Ethnography of Science, Technology and Practices

The challenge to study the embodied, practical experience of consumption is attracting increasing interest in agro-food studies (Lockie 2002). This paper argues for attention to be turned towards the bodies of animals, plants and humans, materially connected through the agro-food network, to enable a study of the embodied, practical experience of consumption. This paper apprehends the relationship between humans and nonhumans in two empirical examples from the agro-food network through applying a ‘relational materialist’ (Thrift 1999) approach. This approach is worked through by drawing upon the concepts of ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979; 1982) and ‘intercorporeality’ (Weiss 1999) and through introducing the concept of ‘things becoming food’. A live art performance of sushi being made is discussed to show how embodied practices materially transform the fish into sushi, from production to consumption. Excerpts from the video diary of an organic food consumer and his talk are compared to explore the practice of eating or not eating between potato and human. The findings contribute to debates on nonhuman methodologies, embodied consumption practices, food quality and the intimate material connections between bodies that eat and bodies that are eaten.

Robotic milking machines are novel technologies that take over the labour of dairy farming and reduce the need for human–animal interactions. Replacing ‘conventional’ twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, it is claimed that robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. Such claims are certainly contested, but the installation of robotic milkers clearly establishes new forms of relationships between cows, technologies and dairy farmers.

This paper draws on in-depth interviews with farmers and observational research on farms to examine relationships between representations of robotic milkers as a technology which gives cows freedom and autonomy, and practices and mechanisms which suggest that bovine life is re-captured and disciplined in important ways through the introduction of this technology. We focus on two issues. First, we explore changes in what it is to ‘be bovine’ in relation to milking robots, drawing on a combination of a discursive framing of cows' behaviour and ‘nature’ by dairy farmers and on-farm observation of cow-technology interaction. Second, we examine how such changes in bovinity might be articulated through conceptions of biopower which focus on knowledge of and intervention in the life of both the individual cow body and the herd. Such knowledge and intervention in the newly created sites of the robotic milking dairy are integral to these remodelled, disciplinary farm systems. Here, cows' bodies, movements and subjectivities are trained and manipulated in accordance with a persistent discourse of agricultural productivism. In discussing these issues, the paper seeks to show how particular representations of cows, the production of embodied bovine behaviours, technological interventions and micro-geographies contribute to a re-capturing and re-enclosure of bovine life which counters the liberatory discourses which are used to promote robotic milking.

This is the only full length report of an ethnography of an archaeological dig to have been published. It describes the everyday events that take place on the excavation of a Bronze Age ring-ditch cemetery, situated in the east of England, from the viewpoint of an ethnographer. The author asks the question: what are the conditions - social, material, cognitive, practical - which make archaeological interpretation possible? His ethnography focuses on the acts of discovery through which archaeologists encounter and interpret material evidence of the past. An ‘act of discovery’ is defined as 'the (temporal) relation between (embodied) subjects and (emerging) objects, mediated through the use of tools'. This is where the cultural agency of archaeologists, in giving form to material patterns, comes into contact with the sheer ‘resistance’ of unfolding material evidence. It is in these practical encounters, the author argues, that knowledge of the past is ultimately produced and reproduced.

This article, drawing on ethnographic study in a chemical physics research facility, explores how notebooks are used and produced in the conduct of laboratory science. Data include written field notes of laboratory activity; visual documentation of in situ writing processes; analysis of inscriptions, texts, and material artifacts produced in the laboratory and assembled in notebooks; and an in-depth interview with an expert chemist whose research and writing formed the basis of this investigation. Findings from this study suggest that the notebook occupies a negotiated space between the scientist's contingent response to exigency in the laboratory and the genre-specific strategies that he or she deploys to communicate his or her work outside the laboratory. This text, the author argues, might therefore be understood as a locus in the sense that it facilitates a reflexive process whereby inscriptions are used both to interpret a-perceptual chemical phenomena in time, and, through their inclusion and integration in the notebook, to discipline that interpretation Written Communication XX(X) over time. Tracing the way inscriptions move between material synthesis, on the one hand, and text production, on the other, this article ultimately offers a methodical approach for investigating how the material, technical, and symbolic dimensions of writing and text converge in a modern scientific workplace.

