ABSTRACT
Sociologists and anthropologists of science have begun to study scientific knowledge production in laboratories and elsewhere as everyday practice. This work raises questions about what we mean by "everyday practice." It encourages questions about what becomes of "everyday" everyday practice when science is thus reconceived. And it provokes opposition from many, in part because views of science as everyday practice contest conventional claims. The prevailing belief among scientists and nonscientists alike is that whatever science may be it is most definitely not everyday. Such a belief defines "science" in opposition to the "not science" otherwise known as "everyday life." Philosophical traditions and scientific discourses ascribe to scientists specialized, value-neutral, and powerful thinking and to their work an exceptional character, inevitably helping to reinforce the hegemonic role of science and underlining distinctions between real scientists and the rest—the "others" who are not scientists.
