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Laboratories (Anthropology)

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  1. Introduction
  2. Laboratory studies—ethnographic research conducted in and about medical and scientific labs—are connected to movements within cultural anthropology, sociology, and women’s studies in the 1970s and 1980s that called for critical social scientific accounts of powerful Western institutions. Laboratories were identified as key sites for the transformation of both science and society as observers of laboratory work challenged representations of scientific institutions as isolated from the cultural, political, and economic concerns that animate everyday life outside of the laboratory. Ethnographers began to conduct fieldwork in laboratories, applying the insights of ethnomethodology, practice theory, discourse analysis, and other social science methods in order to analyze what scientists actually did and said, which revealed messier, more interesting versions of laboratory life than what could be found in official accounts or polished scientific publications. Ethnographies of labs, however, were never intended as mere descriptions. This work had important political implications—if science was more than a neutral recording of facts and a linear progression of individual accomplishments getting closer and closer to the truth about nature, then perhaps science could be done differently. If all scientists necessarily brought their cultural beliefs and values to bear on their work, then the exclusion of a wider range of perspectives—from women, minorities, and other groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences—could no longer be justified using the language of objectivity, rationality, or neutrality. As laboratories became better established as sites of social scientific research in the 1990s and 2000s, scholars began to expand their inquiries and pursue more specialized concerns. The focus on scientific discourse and practice that had been present since the beginning of laboratory studies deepened, and studies of scientific language, communication, gesture, practice, and pedagogy grew into subfields in their own right. Scholars continued to examine gender and science, developing strong research programs focused on the natural sciences, where questions of objectivity and perspective came to the fore, and biomedicine and the life sciences, where questions about bodies, representation in research, and interventions in reproduction were given particular attention. Another strand of research began to revisit the question of the laboratory itself—what kind of place is the laboratory, and is it always bounded by four walls? Scholarship on laboratory technology has been another productive area where interest in practice has met attention to values and valuing, as research on weapons science and biotechnology has opened up profound questions about nature, culture, and the limits of the human.
  3. General Overviews
  4. Laboratory studies sit at the intersection of anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and scholarly overviews of laboratory studies offer different genealogies of the multidisciplinary development of this field. Fischer 2007 offers a thoughtful take on the multiple scholarly lineages that have informed anthropological research on laboratories and other sites of scientific and technological knowledge production, pointing to the connections and tensions that run across disciplinary divides. These tensions, some of which can be traced to the “science wars” of the 1990s, are also addressed in Fujimura 1999, which makes a compelling case for the need for anthropologists to analyze questions of scientific knowledge and authority. Franklin 1995, a meticulous overview of the scholarly origins of the anthropology of science, also discusses the controversies of the science wars, arguing that anthropology is uniquely positioned to offer a needed critical analysis of science as culture.Martin 1998 also takes up the question of science as culture in order to think about how cultural anthropologists might engage with science as simultaneously a sphere of meaningful social action as well as a locus of political and economic power. Woolgar 1982, Knorr Cetina 1995, and Doing 2008 are general overviews that specifically address laboratory studies, although they necessarily also engage with broader questions in anthropology and STS as they situate the laboratory as an object of analysis. Woolgar 1982 describes the emerging field of laboratory studies as characterized by its ethnographic and immersive methods of study and argues that the field would benefit from greater attention to reflexivity. Knorr Cetina 1995 shares this understanding of laboratory studies as defined through its ethnographic focus and further identifies the laboratory as theoretically significant in its own right as a powerful location for the reconfiguration of the natural and social order and the construction of facts. The problem of the laboratory’s role in the construction of facts is taken up again in Doing 2008, which makes a convincing argument that laboratory studies have not always lived up to their stated goal of accounting for the relationship between local practice and the production of enduring facts.
  5. Doing, Park. 2008. Give me a laboratory and I will raise a discipline: The past, present, and future politics of laboratory studies in STS. In The handbook of science and technology studies. Edited by Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael E. Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, 279–295. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
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  7. This comprehensive review looks at the problem of accounting for the relationship between local practice and enduring facts as a leitmotif in the history of laboratory studies and provides thoughtful syntheses of the major early works in this field.
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  9. Fischer, Michael M. J. 2007. Four genealogies for a recombinant anthropology of science and technology. Cultural Anthropology 22.4: 539–615.
  10. DOI: 10.1525/can.2007.22.4.539Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. An insightful survey of the complex histories of anthropological engagement with science and technology that weaves together the diverse philosophical legacies and political concerns that have animated studies of scientific knowledge and practice.
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  13. Franklin, Sarah. 1995. Science as culture, cultures of science. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:163–184.
  14. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.001115Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. This meticulously detailed overview of the development of the anthropology of science offers a particularly sharp reading of the political stakes of anthropological engagement with science as culture.
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  17. Fujimura, Joan H. 1999. Authorizing science studies and anthropology. American Anthropologist 101.2: 381–384.
  18. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1999.101.2.381Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. This commentary, written in response to Steve Fuller’s remarks on Fujimura’s work on knowledge production, explicitly situates science studies within the disciplinary concerns of anthropology, arguing that anthropologists can and should attend to pressing questions of authority over knowledge, including those raised by the science wars of the 1990s.
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  21. Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1995. Laboratory studies: The cultural approach to the study of science. In Handbook of science and technology studies. Edited by Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Peterson, and Trevor Pinch, 140–167. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  23. This book chapter reviews ethnographic work on laboratories and describes the theoretical significance of the laboratory as a place where the natural and social orders are reconfigured and facts are constructed. The chapter concludes with a reflection on critiques of laboratory studies and outlines an agenda for future research.
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  25. Martin, Emily. 1998. Anthropology and the cultural study of science. Science, Technology & Human Values 23.1: 24–44.
  26. DOI: 10.1177/016224399802300102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. A thoughtful analysis of science as a site of cultural production and hub of social and economic power deserving of critical anthropological attention. Martin introduces three concepts—citadels, rhizomes, and string figures—that are useful for theorizing the complex relationships between science, culture, and society.
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  29. Traweek, Sharon. 1993. An introduction to cultural and social studies of sciences and technologies. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 17.1: 3–25.
  30. DOI: 10.1007/BF01380596Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. This highlights the contributions of European and North American anthropology, sociology, social epistemology, philosophy, cultural studies, and gender studies to developing the cultural and social study of sciences, technologies, and medicine. The article also includes a comprehensive bibliography.
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  33. Woolgar, Steve. 1982. Laboratory studies: A comment on the state of the art. Social Studies of Science 12.4: 481–498.
  34. DOI: 10.1177/030631282012004001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. This article distinguishes laboratory studies based on immersive ethnographic experience with scientific activity and practice from earlier sociological studies of scientists, which often relied on secondary sources. Questions of methodology and reflexivity in the context of empirical social research are also discussed.
