Beltrame, Lorenzo | Italy

I have a degree in Sociology and a PhD in Sociology and Social Research (University of Trento, Italy). After the PhD I worked at the Science, Technology and Society Programme (STSTN) of the University of Trento. From 2009 to 2011 I was post-doc fellow at the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Florence Italy). Since February 2013 I’m visiting research fellow at the IAS-STS (Graz, Austria). My research focuses on the relationship between biomedical innovations and society. I have studied the Italian debate on the stem cell research regulations.

 

Project at IAS-STS: Hybrid biovalues in cord blood economy

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is become a medical technology, a bio-objectified tissue that flow worldwide through circuits of biobanks for its clinical application. Usually the economy of UCB is divided in two main regimes: the system of interconnected public biobanks – which manage a global redistributive economy – and the circuit of private family banks – which, in the framework of a market economy, sell directly to individuals the opportunity to store UCB from possible future family use. My research would call into question this simple opposition. By studying the making of institutional arrangements in UCB biobankking – through the analysis of regulations and the agency of actors involved – my research aims to demonstrate how the complex network structure sustaining the circulation of UCB units is generating a field of practices where redistributive and market economies not only coexist, but are hybridizing each other. I would thus demonstrate that the emergence of bioeconomical regimes does not follow autonomous dynamics, but is the outcome of the agency of actors and of its embeddedness into network configurations and institutional Arrangements.

Selected Publications

Beltrame, L. (2014), ‘The bio-objectification of Umbilical Cord Blood and the socio-economic and epistemic implications of biobanking’, Tecnoscienza. The Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 5(1), pp. 67-90.

Beltrame, L. (2014), ‘The therapeutic promise of pluripotency and its political use in the Italian stem cell debate’, Science as Culture, published on line on 23 April 2014

Beltrame, L. (2013), ‘Disputing the boundaries of pluripotency. The Italian public debate on Amniotic Fluid-derived Stem cells’, New Genetics and Society, 32(4), pp. 385-404.

Beltrame, L. (2013), ‘“Sidestepping the Embryo”. The cultural meanings and political uses of ethical stem cells’, Tecnoscienza. The Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 4(1), pp. 125-146.

Beltrame, L., Bucchi, M. and Mattè, B. (2013), Climate change as a rhetorical resource and masterframe. An analysis of the daily press coverage and public opinion in Italy, in A. Salvatore, O. Schmidtke, and H-J. Trenz (eds.), Rethinking the Public Sphere through Transnationalizing Processes: Europe and Beyond, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187-208

Beltrame, L. (2012), Embedding society in cells: Science, Ethics, and Politics in the Italian Public Debate on Stem Cell Research, in R.G. Mazzolini and H.-J. Rheinberger (eds.), Differing Routes to Stem Cell Research: Germany and Italy, Berlin: Ducker & Humblot/Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 191-223.

Beltrame, L. and Giovanetti, S. (2009), ‘When the Oocyte Becomes an Embryo. The Social Life of an Ambiguous Scientific Image in Italian Newspapers (1996-2007)’, Nuncius. Journal of the History of Science, 2, 2009, pp. 489-506.