sopimaan.

Hakemukseen tulee liittää englanninkieliset (mieluiten pdf-muodossa):

  • CV ja mahdollinen julkaisuluettelo
    • Muut hakemusta tukevat asiakirjat (esim. suositus ohjaajalta tai vastaava, maisterin tutkintotodistus arvosanoineen, jos sellainen on, yms.)
    • Lisäksi toivomme hakemuksen liitteeksi lyhyen suunnitelman (enintään 2 sivua) siitä, miten hakija toteuttaisi laadullisen tutkimuksen, jossa tarkastellaan lisääntymisen ja hedelmällisyyden merkitystä saamelaisten tai Suomen romanien elämissä ja kokemuksissa. Suunnitelmassa pyydämme perustelemaan, mitkä ilmiöt ja kysymykset ovat mahdollisesti relevantteja puhuttaessa lisääntymisestä ja siihen liittyvistä huolista saamelaisten/romanien maailmassa, ja miten hakija tarkastelisi niitä. Entä miksi ja miten hakija ajattelee eettisen arvioinnin olevan yhteiskunnallisesti tärkeää saamelaisten tai Suomen romanien lisääntymiseen liittyvissä kysymyksissä? Lopullisesta asetelmasta päätetään yhdessä valittavan väitöskirjatutkijan ja hankkeen jäsenten kanssa.

Lisätietoja: Riikka Homanen, riikka.homanen@tuni.fi, projektin internet-sivut: https://www.riikkahomanen.net/kone-foundation-project/

Tracing affect in vaccine debates

by Venla Oikkonen, Academy Research Fellow (University of Tampere)

In the decades following World War II, vaccines were widely considered a routine method of preventing illness. Childhood vaccinations appeared to have eradicated infectious diseases that had killed and harmed children during the previous decades. However, since the late 1990s, arguments challenging vaccines have gained considerable media presence in many wealthy and technologically advanced societies. While vaccine skeptics and critics have always existed, British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s claims about a connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism placed the safety and rationale of childhood immunization programs in the public spotlight with a new intensity. Although Wakefield’s claims have been discredited, the idea of the MMR vaccine – and by association other childhood vaccines – as potentially harmful lives on in cultural debates. Recent epidemics of presumably defeated diseases such as measles, mumps and pertussis (whooping cough) in Europe and North America attest to the critically low vaccination rates in many places in the global north.

A number of social scientists have addressed vaccine hesitancy and refusal. For example, Samantha D. Gottlieb (2016) and Jennifer A. Reich (2016) have recently published nuanced ethnographic analyses of the complexities and ambiguities involved in how parents make decisions about vaccines. In Finland, Johanna Nurmi and Pia Vuolanto are currently leading a project titled Health, Knowledge and Expertise which examines the rationales of vaccine skepticism and complementary and alternative medicine. These projects shed important new light on how individuals make decisions about vaccinations within the social, cultural and historical contexts in which they live.

I have just begun a five-year Academy Research Fellow’s project that approaches recent and ongoing vaccine debates from the viewpoint of cultural studies of science. The project is funded by the Academy of Finland and located in Gender Studies at the University of Tampere. Titled Affect and Biotechnological Change: Three Vaccine Debates in Europe, the project positions vaccine skepticism and acceptance within the larger patterns of biotechnological change. It asks how cultural emotions (“affect” in the project title) structure how biotechnologies such as vaccines become contested, rejected or accepted. Instead of focusing on individuals’ experiences or decisions, the project traces how public debates about vaccines invoke and move emotions in culture and society.

The project approaches vaccines as an intersectional phenomenon, that is, as a phenomenon that takes shape through mutually entangled categories of difference such as gender, sexuality, class, age, and ethnicity. For example, immunization programs often assume that some demographic groups (based, for example, on gender, sexuality, age, or immigration history) are in a particularly high risk of contracting or spreading an infectious disease. The project traces the affective underpinnings of this logic across cultural texts. It approaches vaccines as technologies through which boundaries between nations, continents and communities, or between “risky” and “healthy” groups, are drawn and negotiated. Inspired by feminist science and technology studies, the project conceptualizes vaccines as bodily technologies that involve material processes such as the manipulation of inactivated or attenuated viruses, immunological responses triggered by the vaccine, as well as points of contact and possible contagion between bodies perceived as gendered or racialized.

The project centers on three case studies, which each sheds light on different aspects of affect, intersecting differences and biotechnological change. The case studies approach vaccines through analysis of public and popular texts, ranging from bioscientific articles, institutional reports and vaccination policies to media coverage of vaccines, popular blogs and online discussion forums.

I am currently working on the first case study, which focuses on the link between the 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) vaccine Pandemrix and the appearance of narcolepsy among vaccinated children and adolescents in several European countries. I place the case within the larger phenomenon of pandemic preparedness, as well as view it as an event that has shaped public attitudes towards national childhood immunization programs. I explore how cultural emotions surrounding a specific vaccine may change quite dramatically within a few months, and, at the same time, how the 2009 H1N1 virus strain became nevertheless routinized as part of the seasonal influenza vaccine during the following influenza seasons. I ask how culturally circulating emotions around the 2009 H1N1 vaccine emerged through discourses of childhood, disability, and ethnic difference – especially the assumed Mexican origins of the pandemic, and the initial framing of vaccine-associated narcolepsy as a “Nordic” condition.

