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Charting the rise and fall of an experimental biomedical facility at a North American university,
Culturing Bioscience offers a fascinating glimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates. Krautwurst nests the discussion of scientific culture within a series of levels from the lab to the global political economy. In the process he explores a number of topics, including: the social impact of technology; researchers' relationships with sophisticated equipment; what scientists actually do in a laboratory; what role science plays in the contemporary university; and the way bioscience interacts with local, regional, and global governments. The result is a rich case study that illustrates a host of contemporary issues in the social study of science.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction Intraduction
A Beginning Is Always in the Middle of Something
Bioscience in an Out-of-the-Way Place: How It Got Started
The Organization of the Book: Magnifying Currents
Science Studies: A Brief Outline of Newtonian and Quantum Versions
Thirty Years of Bioscience in Action
A Theoretical and Methodological Intralude
An Indeterminate List of Agential Realist Concepts
Thinking through Methods, Thinking Methods through
1. Intra-Action and Doing Science:
Experiments, People, and Technology
Investigating Neuroscience
2. Re-Visioning Scientific Practice through the ACCBR
A Vision: From Cooperation to Collaboration
Structure and Practice, or, Space. . . . the Final Frontier?
The Near Future of the ACCBR
3. What Can You Do in, to, and with a University?
Anthropology and the Call to "Study up"
The University in Transformation
4. Science and/as Development
Science and/as Science Policy:
The Triple Helix, Modes 1 and 2, and Business Clusters
Culturing Bioscience on Prince Edward Island
5. Globalizing Bioscience and/as Biocapital
Global Biocapital and/as Community
Bioscience, Biocapital, and Business Clusters: Intellectual Property on PEI
Concluding:
Lessons from an Open Concept Lab
Appendix 1:
A Parable on Changing Assumptions, or, How to Approximate Agential Realism
Appendix 2:
Fieldwork in the Academy, and the Ethics of Ethics
References
Index
About the author
Udo Krautwurst is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is a social theorist with a particular interest in the anthropology of representation, practice, and the historical confrontations between forms of knowledge production and technology.
Summary
Charting the rise and fall of an experimental biomedical facility at a North American university, Culturing Bioscience offers a fascinating glimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates.
