Democratic Horizons: Hype, Speculation, and the Space for Critique in Biomedical Futures

Datum
30. April 2026 

Invi­ta­tion for a pan­el at 2026 4S Con­fer­ence, Toron­to, Canada

Invi­ta­tion for open pan­el “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Hori­zons: Hype, Spec­u­la­tion, and the Space for Cri­tique in Bio­med­ical Futures.”
2026 4S Conference
Toron­to, Canada
Octo­ber 7–10, 2026

Sub­mis­sion due date: April 30, 2026. More infor­ma­tion at: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that address the gov­er­nance and polit­i­cal econ­o­my of bio­med­i­cine and the life sci­ences, includ­ing emerg­ing biotech­nolo­gies and ELSI research. Bring­ing togeth­er per­spec­tives on pow­er, tem­po­ral­i­ty, and the pol­i­tics of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, the pan­el seeks to explore how more inclu­sive and reflex­ive demo­c­ra­t­ic hori­zons might be imag­ined and enacted.

Con­venors: Alber­to Apari­cio, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch; Andrew Mur­ray, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania 

Key­words: Genet­ics, Genomics, Biotech­nol­o­gy; Eco­nom­ics, Mar­kets, Value/Valuation; Med­i­cine and Healthcare

The pan­el descrip­tion is as follows:

What val­ues will guide the future of bio­med­i­cine? STS schol­ar­ship shows that future expec­ta­tions are per­for­ma­tive, reor­ga­niz­ing the present by con­struct­ing visions of where sci­ence and soci­ety are head­ed. Today, these per­for­ma­tive con­struc­tions are pro­found­ly shaped by per­va­sive finan­cial log­ics in bio­med­i­cine. Twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mism is dif­fi­cult to dis­en­tan­gle from hype and spec­u­la­tive val­u­a­tion that frame inno­va­tion as moral­ly urgent, even sal­va­tion­ary. This opti­mism shapes diverse emerg­ing areas of bio­med­ical tech­nol­o­gy: pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, cell and gene ther­a­pies, genome edit­ing, assist­ed repro­duc­tion, and AI-enabled diag­no­sis and drug dis­cov­ery. Advo­cates for these tech­nolo­gies promise to solve social and polit­i­cal prob­lems and cast uncer­tain­ty and con­tes­ta­tion as tem­po­rary obsta­cles on the path to progress.

This pan­el attempts to ground bio­med­ical hype in the every­day work of future-mak­ing. It asks, how are bio­med­ical and health futures being pro­duced and imag­ined, by whom, through what mate­r­i­al-dis­cur­sive infra­struc­tures, and with what con­se­quences? What tools does STS offer for analyzing—and poten­tial­ly reshaping—cycles of hype, solu­tion­ism, and clo­sure? We invite papers that attend to how bio­med­ical futures become cred­i­ble and investable: fund­ing prac­tices; fore­cast­ing and bench­mark­ing; demon­stra­tions and pro­to­types; pol­i­cy roadmaps; clin­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry work; moon­shot ini­tia­tives; and data-dri­ven research infra­struc­tures. We also invite con­tri­bu­tions that the­o­rize how broad val­ues like “democ­ra­ti­za­tion” and “inclu­sion” are defined, claimed, and con­test­ed in future-ori­ent­ed bio­med­ical projects. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in method­olog­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal insights into work­ing against the grain of total­iz­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly deter­min­ist futures, exam­in­ing how alter­na­tive val­ues are artic­u­lat­ed, trans­lat­ed into gov­er­nance, or dis­placed by entre­pre­neur­ial and finan­cial ratio­nales. Final­ly, we wel­come con­tri­bu­tions will­ing to stake empir­i­cal­ly informed nor­ma­tive claims to more just bio­med­ical futures. Across cas­es, the pan­el will inter­ro­gate bio­med­ical futures as instru­ments of author­i­ty in the present and ask what it would mean to fore­ground val­ues beyond mar­ket growth in techno­sci­en­tif­ic futures.