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  37. Journals
  38. Anthropological and ethnographic studies of laboratories appear in the major journals of the discipline, but there are also a number of specialty journals that more regularly showcase this type of work. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Medical Anthropology, Medicine Anthropology Theory, andSocial Science & Medicine are valuable resources for research situated in and around biomedical laboratories, including many ethnographic and patient-focused studies. Science, Technology, & Human Values, Social Studies of Science, and Science & Technology Studies—as the titles suggest—publish laboratory studies framed by the concerns of the interdisciplinary field of STS. These journals take a wider approach to the laboratory as a scholarly object and in addition to work on biomedical laboratories also publish social analyses of laboratory work and practice in fields such as physics, chemistry, and environmental science. Science as Culture, Public Understanding of Science, and Science in Context take an even broader perspective, situating the laboratory within the social and cultural worlds that lend meaning and power to scientific knowledge. These journals are especially strong in their focus on how science is interpolated by publics, whether through citizen science projects, public engagement efforts, or educational initiatives.
  39. Medical Anthropology. 1977–.
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  41. Medical Anthropology focuses on work that explores the social aspects of health and disease, as well as the global circulation of biomedical knowledge, technologies, and treatments.
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  43. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 1972–.
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  45. This highly regarded medical anthropology journal published by the American Anthropological Association features ethnographic research focused on biomedical issues and offers a wide range of work exploring laboratory science and practice from an international perspective.
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  47. Medicine Anthropology Theory. 2014–.
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  49. This open-access journal provides a forum for scholarly explorations of the anthropology of health, illness, and medicine and aims to showcase work in medical anthropology beyond North America.
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  51. Public Understanding of Science. 1992–.
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  53. This interdisciplinary journal publishes work that examines the relations between science, technology, and medicine and the public, with articles on topics such as science education and popular media representations of science.
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  55. Science as Culture. 1987–.
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  57. Science as Culture offers a critical perspective on the myriad ways in which science and technology mediate cultural experience. The journal places special emphasis on articles that unpack the ideologies and values underpinning scientific work and knowledge.
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  59. Science in Context. 1987–.
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  61. Science in Context is an international journal focused on studies of scientific controversies and debates, often from a historical, sociological, or philosophical perspective.
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  63. Science & Technology Studies. 1988–.
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  65. The official journal of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Science & Technology Studies takes an interdisciplinary approach to the coconstitution of science, technology, and society, with a particular focus on Europe. Prior to 2012 the journal was named Science Studies.
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  67. Science, Technology, & Human Values. 1976–.
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  69. Science, Technology, & Human Values is the journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science and is an excellent resource for STS scholarship that examines science and technology in relation to political, cultural, and social concerns.
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  71. Social Science & Medicine. 1967–.
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  73. This interdisciplinary journal publishes work from across the social sciences and health professions and examines international issues at the intersection of health, biomedicine, and social science, with a particular focus on policy applications.
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  75. Social Studies of Science. 1971–.
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  77. Social Studies of Science is an interdisciplinary STS journal that frequently publishes ethnographic and qualitative studies of laboratory practices and the social and political power of laboratory-based scientific research.
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  79. Textbooks, Handbooks, and Readers
  80. Anthropological scholarship in and of laboratories is often included in textbooks and readers that focus on the broader, interdisciplinary field of STS. Biagioli 1999 compiles a wide range of classic ethnographic work focused on laboratory settings and is a useful teaching resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses on the topic. Harding 2011 and Wyer, et al. 2014 offer readings that highlight the political stakes of critical analyses of the sites of scientific knowledge production from feminist and postcolonial perspectives. The second and third editions of The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Jasanoff, et al. 1995; Hackett, et al. 2008, respectively) are essential reference works published in association with the Society for Social Studies of Science. Each volume includes stand-alone chapters on major themes of research in STS, such as genomics, social studies of finance, publics and politics, and laboratory studies, written by leading scholars in the field. Restivo 2005 is another key reference work, with alphabetically organized entries on topics of general interest, such as medical technologies, concepts of nature, and emerging diseases. The short bibliographies that follow each entry make this encyclopedia especially useful for students and researchers looking for additional resources on science and technology–related topics. For advanced undergraduate students and scholars who are new to the field of STS, Sismondo 2010offers a helpful and clearly written background to the theoretical issues and historical development of this interdisciplinary field.
  81. Biagioli, Mario, ed. 1999. The science studies reader. New York: Routledge.
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  83. This indispensable reader contains influential articles and classic essays in STS and is an essential resource for those teaching laboratory studies at an undergraduate or graduate level.
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  85. Hackett, Edward J., Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, eds. 2008. The handbook of science and technology studies. 3d ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
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  87. This edition of the handbook surveys contemporary research directions in STS with a special emphasis on STS engagement with publics and politics.
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  89. Harding, Sandra G. 2011. The postcolonial science and technology studies reader. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
  90. DOI: 10.1215/9780822393849Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  91. This classroom-friendly reader combines familiar scholarship with innovative work in the field, all of which offers a global perspective on the politics of scientific expertise and practices in relation to other forms of producing and evaluating knowledge.
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  93. Jasanoff, Sheila, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, eds. 1995.Handbook of science and technology studies. 2d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  95. An omnibus volume surveying the major directions of the first decades of STS scholarship. This edition includes several contributions that offer insight into the theoretical development of anthropological studies of laboratories. A revised edition of this edition was published in 2001.
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  97. Restivo, Sal, ed. 2005. Science, technology, and society: An encyclopedia. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  99. This useful interdisciplinary reference work surveys topics of concern to the study of science, technology, and society. Entries are organized around three broad themes: science and society, technology and society, and medicine and society.
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  101. Sismondo, Sergio. 2010. An introduction to science and technology studies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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  103. A helpful introduction to the history and theory of STS. Chapter 10, “Studying Laboratories,” is of particular interest, engaging with both the methodological and theoretical issues that arise in empirical research in laboratory settings.
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  105. Wyer, Mary, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Giesman Cookmeyer, Hatice Ozturk, and Marta Wayne, eds. 2014. Women, science, and technology: A reader in feminist science studies. New York: Routledge.
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  107. This interdisciplinary reader includes both classic and contemporary work and would be suitable for use in courses in science studies, gender studies, and medical anthropology. Topics include gender and science education; feminist approaches to science and technology; technologies of sex, gender, and difference; and theoretical contributions to feminist technoscience studies.
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  109. Methods
  110. Laboratories are often situated within universities or in competitive industries and employ highly skilled and educated workers. Anthropologists conducting ethnographic research in laboratory settings have confronted methodological issues associated with working in these often elite and difficult-to-access spaces. As with the broader “studying up” movement in anthropology, presented inNader 1969, the impetus to study laboratories was partly motivated by political concerns that led anthropologists to critically examine institutions and processes associated with power and responsibility in Western societies—a point that is explored in Forsythe 1999. This movement upended the traditional power relationship of anthropologist and informant, as anthropologists turned their attention to actors in privileged cultural and economic positions, rather than focusing exclusively on traditionally marginalized groups. In this shift, the question of ethnographic access was reconfigured. Obtaining permission to enter and observe laboratories—as with other spaces of power and prestige—can be difficult for the would-be anthropologist. Traditional, immersive participant observation may not always be possible. As Gusterson 1997 explains, anthropologists in these settings may instead employ techniques of polymorphous engagement, combining interviews, textual analysis, short sessions of observation, and research in multiple field sites to gain in-depth ethnographic knowledge. Schlecker and Hirsch 2001, however, questions the move toward multisited fieldwork in science studies. Another approach is suggested in Beaulieu 2010, which proposes the notion of copresence rather than colocation as a strategy for ethnographers of science. A strategy of copresence, as opposed to colocation, places emphasis on nonlab-based knowledge production rather than restricting research to a bounded geographical location. Latour 1987highlights the significance of studying science while it is in progress, rather than analyzing knowledge that has already been produced. Laboratory science often relies on complex technical infrastructures, a methodological problem that is explored in Star 1999, which suggests a combination of traditional ethnographic methods with other techniques like historical and literary analysis, systems analysis, and usability studies. Hine 2001 makes a case for analyzing the laboratory using the tools of organizational anthropology and, like Star 1999, argues for the importance of attending to technologies, such as those that produce measurements, traces, and statistical analyses.
