Testing (bio)governance

Tests to detect SARS-CoV-2 infections were used in many countries during the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ways in which tests were used differed remarkably between countries. For instance, many more tests were done for the coronavirus in Austria than in England. Moreover, the number of tests performed in Austria also changed frequently, whereas it stayed relatively stable over time in the Netherlands. This project takes these different numbers as a starting point to ask more systematic questions about SARS-CoV-2 testing. It looks at SARS- CoV-2 testing in Austria, England, and the Netherlands to learn more about the uses of technologies in pandemic management and the governance of life. We assume that a range of values, rationalities, and expectationsor so called bio-moralities--have informed specific uses of testing. They may, for example, have shaped expectations on how tests might help to manage the pandemic, or have defined what responsible public health authorities ought to do to protect the health and lives of citizens and populations. This project seeks to identify these values, rationalities, and expectations, to explore how these have shaped specific uses of testing and how they have been shaped by testing. Central research questions are: Which kinds of values, expectations, and rationalities shaped the development, provision and uses of testing in the three countries? Who were the actors, experts, and authorities involved in envisioning, organizing, and providing tests? And what may we learn from this specific case about the uses of technologies in pandemic management and the governance of life? To answer these questions, a team of researchers from the University of Klagenfurts Department of Society, Knowledge, and Politics and the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences Division of Biomedical and Public Health Ethics in Krems will analyze and compare the uses of testing in Austria, England, and the Netherlands. We will build upon conceptual tools from Science and Technology Studies, Policy Analysis, and Public Health Ethics, and use social science methods to answer our research questions. Reconstructing and comparing uses of testing at different sites and different moments in time throughout the pandemic and unpacking the biomoralities that sustained them will help us improve our understanding of how normative ideas about health and life are reflected in how actors collectively envision, organize and deliver technologies. The project will thereby contribute to social science literature on the relations between technologies and moral orders, on the significance of testing in contemporary health care, and on the increasing social significance of data.