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- Convenor:
-
Tsung-Yen Tsou
(Virginia Tech)
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- Format:
- Closed Panel
Short Abstract:
Care involves resisting oppression and fostering collective action for policy change. This panel explores care's role in the environment, medicine, and policy, examining reproductive health, transgender medicine, pollution, and bioethics. It highlights care ethics and decolonizes medical knowledge.
Long Abstract:
Care facilitates the normative importance of addressing social challenges in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Feminist STS scholars are working on scaling up care toward institutional change, which involves recognizing race, gender, sexuality, and coloniality (Carrigan and Wylie 2023). In order to resist systems of oppression, care relates to sensing the neglect and committing to seamless actions (de la Bellacasa 2011). Often, the collective action aiming to reify care enables changes in politics and policy. This closed panel explores care, normativity, and their implication in environment, medicine, and policy. As care across multiple domains, our exploration emphasizes the normative implication in medicine and environmental policy. We examine the ethical frameworks of abortion policies in the US, the social shaping of transgender medicine in the context of Western medicine, the environmental ethics of regulating plastic pollution, and the bioethics in the era of the Anthropocene. By thinking through care with the above topics, this panel delves into the normative implications—such as care ethics, decolonizing medical knowledge, and non-human-centered politics.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sehrish Altaf (Virginia Tech)
Short abstract:
To integrate considerations of anthropogenic climate change into bioethics, we need to de-center its humanist approach for the survival of the entire ecology on Earth. I explore the stakes when we move away from this humanist approach in bioethics to make space for a multi-perspective ethics.
Long abstract:
With an increasing demand to consider Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) into bioethics, there are also increasing demands to de-center the human and look at the survival of the entire ecology of the earth (Churchill and Schenk 2021) (Lautensach 2018) (Wardrope 2020). However, the humanist approach in bioethics places humans at the front and center of ethical considerations, and focuses on the survival, both short and long term, of the human species. In this project, I explore the stakes when we move away from this humanist approach in bioethics to make space for environmental justice, more specifically, a space for a multi-perspective ethics that is concerned with the continued existence of all living beings on Earth. This multi-perspective approach aims to re-define bioethics along a more global line of thinking that considers various subjectivities and recognizes all life as the center in this world and imperative for its continued survival. However, this multi-perspective approach risks undoing critical medical care standards within bioethics that are routine for identifying and fighting causes and root problems withing local spheres. As an exploratory study, in this project I also consider what STS brings to this irreconcilable space between environmental justice and medical care ethics, keeping in mind how contemporary bioethics struggles with harnessing justice for more than a specified group of people, while the policies envisioned within bioethics are considered exemplary for much of the rest of the world.
Lyndon Frommer (Virginia Tech)
Short abstract:
Neither the logic of care nor the logic of choice fits into how transgender medicine is practiced, and neither meets transgender people's needs. The current structure used in trans medicine presumes a logic of care when discussing standards of care, but in practice, it follows the logic of choice.
Long abstract:
A turbulent past marks trans medicine, and the full range of the chaos depends on where the discussion is placed in the history of trans medicine. However, in recent years, much of the advocacy and legitimization of transness and trans identities have come out of medicine and science validating and justifying trans identities without reconciling with its checkered past. Moreover, trans people are oftentimes still discriminated against or lack access to care. In this piece, I use Annemarie Mol’s framework from The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice to unpack the current logic in trans medicine to begin a discussion of how to reconstruct trans medicine that not only reconciles with its past but queers the care of trans people or makes trans medicine that is for trans people.
Maggie Morris (Virginia Tech)
Short abstract:
This essay analyzes the ethical frameworks behind the Mississippi Gestational Age Act and Graham’s Proposed Law. These cases provide insight into how personhood is defined in American abortion policies. I then propose a more inclusive policy that considers multiple individual standpoints.
Long abstract:
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the ethical frameworks behind the Mississippi Gestational Age Act and Graham's Proposed Law. Analyzing these frameworks can provide a better understanding of societal pressures and tensions potential mothers face regarding abortion policies. In this essay, I look at two cases that prioritize the fetus over the maternal patient and discuss how personhood is defined. I then propose a more inclusive policy based around a feminist framework that moves away from the current masculine models that value single individual actors often at the expensive of other individual actors. This more inclusive policy follows an ethics of care framework that emphasizes considerations of multiple individual standpoints and the relationship between the mother and fetus.
Tsung-Yen Tsou (Virginia Tech)
Short abstract:
Plastic pollution, generating enduring residues, raises health and environmental concerns. Addressing it demands collective action and a care-centric perspective. This essay explores integrating environmental ethics and empirical-normative analyses for mitigating plastic pollution.
Long abstract:
Plastic is one of the most enduring materials humans have created. It can take hundreds of years to degrade, and research shows that it may not even fully degrade but becomes what is called microplastics. Concerns about microplastics are increasing, while these chemical-rich plastic particles are found in the air, drinking water, and human blood. The conundrum caused by plastic pollution leads to a policy question in two folds: descriptive and normative. I suggest that addressing plastic pollution requires a collective effort and a shift in perspective toward treating environmental challenges as matters of care. In this essay, I delve into the current governing strategies—how can we govern plastic pollution—by highlighting the limitations of risk analysis. For the normative question, I explore environmental ethics, challenging traditional distinctions between culture and nature, technology and environment, and humans and nonhumans. The essay further emphasizes the interconnectedness of the normative and descriptive aspects of governing plastic pollution, advocating for a combined approach that integrates empirical studies with normative analysis.