  111. Beaulieu, Anne. 2010. Research note: From co-location to co-presence: Shifts in the use of ethnography for the study of knowledge. Social Studies of Science 40.3: 453–470.
  112. DOI: 10.1177/0306312709359219Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  113. This article suggests that ethnographers of science replace the strategy of colocation, which requires conducting research in a bounded physical location, with an emphasis on copresence, which instead looks at the process of producing knowledge beyond the walls of the lab.
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  115. Forsythe, Diana. 1999. Ethics and politics of studying up in technoscience. Anthropology of Work Review 20:6–11.
  116. DOI: 10.1525/awr.1999.20.1.6Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  117. The author of this article reflects on her shifting fieldwork locations over the course of her own career, from rural Scotland to medical and scientific institutions in the United States, to disrupt the “traditional fieldwork narrative.”
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  119. Gusterson, Hugh. 1997. Studying up revisited. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20.1: 114–119.
  120. DOI: 10.1525/pol.1997.20.1.114Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  121. Drawing on Laura Nader’s classic essay on studying up, Gusterson suggests a strategy of polymorphous engagement for ethnographic research with groups or institutions with which traditional participant observation is not feasible.
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  123. Hine, Christine. 2001. Ethnography in the laboratory. In Inside organizations: Anthropologists at work. Edited by David N. Gellner and Eric Hirsch, 61–76. Oxford: Berg.
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  125. This chapter describes ethnographic research in a laboratory context as a form of organizational anthropology and emphasizes the importance of studying the uses and effects of technology.
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  127. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  129. In this book, Latour outlines a methodological and theoretical program for the social study of science. In his approach, it is critical to study science during the process of its creation, before knowledge and facts become taken for granted.
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  131. Nader, Laura. 1969. Up the anthropologist: Perspectives gained from studying up. InReinventing anthropology. Edited by Dell Hymes, 284–311. New York: Pantheon.
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  133. This influential essay proposes that anthropologists begin to “study up,” or to study powerful and privileged actors and institutions in Western societies.
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  135. Schlecker, Markus, and Eric Hirsch. 2001. Incomplete knowledge: Ethnography and the crisis of context in studies of media, science and technology. History of the Human Sciences 14.1: 69–87.
  136. DOI: 10.1177/095269510101400104Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  137. This article surveys how the method of ethnography was taken up in media and cultural studies and STS and argues that ethnography is facing a crisis in light of uncertainty about its epistemological basis.
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  139. Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. The ethnography of infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist43.3: 377–391.
  140. DOI: 10.1177/00027649921955326Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  141. An article that sets out methods for studying infrastructure and makes a case for attending to the seemingly mundane (numbers, categories) and technically complex (large-scale artificial intelligence systems) as ethnographic objects.
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  143. Ethnographies of Laboratories
  144. In the 1970s and 1980s, anthropologists and sociologists began to develop methods and theories for the empirical study of laboratories and scientists. This scholarship was seen as an important counterpart to philosophical and historical accounts of science, and ethnographic methods were used to gain access to the everyday events of the laboratory and the ordinary language and practices of scientists. These ethnographies provided important insights into the social construction of scientific knowledge and highlighted the ways that scientists actively worked to produce orderly and structured knowledge, countering the notion that science simply revealed a preexisting natural order. Some of the early empirical work on laboratories came out of the British sociological movement known as the sociology of scientific knowledge, which insisted that sociologists must attend not only to the institutional structures and external factors influencing science but also the content and nature of scientific knowledge. The sociology of scientific knowledge is discussed at length in Bloor 1976. Collins 1974 is another early sociological work in this tradition, focusing on the uncertainties involved in the transmission of specialized scientific knowledge through an empirical analysis of North American and British laser researchers. The uncertainties and contingencies of scientific practice are also highlighted in Zenzen and Restivo 1982, an empirical study of a chemistry lab. Other sociological approaches to the production of knowledge include social constructivism, as in Knorr 1981, which draws on ethnographic fieldwork in a plant protein research center, and social interactionism, as in Star 1983, based on participant observation in a neuroscience lab. Lynch 1985exemplifies the ethnomethodological approach to the social study of science and relies extensively on linguistic analyses of transcripts of shop talk among researchers in a neuroanatomy lab. Arguably the most influential of the early laboratory studies, Latour and Woolgar 1979 takes an explicitly anthropological approach to the study of science, arguing that anthropological inquiry requires observers to maintain an analytical distance from their subjects. For anthropologists of science, this means moving beyond their own emic explanations and instead focusing on how scientific facts are produced and given meaning. While Latour and Woolgar 1979 was originally associated with the social constructivist approach, the authors later moved away from this stance and went on to develop actor-network theory, which takes into account the role of nonhumans in science. Traweek 1988 is a classic ethnography of science, analyzing high-energy particle physicists in the United States and Japan in relation to traditional anthropological topics such as kinship, material culture, and social hierarchies.
  145. Bloor, David. 1976. Knowledge and social imagery. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  147. In this book, Bloor lays out the tenets of the strong program in the sociology of scientific knowledge, which argues for a thorough empirical investigation of “the very content and nature” of Western science.
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  149. Collins, Harry. 1974. The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks. Science Studies4:165–186.
  150. DOI: 10.1177/030631277400400203Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. A sociological study of North American and British laboratories working on TEA lasers that focuses on how knowledge is transferred within and among scientific networks.
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  153. Knorr, Karin. 1981. The manufacture of knowledge: An essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science. Oxford: Pergamon.
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  155. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a plant protein research center, Knorr makes a case for studying science as a form of social action and for analyzing scientific knowledge in the context of its production.
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  157. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  159. This classic ethnography of a laboratory in the Salk Institute analyzes the means by which researchers produce order from disorder, drawing on close observations of everyday work and life in the lab.
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  161. Lynch, Michael. 1985. Art and artifact in laboratory science: A study of shop work and shop talk in a research laboratory. London: Routledge.
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  163. Lynch employs an ethnomethodological approach in this study of a neuroanatomy laboratory and through linguistic analysis describes how scientists distinguish between fact and artifact and how divergent interpretations are reconciled.
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  165. Star, Susan Leigh. 1983. Simplification in scientific work: An example from neuroscience research. Social Studies of Science 13.2: 205–228.
  166. DOI: 10.1177/030631283013002002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. This article, based on ethnographic research in a neuroscience lab, examines the process of simplifying problems in order to make them amenable to scientific analysis and how this process is erased from scientists’ descriptions of their work.
