Neil Stephens

Brunel University London · Department of Sociology and Communications

Mitochondrial replacement therapies (MRT) represent the most recent advancement in assisted reproductive technologies, allowing some women with mitochondrial diseases to birth—for the first time—babies without those diseases. MRT, however, are not without controversy: DNA is intentionally changed, and resulting babies have DNA from three people. Ad...

Mitochondrial replacement therapies (MRT) represent the most recent advancement in assisted reproductive technologies, allowing some women with mitochondrial diseases to birth—for the first time—babies without those diseases. MRT, however, are not without controversy: DNA is intentionally changed, and resulting babies have DNA from three people. Ad...

In this article, we explore the legalisation of mitochondrial donation in the UK as the latest iteration of an established sociotechnical imaginary of permissive yet highly scrutinised human embryo research in the country. The focus of our analysis is the work of the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee as it contributed to t...

In contemporary capoeira groups, newcomers are symbolically ‘baptised’ into the community at a public ceremony called their Batizado (literally baptism) held during a festival. Novices play a game with a guest expert, get their first belt and thereafter they are members of their teacher’s group. Drawing on a long term, two-handed ethnography of dia...

Capoeira , the African-Brazilian dance and martial art has enthusiastic devotees in Britain. Most practitioners are acutely aware of their capoeira embodiment, and have strategies to protect themselves from injury, and ways to seek treatment for any injuries they get. Drawing on data from a long-term ethnography and a set of 32 open-ended interview...

Cultured/clean/cell-based meat (CM) now has a near two decade history of laboratory research, commencing with the early NASA-funded work at Touro College and the bioarts practice of the Tissue Culture and Art project. Across this period the field, or as it is now more commonly termed, the “space,” has developed significantly while promoting differe...

This article compares ethnographic experiences of two settings characterised by embodied learning: the African-Brazilian dance/martial-art/game capoeira, and swimming for fitness and leisure, both as practiced in the UK. We consider the ways in which participants in these scenes stage-manage the display of their learning environments, focusing on t...

We review how the Wellcome Collection exhibition ‘Teeth’ enacts meanings from an educational anthropology and Science and Technology Studies perspective. The exhibition tells the history of dental science. It starts with accounts of the painful procedures and social inequalities of early oral healthcare. As it moves towards the present day it shows...

Interdisciplinary work is an increasingly frequent and important aspect of scientific research. However, successful knowledge exchange and collaboration between experts is itself a challenging activity with both technical and social components that require consideration. Here, this article analyses the cultural factors involved in interdisciplinary...

Tissue engineering is a set of biomedical technologies, including stem cell science, which seek to grow biological tissue for a diversity of applications. In this paper, we explore two emergent tissue engineering technologies that seek to cause a step change in the upscaling capacity of cell growth: cultured blood and cultured meat. Cultured blood...

This paper argues that analyses of the ways in which Big Data has been enacted in other academic disciplines can provide us with concepts that will help understand the application of Big Data to social questions. We use examples drawn from our Science and Technology Studies (STS) analyses of -omic biology and high energy physics to demonstrate the...

In 2016, the New Scientist announced the birth and good health of the world’s first baby conceived using spindle nuclear transfer (SNT). The story was immediately circulated worldwide. In this article, we analyze 39 articles published within the first 48 hours of the announcement, in the Mexican, British, and U.S. press. These articles constitute t...

Background Cultured meat forms part of the emerging field of cellular agriculture. Still an early stage field it seeks to deliver products traditionally made through livestock rearing in novel forms that require no, or significantly reduced, animal involvement. Key examples include cultured meat, milk, egg white and leather. Here, we focus upon cul...

In 2015 the UK became the first country in the world to legalise mitochondrial donation, a controversial assisted reproductive technology. Across this book, we detail how institutions, activist groups, scientists, parliamentarians, patients and publics engaged in extensive labour to support, justify and legitimise their position within hard fought...

Parliamentary debates took place in the House of Commons and House of Lords in February 2015, when each House voted overwhelmingly in support of legalising mitochondrial donation. In this chapter we explore key sites of contestation as revealed in these parliamentary exchanges: patient-families; slippery slopes and three parent babies; and genetic...

Operating a legitimate campaign in UK biomedical politics requires labour. We focus on how the group that campaigned for legalisation, here the for-cluster, formed a coalition, describing a strong and collaborative partnership approach involving anticipating what work would be required, identifying sympathetic and influential colleagues, and workin...

The legalisation of mitochondrial donation is the latest iteration of a particular UK sociotechnical imaginary around human embryo research and use; one in which strict but permissive oversight and licensing from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) operates to legitimise practice. This imaginary has an embedded notion of the goo...