The second case study focuses on the debates about the potential inclusion of boys into national HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination programs in Europe – currently most European HPV immunization programs cover only girls. The study asks why HPV has been slow to emerge as a vaccine for boys in Europe despite the current licensing of HPV vaccines for use in all genders to protect against a range of conditions including cervical cancer, anal cancer and genital warts. I trace how the debated inclusion of boys in vaccination programs emerges in relation to assumptions of masculinities, queer sexualities, and gendered sexual practices. This focus sheds new light on the role of gendered and heteronormative assumptions about agency and “risky” behavior in cultural responses to a vaccine against a sexually transmitted infection.

My third case study approaches debates about mandatory MMR vaccinations following a number of local measles epidemics across Europe. The study focuses on how ongoing debates about MMR mobilize discourses of immigration and travel within and into Europe. I am particularly interested in how the MMR vaccine has re-emerged as an object of political debate in relation to the movement of people within the EU, on the one hand, and the rise of right-wing anti-immigration populism, on the other. Focusing on debates about measles, travel and migration, I ask how an already affectively charged technology becomes entangled with new cultural emotions that may contradict the earlier ones, and how responsibility and risk become reconfigured as racialized and nationalist issues.

I hope the project may help us understand why vaccines raise particular emotional responses on a collective cultural level. By focusing on issues such as embodiment, agency and diversity, the project provides a useful addition to the public health and economic framework within which vaccination programs are usually envisioned and designed. By theorizing ideas of “risk” and “responsibility” as intersectional issues, the project also highlights the importance of developing nuanced and ethically accountable vaccination campaigns and communication.

You can read more about Venla’s research here: https://research.uta.fi/oikkonen/

 

References:

Samantha D. Gottlieb (2016) Vaccine resistances reconsidered: Vaccine skeptics and the Jenny McCarthy effect. Biosocieties 11(2): 152–174.

Jennifer A. Reich (2016) Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. NYU Press.

Adventures into interdisciplinary research: the strategy of a respectful tourist

Interdisciplinary research saves the world

by Vera Raivola

“Scientists must work together to save the world” a Nature news feature sums up high expectations towards interdisciplinary research. The argument goes, that questions about e.g. health, food, water, climate, are so complex that we need researchers across the spectrum of scientific disciplines to join their forces. Only then can we tackle these so called grand challenges.

Such high expectations seem to be a defining feature of interdisciplinary research (IDR). According to a report from The National Academies, IDR: “…can be one of the most productive and inspiring human pursuits – one that provides a format and connections that lead to new knowledge”.

Also research funding bodies, like the EU commission, take the message about the benefits of IDR seriously. Programmes such as the Horizon2020  fund research that crosses the disciplinary boundaries.  For Academy of Finland,  advancing interdisciplinary research is a science policy objective. Academy’s Strategic funding can only be applied by projects that have three different scientific disciplines represented.

However, despite all this top-down push to deliver successful IDR, crossing disciplinary boundaries does not seem easy for researches. For example, social scientists have often been disenchanted by working in interdisciplinary projects. They felt being partners, but found to be offered a service role.

As a sociologist working in an interdisciplinary PhD project, how to deal with the challenges and promises of IDR is a very pragmatic question. I am interested to know what makes interdisciplinary collaboration something that has added value for researchers participating in it. This made me wonder, are there rules and roles for successful IDR?

Disciplines organise scientific knowledge production and create cultures

First, to find rules for collaboration that happens inter – in between- we need to ask where this place is.

Scientific research is organised by disciplines that form “bodies of specialized knowledge” as The National Academies report describes them. Disciplines are formed by researchers who work together to produce knowledge on their specific scientific object of interest e.g. psychological or biological phenomena. Each of these scientific communities also holds the traditions on how this work should be done, a stock of research methods.

Disciplines have the responsibility to educate and certificate new researchers. Students learn not only the specialized knowledge and methods of their own discipline, but also how to qualify as members of this group.

During research careers, the discipline holds the power to review the value of research, which means it controls the social and personal rewards attached to it. The ownership to the means and ends of legitimate scientific knowledge is what makes disciplines so powerful.

Exploring the interdisciplinary as a respectful tourist

So disciplines are research communities with their own historical belief systems and practises or “epistemic cultures” as Knorr Cetina described them in 1998. Thinking disciplines as cultures, we can see how they provide to people belonging to them with resources, norms, concepts, values and self-identities.

Interdisciplinary collaboration then takes place in somewhere between these familiar spaces provided by disciplinary cultures. I suggest that by entering this space of IDR where we are faced with new cultures as researchers we can apply the role of a respectful scientific tourists.

With the analogy I hope to emphasise the positive risk of adventuring into the unfamiliar and learning about new cultures. It is not that some researchers can remain fixed in their well-trodden territory, but IDR collaboration takes in turns all participants into strange fields.