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  169. Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and lifetimes: The world of high energy physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  171. This ethnographic monograph compares the social organization and practices of high-energy particle physicists in the United States and Japan. Clearly written and engaging, this book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses.
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  173. Zenzen, Michael, and Sal Restivo. 1982. The mysterious morphology of immiscible liquids: A study of scientific practice. Social Science Information 21.3: 447–473.
  174. DOI: 10.1177/053901882021003004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. This ethnographic account of a chemistry lab follows a research project from initiation to publication and compares the style and rhetoric of documents produced along the way. The authors propose that contingencies are integral to scientific work.
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  177. Laboratories as Places and Spaces
  178. The modern laboratory is only one of the multiple locations where scientific knowledge is and has been produced. However, as Bruno Latour 1999 has argued, the laboratory is also a uniquely powerful place for scientific inquiry. Social scientists and historians have argued that the power of the laboratory relies on the creation and ongoing maintenance and reiteration of boundaries that delineate inside from outside. Kuklick and Kohler 1996, Henke 2000, and Kohler 2002 analyze the lab–field border, or the processes by which field sciences are differentiated from laboratory sciences and the “field” is separated from the lab. Building on this work, Fearnley 2015 further argues that scientific practice in the field entails different ways of relating to research objects, as these objects are already enmeshed in other processes of transformation. Together, these works exploring labs, fields, and their borders suggest that while these borders are far from impermeable, they structure practices, reveal and form social stratifications, and allow scientists in particular places to exert different forms of control over nature. Laboratories have also been compared and contrasted with other social and academic institutions such as museums and botanic gardens, as in Bennett 2005and Livingstone 2003. The geographical placement of laboratories offered in this work is complemented by Galison 1997 and Lynch 1991, which take a different approach to the siting of knowledge production, suggesting that laboratories can also be situated temporally (as in Galison 1997) and symbolically and materially (as in Lynch 1991). More recently, distributed scientific practices across multiple sites and infrastructures have raised new questions about the organization of scientific space and place. Vertesi 2014 addresses the overlapping of sociotechnical systems in scientific work and introduces the notion of “seams” to theorize these areas of overlap and how actors work with and across them.
  179. Bennett, Tony. 2005. Civic laboratories: Museums, cultural objecthood and the governance of the social. Cultural Studies 19.5: 521–547.
  180. DOI: 10.1080/09502380500365416Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  181. This article draws on Karin Knorr-Cetina and Bruno Latour’s work on how laboratories rearrange objects, persons, and their relations in order to theorize the ways that museums similarly bring new things into being.
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  183. Fearnley, Lyle. 2015. Wild goose chase: The displacement of influenza research in the fields of Poyang Lake, China. Cultural Anthropology 30.1: 12–35.
  184. DOI: 10.14506/ca30.1.03Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  185. Based on ethnographic research with scientists studying the avian influenza epizootic, this article identifies a movement from the lab to the field in this area of research and suggests the need for a new anthropological approach to scientific knowledge production beyond the laboratory.
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  187. Galison, Peter. 1997. Three laboratories. Social Research 64.3: 1127–1155.
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  189. This article dissects the laboratory into three distinct laboratories, each associated with a particular epoch in the 20th century (modernist, late modernist, postmodern) in order to examine the particular ways that scientific instruments and practices encountered technological structures and the ideas about pure and applied science and engineering that emerged from these encounters.
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  191. Henke, Christopher R. 2000. Making a place for science: The field trial. Social Studies of Science 30.4: 483–511.
  192. DOI: 10.1177/030631200030004001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  193. Drawing on research with farm advisors and growers in California, this article examines the field trial as a site where aspects of both laboratory and field science come into play, thus suggesting some of the difficulty of drawing neat distinctions between lab and field in practice.
  194. Find this resource:
  195. Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes and labscapes: Exploring the lab-field border in biology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  196. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226450117.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  197. An historical account of the coinvention of laboratory and field science in biology that analyzes the lab–field border as an intangible cultural space that is embodied and experienced in tangible ways.
  198. Find this resource:
  199. Kuklick, Henrika, and Robert E. Kohler, eds. 1996. Special issue: Science in the field. Osiris11.
  200. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  201. This special journal issue features work exploring the field sciences across the physical, biological, and social sciences as objects of historical and social research.
  202. Find this resource:
  203. Latour, Bruno. 1999. Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world. In The science studies reader. Edited by Mario Biagioli, 258–275. New York: Routledge.
  204. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  205. This classic essay illuminates how the ability of the laboratory to destabilize distinctions between spaces and across scales is profoundly linked to its unique form of political power. Originally published in Science observed, edited by K. Knorr and M. Mulkay, 141–170 (London: SAGE, 1983).
  206. Find this resource:
  207. Livingstone, David N. 2003. Putting science in its place: Geographies of scientific knowledge. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  208. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226487243.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  209. This geographical history situates scientific knowledge production in diverse places, including laboratories, museums, botanic gardens, and hospitals.
  210. Find this resource:
  211. Lynch, Michael. 1991. Laboratory space and the technological complex: An investigation of topical contextures. Science in Context 4:51–78.
  212. DOI: 10.1017/S0269889700000156Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  213. Lynch builds on Shapin and Schaffer 2011’s (cited under Biomedical Laboratories, Experiments, and Human Subjects) focus on the laboratory as a physical space, introducing the concept of “topical contextures,” or locally organized spatial orders of equipment and practice that define the place of scientific work.
  214. Find this resource:
  215. Vertesi, Janet. 2014. Seamful spaces: Heterogeneous infrastructures in interaction. Science, Technology & Human Values 39.2: 264–284.
  216. DOI: 10.1177/0162243913516012Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  217. Drawing on ethnographic work with two distributed planetary science teams, this article addresses the overlapping of sociotechnical systems in scientific work and introduces the notion of “seams” to theorize these areas of overlap and how actors work with and across them.
  218. Find this resource:
  219. Postcolonial Laboratory Studies
  220. While much of the early work in the anthropological study of laboratories focused on North American and European sites of knowledge production, in recent years a robust postcolonial approach has emerged and broadened the geographic focus of the field. This body of work moves away from Eurocentric approaches and analyzes scientific and technological thought in a variety of cultural contexts. At the same time, postcolonial science studies scholars have pointed to the coconstitution of colonialism as a political formation and to scientific forms of imperialism, a perspective suggested in Anderson 1992. This perspective is further elaborated in Anderson 2002a, the editor’s introduction to a special issue of Social Studies of Science on postcolonial technoscience. Another influential approach in postcolonial laboratory studies is based on an intersectional style of analysis, as inHarding 1998, which draws on feminist and postcolonial theory to ask if science is “multicultural.” Ethnographic studies of laboratories in the Global South have analyzed how researchers negotiate the possibilities and challenges of scientific inquiry in local contexts. Much of this work examines global pharmaceutical research and development and calls into question easy distinctions between “traditional knowledge” and science. Hayden 2003, which focuses on bioprospecting—the development of drugs based on ethnobotanical and medical knowledge in biodiverse areas of the developing world—looks at the politicization of scientific research and negotiations of inclusion and exclusion in a prospecting partnership between the United States and Mexico. Contestations over the meanings of science also come into play in Adams 2002, an analysis of the circulation of Tibetan medicine in the context of global pharmaceutical capitalism. Pollock 2014, based on qualitative research at a small South African pharmaceutical company, argues against accounts that portray the Global South as either a site for the reception of knowledge from the North or a conduit for translating local or traditional knowledge into global science. Instead, the author considers what is at stake for a pharmaceutical company in the Global South that seeks to participate in global knowledge production. Relatedly, Crane 2010 examines questions of how science travels in global health research networks and connects bioethical concerns to the broader set of challenges experienced by African researchers participating in transnational biomedical research. Another direction of research in this emerging field looks at global biosciences through the lens of political economy, as in Peterson 2014, which situates Nigerian pharmaceutical development in relation to local and transnational financial markets.
