Making Sense of Community and Identity in Twenty-First Century Technoscience

This introductory chapter begins with the empirical example of synthetic biology, a case that has challenged our own thinking, provoking us to re-address the concepts of scientific ‘community’ and ‘identity’ in contemporary technoscience. The chapter then moves on to a delineation of the conceptualisations of community and identity in past sociologies of science, highlighting open questions, promising avenues and potential shortcomings in explaining contemporary conditions. Following this, the individual contributions to this volume are presented, including their analyses on community and identity constellations and the related effects on the contemporary technosciences as institutions, practices and living spaces. This is achieved with a focus on common themes that come to the fore from the various contributions. In a final discussion, we take stock of our attempt at re-addressing community and identity in contemporary technoscientific contexts and discuss where this has brought us; which ambiguities could not be resolved and which questions seem promising starting points for further conceptual and empirical endeavour.