Like all touristic explorations, interdisciplinary research is expected to take us out of the comfort zone without going too far away. Like tourists, researchers come with different personal limits after which interesting adventurers becomes a panic zone. What fuels the travel is curiosity, not forcing or being converted.

The place for a scientific tourists to aim is the learning zone as Rebecca Freeth argued on her fascinating Tampere STS Symposium presentation “At the edge: Practices to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration” on 15 June, 2018. This is a place to observe the new culture, adjust, compare and pass ideas without fear of losing one’s disciplinary identity.

 The benefits of anthropological mindset

Adopting the viewpoint of a respectful tourist also reminds that IDR is about interaction between different cultures aiming into an innovative dialogue. Because of differences in languages, beliefs and habits, misunderstandings are part of this interactive process.

Negotiating with differences will take energy. As a tourist one lacks relevant competencies to that cultural context. This can make one feel stupid, perhaps lonely, as anyone who has tried to manage life away from home knows. The outsider position challenges the sense of “knowing” and mastery, both likely to feel important to researchers in their normal disciplinary practises.

Intellectually, perceiving myself as a scientific tourist has made it easier to accept my own ignorance on other research disciplines. I have also found my own background in interpretative sociological tradition and in the STS to be useful.

I can assume a role of an anthropologist and focus on the social processes that construct different kinds of epistemic cultures. Being in this role provides me with an analytical distance where it is easier to compare different ways of thinking about science.

Having been educated to think about scientific knowledge as a social construct gives certain flexibility to cross the cultural boundaries. I have learned to take a deep breath before diving into the Natural Science’s jungle of terminology. Instead of trying to understand everything, I focus on following the narrative about a discovery.

Following the storyline and lead characters leads to the treasure; a new technology, a theory or a finding that makes my colleagues from biomedicine excited. This enthusiasm about creating a great story about a discovery is something all researchers share.

Tackling cultural biases

The example of a touristic viewpoint also reveals the potential power conflict in cultural encounters. Tourism has its uncivilized side. Sometimes tourists go purposefully to “arse around” because they see “away” as an opportunity to evade normal moral and social repercussion.

But often we tourists just are lazy and lack reflexivity. Learning gets replaced with colonializing interests; by being/knowing better than “locals” or decidedly exploiting the context to meet our own (superficial) needs. While usually unintended, this is something that I think happens quite often with us scientific tourists, too. For example, I feel to have undermined the craftsmanship and creativity required for designing laboratory experiments.

In scientific life, like in any other section of social reality, combining cultural differences with power differences can feed into negative stereotyping on “us” and “them”. For example, the existing hierarchy between the so-called hard and soft disciplines can invite such thinking.

I often have used these stereotypes, which can seem only neutral and pragmatic. Now I have started to think it unnecessarily contradicts compatible styles of scientific knowledge production. It explicates a hierarchy that undermines the value of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

I have experienced how such labelling can make us who represent SSH communities defensive and shun from otherwise beneficial dialogue with the Natural Sciences. The cost of using these musty terms seem higher than its benefits, so perhaps it would be time to move on.

Rules of respectful interdisciplinary collaboration

These examples show what I think is the most important rule for IDR: respect. As with people from different cultures we scientific tourists should respect that other researchers know their disciplines. They have lived experience and expertise in form of knowledge and skills that we tourists only wish to learn about.

Making respect as the rule of conduct for IDR does not mean taking other disciplines’ knowledge for granted or as sacred. This is against the principle of science that reminds everyone to stay humble towards the fallibility of knowing. Critical thinking and good questions are important tools for all in the learning zone.

So how to put the rule in to practise? Listening and trying to understand each other’s points might be a good start. If every IDR participant has on their turn first an opportunity to tell what they expect from the collaboration and think to bring to the common table, then others can learn to make better questions and suggestions. For me it has been very useful indeed, if sometimes difficult, to hear how these “others” view my research topics and findings.

Sometimes it has been difficult to discuss about research methods with researchers who represent quite different disciplinary traditions.  Constructive and respective criticism is still welcomed, but I feel that criticising might not always be the best starting point for a discussion about such specialized practises. It would be almost like a Swede saying to a Finn that s/he do not know how to use the sauna.

Heading towards great IDR adventures

I have suggested that those who take part in interdisciplinary research collaboration can assume the strategic role of a respectful scientific tourist. This might help to conceive what is special in adventuring into different research fields and epistemic cultures, while holding one’s disciplinary identity.

I find it useful to remember that despite the context, the experience of being a tourist is that of curiosity and clumsiness. Like a tourist in a foreign country, scientific tourists are likely to share an enduring interest in what for “the locals” seem strange relics and may be missing out important cultural nuances. Yet, the treasure hunt of new discoveries, nerdy humour and the pains of academic life can unite interdisciplinary adventurers.

Respecting and trying to understand each other because of cultural differences is the key in successful interdisciplinary collaboration. To make IDR a lucrative option to researchers requires good resources and institutional solutions. For those in their journey to the in-between, I wish compassion, patience and clear signposts.

 

Vera Raivola is a doctoral student and works as a junior researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her PhD project at the Finnish Red Cross Blood Service studies blood donors’ views on donating blood for patients and for biobank research use. You can find her on Twitter, ResearchGate and Linkedin.

