Stem cell spaces, places and flows

This special issue of New Genetics and Society focuses on the themes of spaces, places and flows in and around stem cell sciences. Stem cell spaces can be national geographies, social geographies or regulatory spaces. Stem cell places meanwhile can be more local and localized versions: a laboratory, a stem cell bank, a human body, a hospital, an embryo or an incubator. Spaces and places are political, economic, ideological, cultural and epistemic. Spaces and places should not be understood as static concepts, but instead sites that in themselves both contain and constitute mobility and flow. Laboratories, clinics, cell and blood banks, and other locations are not still but subjected to information flows from other spaces and places. Moreover, the articles in this special issue understand space and place both as material places and spatial organizations of knowledge and meaning production, as well as discursive and regulatory spaces that transform and attribute meaning to various “epistemic entities”, be it ethics, embryos, notions of purity or standards. Stem cells are in constant movement through such spaces and places; and our understanding of them is in constant flux.

The six papers explore the primacy of spaces, places and flows in a range of empirical settings that vary in scale from, at one extreme, the layout of a single laboratory, to, at the other, the economic and political competition between continental powers. The papers also bring different conceptions of space, place and flow to their analysis, employing them to represent symbolic, economic and physical geographies. Indeed, it is how these multilayered aspects of space, place and flow co-constitute, reinforce or undermine each other that is the most valuable outcome of this special edition. As we shall see when we introduce each paper in turn, space and place matter to how meaning is brought to biological materials, regulatory structures, and aspirations for the future.

Stephens, Atkinson and Glasner's paper, “The UK Stem Cell Bank as performative architecture”, is about the flows within a particular space: that of the UK Stem Cell Bank. It considers how the performativity of the very building – its doorways, passageways and working places – shape a particularly nuanced vision of sterile practice. It is the most micro-level analysis in the collection, at times focusing upon the step-by-step movement through the Bank. The authors document the ways in which sterility is enacted and symbolically represented both within and beyond the Bank's space.

Webster and Eriksson's paper, “Governance-by-standards in the field of stem cells: managing uncertainty in the world of ‘basic innovation’” details the issues that arise during an attempt to create “space” beyond “place” in the form of the “International Stem Cell Initiative” project: a co-laboratory of stem cell groups around the world working towards producing shared standards and understandings. Central to the paper is the management of uncertainty through systematic networks that spread across local settings. Doing so, the authors argue, makes the indeterminacy of science a communal problem that is addressed through a process of “basic innovation” that acknowledges the interrelation of networks, uncertainty and technologies.

Haimes, Porz, Scully and Rehmann-Sutter's paper, “‘So, what is an embryo?’ A comparative study of the views of those asked to donate embryos for hESC research in the UK and Switzerland” reports on two empirical studies conducted with couples asked to donate embryos for human embryonic stem cell research. The authors demonstrate the ways in which the couples' perception of “what” an embryo is changes as their experiences are re-contextualized in different spaces and places. Although ambivalence and contestation are frequently acknowledged in the couples' accounts, a clear shaping of the couples' talk by their location within a process is evident.

Martin, Brown and Turner's paper “Capitalizing hope: the commercial development of umbilical cord blood stem cell banking” reports on a survey of the international cord blood banking industry. It details three forms taken by banks in the sector – public, private and the “hybrid” model – that all mobilize hope in different ways. The competing rationalizations incorporate differing timeframes, and with them differing technical and ethical expectations. The relationships between the three banking types are also different in different parts of the world, creating what the authors term “a new geography of promise”. They provide evidence of shifting territories in the global tissue economy, away from Europe and North America towards East Asia and Latin America.

Brian Salter's paper, “Governing stem cell science in China and India: emerging economies and the global politics of innovation” maps stem cell governance in China and India. The sense of place – in the form of national geographies – is explicit throughout the paper. However the real interest lies in the attempts by the two nations to espouse a regulatory and economic space that provides thriving domestic bioscience sectors. Both act within the established Western model of bioscience innovation where they can, but seek to establish alternative spaces where they cannot. The paper identifies where these shared spaces exist, and where counter-spaces are being developed, in the current practices in both nations in terms of their science, their society and their market.

Wainwright and Williams' paper, “Spaces of speech and places of performance: an outline of a geography of science approach to embryonic stem cell research and diabetes”, applies the analytical framework developed in David Livingstone's (2003) work on the geographies of scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century to issues in contemporary stem cell innovation. Focusing upon the shared spaces between diabetes and stem cell research, they argue that these places and spaces shape meaning. The paper looks to provide a language for sharpening and deepening our reflections on the relationship between meaning and geography.

Our rationale in putting this special issue together has been not to investigate spaces and places as conceptual devices applied to an empirical field, but rather to highlight the travels and circulations of stem cells in (social) science. We hope that you enjoy the papers.

Lena Eriksson, Neil Stephens and Andrew Webster

Acknowledgements

The papers draw upon the work conducted under the auspices of the UK's ESRC Social Science Stem Cell Initiative (SCI), with additional contribution from collaborators at the University of Basil, Switzerland, on the Haimes, Porz, Scully and Rehmann-Sutter paper. The SCI was set up in the autumn of 2005 with the broad aim of supporting a range of activities to build research capacity and raise awareness within the social science community, in regard to the emerging field of stem cell science. It includes funded research projects, career development fellowships, and linkages to the ESRC Genomics Network. See www.york.ac.uk/res/sci/introduction.htm for further information.