ABSTRACT
As evidenced by this volume, the question of how biobanks are established as legitimate forms of research that command support– in the form of financial investment from governmental and charitable sectors, and the willingness of individuals to volunteer their biological samples, medical records and other personal data – has become a key question. When thinking about the ways that biobanks seek to gain legitimacy, social scientists have tended to look at innovations in the arenas of governance and policy, at how a number of initiatives have held public consultations and created oversight bodies (Salter and Jones 2005), or how policymakers have used the language of 'citizenship', 'common good' or 'solidarity' to stress the value of this kind of research to society (Petersen 2005). While recognising the contribution of this work, my chapter takes a different approach, drawing on the 'co-production' framework (Jasanoff 2004) developed within Science and Technology Studies (STS). This framework suggests that we need to pay attention to biobanks as examples of knowledge-making projects as well as representing innovations in governance. This means that the legitimacy of biobanks must be understood, simultaneously, in scientific and social terms.
