The Politics of Valuation: Value Disjunctures in Bioethics and Fetal Research During the Twentieth Century

This paper has two aims: First, it proposes to sensitize our analytical minds to what we dub 'value disjunctures'—clashes, in practice, between different valuations. What happens if we highlight the periods and situations when versions of the world are pulled apart? Second, it aims to highlight how today's bioethics can neither be read as a tale of democratization of ethics, nor as a tale solely driven by ethical disasters. What we offer is a story of how the bioethical yardsticks of today were established as dominant in fetal research. Our sensitizing toolkit helps to shine a light on how bioethicalization is a historical process that intertwines what is good, with what objects are seen as important, as well as how these objects are understood. Bioethicalization is partly a struggle about ethics, which yardsticks for the good that become salient, but also a struggle about which objects should be ethicalized—as well as the nature of the ethicalized objects.

read the pdf doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5073

Lee, Francis, Solveig Jülich, and Isa Dussauge. 2024. "The Politics of Valuation: Value Disjunctures in Bioethics and Fetal Research During the Twentieth Century." Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies 12(1): 31-43. https://doi.org/10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5073