Doing Science + Culture : How cultural and interdisciplinary studies are changing the way we look at science and medicine

343 Pages·2000·17.042 MB·English

by  Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek

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SCIENCE
How CULTURAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES ARE CHANGING
THE WAY WE LOOK AT SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
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Doing Science Culture
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Edited by
Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek
Routledge
New York London
2000
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Published in 2000 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
Copyright © 2000 by Routledge
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doing science + culture / edited by Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-92111-2 - ISBN 0-415-92112-0
1. Science-Social Aspects. I. Title: Doing science + culture.
II. Reid, Roddey, 1952- III. Traweek, Sharon.
Q175.5.D65 2000
306.4'5-dc21 99-056916
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Acknowledgments vii
I ntroduction: Researching Researchers
Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek
llTransnational Science and Globalization
Faultlines 21
Sharon Traweek
Postcolonial Science, Big Science, and Landscape 49
Itty Abraham
Transnational Genomics 71
Transgressing the Boundary between
the "Modern/West" and the "Premodern/East"
Joan H. Fujimura
21
Emerging Subjects
Wonder Woman and Her Disciplinary Powers 9S
The Queer Intersection of Scientific Authority
and Mass Culture
Molly Rhodes
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vi Content')
Researcher or Smoker? 119
Or, When the Other Isn't Other Enough
in Studying "Across" Tobacco Control
Roddey Reid
The Ecstasy of Miscommunication 151
Cyberpsychiatry and Mental Dis-Ease
Jackie Orr
The Rationality of Mania 177
Emily Martin
3/ Postdisciplinary Pedagogies and Programs
Mainstreaming Feminist Critiques into 199
the Biology Curriculum
Scott F. Gilbert
with collaboration from the Biology and Gender Study Group
Reconceiving Scientific literacy as Agential literacy 221
Or, Learning How to Intra-act Responsibly within the World
Karen Barad
Engineering Cultural Studies 259
The Postdisciplinary Adventures of Mindplayers, Fools, and Others
Anne Balsamo
Calling the Future(s) with Ethnographic and 275
Historiographic Legacy Disciplines
STS @ the Turn []OOO.mit.edu
Michael M. ]. Fischer
Index 323
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Acknowled mente:,
The publication of these collected essays is the fruit of various collaborations
that stretch back to 1993, when we first staged a conference on interdiscipli
nary studies of science, technology, and medicine. These efforts have enjoyed
institutional and individual support from many quarters. First and foremost is
the University of California Humanities Research Institute, which in 1993
sponsored the "Located Knowledges" conference at UCLA and in the winter
and spring quarters of 1996 hosted the "Postdisciplinary Approaches to
Technoscience" residential research group. The unstinting support and en
couragement of HRI directors Mark Rose and Pat O'Brien will always be in
our eyes as an example of what bold leadership in the humanities can do in the
United States, particularly in times of public controversy and institutional
change. Our six-month residence at the HRI under Pat O'Brien's generous
custodianship especially gave ample opportunity to appreciate the institute's
unparalleled resources and the qualities of its staff: we want to thank Assistant
Director Deborah Massey Sanchez for her energetic organization of planning,
budget, and the group's day-to-day needs; Mia Larson for keeping track of our
complex scheduling of events; DeeDee Nunez, who made arrangements for
visiting scholars and guaranteed that the residency at the HRI housing was an
enjoyable one; and Christine Aschan for helping us fully exploit the scholarly
resources of the HRI and the University of California, Irvine, campus.
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viii Acknowlf'dgmf'nt'>
Members of the research group and scholarly and scientific participants in
the colloquia and workshops it hosted deserve particular thanks: Anne Bal
samo, Karen Barad, Charles Bazerman, Mario Biagioli, Lisa Bloom, Lisa
Cartwright, Adele Clarke, Rich Doyle, Joan Fujimura, Akhil Gupta, Sandra
Harding, Jed Harris, Val Hartouni, John L. King, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Emily
Martin, Constance Penley, Ted Porter, Paul Rabinow, Molly Rhodes, Vernon
Rosario, Vivian Sobchack, Knut Sorenson, Carole Vance, and Steve Woolgar.
Mario Biagioli, who helped organize these undertakings before leaving Cali
fornia, was an invaluable collaborator. The anthology also owes its existence to
other colleagues: Linda Brodkey, Gerald Feldman, Donna Haraway, and Peter
Reill. Lisa Bloom provided crucial support throughout the entire enterprise.
We thank Bill Germano of Routledge for supporting this project, Amy
