Mitchellmemo34

Comparative Positioning

Admittedly, I do not feel that I know the literature well enough at the moment to properly position myself within it. However, here is my best effort…

First, at the heart of the study is the lab…this of course brings up affinities to various lab studies such as Laboratory Life (Latour and Woolgar), Epistemic Cultures (Karin Knorr Cetina), etc. However, those studies primarily limited themselves to the lab itself…I look at the “inputs” and the “outputs” of the lab as well. I suppose then, that this brings up some affinity to Latour’s Pasteurization of France (in that his “lab” “raised” the world), but this study treats the lab as an isolated place where transformations occur within it and are then spread out…as opposed to Latour who argues that the lab itself extends outward.

This book definitely fits within various anthropologies of the biosciences (French DNA, Biocapital, Promising Genomics). It differs most significantly in that the topical area is unique to this study (genetics seems much more popular than stem cell technologies in STS…but that certainly is not true in the wider culture where stem cells are a hot issue).

Theoretically, (I do not want to sound like I am copying Mike here, but…) this text fits well with others on the biosciences as productive of culture (Dolly Mixtures, How We Became Posthuman, etc.). I suppose, though, that mine has a very specific focus on biology as productive of “ethics” broadly conceived, which I do not see much of elsewhere.