Science cultures | 57 | Handbook of Cultural Sociology

ABSTRACT

Any sociologist writing on the topic of science cultures is almost immediately confronted with an apparent paradox: while the study of culture(s) has become increasingly popular among sociologists (for instance, the American Sociological Association’s sociology of culture section is one of the largest), culture has apparently been increasingly marginalized in sociological inquiries of science. To give but one example, the third edition of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Hackett et al. 2007), a work of over one thousand pages giving a state of the art overview of the ﬁeld, mentions culture only in a few places, mostly in describing the relationship between the usage of technologies and law or health movements. The lack of attention to culture is even more intriguing if we take into account that the new sociology of science emerging in the late 1970s has substantially contributed to investigating the role of culture in the production and adoption of forms of scientiﬁc knowledge, as well as in the dynamics of scientiﬁc disciplines. How can we explain this conspicuous absence of culture? Has it become irrelevant in

relationship to science? The answer is straightforward-not at all. Culture is perhaps more relevant than ever in the study of scientiﬁc knowledge. What has happened, though, is that a series of conceptual and methodological shifts, triggered by the very preoccupation with scientiﬁc cultures, has led to signiﬁcant terminological changes which, in their turn, are consequential for the study of other domains. Let’s examine them one by one. The debates about the cultural signiﬁcance of science were triggered in the German-

speaking world after World War I, in relationship to the perceived capacity of science to provide a progressive conception of the world, as an alternative to retrograde ones (Turner 2007: 40). Among the better known elements of these debates are Max Weber’s interventions: in two lectures, Weber (1970 [1919]) contrasted science and politics as characterized by speciﬁc sets of behavioral norms and ethical values. His position signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced Robert King Merton’s (1973 [1942]) argument that science is characterized by the norms of communalism (initially called communism), universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. In this view, science was seen as a particular culture (diﬀerent from political or

economic ones), having at its core a restricted set of speciﬁc norms and values.

In a structural-functionalist account, then, culture consists of norms characteristic of a domain of social activity, norms that determine behavioral patterns. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientiﬁc Revolutions (1962) challenged the claim of universalistic norms of science, as well as the progressivist view according to which better scientiﬁc theories always replace lesser ones. Kuhn argued instead that scientiﬁc disciplines are organized around paradigms-that is, speciﬁc views, deﬁnitions, and explanatory frames supported by social relationships within concrete scientiﬁc communities. These views and frames resist falsiﬁcation attempts and cannot be dismantled other than on the basis of changes within (and across) the scientiﬁc communities in question. The latter communities would then compete for a central position within their domain, ensuring that the explanatory paradigm they embrace is dominant. In this perspective, the approach to culture shifted from concern with ethical norms to broader explanatory, empirically resistant frames. Kuhn’s arguments played a seminal role in the emergence of a whole research program that broke away from Merton’s view on culture, while seeking to specify, both empirically and theoretically, the character of scientiﬁc paradigms (Zammito 2004: 128-31). The notion of scientiﬁc culture was re-formulated in works published in the late 1970s

and early 1980s, among which probably the most prominent are Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979), Karin Knorr-Cetina’s The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981), and Michael Lynch’s Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (1985). These empirical studies of scientiﬁc laboratories in disciplines such as molecular biology and astrophysics departed from the understanding of the scientiﬁc paradigm as a (mental) framework shared by scientists, and focused instead on the practical actions through which new knowledge is produced in a speciﬁc setting (the lab), characterized by material conﬁgurations (such as instruments and devices), and by the interactions of scientists. These, as well as subsequent studies, also departed from any ethnic or national undertones that might be associated with the notion of culture: the culture of scientiﬁc laboratories (and more generally, of science) is characterized precisely by the irrelevance of any national or ethnic distinctions with respect to the practical actions through which knowledge is produced. Studies of large-scale collaborations involving hundreds of scientists from diﬀerent countries (e.g. Knorr-Cetina 1999; Collins 2004) have highlighted that ethnic and national distinctions do not impact the interactions and science-speciﬁc social structures within which knowledge is generated. Karin Knorr-Cetina highlights the ways in which multi-ethnic scientiﬁc communities are built and maintained around a speciﬁc project (such as the Large Hadron Collider). Harry Collins (2004), who has studied the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, analyzes how competitions among groups of scientists are shaped by alternative research programs rather than nationality: groups of scientists from diﬀerent countries compete against other multinational groups by developing alternative research paths for conducting research on one and the same issue. This is not to say that the interests of particular groups are insigniﬁcant in the choice

