Abstract:

My presentation will be an attempt to get beyond the circumscribed (albeit institutionally defined) formula of ELSi (the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues/Implications) with reference to human genome research (HGR). In doing so, I try to address another ground of questions impinging on the ‘morality’ of HGR. Having effected a broader contextualization of what underlies the invocation of the ‘morality’ of HGR, I turn to a discussion of the activity of HGR, particularly the question of its status and its possibilities as a ‘new science of life’.I am specifically concerned to think through the fraught idea of ‘emergent form(s) of life’, while also striving to throw a distinctive light both on the question of what threatens, and what might help sustain, the activity of HGR, and on the question of the relations among scientific activity, thinking and ‘theory’(within science studies itself). The call here is as much for conceptual specification as a call for an enriched description.

About the Speaker:

Prof.Sasheej Hegde is Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. His research and teaching has concerned a subject area intermediate between "philosophy", social and political theory, and culture critique: the question, specifically, of the enabling histories with which one works. More specifically, his areas of specialization have implicated three domains of inquiry: the Structure and Dynamics of Disciplines, the Interpretation of Modernity, and Research on Normative Political Languages. Even as these domains of inquiry have meant a renewed conceptual thrust, his work has actively sought to cultivate many epistemological domains and socio-historical settings. His interests seem to be slowly devolving on questions of law/ethics and constitutional jurisprudence.