  221. Adams, Vincanne. 2002. Randomized controlled crime: Postcolonial sciences in alternative medicine research. Social Studies of Science 32.5–6: 659–690.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. An influential contribution to postcolonial science studies, this article explores intersections between Tibetan medicine and global pharmaceutical research and attends to the production of distinctions between medical facts and medical beliefs.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Anderson, Warwick. 1992. “Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile”: Laboratory medicine as colonial discourse. Critical Inquiry 18.3: 506–529.
  226. DOI: 10.1086/448643Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. Examines the connection between laboratory medicine and colonialism through an analysis of how the medical laboratory helped to perpetuate ideas of racial hierarchies as part of American colonialism in the Philippines.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Anderson, Warwick. 2002a. Introduction: Postcolonial technoscience. In Special issue: Postcolonial technoscience. Social Studies of Science 32.5–6: 643–658.
  230. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. This introduction to a special issue of Social Studies of Science dedicated to bringing postcolonial studies into conversation with science studies proposes “postcolonial technoscience” as an intentionally ambiguous term for a new style of analysis of science and technology.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Anderson, Warwick, ed. 2002b. Special issue: Postcolonial technoscience. Social Studies of Science 32.5–6.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. A special issue of Social Studies of Science that brings together leading scholars in STS and postcolonial studies to critically examine technology and science from global and transnational perspectives.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Crane, Johanna. 2010. Adverse events and placebo effects: African scientists, HIV, and ethics in the “global health sciences.” Social Studies of Science 40.6: 843–870.
  238. DOI: 10.1177/0306312710371145Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. This article focuses on transnational HIV research and raises questions about ethics, authority, and inequality in global health.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Harding, Sandra. 1998. Is science multicultural? Postcolonialisms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
  242. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. This landmark volume brings together insights from postcolonial studies, feminist theory, and STS in order to analyze the cultural situatedness of knowledge production.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Hayden, Cori. 2003. When nature goes public: The making and unmaking of bioprospecting in Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. An ethnography of bioprospecting in Mexico with a critical approach to the ways in which conservation and biodiversity are leveraged by pharmaceutical companies seeking to develop new medical products.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Peterson, Kristin. 2014. Speculative markets: Drug circuits and derivative life in Nigeria. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
  250. DOI: 10.1215/9780822376477Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. An ethnographic examination of Nigerian pharmaceutical markets that connects global health to global capitalism.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Pollock, Anne. 2014. Places of pharmaceutical knowledge-making: Global health, postcolonial science, and hope in South African drug discovery. Social Studies of Science44.6: 848–873.
  254. DOI: 10.1177/0306312714543285Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. This article—an ethnographic analysis of a small South African pharmaceutical company—challenges traditional understandings of knowledge transfer between the Global North and the Global South.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Science as Practice
  258. Ethnographers of laboratories and laboratory work have brought attention to the everyday things that scientists do and say as they work together to produce scientific knowledge. These seemingly ordinary, mundane activities are often referred to as scientific practices. The study of scientific practices has been inspired by Harold Garfinkel’s pioneering work in ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967), which identified the question of how professionals such as scientists and social workers apply common-sense understandings to achieve order and meaning in social action as pressing sociological problems. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 2012, originally published 1962), a philosophical examination of scientific progress and discovery, was also incredibly influential both in drawing attention to the everyday aspects of “normal science” and in dispelling notions of scientific progress hinging on the heroic accomplishments of individual geniuses working in isolation. Scholarship on scientific practice has also drawn on Pierre Bourdieu’s framework for the analysis of social practices (Bourdieu 1977) and his concepts of fields, habitus, doxa, and symbolic capital have been influential, although his structuralist orientation has largely fallen out of favor. Rabinow 1997 offers a critical reflection on the applicability of Bourdieu’s theories for the analysis of scientific practices. Pickering 1992, an edited volume, has many detailed discussions of the concept of science as practice and gives a range of perspectives on the applications of science as practice for sociological and philosophical research. Goodwin 1994 andOchs and Jacoby 1997 take more linguistically oriented approaches to the practice of science and emphasize the role of collectives in orienting social action—practice, as they point out, takes place within and helps to define communities of practice. Roth 2005 builds on this emphasis on language and practice within scientific communities, suggesting that scientists’ processes of forming and agreeing upon classifications and categorizations help to minimize contradiction without eliminating uncertainty.
  259. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  260. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511812507Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  261. This major sociological work brought attention to practices as a unit of human behavior and an object of social analysis. Bourdieu describes how practices tend to reproduce the larger social structures of which they are part, hence often perpetuating inequality.
  262. Find this resource:
  263. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  264. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  265. This volume establishes an analytical framework for the empirical investigation of ordinary, everyday activities and common-sense understandings. Includes studies of psychiatric outpatient clinics, courtrooms, and a medical examiner’s office.
  266. Find this resource:
  267. Goodwin, Charles. 1994. Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96.3: 606–633.
  268. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  269. Using an archaeological field site and the Rodney King trial as case studies, Goodwin describes how scientists and other professionals use coding schemes, highlighting, and graphic representations to create mutually intelligible knowledge within a community of practice.
  270. Find this resource:
  271. Kuhn, Thomas. 2012. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  272. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226458144.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  273. This classic philosophical work on scientific progress and discovery introduced influential concepts of paradigms and paradigm shifts and contributed to an understanding of science as largely composed of relatively ordinary efforts at puzzle-solving. Originally published 1962.
  274. Find this resource:
  275. Ochs, Elinor, and Sally Jacoby. 1997. Down to the wire: The cultural clock of physicists and the discourse of consensus. Language in Society 26:479–506.
  276. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404500021023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  277. An ethnographic study of how deadlines and time limits organize the discourse of consensus among physicists coauthoring conference papers.
  278. Find this resource:
  279. Pickering, Andrew, ed. 1992. Science as practice and culture. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  280. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  281. This edited volume is divided into three sections: positions, arguments, and contents. Contributors discuss sociological and philosophical perspectives on scientific practice, defined by Pickering as “what scientists actually do.”
  282. Find this resource:
  283. Rabinow, Paul. 1997. Science as a practice: The higher indifference and mediated curiosity. InCyborgs and citadels: Anthropological interventions in emerging sciences and technologies. Edited by Gary Lee Downey and Joseph Dumit, 193–208. Santa Fe, NM: SAR.
  284. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  285. In critical conversation with Bourdieu, Rabinow considers the practice of science from an ethical perspective, drawing in part on reflections from his ethnographic work with molecular biologists in the United States and France.