The mitochondrial donation debates were punctuated by a set of reports produced by key institutional bodies. Here we focus upon three to analyse the boundary and legitimacy work inherent to their conduct. Based on calls for evidence and expert/public consultations, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concluded mitochondrial donation was ethical if sa...

The process of campaigning lasted several years, although the intensity increased as the parliamentary votes drew near. Here we identify a set of campaign strategies and central issues undergoing contestation, specifically the development of an interpretative package used to render the techniques knowable in particular forms through particular term...

In contrast to the coalition approach of the for-cluster, the against-cluster included a smaller set of institutions and individuals with different reasons for opposition. This cluster were unable and sometimes unwilling to mobilise around a centralised and connected campaign, and operated a set of boundary and alignment work practices to navigate...

In 2015 the UK became the first country in the world to legalise mitochondrial donation, a controversial germ line reproductive technology to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease. Dimond and Stephens track the intense period of scientific and ethical review, public consultation and parliamentary debates preceeding the decision. They dr...

Laboratory ethnography extended the social scientist’s gaze into the day-to-day accomplishment of scientific practice. Here we reflect upon our own ethnographies of biomedical scientific workspaces to provoke methodological discussion on the doing of laboratory ethnography. What we provide is less a ‘how to’ guide and more a commentary on what to l...

In 2015, two novel in vitro fertilisation techniques intended to prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disease were legalised in the United Kingdom, following an intense period of inquiry including scientific reviews, public consultations, government guidance and debates within the Houses of Parliament. The techniques were controversial because...

The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira i...

p>Conferences are important performative sites. Here we detail a UK science policy conference debating the novel biomedical techniques CRISPR/cas9 and mitochondrial donation. Both techniques have received significant attention from scientists and bioethicists about their clinical potential, social implications, and the prospects of genetic and germ...

In vitro meat (IVM), also known as cultured meat, involves growing cells into muscle tissue to be eaten as food. The technology had its most high-profile moment in 2013 when a cultured burger was cooked and tasted in a press conference. Images of the burger featured in the international media and were circulated across the Internet. These images-li...

In 2003, the United Kingdom and Japan had adopted relatively similar approaches to human embryonic stem cells science. The decade since has witnessed significant divergence in their national policies as differing responses to ethical questions about research use of human embryos emerged. The United Kingdom pursued a vision of 'institutionally accre...

In this article, we analyse a 2013 press conference hosting the world's first tasting of a laboratory grown hamburger. We explore this as a media event: an exceptional performative moment in which common meanings are mobilised and a connection to a shared centre of reality is offered. We develop our own theoretical contribution - the promotional pu...

This chapter charts shifts in the ethical and social context of stem cell science from 1998 until 2012. It starts by focusing upon some philosophical, religious, and in situ accounts of the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research. It then articulates key components of the regulatory response to this in several countries. This is followed with...

Unanticipated situations can arise in biobanking. This paper empirically documents unexpected situations at the anonymous biobank ‘Xbank’. Firstly, Xbank received an unexpected and significant quantity of tissue from the historical archive of a hospital network. Secondly, Xbank had its funding withdrawn before the designated end date for the grant,...

Biobanks are increasingly being established to act as mediators between patient-donors and researchers. In practice, some of these will close. This paper details the experiences of one such bank. We report interviews with the bank's staff and oversight group during the period when the bank ceased biobanking activity, reconfigured as a disseminator...

The aim of the Epinet case study was to explore and interact with the epistemic communities / networks that have been developing, implementing, supporting and promoting IVM technologies. The study team consisted of expertise in sociotechnical evaluations, systems and uncertainty analysis, ethics and media studies. The team identified early on a sma...

The UK and Spanish Stem Cell Banks hold politically controversial—but potentially therapeutically beneficial—human embryonic stem cells for distribution to research laboratories globally. The UK bank was the first of its type in the world, opening in 2004, and the Spanish bank used it as a role model in its own development. Both banks structure the...

This paper reports an ethnographic study of how Brazilians teaching capoeira in the UK use dance as a discursive and embodied pedagogic strategy both to change men's bodies and also to gauge the success of their instructional work. The theoretical framework is drawn from Herzfeld's neglected study of the poetics of manhood in Crete which is revisit...

The essays in this special issue emerged from a workshop held at Cardiff University in September 2010. As sociologists based at the dual-site (Lancaster and Cardiff) Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen) funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, we have both been engaged in researching ethical and social issues a...

Over the last decade, several clusters of scientists have been using animal cells in an attempt to grow meat. Known as in vitro, or cultured, meat, the technology involves tissue engineering muscle cells for potential consumption as food. Those supporting the technology articulate a diversity of potential benefits in producing meat in this way, whi...

Contemporary biomedical research is conducted amidst regimes of national and transnational regulation. Regulation, like rules generally, cannot specify all the practicalities of their application. Regulations for biomedical research impose considerable constraints on laboratories and others. In principle, there is a never-ending regress whereby sci...

