Crafting the Group: Care in Research Management

Crafting the group: Care in research management

To be published in Social Studies of Science

Sarah R Davies

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Maja Horst

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

This article reports findings from an interview study with group leaders and principal investigators (PIs) in Denmark, the UK and US. Taking as our starting point current interest in the need to enhance ‘responsible research and innovation’, we suggest that these debates can be developed through attention to the talk and practices of scientists. Specifically, we chart the ways in which interview talk represented research management and leadership as processes of caring craftwork. Interviewees framed the group as the primary focus of their attention (and responsibilities), and as something to be tended and crafted; further, this process required a set of affective skills deployed flexibly in response to the needs of individuals. Through exploring the presence of notions of care in the talk of PIs and group leaders, we discuss the relation between care and craft, reflect on the potential implications of the promotion of a culture of care, and suggest how mundane scientific understandings of responsibility might relate to wider discussion of responsible research and innovation.

Keywords: craft; care; research management; responsible research and innovation; research groups

Corresponding author:

Sarah R Davies, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, KøbenhavnsUniversitet, Karen BlixensVej 4, DK-2300 København S, Denmark

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In this paper we reflect on what it means to become encultured into university science and, in particular, what it looks like to lead and manage a research group. Based on interviews with research managers and principal investigators (PIs) in Denmark, the UK, and US, we suggest that, contra accounts that emphasize the outward-looking and entrepreneurial role of the PI (Casati and Genet, 2014; Kidwell, 2014), the notion of caringcraftwork is a key way to understandthe role of the PI. In this view, the PI’s roleis slow, unpredictable (in the sense that it depends on the immediate materials to hand), highly skilled in ways that cannot always be readily articulated and, crucially, predicated on notions of care and nurture. As such, we build on recent work in Science and Technology Studies(STS) that has sought to draw attention to under-represented practices of care in spaces where they have traditionally been downplayed or devalued (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011).

Thinking of science in terms of craft is not new. A long tradition of research emphasizesthe embodied, tacit, and craft-like aspects of scientific practice. Students within natural science laboratories and groups undergo enculturation processes, whereby they become adept both in informal knowledge and tactile skills, such as learning the bench skills that make an experiment ‘work’ or thatenable the recognition of relevant data within a particular field site (Delamont and Atkinson, 2001; Hackett, 2005; Pinch, 1981; Polanyi, 1966). If craft is the ‘application of skill and material-based knowledge to relatively small-scale production’ (Adamson 2010, 2), then much lab work is certainly craft-like. However, many of the researchers with whom we spoke were no longer active in the lab. As PIs or managers much of their work consisted of enabling and supporting other people’s science.They spoke about their roles as operating at a more abstracted level than that of individual research projects, and in terms of planning, framing, or communicating research; they were, in Fujimura’s (1996) terms, doing ‘articulation work’. As successful leaders of groups and managers of grants they were entrepreneurial, adept at industry or policy engagement, fundraising, and strategic management (Law, 1994; Shapin, 2009). At the same time they continued to use language that tied their activities to craftwork. We therefore suggest that rather than seeing articulation work as something different tothe craft skills of the bench (Fujimura, 1996; Hackett, 2005), we can understand it as another form of craftwork, one thatis specific to thePI role. As we will show, many of the same conceptual resources– such as tacit skills learned through apprenticeship, flexibility in the face of unpredictable materials, and an emphasis on utility – are used to describe managing research and crafting a group as might be in framing bench skills.

In what follows we outline how research management is framed, by PIs, as a craft practice. We start by describing the context and methods of the research, before moving on to further develop the notion of craft upon whichwe draw;we frame it as a caring practice that involves skill and flexibility in the face of uncertain materials and situations. There are then two empirical sections within which we, first, explore how PIs talk about the group as a structure to be crafted and, second, describe the craft skills necessary to this process. We conclude by reflecting on three issues: the status of these narratives of care as performances given in a particular context; the potential implications of the presence of such narratives; and the implications for discussion of responsibility in science and, specifically, of responsible research and innovation (RRI).

Research approach

This research emerged out of an interest in how ideas of responsibility arearticulated within science policy and the practice of scientific research. As part of wider developments regarding the governance of science and, in particular, emerging technologies (Kearnes and Rip, 2007), scientists increasingly findthemselves called upon to act responsibly (Kjølberg and Strand, 2011; McCarthy and Kelty, 2010). The research we report on here involved 29 interviews with scientists working in emerging scientific and technological areas, including nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Their career stages ranged from assistant professors (or the locally equivalent job title) running their first research group to senior scholars with administrative and scientific responsibilities outside of the group, such as Heads of Departments or of Research Institutes. Interviewees were split evenly between threedifferent national contexts: we spoke with10 individuals in Denmark, eight in the UK, and 11 in the US. Interviews generally lasted about an hour, though some were much longer (150 minutes) and some shorter (45 minutes).[1] A topic guide structured the conversation and included questions on participants’ research background and history, their relationships and responsibilities in their immediate work settings, and their awareness and response to broader policy discourses of responsibility. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and coded using the qualitative software tool MaxQDA. Coding was grounded in actors’ terms and meanings, and was used to organize emergent themes within the interview talk.

