Ethical Reflexivity as Capacity Building: Tools and Approaches

This chapter delineates some institutional initiatives and supportive tools that aim to enhance scientists' ethical reflexivity and offers a discussion of their objectives and challenges. It reframes the endeavour to 'enhance' reflexivity in terms of capacity building, namely working with the capacities for ethical reflexivity that scientists already possess and facilitating further building of capacities, specifically with regard to the articulation and performance of ethical reflexivity and the broadening of perspectives. The chapter describes and discusses tools and approaches with regard to how they contribute to enabling the articulation and performance of reflexivity. The notion of 'reflexivity' has emerged as a key dimension of responsible research and innovation (RRI), a policy discourse particularly visible at European Union (EU) level since around 2010. The interest in RRI seeks to extend scientific responsibility so as to include future societal impacts of technological development.