A locksmith and a supernova: unlocking the secrets of the ‘universe’

The discovery of a supernova

“What’s that?” the locksmith wondered, peeping through the telescope. He was in his observatory checking his new camera that was attached to the telescope. Somewhere far away some strange activities were occurring in the night skies. He carefully started observing again through his high-powered telescope. The distant star was acting very strange as if in some sort of celestial dance. Then a weird sort of energy emitted from it like a hiccup, and the star exploded like a firecracker. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The locksmith muttered under his breath. It was just unbelievable; he had a feeling of euphoria. It slowly sunk in him he was the witness of a cosmic dance, the one that the global scientific community craved to witness. Victor Buso from Argentina had just watched an astonishing phenomenon: the birth of a supernova.

The birth of a supernova is, in fact, the violent death of a supergiant star. Supergiants are massive stars, thousands of times bigger than the Sun. A supergiant dies when it runs out of fuel, and the star starts collapsing in its inward centre. Positive protons and negative electrons start compressing each other due to high gravity, forcing electrons to penetrate the nucleus and converting the protons and electrons to neutrons. Within a day’s period, the created shockwave spreads outwards in a violent explosion, spreading stardust and matter in its wake. The intensity of a supernova’s explosion is equivalent to 1028-megaton bomb. The explosion jettisons matter and dust at 15,000 to 40,000 km per sec.

Buso’s discovery stepped beyond the explosion of a supernova. In the past, famous astronomers like John Flamsteed, Tycho Brahe or Johannes Kepler have discovered and catalogued supernova in different locations of our galaxy, but Buso is the first person who actually saw live the spectacle of the birthing of the supernova and captured it on his camera. After careful scrutiny, the scientific community reported this event in Nature. It occurred 65 million light-years away in a galaxy called NGC-613. Catalogued on 20th September 2016, Buso, the amateur astronomer, had slipped in the pages of history by presenting the scientific community with some missing pieces to supernovae and the puzzle of the Universe.

The science of a supernova

Humanity has always watched the skies with awe. The night skies are a canvas for myths, divination, fantasies, narratives, arts – and also a canvas for science. This is the final frontier where the mysteries of the origin of life, earth, humans, galaxies and practically everything in the Universe lie. Gaining access to these mysteries and deciphering them is perhaps humanity’s biggest quest for knowledge.

Supernovae explosions are rare. Only three have occurred in our galaxy, the Milky Way. In the 17th century, Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed catalogued a supernova explosion in Cassiopeia A or Cas A in the constellation Cassiopeia. The death of this star occurred 340 years ago, ten thousand light years from Earth. The intensity of the explosion leads to stardust and gas spreading in a circular ring at the speed of 50 million km per hour. Tycho Brahe discovered B Cas supernova in 1572. While Johannes Kepler discovered a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus in 1604.
In addition to history, Buso’s discovery garnered him a place in Nature in collaboration with professional scientists. This collaboration and the associated data-sharing are examples of “citizen science” encouraged by NASA, as proclaimed in the organization’s webpage:

“You do not have to be a scientist, or even have a telescope, to hunt for supernovas. For example, in 2008 a teenager discovered a supernova. Then in January 2011, a 10-year-old girl from Canada discovered a supernova while looking at night sky images on her computer. The images, taken by an amateur astronomer, just happened to include a supernova. With some practice and the right equipment, you could find the next supernova!”

What better example could be that represents the relation between science, technology and society than this? Every data, every calculation, every observation matters. For the Universe is profound. In the ‘known Universe /Observable Universe’ itself there are at least two trillion galaxies. This is a great incentive for future Busos out there! May their tribe increase!

Anuradha Nayak

Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Lapland. Teaches Space Law. Interested in narratives of posthuman philosophy and law, technology, outer space and the  human genome.

References

AC Fabian, ‘A blast from the past’ (2008) 320 Science 1167.

D Castelvecchi, ‘Amateur astronomer catches first glimpses of the birth of a supernova: Images taken in Argentina track earliest stages in stellar explosion.’ Nature (21 February 2018).
<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02331-4?utm_source=twt_nnc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=naturenews&sf182688358=1> accessed 7 April 2018.

‘Explore the remains of a massive supernova’ National Geographic (11 January 2018) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQUMm_wWaCo> accessed 7 April 2018.

G Brumfiel, ‘Supernova mystery solved? : Sooty neutron star could lie at the heart of Cassiopeia A’ Nature (4 November 2009) <http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091104/full/news.2009.1063.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

H Fountain, ‘Two Trillion Galaxies, at the very least’ The New York Times (17 October 2016)
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/two-trillion-galaxies-at-the-very-least.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

‘Supernovae: Learn more about what happens when stars explode.’ National Geographic (21 February 2018).
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/supernovae/ > accessed 7 April 2018.

‘Supernovae’, NASA (6 March 2018) <https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/supernovae2.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

V Parry, ‘Eileen Collins: Space, the final frontier’ The Guardian (1 July 2005)
<https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jul/01/spaceexploration.research> accessed 7 April 2018.

‘What is a supernova?’ NASA (4 September 2013) <https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/featurs/nasa-knows/what-is-a-supernova.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

Annual STS symposium, University of Tampere, 14-15 June – propose a session!