Reading for her experience and efficient editorial oversight, and Krister Swartz
for making the production process go as smoothly as possible.
Finally, during various stages of the project we enjoyed funding from the
following sources: the University of California Humanities Research Institute;
the Center for German and European Studies of the University of California,
Berkeley; the Abe Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council
and the American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided by the
Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership; the Academic Senates of the
University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles; and the Japanese gov
ernment's Ministry of Education.
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Introduction
Researching Researchers
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The present collection of essays marks a particular moment in the interdisci
plinary study of science, technology, and medicine in that globalized region of
residence and work called the United States. This publication takes place at a
juncture marked by the slow dismantling of the infrastructure of scientific re
search dating from the Cold War, public controversies over scholarly studies of
scientific practices, and changes in U.S. higher education. The hope of the edi
tors is that the essays not only bear witness to the peculiar institutional, na
tional, and global contexts in which they were written but also constitute
compelling responses to the evolving environment in which researchers en
gage in committed study of past and present practices of knowing the natural
and social world. We welcome comment from within and outside the U.S. aca
demic infrastructure on the substance of these essays and on their underlying
assumptions and preoccupations, which derive from that same institutional
and national context.
If the environment in which physics, evolutionary biology, psychology,
pharmaceutical research, radio astronomy, bioinformatics, cybernetics, psy
chiatry, public health, and genetics are practiced-from wet and computer
simulation labs to research protocols, funding networks, scientific journals,
and databases to classroom teaching and popular culture-is for us an object
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Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek
of reflection, so, too, are the contexts in which we study them. Here we must
contend with the legacy of the peculiar histories of the humanities and social
sciences within U.S. higher education (prestige, public mission, styles of re
search and pedagogy, and so on); with research sites such as archives, libraries,
field sites; with the infrastructure offunding, publishing, and professional net
works; with interdisciplinary programs from women's studies and science
studies to cultural studies and queer studies; with rapidly evolving student
constituencies; with the restructuring of colleges and universities mandated by
budget cutting and political pressures; and with the dismantlement of affirma
tive action policies. We want to claim that the practices of cultural studies and
interdisciplinary studies of science and medicine of the last twenty years refl
ect both these contexts-of doing science and of doing research on science
and are well positioned to deal with the challenges they pose to the routine
understandings of how knowledge is produced.
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Doing Science + Culture brings together interdisciplinary essays researched
and written from within those two contexts. This is not the first anthology to
do SO,2 but it is our contention that it is unique in offering concrete case stud
ies together with thoughtful reflection on what it means to do cultural studies
of science, technology, and medicine today in the United States. We think
these essays display a tone, a way of launching ideas, and a relation to knowl
edge production in general that readers can take away and use to further the
formulation of their own ideas and projects.3
Collaborations and In terdisciplinary Practitioners
This anthology is the culmination of collaborative work between the editors
that began in 1991 and has included also the active participation of Mario Biagi
olio The three of us came from various backgrounds (computer science, visual
studies, history of science, literary studies, cultural history, anthropology of sci
ence, feminist epistemology, and cultural studies), training (cultural theory,
fieldwork, archival research, linguistic apprenticeships, and iconographic and
textual analysis), and prior United States institutional experience (from private
research universities and engineering schools to liberal arts colleges and land
grant and public research universities on the West and East Coasts and in the
Midwest and the South). We believe that the unusual mix of our cross-discipli
nary and cross-institutional experiences laid the foundation for the three of us
to explore together ways for furthering committed, interdisciplinary inquiry in
the United States into scientific, technological, and medical practices.
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