The differences between interviews from the different countries were slight, and largely related to the extent to which policy discussion of ‘responsibility’ had reached those with whom we spoke. Those in the UK tended to be most aware of, and referred most explicitly to, policy demands for responsibility.This was particularly noticeable in the context of synthetic biology, a discipline that has to a large extent been framed through reference to ‘societal implications’ (Lentvos, 2009; Rabinow and Bennett, 2012). This is not surprising given that the UK is seen as supporting‘the wider sort of social responsibility side’ of science, as one of the UK interviewees put it (cf. Horst and Irwin, 2010; Tilli and Dawson, 2010). US and Danish scientists similarly used language tied to the situation in their own national contexts, with US interviewees often referring to National Science Foundation demands for ‘broader impact’, while in Denmark a key frame was responsible conduct in the laboratory, the need for which gained prominence after a high profile case of fraudulent Danish science (see Callaway, 2011). Aside from these differences in language and degree of awareness of policy discussion, however, the themes that emerged from the data cut across the three national contexts.

The research beganin an interest in how calls from funders for responsibility in science – typically construed as responsibility to broader society (Owen et al., 2012; 2013) – are interpreted and used within scientific practice. Itrapidly became apparent from the interviews that such calls, even when interviewees were aware of them (Kjølberg and Strand, 2011), were seen as largely irrelevant to the mundane business of being a scientist and PI. This is not to say that the scientists with whom we spoke were unconcerned with questions of responsibility, or that they didn’t support such initiatives. While some individuals expressed concerns that such calls might encroach on research independence, or spoke about the need for continued funding ofbasic research, interviewees were almost unanimous in supporting closer ties between research and wider society. But they saw the development of such ties as a very different kind of activity to that which comprised their day-to-day work of leading a group, planning its science, and supporting its members. And it was here, on these mundane activities, that their attention – and their articulations of responsibility – were focused. One UK synthetic biologist, for instance, was extremely familiar with the way in which his discipline is oftenportrayed as a multi-disciplinary, publically engaged, responsible science. Thus, he said, he felt:

…a bit of responsibility to the subject itself, and to [the university] to try and deliver things that will have a benefit in general, economically, or for the good of the world in some way, rather than just doing research for research sake … but the weight of responsibility that I feel day to day for that is significantly less than it is for making sure that the team, the individuals around me, do well and don’t fall into a hole where their results never work and no-one’s looking after them. (Ulster, UK)[2]

Ulster and the others PIs with whom we spoke talked frequently about how busy they were. They split their time between their lab or group, undergraduate teaching, department or university administration, dissemination and collaboration, and wider industry or policy outreach. Not unreasonably, their attention was therefore primarily on the sphere in which they saw themselves as being able to have an impact – where ‘responsibility’ became meaningful or ‘do-able’ for them (cf.Fujimara, 1996; McCarthy and Kelty, 2010). This sphere was the group.

The group emerged from the data as the key site where responsibility is performed. Moreover,our data shows that leading the group involves a particular kind of scientific practice, one thatis – in contrast to more instrumental languages that have been reported elsewhere (Casati and Genet, 2014) – overtly caring. We discuss this notion of care, and its connection with craftwork, in the next section.Before doing so, however, we need to briefly outline how we situateour interview data. We are not treating these accounts as direct representations of how things ‘really are’ – as evidence that a particular way of performing the PI role, as caring craft, dominates the practice of research in emerging technologies. (Indeed, recent work suggests that many junior scholars experience their situations as exactly not tailored towards caring for them[Glerup, 2014].Müller and Kenney [2014] discuss the intense pressures postdoctoral scientists represent themselves as being under, and argue that their interviews act as a moment of caring interference that can offer moments of reflection and disruption.) Rather, the interviews enabled a particular performance of ‘PI-ness’ to an attentive listener, and should be understood in these terms (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). At the same time, however, we adopt what we might call an ethos of generosity towards participants in this study, who gave up their time to talk with us and who attempted, in good faith, to describe their experiences as best they could (Fortun, 2005). We are not radically sceptical of the stories they tell – but we do view them only as examples of the stories that they could tell, at other moments and in other contexts (Macnaghten et al., forthcoming). We thus take an approach similar to that described by Delamont et al. (2000) in reporting on interviews concerning the PhD supervision process: ‘we regard’, they write, ‘these narratives … as part of the occupational culture of the academics we studied, not therefore as idiosyncratic or private experiences, nor as situated actions of no relevance at all beyond the interview context itself’ (p.136). Similarly, we view our interviews as providing insight into the ways in which research management can be performed and rationalized, and as giving a glimpse of a certain ‘occupational culture’ – a notion we return to in the conclusion.