The annual STS symposium of the The Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies will be held first time at the University of Tampere, 14-15 June, under the topic: Ideals and practice of interdisciplinary research.

We welcome presentations and sessions that explore different areas of interdisciplinary research from everyday academic challenges to philosophical considerations of conducting interdisciplinary research.

Keynote speakers:

Jane Calvert, University of Edinburgh, http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/people/academic_staff/calvert_jane

Caterina Marchionni, University of Helsinki, https://sites.google.com/site/caterinamarchionni/home

Jaana Parviainen, University of Tampere, http://www.uta.fi/yky/en/research/tasti/Staff/Parviainen.html

Juha Tuunainen, University of Oulu, http://www.oulu.fi/kauppakorkeakoulu/henkilokunta/tuunainen-juha-0

We would like to invite you to propose a session. CfP will be published in early February. If you want to include your session in CfP, please send your abstract (max. 300 word ) to reetta.muhonen@uta.fi by 31 January. Sessions in English and Finnish are accepted.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to any people you think may be interested in attending this event.

 

Kind regards,

Reetta Muhonen (also on behalf of the organising committee)

Chair of the Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies

Research Center for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, TaSTI

University of Tampere, Finland

 

Population genetics and the making of genetic belonging

Genetic roots are not discovered, they are made. This is the central argument of my book Population Genetics and Belonging, recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. The book is the final outcome of my postdoc project (2011-2016), funded by the Academy of Finland and Kone Foundation, which set out to explore how population genetics has changed ideas of nation, national origins and destinies, and structures of belonging. I had the privilege to finish the book in the interdisciplinary research community of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

Population geneticists study genetic differences within and between populations. Such differences are often invisible, that is, they are molecular variation that doesn’t direct visible physiological characteristics. My project started with a simple observation: population genetics has refashioned the relations between populations in ways that don’t match the idea of nations as clearly defined entities – patterns of genetic variation don’t follow national borders. Yet the ways in which population genetics reached into the past beyond the historical roots of nation-states clearly appealed to those wishing to imagine nations as foundational units of social existence. Understanding this contradiction was the initial motivation for my project: How do national narratives establish nations as rooted in foundational moments of human evolutionary history without ending up dismissing the nation as a recent historical development?

In the course of the project, and through various intellectual detours and dead ends, this question began to take a new shape. While population genetics indeed provided a narrative resource for national imaginaries (which structure enterprises such as national genomic initiatives), it also acted as an important narrative resource for other forms of belonging, such as regional, continental, ethnic and personal belonging.

My book explores tensions and resonances between these alternative forms of belonging. It argues that what makes population genetics appealing is precisely the ambiguity of genetic belonging. This ambiguity arises from the relationality of population genetic knowledge. In population genetics, sameness and difference are not fixed. Sameness and difference are produced through technological choices (such as the use of mitochondrial, Y-chromosome or genome-wide techniques), methodological decisions (such as genetic markers chosen for analysis), and points of comparison (such as genetic databases or cell lines available for analysis).

Population Genetics and Belonging traces how this relationality enables population genetics to become entangled with discourses and practices of national, regional, ethnic and personal belonging from the late 1980s until today. The book focuses on selected case studies, including the theory of Mitochondrial Eve (the most recent common maternal ancestor) in the late 1980s and Y-Chromosome Adam (the most recent common paternal ancestor) in the mid-1990s; the use of DNA analysis in the study of two ancient human remains known as Kennewick Man and Cheddar Man; the ontological multiplicity of roots in commercial genetic ancestry tests; tensions between national and continental genetic belonging in the case of “Finnish genes”; and the uses of genetic ancestry in debates about immigration in contemporary societies. Throughout the book, I argue that the alternative forms of belonging that population genetics has engendered are entangled with ideas of gender, sexuality, race and class, and that the affective structures of genetic belonging reflect those intersecting differences.

I hope that the book helps us make some sense of the complex political, social and cultural implications of population genetic knowledges in contemporary societies.

Link to the book: http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319628806

 

Venla Oikkonen

 

Venla Oikkonen (PhD in Gender Studies, 2010) is Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Her research interests include evolution, genetics, vaccine debates, epidemics, affect and intersectionality. Her first book Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives was published by Routledge in 2013.

 

 

 

Vaikuttavuuden vaatimus ja tutkimustulosten paketointi

Vuonna 2005 Suomen yliopistolainsäädäntöön lisättiin niin sanottu kolmas tehtävä. Tämä vaikuttavuuden vaatimus muotoiltiin laissa vuorovaikutukseksi ympäröivän yhteiskunnan kanssa, jolla tulee edistää elinikäistä oppimista sekä tutkimustulosten että taiteellisen toiminnan vaikuttavuutta. Vaikka terminä kolmas tehtävä on osin harhaanjohtava, on vaikuttavuus yksi keskeisimmistä tavoitteista esimerkiksi tutkimus- ja innovaationeuvoston viimeisimmissä linjauksissa (TIN 2014). Korkeakoulujärjestelmän radikaalin kehittämisen ohella kaksi tärkeintä linjausta ovat tutkimus- ja innovaatiotoiminnan tulosten hyödyntäminen ja vaikuttavuuden edistäminen sekä uusien kasvulähteiden, aineettoman pääoman ja yritystoiminnan vahvistaminen. Nämä linjaukset antavat signaalin siitä, miten vaikuttavuus mielletään. Tutkimuksen tulee tukea taloudellista kasvua ja yritystoimintaa.