  286. Find this resource:
  287. Roth, Wolff-Michael. 2005. Making classifications (at) work: Ordering practices in science.Social Studies of Science 35.4: 581–621.
  288. DOI: 10.1177/0306312705052102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  289. Analyzes the micro-processes of making classifications and constructing new categories in the everyday work of scientists using ethnographic examples of ecologists and other researchers.
  290. Find this resource:
  291. Language, Communication, and Sound
  292. Communication plays an important role in establishing scientific consensus and knowledge. Ethnographers have studied how scientists communicate within laboratories as well as scientists’ efforts to explain their findings to wider audiences. Empirical studies of scientists working to craft their scholarly communications have revealed the painstaking labor entailed in “putting facts together” (Law and Williams 1982), as each element of a scientific argument is negotiated and finessed to maximize its persuasive power. While Law and Williams 1982 describes the work of putting together a scientific publication, other scholars have analyzed more informal linguistic practices employed by scientists. Gilbert and Mulkay 1984 identifies scientific discourse as a key area for sociological inquiry, examining how scientists’ informal speech and writing reveal a range of communicative repertoires. Lynch 1985 is another influential work in this vein. Drawing on research in a neuroanatomy lab, Lynch describes the phenomenon of “shop talk”—scientists talking to one another about science. Building on this insight, Amann and Knorr-Cetina 1989 point out that in contrast to the mythical notion of the individual genius thinking and working in isolation, scientific thought is better understood as a public, social activity that takes place when scientists talk to one another. Another area of research focuses on the communication of technical information between experts and lay people. Nelkin 1975 discusses how scientific expertise becomes entangled in political controversies over technical questions, leading to an ambivalent role for scientists. Wynne 1989 argues that communicating complex information about risk is an especially challenging task, and the perceived credibility of scientists and governments contributes significantly to the effectiveness of this form of communication. More recently, scholarship on scientific practices of communication—talking—has been complemented by studies of scientific practices of listening, as inMody 2005, which looks at sound and hearing in experimental work, and Supper 2014, which describes the sonification of scientific data.
  293. Amann, K. and K. Knorr-Cetina. 1989. Thinking through talk: An ethnographic study of a molecular biology laboratory. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science Past and Present 8:3–26.
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. Based on research with a molecular genetics laboratory in Germany, the authors argue that scientific thought is produced interactively through talk between scientists rather than by the individual thinking in isolation.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Gilbert, G. N., and M. Mulkay. 1984. Opening Pandora’s box: A sociological analysis of scientists’ discourse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. This sociological monograph book is based on empirical studies of scientists’ informal speech and writing, arguing that scientists employ a wide range of context-specific linguistic repertoires, including humor.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Law, J., and R. Williams. 1982. Putting facts together: A study of scientific persuasion. Social Studies of Science 12:535–558.
  302. DOI: 10.1177/030631282012004003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. A study of a group of scientists as they negotiate and finesse various elements of a scholarly manuscript, including citations, facts, and syntax, in order to produce a persuasive argument.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Lynch, M. 1985. Art and artifact in laboratory science: A study of shop work and shop talk in a research laboratory. London: Routledge.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. This book is based on ethnographic research in a neuroanatomy lab and takes an ethnomethodological approach to scientific practice. Lynch highlights the manifest ways that scientists use language in their work, from professional “shop talk” to discussing interpretations of ambiguous images to reach consensus.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Mody, Cyrus M. 2005. The sounds of silence: Listening to laboratory practice. Science, Technology & Human Values 30:175–198.
  310. DOI: 10.1177/0162243903261951Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. Mody points out that much of the scholarly literature on laboratory practice has emphasized the role of the visual over other forms of embodied and sensory knowledge. In contrast, Mody takes up the question of how sounds and noises in the lab contribute to the development of scientists’ tacit knowledge.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Nelkin, Dorothy. 1975. The political impact of technical expertise. Social Studies of Science5:35–54.
  314. DOI: 10.1177/030631277500500103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. Using two environmental controversies as case studies, this article examines the politicization of technical expertise and concludes that expert knowledge can become a powerful tool for legitimizing political decisions and that conflict among experts decreases their perceived trustworthiness.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Supper, Alexandra. 2014. Sublime frequencies: The construction of sublime listening experiences in the sonification of scientific data. Social Studies of Science 44.1: 34–58.
  318. DOI: 10.1177/0306312713496875Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. This article describes the sonification of scientific data—the transformation of data into sounds—as part of an effort to promote public understanding of science through sublime experiences.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Wynne, Brian. 1989. Sheepfarming after Chernobyl: A case study in communicating scientific information. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 31.2: 10–39.
  322. DOI: 10.1080/00139157.1989.9928930Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. This article analyzes problems of communication and credibility in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Using a small group of English sheep farmers as a case study, Wynne argues that the perceived credibility of scientists and governments contributes to the efficacy of communication about complex technical information.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Feminism and Science
  326. In the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist scholars began to interrogate the gendered assumptions that historically have been intertwined with the development of the natural sciences. The laboratory came into focus as an important site for the production of gendered knowledge as well as knowledge about gender. A comprehensive overview of the rise of feminist research on gender and science can be found in Keller 1995. One focus of this scholarship was a reevaluation the concept of scientific objectivity and, in particular, how objectivity was associated with masculinity while femininity was associated with subjectivity, emotions, and the irrational. This argument is articulated in Keller 1996(originally published 1985), while Longino 1989 questions the assumption that social values can or should be separated from scientific methodology and understandings of objectivity. With deep roots in the feminist movement of the 1970s, this body of scholarship—notably Fausto-Sterling 1992(originally published 1985)—critically attended to biological knowledge about gender differences, revealing its value-laden social production. For these feminist scholars, the question of a critical, emancipatory approach to science—what Harding 1986 has referred to as a “successor science”—was an important theoretical concern, albeit one with no easy resolution. Tuana 1989, an edited volume, offers a wide range of perspectives on this question and provides a thorough examination of how gender biases—along with racial and class-based biases—have informed scientific theory, discourse, and practice.
  327. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1992. Myths of gender: Biological theories about women and men. 2d ed. New York: Basic Books.
  328. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  329. Written by a biologist, this book offers a critical examination of how scientific knowledge is used to bolster problematic claims of biologically rooted gender differences. Originally published 1985.
  330. Find this resource:
  331. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge.
  332. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  333. Through an analysis of primatology, Haraway brings to light the ways that ideas of nature and evolution have been coconstituted with contemporary notions of gender, race, sexuality, and human difference.
  334. Find this resource:
  335. Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
  336. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  337. This philosophical work addresses feminist critiques of the politics and epistemology of scientific knowledge and explores the possibilities and challenges of developing an emancipatory approach to the sciences.
  338. Find this resource:
  339. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1995. The origin, history, and politics of the subject called “gender and science”: A first person account. In The handbook of science and technology studies. Vol. 3. Edited by Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, 80–94. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  341. This chapter gives an overview of the historical development of scholarship on gender and science beginning in the late 1970s and is a helpful introduction to the field. Includes a comprehensive bibliography.
  342. Find this resource:
  343. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1996. Reflections on gender and science. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
  344. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  345. This book was one of the first to critically examine science from a feminist perspective, drawing on historical examples to highlight underlying assumptions equating masculinity with rationality and scientific objectivity while characterizing subjectivity as linked with femininity and emotion. Originally published 1985.
