Culture in the Workplace

            The Traweek, Gusterson, and Byron articles all highlight the various transformative processes that occur as one transitions from a novice in a given field to a ‘professional’. In particular, Byron’s 1994 article “How Medicine Constructs Its Objects” argues that the training process that all medical students experience drastically transforms their views of their patients and illness in general. The hospital setting represents its own unique culture to which the medical students become acculturated. This culture is one that is so deeply characterized by hierarchies and a focus on physiologic and pathophysiogical processes that the personhood of both patients and physicians is obscured. Thus, the ‘objects’ referred to in the title refers not only to the human bodies upon which medicine works, but also to the physicians trained in a very particular manner on how medicine should be carried out. Nevertheless, Byron admits that the culture described in the article mainly characterizes medical students as opposed to experienced clinicians and focuses on those who work in tertiary care hospital settings. It seems unlikely, however, that the most significant tenets learned by medical school students such as the implied belief of one student that efficiency in medicine and listening to patients’ stories are mutually exclusive (78) would be substantially revised over the years especially amongst clinicians involved in educating new generations of medical school students.

 I was intrigued that the three articles indicate that control is a central part of the cultures of science-based careers. This control occurs either through strictly regulating the education of future members of the field, controlling outcomes within the field, or both. For example, Traweek’s article highlights the very structured training of future particle physicists and emphasizes the conformity that those who wish to join the field must subscribe to. Byron’s article shows the desire of those in the medical field to be able to control and manipulate the processes of the human body while Gusterson’s article indicates that nuclear weapons scientists wish to control the actions of other nations through the production of nuclear weapons. It will be interesting to see what effect this culture of control within science-based professions has on how technology is used and produced.