Aihetta on viime aikoina sivunnut myös Tuomas Aivelo Kaiken takana on loinen –blogissaan, jossa hän kiinnittää huomiota hallituksen niin sanottuun lippulaivaohjelmaan. Lippulaiva-tutkimuskeskittymien tavoitteena on tutkimuksen yhteiskunnallinen ja taloudellinen vaikuttavuus. Lippulaiva-termi on tutkimuksen kansainvälistymisen työryhmän antia, mutta työryhmän linjauksissa tutkimuksen vaikuttavuus rinnastuu taloudelliseen kasvuun: ”Huippuluokan osaamista tarvitaan, jotta Suomessa voi syntyä uusia innovatiivisia ja menestyviä yrityksiä.” (OKM 2017, 23). Se, että pohdintaa yhteiskunnallisen vaikuttavuuden eri muodoista ja ulottuvuuksista ei käydä, vinouttaa ymmärrystä siitä, mitä tutkimuksen tekeminen pitää sisällään ja minkälaisiin yhteiskunnallisiin kehityskulkuihin tai ongelmiin tutkijat pyrkivät työllään vastaamaan.

Tutkimuksen arviointimalleissa ovat viime aikoina korostuneet vuorovaikutukselliset prosessit. Suuntaus itsessään on perusteltu etenkin kun ajatellaan aloja, joissa vuorovaikutuksen mekanismit liittyvät paikallisiin yhteistoimintamuotoihin sekä sosiaalisten tai yhteiskunnallisten ilmiöiden ymmärtämiseen ilman ensisijaista kaupallista motiivia. Suomessa tällainen ala on esimerkiksi oppimisvaikeuksien tutkimus, joka on kytkeytynyt vahvasti koulujärjestelmän kehittymiseen. Kun suurin osa ikäluokasta osallistui opetukseen, huomattiin, että kaikki eivät koulun vaatimuksista selviä. Nykyään oppimisvaikeuden diagnosointi vaatii sen, että oppilas on saanut riittävän määrän tukiopetusta. Koulusta tulee vaatimustason nousun kautta myös ehdollistava ja altistava tekijä. Näin oppimisvaikeuksilla on sekä kieleen että kouluihin oppimisympäristöinä liittyvä vahva kulttuurinen luonne.

Mitä enemmän ilmiöistä, kuten oppimisvaikeuksista, tiedetään, sitä enemmän niitä myös kategorisoidaan. Tutkijaa voivat kiinnostaa ilmiön synty ja esiintyminen sekä se, miten oppimisvaikeuksia voidaan ennustaa, mutta kysymys kuuluu myös mitä asialle halutaan tehdä. Alan tutkijat, joita olen seurannut väitöskirjassani, näkevät työnsä osana hyvinvointivaltion perinnettä: heidän kehittämänsä diagnostiset menetelmät, oppimismateriaalit ja kuntoutusvälineet halutaan lasten käyttöön mahdollisimman aikaisessa vaiheessa ja maksutta. Koska Suomessa tilanne on hyvä ja oppimisen vaikeuksiin pystytään puuttumaan osana neuvola- ja koulujärjestelmää, ovat tutkijat siirtäneet katseensa globaalille tasolle. Viemällä tutkimukseen perustuvaa oppimispeliä Afrikkaan tutkimusryhmän tavoitteena on lukutaidon lisääminen maailmanlaajuisesti.

Suomessa verovaroin tuettu tutkimus on tutkijoiden mielestä luonnollisesti yhteiskunnan eri toimijoiden käytössä. Näyttäisi siltä, että myös ulkomaille suunnatuissa hankkeissa tutkijat ovat luottaneet enemmän niin sanottuihin perinteisiin vuorovaikutusmuotoihin työssään kuin innostuneet kaupallisten ratkaisujen luomisesta. Tutkijat mainitsivat ristiriidan ns. tuoteajattelun ja tutkimuksen välillä. He kokivat, että heidän työllään on vaikutusta nimenomaan jos sitä ei ”paketoida tuotteeksi”. Tämä ”paketoiminen” tarkoitti heille sitä, että tutkimustyö pysähtyisi, vaikka se ei ole heidän mielestään tutkimuksen luonne. Tutkimusryhmän johtajan mukaan ei ole olemassa tietoa oppimisesta, joka pysähtyisi johonkin pisteeseen, vaan tieto elää jatkuvasti.