  346. Find this resource:
  347. Longino, Helen. 1989. Science as social knowledge: Values and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  348. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  349. Philosopher of science Longino argues against the notion of scientific objectivity as separable from questions of social values and demonstrates how scientific research on sex-differentiated behavior is imbued with gendered values and assumptions of researchers.
  350. Find this resource:
  351. Tuana, Nancy, ed. 1989. Feminism and science. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
  352. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  353. This edited volume assembles the work of notable feminist scholars and philosophers of science to examine how gender biases are incorporated within the theory, discourse, and practice of science.
  354. Find this resource:
  355. Gender, Body, and Reproduction
  356. Medical anthropology—and its intersections with feminist theory and activism—provided a major impetus for ethnographers to turn their attention to laboratories as meaningful sites of cultural production. In this scholarship, analysis of biomedicine and biomedical technologies is inextricably tied to the experiences of the patients, often women, whose bodies have long served as laboratories in the flesh. Rapp 2001 gives an insightful overview of how biomedicine, medical technologies, and genetic testing emerged as important areas for critical anthropological analysis as feminist concerns led medical anthropologists to examine reproduction in all of its social and scientific iterations. In this vein, Martin 2001 (originally published 1987) is a landmark work in theorizing the gendered and eminently social metaphors through which biomedicine has constructed women’s bodies as objects of scientific knowledge. Lock 1993, a comparative study of aging women in Japan and North America, challenges the notion of a universal biology underpinning phenomena such as menopause and introduces the concept of local biologies to describe how biological differences are produced through interactions between bodies and social, political, and material environments. A comparative, global perspective is also offered in Ginsburg and Rapp 1995, an edited volume focused on stratified reproduction as a diverse and global phenomenon. Building on this work—and taking inspiration from Haraway 1991’s analysis of the cyborg, a figure at the intersection of human and machine—ethnographers began to examine new reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, tracing these ethnographic objects from the clinic to the lab while attending to how assisted reproduction played out in the lived experience of women and their supporters. Franklin 1997, an ethnographic account of assisted conception in England; Davis-Floyd and Dumit 1998, an edited volume collecting anthropological work on technological interventions in reproduction and childhood; and Becker 2000, an examination of the fertility industry from the perspective of men and women navigating its terrain, are among the most influential contributions in this area.
  357. Becker, Gay. 2000. The elusive embryo: How women and men approach new reproductive technologies. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  358. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520224308.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. An ethnography of men and women encountering assisted reproductive technologies as part of the burgeoning fertility industry. This book is especially noteworthy in its attention to the experiences of men in negotiating infertility as well as its nuanced portrayal of failed reproductive interventions.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and Joseph Dumit. 1998. Cyborg babies: From techno-sex to techno-tots. New York: Routledge.
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. This edited volume is divided into four sections: “Cyborg Conceptions,” which analyzes the role of medical technologies in reproduction and childbirth; “The Techno-Fetus,” which examines biomedical discourses and practices around pregnancy; and “Machines and Mothers” and “Techno-Toys and Techno-Tots,” which trace the role of technological interventions from pregnancy and birth to childhood.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Franklin, Sarah. 1997. Embodied progress: A cultural account of assisted reproduction. London: Routledge.
  366. DOI: 10.4324/9780203414965Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. A classic ethnographic monograph focused on the experiences of women and couples undergoing in vitro fertilization in England, with a theoretical framework connecting anthropological accounts of kinship and conception to the new terrain of technologically assisted reproduction.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Ginsburg, Faye D., and Rayna Rapp, eds. 1995. Conceiving the New World order: The global politics of reproduction. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. This influential edited volume offers a comparative and transnational perspective on the politics of reproduction and childbirth in their diverse manifestations globally and historically. Rapp and Ginsburg introduce the concept of “stratified reproduction” to analyze the complex inequalities produced through interventions in reproductive labor.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. This collection of Haraway’s work examines the figure of the cyborg, alongside other hybrid creatures that destabilize easy distinctions between nature and culture, organism and machine. Haraway’s groundbreaking 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” is reprinted here.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Lock, Margaret. 1993. Encounters with aging: Myths of menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. Based on ethnographic work in Japan and North America, this book analyzes women’s accounts of aging and disrupts the notion of biological universals though an examination of the local variability of experiences of menopause.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Martin, Emily. 2001. The woman in the body: A cultural analysis of reproduction. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. This classic account of the metaphors used in medical and scientific texts to describe women’s bodies and their roles in reproduction is a valuable contribution to the study of science as a cultural system, revealing how understandings of social categories, including gender, race, and class, permeate scientific worldviews. Originally published 1987.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Rapp, Rayna. 2001. Gender, body, biomedicine: How some feminist concerns dragged reproduction to the center of social theory. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15.4: 466–477.
  386. DOI: 10.1525/maq.2001.15.4.466Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. This article traces anthropological and feminist approaches to reproduction since the 1970s and provides valuable insights into the history of medical anthropology.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Biomedical Laboratories, Experiments, and Human Subjects
  390. Biomedical laboratories process samples collected from patients and experimental subjects for clinical and research purposes. These samples can also be stored for future research in biobanks. In biomedical research, laboratories play an important role in the transformation of persons into patients and research subjects and of biological materials into information. While the role of experiments in the natural sciences has been extensively theorized in STS, such as in Shapin and Schaffer 2011 and in Gooding, et al. 1989, experiments on human subjects have been taken up more recently, and largely by medical anthropologists. Medical anthropologists have taken inspiration from other ethnographers of laboratories and turned their attention to biomedical laboratories, experiments, and human research subjects across a wide range of geographical settings. The history of the medical laboratory, as Anderson 1992 (cited under Postcolonial Laboratory Studies) argues, is intimately linked with the history of colonialism and colonial medicine. The laboratory is a powerful location for producing knowledge about persons and populations, and laboratory medicine has been used to legitimize practices of exclusion, appropriation, and violence. Anthropologists studying global clinical trials have been attentive to these kinds of questions about power, highlighting how ideas of “ethical variability” (Petryna 2009) have been used to justify conducting medical research according to less rigorous ethical standards in low-income countries.Farmer 2002 further argues against the notion of informed consent as a “magic bullet” for resolving the ethical dilemmas of transnational biomedical research. The tension between Western bioethical concerns, often imagined as universally applicable, and local research governance is also explored in Sariola and Simpson 2011. Cooper and Waldby 2014 theorizes participation in research as a form of labor, calling into question the persistent discourses of altruism that portray research participation as a gift rather than a job. The question of participating in research, however, becomes particularly vexing when society itself is imagined as a laboratory. Lemov 2005 traces the history of social engineering in the 20th century, as techniques for behavioral modification migrated from psychological experiments into the fabric of everyday life, forming the “world as laboratory.” As human behavior is increasingly understood in neurobiological terms, as Rose and Abi-Rached 2013argues, brains rather than persons are emerging as new objects of experimentation and social control.
  391. Adams, Mary, and Christopher McKevitt. 2015. Configuring the patient as clinical research subject in the UK National Health Service. Anthropology & Medicine 22.2: 138–148.