This article reports on two qualitative studies of tissue banks in the United Kingdom: the onCore UK Cancer Tissue Bank and the UK Stem Cell Bank. I use the language of Waldby and Mitchell's tissue economies to interrogate the shared ground between the two institutions as collators, moral guardians and distributors of human tissue. The article arti...

In this chapter Neil Stephens and Sara Delamont examine bodies in capoeira, a Brazilian dance and martial art. Drawing from Arthur Frank’s typology, Stephens and Delamont magnify how, in capoeira, bodies are fashioned of discipline and control. Yet this discipline and control is a dramaturgical effect of a scene that comes off; teachers and student...

Introduction Our title is from Jorge Amado's (1993) novel The War of the Saints set in Salvador, Brazil. The romantic hero is an African-Brazilian taxi driver, and a student (discipulo) of respected capoeira teacher Master (Mestre) Pastinha. Capoeira is an African-Brazilian dance-fight game, which has become globalized in the last 30 years. In the...

We describe the experience of conducting intensive social science research at the UK Stem Cell Bank from the viewpoint of both the person conducting the social science research and the Director of the Bank. We detail the initial misunderstandings and concerns held by both and the problems these caused. Then we describe how the relationship develope...

We explore the local negotiation of regulatory practice at the UK Stem Cell Bank, the first Bank of its type in the world. Basing our empirical work on a detailed analysis of one aspect of the Bank's regulatory commitment--the completion of the Cell Line Information form--we make visible the necessary judgements and labour involved in interpreting...

This article discusses the international movement of human embryonic stem cell lines through stem cell banks. It draws upon two research projects. This first is a three year study of the 'UK Stem Cell Bank' that also focuses upon the equivalent bank in Spain. The second is a study documenting the supply chain of stem cell lines in India. Our articl...

Globalising Standards, Banking on Trust: Stem cell banking in three national systems This article discusses the international movement of human embryonic stem cell lines through stem cell banks. It draws upon two research projects. This first is a three year study of the ‘UK Stem Cell Bank’ that also focuses upon the equivalent bank in Spain. The s...

This paper, written by two social scientists, presents a social science perspective on the issues raised at the FRAME symposium on Human Alternatives to Animal Studies. Drawing upon the authors' experience of conducting research with stem cell scientists, issues around access to human tissue for in vitro uses are considered. The paper concludes by...

Capoeira, the Brazilian dance and martial art is now globalised and taught widely outside Brazil. Instruction is provided by Brazilians who are living in self-imposed exile from their homeland. The authentic capoeira that such teachers provide is a major attraction for non-Brazilian students. However, there is little research available on the motiv...

Capoeira, the Brazilian dance and martial art, is taught across the world. Learners acquire vital knowledge and are socialised as capoeiristas through legitimate peripheral participation, in particular when watching games in the roda. The roda, the circle within which the capoeira game is played, is a classic place for learning by legitimate periph...

The title, which translated from Portuguese means ‘I came from Bahia to see you’, is the opening line of a well-known song used in the Brazilian dance, fight and game capoeira. It can be sung in a cheerful, friendly way, as a simple greeting, or with menace, carrying the meaning that the singer has travelled to engage in a serious contest with the...

The sociological study of education involves focusing upon teaching and learning, upon explicit instruction and the acquisition of the tacit knowledge and skills that are essential if learners are to become enculturated into a new habitus. Sociological insight into these processes can come from research on conventional educational settings, but is...

Since November 2006 the UK Stem Cell Bank has made human embryonic stem cell lines available for international distribution. As the first Bank of its type in the world it has an important role in the movement and guardianship of stem cell material. In this paper we discuss the flows of people and biological material through the very building itself...

In 2004 the United Kingdom opened the world's first stem cell bank. The UK Stem Cell Bank takes donations of ethically approved stem cell lines, tests them, grows larger stocks, and re-distributes the material internationally. As such the Bank has an important guardianship role in the international movement of human embryonic stem cell lines. It al...

The majority of the popular martial arts in Britain are of South East Asian origin. One exception is the Brazilian dance and martial art capoeira, which has grown in popularity in the UK over the past twenty years at the same time as it has become a global phenomenon. Brazilian teachers have spread across the globe to create what the article calls...

This article explores the author's experiences of conducting both face-to-face and telephone interviews with elite and ultra-elite respondents. It draws upon the author's PhD research that uses a Sociology of Scientific Knowledge perspective to understand the social construction of macroeconomics. The article demonstrates how this perspective, and...

This article is an unusual reflexive text. It has two authors, two voices, two embodied experiences, and two sociological biographies in dialogue. The empirical focus is capoeira, but the ethnographic experience is common to many cultural forms. Capoeira is the Brazilian dance and martial art, done to the music of the berimbau. Classes are offered...