| Description |
294 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction / Jonas Salk -- 1. From order to disorder -- The observer and the Scientist -- The social and the scientific: A participant's resource -- The social and the scientific: The observer's dilemma -- The "anthropology" of science -- The construction of order -- Materials and methods -- The organisation of the argument -- Notes -- 2. An Anthropologist visits the laboratory -- Literary inscription -- The culture of the laboratory -- Articles about neuroendocrinology -- The "phenomenotechnique" -- Documents and facts -- The publication list -- Statement types -- The transformation of statement types -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 3. The construction of a fact: The case of TRF(H) -- TRF(H) in its different contexts -- The delineation of s subspeciality: The isolation and characteristics of TRF(H) -- A choice of strategies -- The elimination of concurrent efforts by new investments -- The construction of a new object -- The peptidic nature of TRF |
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Narrowing down the possibilities -- TRF moves into other networks -- Notes -- 4. The microprocessing of facts -- The construction and dismantling of facts in conversation -- The sociological analysis of "thought processes" -- Facts and artefacts -- Notes -- 5. Cycles of credit -- Credit: Reward and credibility -- What motivates Scientists? -- Limitations of the notion of credit as reward -- The quest for credibility -- Conversion from one form of credibility to another -- The demand for credible information -- Strategies, positions and career trajectories -- Curriculum vitae -- Positions -- Trajectories -- Group structure -- Group dynamics -- Notes -- 6. The creation of order out of disorder -- Creating a laboratory: The main elements of our argument -- Order from disorder -- A new fiction of old? -- Postscript to second edition (1986) -- How radical is radical? -- What does it mean tobe ethnographic? -- The place of philosophy -- The demise of the "social" |
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Reflexivity -- Conclusion -- Notes |
| Summary |
"Laboratory Life succeeds and will continue to succeed, and to win friends and allies, because it contains good, persuasive ideas, such as the analyses of modalities and of splitting. These ideas have been generated by excellent social scientists. All the rest is so much window undressing."--H.M. Collins, Isis |
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"The pioneering 'laboratory study' in the sociology of scientific knowledge. ... The first and, deservedly, the most influential book-length account of day-to-day work in a single laboratory setting."--ISIS |
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This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts, "and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science |
| Notes |
Reprint. Originally published: Beverly Hills : Sage Publications, c1979. (Sage library of social research ; v. 80) |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographies and index |
| Subject |
Biological laboratories -- Sociological aspects.
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Biology -- Methodology.
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Biology -- Research.
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Laboratories -- Sociological aspects.
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Laboratories.
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Science -- Methodology.
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Biology.
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Laboratories.
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Research.
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| Author |
Woolgar, Steve, author
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| LC no. |
85043378 |
| ISBN |
069102832X (paperback) |
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0691094187 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
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9780691028323 |
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9780691094182 |
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