Embodied and Situated Responsible Research and Innovation: A New Approach to Enhancing Inclusion

This chapter makes the case for a pluralistically embodied and situated turn in RRI research. This turn involves two moves: (1) reflective engagement with how an ableist picture of human embodiment animates innovation contexts and sociotechnical anticipation and (2) operationalization of a view of human cognition, interaction, dialogue, and participation as pluralistically embodied and situated phenomena. The latter move carries important implications for RRI’s approach to inclusion, which, the authors argue, must be broadened away from its traditionally narrow focus on logocentric approaches to dialogue and deliberation toward practices and processes that recognize the politically nonneutral ways in which people’s embodiment and situatedness in specific material contexts shape participatory processes of inclusion. The chapter concludes by outlining several implications and recommendations that follow from the authors’ pluralistically embodied and situated approach to RRI—bearing on the who, the how, the when, and the where of operationalizing inclusion in responsible research and innovation.