Craft as care

Recent work in STS argues for a re-evaluation of the importance of care within scientific practice. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2011), for instance, makes a double move in her paper ‘Matters of care in technoscience’. She first suggests thatLatour’s ‘matters of concern’ might be reimagined as ‘matters of care’, and builds on this to frame the scholar’s role as being‘not only to expose or reveal invisible labours of care, but also to generate care’ (p.10; emphasis added). She is interested in bringing the presence of care to the foreground of sites where it is often ignored or rendered invisible; in so doing, she herself nurtures caring practices. Puig de la Bellacasa(2011) argues that orienting towards care in technoscience highlights the affective within mundane scientific practice and maintains a commitment to that which has been marginalized or neglected. Recent scholarship has responded to this call by, for instance, examining the ways in which particular technological flows and configurations can embody relations of care (Lutz, 2013), framing listening as a key caring practice (Watson, 2014) and examining marginalized caring practices within science (Friese, 2013). Friese, for example, traces the way in which one scientist foregrounds notion of care within her laboratory practice and, specifically, through animal husbandry. For this scientist, care for the rats she works with in the laboratory is directly related to care for (eventual) patients by increasing the robustness of her data and thereby its usefulness for translation to a clinical setting. Care ‘becomes a way of enhancing or improving the potential of the model organisms scientists use and thus the findings that result’ (Friese, 2013: S130). As Puig de la Bellacasa(2011) suggests, such care goes beyond an intellectual calculation about how to produce the best possible data. Rather, it is both an ‘embodied emotion’ (Friese, 2013: S133) and a moral compulsion.

Annemarie Mol (2010) and the other editors of a recent volume on the practice of care tie lack of interest in care in the academy to a more general lack of interest in bodies, emotions, and the private realm. As these things have been reclaimed as, first, visible and, second, interesting, disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy (and STS) have begun to notice practices of care. For Mol et al. (2010) and the case studies that comprise their collection, care is less something to be rigidly defined than a style of thinking. It directs attention to what was once rendered invisible within scientific research – the private, emotional, embodied, messy, and insoluble,as opposed to the calculable and controllable. Though they focus on farming and health and social care, and do not enter either the lab or the workshop, their understanding of care offers a number of bridges to theories of craft and craftwork. In particular they frame care as a matter of tinkering, or ‘attentive experimentation’ (Mol et al., 2010: 13). Good care, they argue, is not something that can be codified, or rid of ambivalence; care is always performed in an imperfect world, and what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ not always readily apparent. Caring will therefore not always look the same. It is, rather, about ‘persistent tinkering in a world full of complex ambivalence and shifting tensions’ (Mol et al., 2010: 14).

Such an understanding of care – as a continuous process of creative experimentation – can also be framed as an act of craftwork. Craft is similarly ‘a set of concerns’thatmight be used in different sites and with different emphases (Adamson, 2010: 3); like care, it is best understood as a way of thinking, or as a tool for re-imagining particular practices. The vast majority of such thinking, and of the literature on craft, is carried out in the context of art history and theory. The central concern in writing on craft is the tension between craft and fine art practices (Peach, 2009). Adamson, in his book Thinking Through Craft (2007), focuses on this context. But he is also clear that craft is a process, and as such its characteristic features are relevant to other contexts (see Dornan and Nestel, 2013). These features include, first, being supplemental rather than autonomous. Works of craft are, in other words, instrumental. In contrast to fine art, they do not stand alone, but are crafted for a particular purpose (Adamson notes that the old term ‘applied arts’ conveys this well). Second, craft is organized around material experience, and implies a deep engagement with the properties of different kinds of materials. This relates to the sense that craft is something beyond language; that it is ‘subconscious, instinctive or experiential’ (Adamson, 2010: 303). Third, craft requires skill. Thus for Dornan and Nestel (2013), a skilled craftsperson is one who can ‘respond to variability in the materials they work. No technique or piece of apparatus can guarantee a standard result, because judgement, dexterity, and care rather than technology per se determine the result of a craftsman’s [sic] work’ (p. 36). Fourth (and combining Adamson’s final two principles of the pastoral and amateur), craft has traditionally been understood as subordinate – as second-class, under-valued, or low-status, through, for example, its association with the feminine.

There are thus a number of commonalities in the ways in which care and craft are discussed. Both are concerned with the subordinate or under-represented, take a bricolage-like approach to the situation at hand, and are concerned with embodied experience and affect. Indeed, we argue that care is inherent to craft. Skilful engagement with particular materials is always careful, and despite contemporary craft’s position within capitalist markets it continues to be understood as a practice imbued with a passion not present within economies of mass production (Adamson, 2010; Levine and Heimerl, 2008). We formulate a model of craft as a caring practice, often rendered invisible or made subordinate, which brings together skill, a focus on utility or purpose and a particular emotional orientation (care, passion, commitment). We also take seriously the call from Puig de la Bellacasa(2011) and others to expose, and by exposing to generate, care by highlighting its existence in sites where it has been under-represented (Müller and Kenney, 2014; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). The contemporary university generally, and research and development of new and emerging technologies in particular, has been represented as a place under particular pressures – such as that of ‘academic capitalism’ – that render care difficult, or as something that must be explicitly legislated for (Hackett, 2014; Lam and Campos, 2012; Müller, 2014; Owen et al., 2012). We thus use our model of craft to reflect on narratives of research management, aside from those of enterprise and entrepreneurship (Law, 1994; Shapin, 2009), that are available to those working in science.In the following two sections we explore our empirical data in order to put this understanding of craft to work.