The Medicine & Its Objects Workshop is delighted to present:

Dr. Sorcha Brophy

Harris School of Public Policy

Systematization Work: The Backstage Repair of Clinical Medical Ethics”

Overview: In this book chapter, I investigate the challenges created by expectations about ideal classification systems, describing the work done within a US medical association to develop and repair the association’s ethics code. I argue that the cleavage between ideal and real-world classification systems mandates purposive work to repair and maintain classification systems, and to cause them to appear consistent and complete even as they are not. The broader book project draws on three ethnographic case studies to investigate the strategic—and often conflictual—work of creating organizational ethics policy. I demonstrate that even as members of organizations are skeptical about the extent to which ethics standards shape behavior, the creation of these standards matters a great deal because this process provides opportunities to engage with an imagined moral infrastructure. By creating ethics standards, members of organizations are able to understand their actions as guided by a systematic design and undergirded by stable principles. In practice, these moral infrastructures are not actually comprehensively designed systems. Nor are they truly stable. As a result, organizational actors must engage in strategies to cause ethics policy to appear as systematic—even as it is not. This book provide insights about why organizational ethics have limited success in producing behavioral changes by demonstrating that the process of creating ethics actually diminishes the perceived need for change.

Discussant: Alexandra Brewer, Doctoral Candidate, Sociology

Wednesday, January 22nd

4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

Rosenwald 329

***Snacks and refreshments will be served.***

To receive a copy of the paper, or if you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please email Katie Gibson (gkate@uchicago.edu).