Virtuous Repertoires for Postcolonial Bioethics

The Case of Coccinia abyssinica Research

Abstract

Scientific research, particularly in international collaborations, operates within a complex web of expert-driven practices, legal regulations, and ethical considerations that are often distanced from local and regional participation. While ethical, legal and social initiatives to govern science have attempted to bridge this gap, the good governance of science, especially in cases marked by historical power imbalances, remains a significant challenge. Existing governance structures, often influenced by national or supranational legal frameworks and cosmopolitan ideals, may not adequately address the nuances of international, privately funded, or postcolonial research landscapes. This paper addresses relating limitations, particularly in the case of international scientific collaborations involving the Global South. It argues that current governance models, while aspiring to universalism, can inadvertently perpetuate injustices and overlook local values and needs. Using the case of a German-Ethiopian research collaboration on Coccinia abyssinica, an endemic Ethiopian plant, this paper illustrates the tensions arising from differing sociotechnical imaginaries, research repertoires, and power relationships to decision making processes. As a corrective, this paper proposes the development and adoption of virtue-based ethics. This perspective emphasizes virtues and responsibilities for actors within the scientific and bioethical ecosystem, aiming to foster more equitable, culturally sensitive, and fair international research collaborations. By integrating postcolonial critiques of epistemology and STS insights to bioethics, this approach seeks to reconfigure bioethical governance to better navigate the complexities of global science and promote genuine epistemic inclusion.