In this article, we evaluate a novel method for post-ELSI (ethical, legal and social implications) collaboration, drawing on ‘human practices’ (HP) to develop a form of reflexive ethical equipment that we termed ‘sociotechnical circuits’. We draw on a case study of working collaboratively in the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) and relate this to the
parts-based agenda of synthetic biology. We use qualitative methods to explore the experience of undergraduate students in the Competition, focussing on the 2010 University of Sheffield team. We examine how teams work collaboratively across disciplines to produce novel microorganisms. The Competition involves a HP component and we examine the way in which this has been narrowly defined within the ELSI framework. We argue that this is a much impoverished style of HP when compared with its original articulation as the development of ‘ethical equipment’. Inspired by this more theoretically rich HP framework, we explore the relations established between team members and how these were shaped by the norms, materials and practices of the Competition. We highlight the importance of care in the context of post-ELSI collaborations and report on the implications of our case study for such efforts and for the relation of the social sciences to the life sciences more generally.

In some circumstances, scientists of the same discipline visualize and view differently the same scientific object. The question of representational difference, which has usually been connected to scientific revolutions or controversies, is framed here using the concept of “style,” addressing the plurality of scientific traditions within a well-established scientific field. Using ethnomethodology we will examine the divergences of representational practices that, beyond the apparent consensus of a scientific community, are present throughout the procedure of chromosomes preparation. The ethnographic data was gathered through participant observation and in-depth interviews in several Italian clinical cytogenetic laboratories. The concept of style emerges through the examination of the two alternate, and sometimes conflicting, ways of configuring the complex texture of practice, instrumental mediation, epistemic virtues, and expertise involved in scientific representation of chromosomes. Resonating with the recent debate on objectivity, it tries to articulate the concept of “epistemic virtue” outside an internalised scientific self through an aesthetic, analytical, instrumental, and ontological preferences in the current manners to produce and see the same research object.

Automatic Milking Systems (AMS) milk cows any time without the need for a human worker to be present. Cows choose when to be milked and detailed data is recorded by the robot which can be accessed remotely by computer or mobile device meaning farmers can check the health and performance of their herd from a distance. It is claimed that robotic milking improves the working conditions and lifestyle of the dairy farmer, as well as having economic advantages and benefits for cow health and welfare. This paper focuses on the relationship between AMS and the role of the stockperson. Although AMS reduces the need for labour in the milking parlour and in theory creates freedom and flexibility for the farmer, in practice farmers found their work routines changed rather than lessened. Ultimately, the role of the stockperson is still vital in maintaining and improving cow health and welfare when compared to conventional milking routines.

In this article I want to answer three questions: why psychoanalysis is extremely popular in Argentina, why it is the main psychological therapy, and why psychoanalytical ideas are taken for granted. As with most expert knowledge, psychoanalysis is thought of by followers as a theoryand clinical practice with universal reach, immune to the effects that the specific characteristics of national, regional or urban environments can cause. Against these wishes, the types of knowledge defined as “expert” like psychoanalysis are, above all, social practices rooted in cultural traditions and networks of meanings, placed, interpreted and appropriated in singular contexts. For that reason, psychoanalysis is a plural, historical and contextual phenomenon; it does not exist
only as institutions, theories, therapeutic practices or learning systems, but as a way of acting and thinking, which affect to social identities and lifestyles. In other words: institutions, theories, therapies or professional training are related to everyday life. I suggest researching how psychoanalysis in
Argentina has become a practical knowledge, that is to say, common sense. If psychoanalysis works as a secular theodicy, we need to show how that theodicy has become acceptable and reasonable for a lot of Argentinean people.

(Original and unabridged) 1991 thesis on ethnography of archaeological practice.

Themes covered include:

material resistance
fluidity of emerging materials
rhythms of work and tool-use
archaeological inference-in-action
acquisition and transmission of craft skills
embodied perception of artefacts
phenomenology of archaeological practices

The thesis gives detailed accounts of processes taking place "under the moving blade of the trowel", long before the well-known phrase ‘at the trowel’s edge’ was coined.

Introductory chapters are somewhat out of date, but the main ethnographic section is arguably as relevant as ever. This early work is rarely cited in the post-processual literature. In a recently published book, however, Gavin Lucas describes the thesis as:

“almost unrivalled, even today...a superb analysis of the archaeological operation from a material perspective ...quite ahead of its time... still offers one of the best and sustained analyses of how archaeological facts are produced in the field, from a participant-observer on an excavation of a Bronze Age site in Britain” (Lucas 2012, 'Understanding the archaeological record', p203).