  392. DOI: 10.1080/13648470.2014.997192Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  393. Adams and McKevitt provide a detailed review of the anthropological literature on medical research and human subjects and draw on their own ethnographic work in the UK to problematize the concept of the altruistic research subject.
  394. Find this resource:
  395. Cooper, Melinda, and Catherine Waldby. 2014. Clinical labor: Tissue donors and research subjects in the global bioeconomy. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
  396. DOI: 10.1215/9780822377009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  397. This book theorizes participation in global biomedical research as a form of clinical labor indicative of larger economic patterns under neoliberalism.
  398. Find this resource:
  399. Farmer, Paul. 2002. Can transnational research be ethical in the developing world? Lancet360.9342: 1266.
  400. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11357-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  401. This commentary article suggests that debates about informed consent and the ethics of transnational research protocols must take into account the larger social context of inequality between developed countries, where research universities are often located, and less developed countries, where studies are often conducted.
  402. Find this resource:
  403. Gooding, David, Trevor J. Pinch, and Simon Schaffer, eds. 1989. The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences. Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  404. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  405. The chapters in this edited volume analyze the role of experiments in the natural sciences, with contributions from historians and sociologists.
  406. Find this resource:
  407. Lemov, Rebecca. 2005. World as laboratory: Experiments with mice, mazes, and men. New York: Hill and Yang.
  408. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  409. A history of social engineering in the 20th century with a focus on behavioral research and modification in psychology, anthropology, and sociology.
  410. Find this resource:
  411. Petryna, Adriana. 2009. When experiments travel: Clinical trials and the global search for human subjects. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  412. DOI: 10.1515/9781400830824Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  413. An ethnography examining the offshoring of clinical trials—a process largely driven by the pharmaceutical industry—and the inadequacy of current bioethical guidelines for the complex ethical questions that emerge.
  414. Find this resource:
  415. Rose, Nikolas, and Joelle M. Abi-Rached. 2013. Neuro: The new brain sciences and the management of the mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  416. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  417. This monograph gives a comprehensive overview of contemporary neuroscience and its implications and ramifications for the study and management of human behavior.
  418. Find this resource:
  419. Sariola, Salla, and Bob Simpson. 2011. Theorising the “human subject” in biomedical research: International clinical trials and bioethics discourses in contemporary Sri Lanka.Social Science & Medicine 73.4: 515–521.
  420. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.11.024Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  421. Based on ethnographic research with doctors and researchers in Sri Lanka, this article critiques bioethical understandings of the human research subject as based on paternalistic views of the doctor–patient relationship.
  422. Find this resource:
  423. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. 2011. Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  424. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  425. This landmark historical work focuses on the work of Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle in the 17th century, revealing the genealogy of scientific experimentation as well as the coconstitution of science and the social order. Originally published 1985.
  426. Find this resource:
  427. Politics of Technoscience
  428. Laboratories use, test, and produce a wide range of technologies. Given the intimate relationship between technology and science, some scholars, influenced by philosopher Gilbert Hottois and the more well-known work of Bruno Latour, prefer to use technoscience as a portmanteau, as in Marcus 1995, which introduces the concept of the “technoscientific imaginary.” Work on technoscience also tends to emphasize its political, social, and ethical significance. Winner 1986 takes this approach, analyzing technologies as “forms of life,” entangled with ways of living in the world and inseparable from the social relationships that make technoscience possible and meaningful. While even the most humble and mundane technologies can be understood and analyzed as forms of life, scholars have pointed out that the social and political work of technoscience is particularly apparent in the context of weapons research and biotechnology—two realms where questions of morality and value come to the fore. One influential work on military technoscience is Gusterson 1998, an ethnography of an American weapons laboratory, which reveals how scientists’ views, beliefs, and values animate their work and how they form identifications with the power of the nuclear technologies they develop.Cohn 1987 similarly analyzes how defense intellectuals, scientists, and government officials who formulate nuclear weapon policy employ specialized, “technostrategic” language that abstracts from death and horror and uses striking sexual imagery to construct a masculinist world of nuclear war planning. Ethnographers have also been attentive to the forms of life made possible by and through biotechnology. Rabinow 1996, an ethnography that traces the origins of the molecular biological technique of polymerase chain reaction, is exemplary in this regard, connecting the various social, political, scientific, and legal processes that came together in the development of this transformative technology. Sunder Rajan 2006 offers another incisive take on biotech, building on Rabinow’s work but with greater attention to the processes by which biotechnologies are exchanged and valued. The commercialization and speculation surrounding biotech is further addressed in Hughes 2011, a history of Genentech that situates this company within the larger context of the life sciences and venture capital. As Winickoff 2015 points out, the transformative power of biotechnology must be considered in relation to legal processes that have reconfigured ownership and value in the life sciences via the concept of intellectual property. These changes, Winickoff argues, have the potential to profoundly transform the relationship between nature and culture as well as public and private as biotechnological processes and intellectual property regimes draw together the questions of what nature is and who owns it.
  429. Cohn, Carol. 1987. Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals. Signs 12.4: 687–718.
  430. DOI: 10.1086/494362Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. This article draws on participant observation among American nuclear policy officials and scientists and offers a striking analysis of their use of abstract technostrategic language and sexual metaphors to construct a masculinist world of nuclear war planning.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Gusterson, Hugh. 1998. Nuclear rites: A weapons laboratory at the end of the Cold War. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. This ethnography is based on fieldwork at an American nuclear weapons laboratory and looks at how scientists’ beliefs and values inform their work and how they identify with the power of the weapons they design. The author also analyzes some of the surprising congruities between scientists and antinuclear protesters.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Hughes, Sally Smith. 2011. Genentech: The beginnings of biotech. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  438. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226359205.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. An historical account of the biotech company Genentech and the extraordinary speculation surrounding its initial public offering.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Marcus, George E., ed. 1995. Technoscientific imaginaries: Conversations, profiles, and memoirs. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  442. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. This edited volume focuses on the changing social and political landscapes of late-20th-century science and technology. Chapters depart from traditional academic writing styles, with some contributors writing memoirs, profiles, and interviews.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Making PCR: A story of biotechnology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. This ethnography focuses on the biotechnological world that produced polymerase chain reaction, the molecular genetic technology that transformed genetics in the 1980s.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Sunder Rajan, Kaushik. 2006. Biocapital: The constitution of postgenomic life. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
  450. DOI: 10.1215/9780822388005Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. Based on ethnographic research in the United States and India, this highly theoretical book introduces the concept of biocapital to help explain the processes by which biotechnologies are exchanged, circulated, and valued as a part of yet distinct from contemporary capitalism.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Winickoff, David E. 2015. Biology denatured: The public–private lives of lively things. InScience and democracy: Making knowledge and making power in the biosciences and beyond. Edited by Stephen Hilgartner, Clark Miller, and Rob Hagendijk, 15–32. New York: Routledge.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Examines how changes in intellectual property driven by biotechnology and legal institutions are reconfiguring the relationship between, on the one hand, nature and culture, and, on the other, public and private.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Winner, Langdon. 1986. The whale and the reactor: The search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  458. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. This influential philosophical monograph draws on Marx and Wittgenstein to consider technologies as forms of life, less tools than part of how we think about ourselves as humans.
  460. Find this resource:
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