Ganguli-Mitra Agomoni, Dove Edward S, Laurie Graeme T, Taylor-Alexander Samuel
Bioethics. 2017 Feb;31(2):87-96. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12324.
Despite the growing importance of 'social value' as a central feature of research ethics, the term remains both conceptually vague and to a certain extent operationally rigid. And yet, perhaps because the rhetorical appeal of social value appears immediate and self-evident, the concept has not been put to rigorous investigation in terms of its definition, strength, function, and scope. In this article, we discuss how the anthropological concept of liminality can illuminate social value and differentiate and reconfigure its variegated approaches. Employing liminality as a heuristic encourages a reassessment of how we understand the mobilization of 'social value' in bioethics. We argue that social value as seen through the lens of liminality can provide greater clarity of its function and scope for health research. Building on calls to understand social value as a dynamic, rather than a static, concept, we emphasize the need to appraise social value iteratively throughout the entire research as something that transforms over multiple times and across multiple spaces occupied by a range of actors.
尽管“社会价值”作为研究伦理的核心特征日益重要，但该术语在概念上仍然模糊，在一定程度上在操作上也很僵化。然而，也许是因为社会价值在修辞上的吸引力似乎是直接且不言而喻的，所以这个概念在其定义、强度、功能和范围方面尚未得到严格的研究。在本文中，我们讨论了阈限性的人类学概念如何能够阐明社会价值，并区分和重新配置其多样化的方法。将阈限性用作一种启发式方法，鼓励重新评估我们如何理解生物伦理学中“社会价值”的调动。我们认为，从阈限性的角度看待社会价值，可以更清晰地了解其在健康研究中的功能和范围。基于将社会价值理解为一个动态而非静态概念的呼吁，我们强调需要在整个研究过程中反复评估社会价值，因为它会在一系列行为者占据的多个空间中多次转变。