of their respective research programs, or that there is no competition among groups of scientists working on the same topic. Quite the contrary: as the above-mentioned ethnographic studies have shown, competition and group interests play a signiﬁcant role here, yet both interests and competition are shaped by the logic of scientiﬁc knowledge production, and not by ethnic or national factors. These arguments run counter to the Mertonian view of science as determined by a

restricted set of ethical norms: in scientiﬁc groups and communities, prestige, reputation within speciﬁc research communities, as well as adherence to and identiﬁcation with

a speciﬁc research program, and the capacity to mobilize funding resources are much more relevant factors. Competition for prestige and high ranking within scientiﬁc communities can also lead

in speciﬁc circumstances to the emergence of anomic forms of behavior, as manifested, for instance, in claims of scientiﬁc discoveries based on forged laboratory protocols. Such cases, indeed, have repeatedly come to attention since the late 1980s; a recent example is that of South Korean molecular biologists falsely claiming in 2005 to have produced the ﬁrst human embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. In many instances, scientiﬁc frauds have been exposed only after an initial period of public enchantment with the fraudulent claims (see also Gieryn 1999). These instances run counter to the Mertonian view that scientiﬁc cultures are characterized by disinterestedness. They show that prestige-seeking competitions (in many cases associated with national pride as well), together with the ﬁnancial incentives provided by the potential commercialization of applied research, can create an environment conducive to deviant behavior. We should expect therefore to ﬁnd particular science cultures centered on speciﬁc

research programs within diﬀerent scientiﬁc disciplines. These science cultures are then anchored not only in particular material arrangements (provided by the technologies of scientiﬁc experiments, for instance) but also in the skills and abilities required by manipulating such arrangements, and in the communication processes and interactions related to manipulations. Science cultures are dynamic: whereas the notion of paradigm has been very often interpreted as emphasizing stability and lack of or slow change, in the above understanding scientiﬁc cultures are in ﬂux, simply because the material arrangements in which they are anchored represent not only resources, but also constraints with respect to human action. The actions of scientists have to overcome these constraints by constantly adjusting and rearranging experimental technologies, for instance. Agency (including the making of new scientiﬁc discoveries) arises out of reciprocal adaptations of human actions and technological arrangements (Pickering 1995: 204). Culture, then, designates the “speciﬁc ensemble of conditions that allow the generation of unprecedented events” (Rheinberger 1997: 140), that is, scientiﬁc discoveries. Within a scientiﬁc discipline, groups may have similar technological sets (used, for instance, in replicating experiments), similar skills, and shared commitment to a research program. Or, they may compete with each other-on the basis of technologies, skills, and concepts. Consequently, the micro-dynamics of knowledge production will translate into the

meso-and macro-dynamics of scientiﬁc groups and institutions. Factors such as inﬂuence, interests, and prestige intervene in groups coalescing and competing against each other but, ultimately, the underlying dynamics will be those of knowledge production. For instance, Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999: 238-39) emphasizes that disciplines such as molecular biology and high-energy physics have diﬀerent structures of competition versus collaboration, due mainly to the speciﬁc constraints of production discussed above. In high-energy physics, the very expensive and complex character of technology (an experimental machine can cover thousands of acres) requires collaboration concentrated in a few centers. In molecular biology, scientiﬁc projects are seen as individualnot collective-undertakings: they involve minute, individualized work, which can be coordinated across a team, but which nevertheless can be broken down into distinct, quasi-independent projects. Project-speciﬁc individualization would be much more diﬃcult to achieve in the case of high-energy physics. Hence the culture of collaboration in physics contrasts with that of competition in molecular biology.