Anna Pichelstorfer

This contribution seeks to develop a better understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in Austrian biopolicy making. It argues that the ambiguous place of the Catholic Church in Austrian culture and politics helps us to make sense of the particular shape of biopolicy debates. The argument is based on an exploration of moments in the politics of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryo research over the past three decades, which are situated in the values, norms, and imaginaries of the political culture of Austria’s postwar Second Republic. The study shows that biopolicy debates focused on the use of ART technologies in reproductive medicine and the legitimate shape of Austrian families. This focus went along with a blurred vision on IVF embryo research and constitutive silences on IVF embryos. The brief moments in which IVF embryos were given center stage revealed that unborn human life is entangled in competing visions on its moral status and disagreements about the appropriate place of the Catholic Church in Austria’s public life. In line with the norms and imaginaries of Austrian political culture, such disputes were not publically debated but pragmatically circumvented and silenced.

What is an actor? What does it mean to act? Questions of actors and agency touch upon the core interest of social sciences and have been addressed from different theoretical angles. This article aims to investigate the term ‘actor’ and proposes to (re)configure actors as well as agency as practically achieved. This contribution draws on practice theories by Reckwitz and Schatzki to show that actors are constituted in practices while being constitutive of them. It then argues for a conceptualisation of actors as ‘actors-enacted’ by referring to recent work in actor-network theory. Such practice-based understandings do not only provide a new perspective on actors in theory, but encourage us to take actors and their emergence themselves as a topic of empirical research. Next, I elaborate and reflect upon methodological implications of a practice-based investigation of actors: (1) the necessity to explore sites where actors and agencies are observably achieved and actorship itself is of central concern for practitioners and (2) the emphasis on praxiography as a research strategy. Finally, using an example from a detailed study on how actors and agencies are implicated in practicing a public debate on assisted reproductive technologies, I illustrate the work involved in enacting actors and by doing so, highlight the situated accomplishment of actors and agencies in practice. The article concludes by arguing for treating our own research as theoretical and empirical practices that configure actors in particular ways.

Diese Tests werden ua in der prädiktiven genetischen Diagnostik genutzt und sind mit einer Reihe ethischer, rechtlicher und sozialer Probleme ver-bunden. Die wichtigsten Probleme betreffen ua die informierte Zustim-mung der Ratsuchenden, deren Recht, den eigenen ...

Citizens, policymakers and social scientists often call for citizen participation for reasons of democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. A field in which this has been vigorously asserted is science and technology policy. Many countries therefore witnessed the introduction of ...

Recent efforts by intergovernmental actors, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), to foster collaboration on vaccine-preventable diseases stand in stark contrast to the contextually contingent nature of national immunization programs: vaccination schedules and delivery differ greatly, and so do the ways in which these programs are assessed by means of coverage rates—a key metric in global health governance. These divergences, we show, are sidelined and resolved diplomatically in WHO assessment practices: here, seemingly standardized metrics and practices of datafication function to translate political differences into technical discussions about “data quality.” Using a practice-based approach, we conceptualize data practices as a form of health diplomacy and their infrastructures as constitutive of global health governance. Drawing on document analysis and interviews, we examine the WHO’s practices of producing coverage rates provided by member states. We argue that these met...

Diese Tests werden u.a. in der prädiktiven genetisc hen Diagnostik genutzt und sind mit einer Reihe ethischer, rechtlicher und sozialer Probleme verbunden. Die wichtigsten Probleme betreffen u.a. die informierte Zustimmung der Ratsuchenden, deren Recht, den eigenen gen etischen Status zu kennen oder aber auch nicht zu erfahren, den Schutz des Embryos bzw. Fetus in Pränatalund Präimplantationsdiagnostik, Datenschutz sowie genetische Diskriminierung. Personen, die prädiktive genetische Diagnostik in A nspruch nehmen, sind mit einer Reihe von Unsicherheiten und Problem en konfrontiert, welche die genetische Beratung schwierig gestalten kön en:

This contribution seeks to develop a better understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in Austrian biopolicy making. It argues that the ambiguous place of the Catholic Church in Austrian culture and politics helps us to make sense of the particular shape of biopolicy debates. The argument is based on an exploration of moments in the politics of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryo research over the past three decades, which are situated in the values, norms, and imaginaries of the political culture of Austria’s postwar Second Republic. The study shows that biopolicy debates focused on the use of ART technologies in reproductive medicine and the legitimate shape of Austrian families. This focus went along with a blurred vision on IVF embryo research and constitutive silences on IVF embryos. The brief moments in which IVF embryos were given center stage revealed that unborn human life is entangled in competing visions on its moral stat...

What is an actor? What does it mean to act? Questions of actors and agency touch upon the core interest of social sciences and have been addressed from different theoretical angles. This article aims to investigate the term ‘actor’ and proposes to (re)configure actors as well as agency as practically achieved. This contribution draws on practice theories by Reckwitz and Schatzki to show that actors are constituted in practices while being constitutive of them. It then argues for a conceptualisation of actors as ‘actors-enacted’ by referring to recent work in actor-network theory. Such practice-based understandings do not only provide a new perspective on actors in theory, but encourage us to take actors and their emergence themselves as a topic of empirical research. Next, I elaborate and reflect upon methodological implications of a practice-based investigation of actors: (1) the necessity to explore sites where actors and agencies are observably achieved and actorship itself is of...