[Sci-tech-public] STS Brown Bag Lunch Talk on Monday, April 3, 12:00 noon

[Debbie Meinbresse]

Please join us for an STS Brown Bag Lunch Talk on 
Monday, April 3rd, at 12:00 noon:
The Politics of Stem Cells in Sweden.
Explaining Liberal Regulations in the Social Democratic State

Teresa Kulawik

MIT, E51-275
                      Feel free to bring your 
lunch; coffee and dessert will be provided

Teresa Kulawik is an Associate Professor in 
Political Science in the Department of Gender 
Studies, and Research Leader at the Centre for 
Baltic and East European Studies at the 
University College of South Stockholm. She 
received her Dr.phil. in Political Science from 
the free University of Berlin in 1997. Dr. 
Kulawik's areas of specialization include 
Comparative Politics, Theory and Politics of the 
Welfare State, History and Politics, Politics of 
Knowledge, Social Movements, and Gender 
Politics.  Her current research projects are 
genetic engineering, democracy and deliberation 
to Germany, Poland and Sweden; Science, politics 
and public in the Baltic Sea region.  She has had 
research appointments at several universities, 
including Columbia University's Research Center on Women.

Abstract
The potential and risks of biotechnology and 
genetic engineering have been the subject of 
public discussion for over two decades. By now, 
several countries have devised policies that 
impose state regulations on genetic and 
biomedical research and practices. What makes 
Sweden especially relevant for this case study? 
At first, Sweden appears to have quite a puzzling 
policy pattern indeed. As a social democratic 
regime with an extensive statist governance 
system, Sweden stands out in its biomedical 
policy through remarkably liberal, lenient 
regulations, which, in European comparison, are 
closest to those of Great Britain. Sweden's 
legislation allows for the use of so-called 
"spare" human embryos, resulting from IVF 
procedures, for research purpose, 
pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, and egg 
donation. This country also has a considerable 
amount of embryonic stem cell lines at its 
disposal and has recently initiated an entire 
research program involving their use. 
Furthermore, the creation of – instead of the use 
of "spare" – human embryos for research purposes 
and so-called therapeutic cloning has been recently legalized.

This policy-making process provoked only a 
moderate deal of controversy. Parliamentary 
resolutions concerning the issue were backed by a 
broad consensus among all parties in Parliament. 
To say the least, the politicization of 
biomedical issues has been quite limited. This 
corresponds well to the virtual lack of 
noticeable mobilization of 
extra-parliamentary  groups. This may come as a 
surprise for at least two reasons. Sweden 
generated one of the largest environmentalist 
movements in the 1970s. From a comparative 
perspective, Sweden has been classified as having 
high political potential regarding "new 
politics." Hence, one would expect more 
pronounced articulation of criticism concerning 
biomedical research and practice in the political 
arena. In addition, over half of the Cabinet 
members in Sweden are women and its Parliament 
boasts a 44% membership of women. Sweden is 
regarded as an important example for the feminist 
hypothesis that a correlation exists between the 
numeric presence of women in political 
institutions and their substantial 
representation, which results in women friendly 
policy outcomes. Therefore, it might be assumed 
that women involved in policy-making would 
problematize the gendered implications of 
biomedical techniques that turn  women into 
suppliers of human "raw materials". However, this 
is not the case: gendered consequences of 
biomedical techniques have hardly even been 
mentioned in Swedish political discourse.

I will de-riddle the puzzling features of 
Sweden's biopolitics through presenting the 
juncture between institutionalist and discursive 
approaches. In short, I argue that the Swedish 
model is based on a productivist paradigm, the 
institutional and discursive parameters of which 
have not been decisively extended through its 
"new politics." In this way, elitist 
policy-making structures within environmental and 
technology policies have remained intact. 
Ironically, this relative openness, which enabled 
the rapid integration of new issues and political 
actors, was what led to the blockage of extensive 
participatory rights (as a counter-concept to the 
elitist policy style) and hindered the 
development of oppositional public spaces and 
forms of knowledge. Sweden's heritage of 
utilitarian ethics and pragmatic legal tradition 
and its assertions make it even more difficult 
for leftist or feminist to formulate a critical 
stance. Therefore, the only anti-embryo research 
position taken in the political arena was by the 
Christian Democratic Party. I will start by 
providing an overview of policy regulations and 
then analyze the peculiar relation between the 
social democratic state, and the so-called new 
politics. I will then examine the institutions 
and actors in the biomedical policy field, and 
finally reconstruct the lines of argumentation 
within policy discourse on embryo research and stem cells.

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