Laboratory Cultures Readings

The readings this week examined the functions, characteristics and impact of scientific laboratories--not as some objective construct isolated from the “real world” but in relation to the people and social factors that are intrinsically tied to it.

For Knorr-Cetina, an important premise that laboratories exist upon is the malleability of objects. Different forms of laboratories exist in various scientific fields and they reconfigure objects in different ways: some aim to mimic real time events, others are processing environments, and others still deal with the transformation of signs. Latour takes this a step further in “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World” by suggesting that the laboratory is the scientist's’ most important tool because it allows for control and repetition and mistakes--without which scientists would be as fallible as politicians.

Fullwiley and Benezra, DeStefano, and Gordon consider laboratories in context of their specific subject matter--medical genetics and human microbial ecology respectively. Fullwiley’s “The Biologistical Construction of Race” is an case study of two connected medical labs that are attempting to study the relationship between disease and race. Fullwiley’s main argument is that even something as seemingly objective as genetic sequence variations are subject to interpretation, and these interpretations that based on prior social learning and preconceptions of the organization of the world. Whether this has positive or negative consequences is not the primary concern of the paper, it seems more important to Fullwiley to show that this cultural aspect is unavoidable in any field of study.  

Benezra, DeStefano, and Gordon’s “Anthropology of Microbes” is more proactive in encouraging the consideration of social and cultural interactions with microbes in human biology. I think to different extents all the authors we read this week would agree with that idea, that there isn’t a division between science and culture, but that both continually shape and change each other.