Oppimisvaikeuksien tutkimus on esimerkki siitä, miten tutkimuksen yhteiskunnalliset motiivit yhdistyvät tieteen sisäisiin tavoitteisiin ja vuorottelevat näiden kanssa. Lisäksi tutkimusmenetelmien ja –välineiden muovautuminen tutkimuksen edetessä mahdollistaa tutkimuksen tekemisen sekä aineiston keruun uusilla tavoilla. Ymmärryksen lisääminen oppimisvaikeuksista ilmiönä on ollut tutkijoiden työn perusta, johon on vahvasti kuulunut soveltaminen sekä ongelmiin puuttuminen. Puhuminen kolmannesta tehtävästä tutkimuksen ja opetuksen rinnalla irrottaa tutkimuksen vaikuttavuuden helposti omaksi alueekseen, vaikka lähtökohtaisesti tiede ja tutkimus ovat yhteiskunnallista toimintaa ja tutkimuksen motiivit ovat usein yhteiskunnalliseen ongelmanratkaisuun pyrkiviä.

Tässä valossa hallituksen uudet lippulaiva-kaavailut eivät tunnu kovin innovatiivisilta. Niissä ei oteta kantaa vaikuttavuuden muihin kuin taloudellisiin ulottuvuuksiin, puhumattakaan siitä, että keskustelua heräteltäisiin laajemmalti siitä halutaanko julkisella tutkimusrahoituksella mahdollisesti edistää demokratian, terveyden, tasavertaisuuden tai palvelujen saatavuuden arvoja.

 

Terhi Esko

tohtorikoulutettava, Helsingin yliopisto

 

Lähteet:

TIN (2014): Uudistava Suomi: tutkimus- ja innovaatiopolitiikan suunta 2015 – 2020. Tutkimus- ja innovaationeuvosto.

http://80.248.162.139/export/sites/default/OPM/Tiede/tutkimus-_ja_innovaationeuvosto/julkaisut/liitteet/Linjaus2015-2020.pdf

OKM (2017): Yhteistyössä maailman parasta. Korkeakoulutuksen ja tutkimuksen kansainvälisyyden edistämisen linjaukset 2017–2025. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2017:11

http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/79438/okm11.pdf?sequence=3

… And a Flower Blooms

‘Jurassic Park’ the blockbuster movie was one of the technically advanced movies of its time. The story is located in a theme park of dinosaurs long dead resurrected using latest biotechnological advancements. Scientists in this movie locate an amber from the Ice Age, which has a mosquito preserved in it; they extract the DNA of the mosquito and then combine it with frog’s genome to complete the genetic missing links. Thus, with such technology they resurrect dinosaurs ranging from Triceratops to Tyrannosaurs in the present times. [1]

Such ‘bringing back extinct to life’ celluloid fiction turned to reality when scientists in Russia brought back to life a pre-historic flower. While researching in the Siberian Tundra, near the Kolyma River, Russian scientists came across fossilized, squirrel burrows containing variety of seeds including those of the extinct ‘Campion’ plant, which last bloomed in the Pleistocene Age. The team cultivated a cell culture, created permafrost conditions and then implanted it in an artificial biome. The flower bloomed after 32000 years becoming the oldest tissue to live. [2]

Through science, humans have pierced the ‘unbroken’ veil of time. he above resurrection of the past would not have occurred in the absence of technology, for without technological resurrection the Campion plant would have disappeared in the layers of time. Resurrection was only possible because of technological intervention in the fabric of time. Today it is the flower, tomorrow it could be animals and beyond that, humans. If history can be intervened, is there a possibility of a future-story being intervened? The answer is in the assertive although some scientists are skeptical. The reason is that the main characteristic of technology is growth and the possibilities of growth are everywhere, in the present, the past and the future.

However, scientific experiments are not restricted to mere labs. Eventually, they have a spillover effect in the society. Thus, making us re-visualize, re-define the core structure on which the society stands.

 

Anuradha Nayak,

Doctoral Researcher, Faculty of Law, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi.

 

Notes:

[1] Janet Maslin, Screen stars with teeth to spare, (New York Times, June 11, 1993) http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1D71E3DF932A25755C0A965958260

[2] Sharon Levy, Wild flower blooms again after 30000 years on ice: Fruit hoarded by ancient ground squirrels give new life to prehistoric plants, (Nature, Feb 21 2012) http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after-30-000-years-on-ice-1.10069

 

Verenluovuttajien avun monet muodot

Uusia auttamisen tapoja

Vuonna 2015 Suomessa kävi noin 134 000 aikuista luovuttamassa verta Suomen Punaisen Ristin (SPR) Veripalvelussa. Vaikka verituotteiden kysyntä on vähentynyt hoitotekniikan edistyessä, tarvitaan silti yhä päivittäin noin 800 luovuttajaa kattamaan verensiirtojen ja lääkinnän tarpeet potilaiden hoidossa. (SPR Veripalvelun 2015 tiedot www.veripalvelu.fi.)

Suomen lain mukaan verenluovutuksen on oltava vapaaehtoista eikä siitä voi maksaa palkkiota. Ainoastaan pienet eleet kuten kahvi- ja leipätarjoilu ovat sallittuja. Silti joka päivä ihmiset ympäri Suomea, kuten Sanna Pieksämäellä tai Karim Turussa miettivät: ”Käynpä tänään antamassa puoli litraa vertani tuntemattomien avuksi”, ja pistävät toimeksi.  Tuntuukin melkein ihmeeltä, että homma toimii ja verituotteiden puutteilta on Suomessa vältytty jo pitkään.

