ABSTRACT
This chapter examines socialization in biochemistry, and to a lesser extent the other laboratory-based sciences we studied-physical geography and environmental sciences. We discuss the social context in which that socialization takes place and the production of knowledge in science at doctoral level. To this end we explore how scientific knowledge in biochemistry is defined, produced and reproduced in sites of academic socialization and how this knowledge is characterized and transmitted. The choice of topic was prompted by a notable absence of ethnographic work on ‘becoming a scientist’ (Delamont, 1987; Ashmore et al., 1995).
