Realizing responsibility. Institutional routines, criticalintervention, and the“big”questions in the controversyover non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Autoren

  • Kathrin Braun
  • Sabine Könninger

Organisationseinheiten

Externe Organisationen

  • Universität Stuttgart
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Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)248-267
Seitenumfang20
FachzeitschriftNew genetics and society
Jahrgang37
Ausgabenummer3
Frühes Online-Datum26 Juli 2018
PublikationsstatusElektronisch veröffentlicht (E-Pub) - 26 Juli 2018

Abstract

NIPT has become a matter of controversy in Germany over the past years, there is now a widespread concern that it raises fundamental social and ethical questions. Starting from the assumption that responsible governance requires governance actors to address these questions, the article examines how the main governance actors realized their responsibility in the sense of conceiving and performing it. Building on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we study how actors are doing responsibility within a given institutional and political context. We show that critical interventions disrupted institutional routines and caused governance actors to struggle with conflicting commitments of complying with institutional rules and exercising responsibility by taking social and ethical considerations into account. Whereas these conflicting commitments posed a predicament for political decision-makers, who solved it through shifting responsibility for social and ethical issues elsewhere, there was no such predicament for the producers; for them, routine and responsibility converged.

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Realizing responsibility. Institutional routines, criticalintervention, and the“big”questions in the controversyover non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany. / Braun, Kathrin; Könninger, Sabine.
in: New genetics and society, Jahrgang 37, Nr. 3, 26.07.2018, S. 248-267.

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

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