This article concerns the forms of involvement of « not scientific » actors in research, and the emergence of new expertises, through the case of linguistic researches on sign languages. We show that the main registers of participation of deaf locutors can be described as activities of cultural and lin- guistic mediations. We then analyze what are the tasks and the responsibilities endorsed by these people within a laboratory of linguistics specialized in the analysis of the Quebecois Sign Language. This article, which relies on an ethnographic analy- sis of these scientific activities, shows how the locutors invol- ved in these researches are becoming experts. It suggests articulating the studies on science, on forms of collective actions and on emergence of new expertises, and evokes the central character of an analysis of practices – even routine – of scientific inscription and communication.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study, accomplished through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, of the cultural world of third party Apple
software developers who use Apple’s Cocoa libraries to create apps. It answers the questions: what motivates Apple developers’ devotion to Cocoa technology, and why do they believe it is a superior programming environment? What does it mean to be a “good” Cocoa programmer, technically and morally, in the Cocoa community of practice, and
how do people become one? I argue that in this culture, ideologies, normative values, identities, affects, and practices interact with each other and with Cocoa technology in a seamless web, which I call a “techno-cultural frame.” This frame includes the construction of a developer’s identity as a vocational craftsman, and a utopian vision of software being developed by millions of small-scale freelance developers, or “indies,” rather than corporations. This artisanal production is made possible by the productivity gains of Cocoa technology, which ironically makes indies dependent on Apple for tools. This contradiction is reconciled through quasi-religious narratives about Apple and Steve Jobs, which enrolls developers into seeing themselves as partners in a shared mission with Apple to empower users with technology. Although Cocoa helps make software production easier, it is not a deskilling technology but requires extensive learning, because its design heavily incorporates patterns unfamiliar to many programmers. These concepts can only be understood holistically after learning has been achieved, which
means that learners must undergo a process of conversion in their mindset. This involves learning to trust that Cocoa will benefit developers before they fully understand it. Such technical and normative lessons occur at sites where Cocoa is taught, such as the training company Big Nerd Ranch. Sharing of technical knowledge and normative practices also occurs in the Cocoa community, online through blog posts, at local club meetings, and at conferences such as Apple’s WWDC, which help to enroll developers into the Cocoa techno-cultural frame. Apple’s relationship with developers is symbiotic, but asymmetrical, yet despite Apple’s coercive power, members of the Cocoa community can influence Apple’s policies.

The issue of riverine flooding in the UK is closely tied up with computer simulations. Arguably, these modelling practices are ripe with the anticipation of nature. They aspire to pre-empt it, hence expect it to be ‘out there’, and ultimately work through formalized distillations of it – hydrodynamic equations – which have their own anticipations and place their own demands on their modellers. Through the experience of a flood modelling apprenticeship I argue that the taking-place of such anticipations paradoxically relies on the birth of a hybrid, the model-modeller, and thus on a nature which is generative rather than anticipative and wholly freed from ontological confines.

Resumen: El 'giro ontológico' ha sido una reciente corriente intelectual que ha recibido atención y críticas tanto de la filosofía como de la antropología. Realmente, este movimiento no hace parte de ninguna de esas disciplinas, sino que se constituyó como la matriz teórica de una nueva disci-plina: los Science and Technology Studies. A medida que estos ganaban legitimidad académica y definían su identidad profesional, cierta inconmensurabilidad emergió entre esta comunidad científica y las otras disciplinas que se veían amenazadas por esta nueva corriente. Este artículo hace un recuento histórico de la construcción paralela de los Science and Technology Studies y el 'giro ontológico', haciendo hincapié en la propuesta de Bruno Latour, el primero en articular teorías ontológicas con metodologías etnográficas, gesto fundacional de los Science and Technology Studies. También se muestran algunas críticas recientes realizadas al 'giro ontológico', que buscan deshacer esta hibridación entre filosofía y antropología. Se concluye que, pese a lo certero de algunas de estas críticas, los Science and Technology Studies logran mantener cierto dominio disciplinar, mientras que el ‘giro ontológico’, en tanto matriz teórica de esta nueva disciplina, sí debe hacer frente a los desafíos contemporáneos.

