Trust, regulatory processes and NICE decision-making: Appraising cost-effectiveness models through appraising people and systems.

This article presents an ethnographic study of regulatory decision-making regarding the cost-effectiveness of expensive medicines at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England. We explored trust as one important mechanism by which problems of complexity and uncertainty were resolved. Existing studies note the salience of trust for regulatory decisions, by which the appraisal of people becomes a proxy for appraising technologies themselves. Although such (dis)trust in manufacturers was one important influence, we describe a more intricate web of (dis)trust relations also involving various expert advisors, fellow committee members and committee Chairs. Within these complex chains of relations, we found examples of both more blind-acquiescent and more critical-investigative forms of trust as well as, at times, pronounced distrust. Difficulties in overcoming uncertainty through other means obliged trust in some contexts, although not in others. (Dis)trust was constructed through inferences involving abstract systems alongside actors’ oral and written presentations-of-self. Systemic features and ‘forced options’ to trust indicate potential insidious processes of regulatory capture

Een deurtje in de toren. Tien jaar Wetenschapswinkels

In het begin van de zeventiger jaren schoten de vrijwilligersprojecten van studenten en ex-studenten die hun kennis ten dienste wilden stellen van de maatschappij als paddestoelen uit de grond. Voorbeelden daarvan zijn de zeer bekend geworden rechtswinkels. Soms werkten studentvrijwilligers ook in projecten van anderen, zoals cursussen voor tweede-taalverwerving en tweede-kansonderwijs in buurthuizen. Deze groepen noemden zich vaak winkel, waarmee de mogelijkheid om eens binnen te lopen en de overdracht van zaken (kennis) benadrukt werden. De studentvrijwilligers hadden gemeen dat ze vonden dat de officiële instanties te weinig openstonden voor niet-mondige en niet-draagkrachtige groeperingen. Ze wilden met hun activiteiten en hun kennis de positie van die personen verbeteren en daarmee ook politieke en sociale veranderingen bewerkstelligen. Deze winkels kozen bewust voor een positie onafhankelijk van de universiteit

Religious pluralism and processes of individualisation in Hinduism

The paper explores the interconnection between religious pluralisation and processes of individualisation in India by focusing on the emergence of religious alternatives to Vedic ritualism in the centuries around the beginning of the Common Era. Criticism of established religious goals and practices voiced by individuals was accompanied by an increasing interest in the structures of individual existence. The conceptualisation of the individual in the philosophical and religious literature of the period is an important aspect of establishing new religious pathways with ideas of self, agency and personal relatedness being of central concern. On the basis of different doctrines religious options gained acceptance which allow individuals to pursue their religious aspirations either apart from or parallel to the ritual-social obligations in the context of caste-hierarchy. The new religious options gravitate towards institutionalisation in the form of religious communities (sampradāya). These are not only important elements in organising Hindu religious pluralism, but also allow for recurrent processes of religious individualisation