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The (Seasonal) Joy of
Communication and Interdisciplinarity..
Gill Haddow
There are three people on a train..
…One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and
one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the
border into Scotland and they see a brown cow standing in a
field from the window of the train.
• And the economist says, "Look, the cows in Scotland are brown."
• And the logician says, "No. There are cows in Scotland of which
one at least is brown."
• And the mathematician says, "No. There is at least one cow in
Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.“
From: Mark Haddon (2003) The Curious Incident of The Dog in the
Night-Time
There are two people ‘listening’ in on
the train..
• And the sociologist says, “I am happy that we have reached a common
consensus regarding how one might classify what a cow is in Scotland –
but what can we do with these results in order to inform policy“
• And the lawyer says,…….(TO BE CONTINUED).
Once upon a time…
• In 1999 I got on the train to York to attend a
PG conference on gifts (Sarah Franklin/Richard
Tutton)…
• Shared a taxi with Graeme Laurie…
• Fast forward 2002 interviewed by Graeme and
Joyce to join the ELSI team of GS…
…Sometimes I/D is not intentional
•
Circulation of preliminary analysis
•
Serendipity! GL and KH expressed interest.
•
History of common interest.
•
Answer to problems of Public engagement & legitimating process?
•
Desire in seeing more interaction between our respective disciplines (law
and sociology) towards common ends!
www.innogen.ac.uk
Benefit_shareMarch2005GLeditsv.5(2)
Draft sentence in article written by GH: “Rather, in the UK examples, it has been stated as a matter of
policy that the information and samples will be held in public ownership”
Response by GL: HMMM, not sure I agree that it is meaningful in law to talk of ‘public ownership’
here. Rather, I’d focus on the ‘policy stance’ that the projects have taken and talk about how they
see themselves acting as ‘stewards’ or ‘custodians’ of the information and samples. Here we
could quote the Ethics and Governance Framework of Biobank and the recommendations made
by myself and Jo Gibson in respect of Generation Scotland [unless, something already appears to
this effect on the GS website]. (Chadwick and Berg 2001)
Response by GH: OK – I wasn’t aware of that - but “public ownership” turns out to be an important
component to the discussion later on in matters related to control – I am happy to remove
reference to it here but want to focus on it later? Obviously there are going to be times when we
interpret the same concept or phenomenon differently – all good fun!
www.innogen.ac.uk
What a pain in the….
• GL: ON THIS SECTION GENERALLY, WAS IT EVER INVESTIGATED WHAT PEOPLE
MEANT BY ‘OWN’ OR ‘OWNERSHIP’? WERE THEY CONCERNED ABOUT
PROPERTY RIGHTS OR WERE THEY MORE CONCERNED ABOUT CONTROL??
FROM THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE IT CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE IF WE VEST
ACTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN SOMETHING/SOMEONE AS OPPOSED TO SAYING,
FOR EXAMPLE, THAT THE THING IS TO BE HELD IN TRUST. IT MIGHT BE
IMPORTANT TO KNOW WHAT PEOPLE FELT IN ORDER TO INFORM THE LEGAL
MODEL.
• GH: This links to what I go on to say about embodiment and that I haven’t quite
finished – if one feels that I have a body – then the logical next step that might
be made that it is a thing that I can have property in. However, if I am a body
then there is an intimate conncetion to self, personhood etc – and it is this
that, I would argue, brings about “respect for persons” which relates to the
blocking of any monetary exchange. We need to explore this further – is it the
sample or the data. We know from previous work on organ donation and
blood donation that when it was discussed the pharmaceutical company would
have no rights for patent (FG 3).
•
THE IDEA OF PROPERTY HAS A STRONG NORMATIVE APPEAL PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THE
STRONG RIGHTS OF CONTROL THAT IT CAN GIVE YOU: HENCE PEOPLE FEEL THAT THEIR dna
‘BELONGS’ TO THEM; BY THE SAME TOKEN, IT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE PEOPLE PERCEIVE
PATENTS AND OTHER PROPERTY RIGHTS AS GIVING CONTROL – WHICH THEY FEAR MIGHT BE
EXERCISED AGAINST THEIR INTERESTS – THAT PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS (USED FOR PRIVATE
PROFIT) GET SUCH A BAD NAME.
•
GH: Not sure I have followed you right here Graeme – but if I have not misrepresented you I
disagree with 1. and partly agree with 2. I don’t think that “the idea of property has strong
normative appeal because of strong rights of control” and hence the DNA belongs to them. I
would turn that the other way around and say that because “the DNA is an *intimate part of
self-identity* then people want to control what happens to it.” I know you used to like your
property rights in the body – and you know that I disagreed with you about this before.
Bodies aren’t just “ours” to have like a car but are intimately connected with self identity. We
can hold two contradictory views of our bodies – it can be both a thing and an intimate
integral part to us. Hoeyer talks about this in the Tutton book.
Always having the last word…
• GL: Our proposal is that benefit sharing can act as a means to engender
trust/public confidence by addressing commercialisation concerns. We do
not, and cannot, offer a model that guarantees trust, nor, can we reliably
claim it will engender trust, nor, does our model address all trust issues.
Rather, it addresses an issue which, from our social science studies, we
know to be true: “reciprocity” is an essential element of trust (Sutrop,
2004).
• GH: Debatable – we do not know it to be “true” as nothing in sociology
can be “true” in the strictest interpretation and I would argue that
reciprocity is not a essential element to trust (take the Alder Hey isse – the
malpractice of removing tissue was not based on reciprocity but on the
basis of a lack of consent.). For instance, you and I do not have to
exchange anything in order for their to be trust between us. Reciprocity
can be one condition of engendering trust but not the only one? I would
prefer that we take this out because there is a whole literature on trust
(and if only people would trust scientists “it would all be OK” rhetoric) that
would be good to body swerve??
Haddow, G., Laurie, G., Cunningham-Burley, S., & Hunter, K. (2007). Tackling
Community Concerns about Commercialisation and Genetic Research: A
Modest Interdisciplinary Proposal. Social Science and Medicine, 64, 272-282.
• Unlikely to address public deficit in policy formation nor build trust
but highlights pressure points…
• But what can lawyers get out of working with sociologists and how
can sociology inform law?
– Bringing different insight into gathering and interpretation of
“facts” and concepts
– Deconstructing ‘accepted’ paradigms
– Grounding/Informing legal and policy responses in/with social
data
• What do other disciplines get out of working together?
• Is the commonality research and/or relationship?
• How to keep the motivation and the communication?
Appendum ….the ‘onion’
Q. Parlez vous francais?
A. Oui!
Q. What is ‘onion’ in French?
A: Meh…Onion
• The onion structure of
communication;