Hoidon lisäksi verta käytetään lääketieteessä myös tutkimusmateriaalina.  Olisivatko Sanna ja Karim yhtä innostuneita luovuttamaan verinäytteensä biopankille, jos se tulisi mahdolliseksi verenluovutuksen ohessa? Biopankkeihin kerätään ihmisperäisiä kudosnäytteitä, kuten verta sekä näytteisiin liittyvää rekisteri ja -henkilötietoa biolääketieteellisen tutkimuksen tuleviin tarpeisiin. Väitöskirjatutkimuksessani kysyn, voiko biopankkitutkimus tarjota ihmisille uuden tavan auttaa verenluovutuksen rinnalla.

 

Verenluovuttajien monet roolit

Täysin uudesta ilmiöstä ei tällaisten vaihtoehtojen pohdinnassa kuitenkaan ole kyse, vaan verenluovuttajien vapaaehtoisesti antamaa panosta on hyödynnetty lääketieteellisissä tutkimuksissa aikaisemminkin. Tällä hetkellä pääkaupunkiseudulla asuvat verenluovuttajat voivat halutessaan osallistua Veripalvelussa FIN Donor 10 000 sekä GeneRISK (45–64-vuotiaat verenluovuttajat) tutkimushankkeisiin.

Verenluovuttajana voi tukea tiedettä, mainostaa Helsingin yliopiston ja Veripalvelun yhteinen kampanja

“Verenluovuttajana voi tukea tiedettä”, mainostaa Helsingin yliopiston ja Veripalvelun yhteinen kampanja . Kuva julkaistu Helsingin Yliopiston luvalla.

FIN donor 10 000 -hankkeessa osallistujien verinäytteistä selvitetään verenluovutuksen vaikutusta verenluovuttajien rauta-aineenvaihduntaan. Tieto voi auttaa Veripalvelua suojaamaan niitä verenluovuttajia, jotka ovat alttiimpia kärsimään raudan puutteesta. GeneRISK -tutkimukseen osallistuneet saavat tietää arvion omasta geneettisestä riskistään sairastua sydän- ja verisuonitauteihin. Jos GeneRISK osallistujalla huomataan olevan keskimääräistä suurempi perinnöllinen riski saada sydäntauti, lääkäri voisi antaa hänelle erityistä ohjausta elintavoissa tai seurata tilannetta hoidon näkökulmasta.

Nyt kerättävät GeneRISK näyteaineistot tallennetaan tutkittavan suostumuksella THL Biopankkiin. Samalla on alettu pohtia, voisiko tulevaisuudessa olla järkevää perustaa Veripalvelun biopankki, johon kerättäisiin verenluovuttajien verinäytteitä tieteellistä tutkimusta varten? Näin on jo tehty joissain muissa Euroopan maissa, mutta Suomessa mahdollisuus on vasta harkinnan alla.

Taustalla on ajatus, että myös biopankki voisi olla keino auttaa parantamaan ihmisten terveyttä. Vapaaehtoisten olisi Veripalvelussa käydessään helppo antaa halutessaan verinäytteensä myös biopankille ja tällä tavoin kerätty näyteaineisto saataisiin tieteellisen tutkimuksen käyttöön. Biopankkitutkimuksen avulla voitaisiin tehokkaammin kehittää uusia ratkaisuja lisäämään ihmisten hyvinvointia.

Näitä tavoitteita tuskin kovin moni vastustaa. Käytännössä asiat ovat kuitenkaan monimutkaisempia. Erityisesti mahdollisen Veripalvelun biopankin kohdalla on tärkeä miettiä, miten verenluovuttajien kasvava rooli tieteellisessä tutkimuksessa voisi muuttaa verenluovutuksen luonnetta ja sen merkitystä vapaaehtoisille itselleen. Verenluovuttajan näkökulmasta tilanteisiin voi liittyä erilaisia odotuksia tai huolia riippuen siitä pyydetäänkö häneltä verta potilaalle vai biopankkitutkimukselle.

Tilanne mutkistuu ennestään, jos verenluovuttaja voisi saada biopankkitutkimukseen osallistumalla tietoa omasta geeneistään ja siihen liittyvistä perinnöllisistä riskeistä, kuten jo nyt tapahtuu esimerkiksi GeneRISK -hankkeessa. Haluavatko verenluovuttajat tällaista tietoa? Muuttuuko avunannon logiikka jollakin tapaa, jos verenluovuttajasta tulee myös geenitiedon vastaanottaja?

Näihin kysymyksiin tutkimukseni tulee aikanaan tarjoamaan tutkimustietoon perustuvan vastauksen. Luovuttajien näkemysten ymmärtämisellä on käytännön relevanssia, koska kyse on vapaaehtoisista, jotka äänestävät jaloillaan. Pahimmassa tapauksessa tietämättömyys voisi uhata verivalmisteiden saatavuutta sairaanhoidossa. Lisäksi väitöstutkimus avaa uusia näkökulmia vapaaehtoisuuden kriteereiden ja biotieteiden tavoitteiden ympärillä käytyyn keskusteluun laajemminkin.

Teksti: Vera Raivola