Abstract: The ‘ontological turn’ has been a recent intellectual trend that has received attention and criticism from both philosophy and anthropology. Actually, this movement is not part of any of those disciplines, but rather was constituted as the theoretical matrix of a new discipline: Science and Technology Studies. As these gained academic legitimacy and defined their professional identity, certain incommensurability emerged between this scientific community and the other disciplines that were threatened by this new trend. This article makes a historical account of the parallel construction of Science and Technology Studies and the ‘ontological turn’, emphasizing the proposal of Bruno Latour, the first to articulate ontological theories with ethnographic methodologies, a founding gesture of Science and Technology Studies . Some recent criticisms made of the ‘ontological turn’ are also shown, which seek to undo this hybridization between philosophy and anthropology. It is concluded that, despite the accuracy of some of these criticisms, Science and Technology Studies manage to maintain a certain disciplinary dominance, while the ‘ontological turn’, as a theoretical matrix of this new discipline, must face those contemporary challenges.

This article is the result of an ethnography based on my
experience as an environmental consultant during the
construction of Belo Monte dam. In particular, about my
participation as a researcher in the Complementary Studies
of the Bacajá River, which, following the determination
of the Brazilian Indigenous Foundation, focused on the
ecological aspects of the Bacajá river, especially the ways
of life of the Xikrin population located on the banks of the
river. The analysis of this field raises a timely reflection on
“corporate indigenism” practice, a process that, accordingly
to Stephen Baines, submits the legal and administrative
order of the state’s indigenist policies to the private
interests of companies and corporations engaged in the
installation of enterprises in, across or on the frontiers of
indigenous territories. I intend to problematize the practical
structure of corporate indigenism in order to explore how
its rules and principles (bureaucratic and techno-scientific)
disguise the destructive temporality of capitalism.

This  thesis is centred around the analysis of how the different groups of specialist experts that make up theoretical physics at large communicate and transmit knowledge between themselves. The analysis is carried out using two sociological frameworks: the Studies in Expertise and Experience (SEE) approach by Collins & Evans (2007), and mechanisms of sociological and institutional trust in the general sociology of science literature. I argue that the communication process is carried out in two ways: through interactional expertise that is based on deep comprehension when the interaction is between micro-cultures that are sociologically closely connected, and through lower forms of knowledge relying on trust for the micro-cultures that are sociologically far apart. Because Collins & Evans’ framework is strongly based on processes of transmission of tacit knowledge, an analysis of the importance of tacit knowledge in physics is carried out to support the thesis. Speciđc types of tacit knowledge are closely examined to understand how they shape theoretical physics practice. I argue that ‘physical intuition’, one of the guiding principles of all theoretical activity, is infact a type of tacit knowledge — somatic tacit knowledge — that is familiar to both philosophers and sociologists within the academic literature. ăe end result is a description of physics that highlights the importance of sociological mechanisms to hold the discipline together, and that permit knowledge to flow from the empirical to the theoretical poles of physics practice, and vice versa. The thesis is supported by unstructured interview material and by the author’s prolonged interaction within theoretical physics professional circles.

This conversation between Michael Lynch and Mauro Turrini gives a historical reconstruction of Lynch's career, from his ethnography of a cutting-edge science laboratory to his recent socio-historical analysis of the technological transfer of molecular genetic techniques to the realm of forensic sciences in the 1990s. The dialogue initially deals with Lynch's ethnomethodological education as one of Garfinkel's graduate students. This background sees him as an original voice of the STS community, especially for his criticism of constructionism, the most common approach of this research area. This critical attitude is the common thread of the interview, which deals with ethnographic method, with the ways in which empirical concepts are constructed, and with the interpretation of some of the major concepts of ethnography of science, such as scientific practice, tacit knowledge and closures. Lastly, the conversation focuses on the prominent role of history in Lynch's latest research on DNA fingerprinting and on the counter-political attitude of ethnomethodology. The ethnomethodological approach emerge as an important resource for rethinking and updating the STS research agenda now that the constructionist stress on the contingency and uncertainty inherent in technoscientific facts and artifacts has been widely acknowledged in law, culture, society and politics.