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Cultural accounts of scientific ideas and practices have increasingly come to be welcomed as a corrective to previous-and still widely held-theories of scientific knowledge and practices as universal. The editors caution, however, against the temptation to overgeneralize the work of culture, and to lapse into a kind of essentialism that flattens the range and variety of scientific work. The book refers to this tendency as culturalism. The contributors to the volume model a new path where historicized and cultural accounts of scientific practice retain their specificity and complexity without falling into the traps of culturalism. They examine, among other issues, the potential of using notions of culture to study behavior in financial markets; the ideology, organization, and practice of earthquake monitoring and prediction during China's Cultural Revolution; the history of quadratic equations in China; and how studying the "glass ceiling" and employment discrimination became accepted in the social sciences. Demonstrating the need to understand the work of culture as a fluid and dynamic process that directly both shapes and is shaped by scientific practice, Cultures without Culturalism makes an important intervention in science studies.
Contributors. Bruno Belhoste, Karine Chemla, Caroline Ehrhardt, Fa-ti Fan,Kenji Ito, Evelyn Fox Keller, Guillaume Lachenal, Donald MacKenzie, Mary S. Morgan, Nancy J. Nersessian, David Rabouin, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Claude Rosental, Koen Vermeir
List of contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Karine Chemla and Evelyn Fox Keller 1
Part I. Stating the Problem: Cultures without Culturation
1. On Invokcing "Culture" in the Analysis of Behavior in Financial Markets / Donald MacKenzie 29
2. Cultural Difference and Sameness: Historiographic Reflections on Histories of Physics in Modern Japan / Kenji Ito 49
3. The Cultural Politics of an African AIDS Vaccine: The Vanhivax Controversy in Cameroon, 2001-2011 / Guillaume Lachenal 69
4. Worrying about Essentialism: From Feminist Theory to Epistemological Cultures / Evelyn Fox Keller 99
Part II. Distinguishing the Many Dimensions of Encultured Practice
5. Hybrid Devices: Embodiments of Culture in Biomedical Engineering / Nancy J. Nesessian 117
6. Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors: Drawing New Ontologies / Mary S. Morgan 145
7. Modes of Exchange: The Culture and Politics of Public Demonstrations / Claude Rosental 170
8. Styles in Mathematical Practice / David Rabouin 196
Part III. The Making of Scientific Cultures
9. Historicizing Culture: A Revaluation of Early Modern Science and Culture / Koen Vermeir 227
10. From Quarry to Paper: Cuvier's Three Epistemological Cultures / Bruno Belhoste 250
11. Cultures of Experimentation / Hans-Jörg Rheinberger 278
12. The People's War against Earthquakes: Cultures of Mass Science in Mao's China / Fa-ti Fan 296
Part IV. What Is at Stake?
13. E Uno Plures? Unity and Diversity in Galois Theory, 1832-1900 / Caroline Ehrhardt 327
14. Changing Mathematical Cultures, Conceptual History, and the Circulation of Knowledge: A Case Study Based on Mathematical Sources from Ancient China / Karine Chemla 352
Contributors 399
Index 403
About the author
Karine Chemla is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University Paris Diderot and University Paris Panthéon Sorbonne.
Evelyn Fox Keller is Professor Emerita of the History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Summary
This volume models a new path where historicized and cultural accounts of scientific practice retain their specificity and complexity without falling into the traps of cultural essentialism, examining issues that range from the history of quadratic equations in China to the studying of employment discrimination in the social sciences.
