632 science

focused on ‘integration’. However, the majorities Further reading

are also being studied, and in this respect, a Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2008) ‘The Otherness
recurrent issue in the anthropology of Scandi- of Norwegian Anthropology’, in Aleksandar
navia has been the question of what, if anything, Boskovic (ed.) Other People’s Anthropologies,
is peculiar to Scandinavian culture. No simple Oxford: Berghahn.
answer is offered, but there appears to be wide- Gullestad, Marianne (1989) ‘Small Facts and
spread agreement that values such as equality, Large Issues: The Anthropology of Con-
strong democratic traditions and gender equity temporary Scandinavian Society’, Annual
are widely shared across the region. Review of Anthropology 18: 71–93.
As a result of this interest in cultural specifi- Lindberg, Christer (2008) ‘Anthropology on the
cities, the idea of national culture as such has Periphery: The Early Schools of Nordic
been scrutinized. It is often assumed that the Anthropology’, in Henrika Kuklick (ed.) A
New History of Anthropology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Scandinavian cultures are homogeneous, yet
minute research in different localities reveals
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important variations within each country.

Anthropologists have not only documented this science
variation, but have also shown how the very idea
In part because anthropology describes itself as a
of a homogeneous national culture was a pro-
science, and perhaps because it has in the past
duct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century nation
struggled to maintain its scientific credentials,
building.
Many Scandinavian anthropologists, espe- science has itself remained largely outside the
cially in Norway, take an active part in public anthropological lens. Instead, a guiding pre-
debates about their own societies, often using the sumption of much early anthropology was the
methods of anthropology not only as tools for belief that European anthropologists possessed a
generating knowledge, but also as means of cul- superior rationality which differentiated them
tural critique. This double quality has been from the peoples they studied (most notably
characteristic of the work of scholars like Löfgren Lévy-Bruhl). Even those, such as Malinowski,
in Sweden and Marianne Gullestad (1946–2008) who argued for the universal presence of scien-
in Norway. A major research project dealing tific rationality, or its prototype, among the most
with the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in 1994, ‘primitive’ peoples did so on the assumption that
directed by Arne Martin Klausen (b. 1930), it had reached its highest expression among civi-
viewed the Olympic games as a ritual, seeing it lized European societies. Well into mid-century,
partly through the lens of anthropological stud- modern anthropologists were more concerned to
ies of rituals in non-industrial societies. Others become properly scientific than to examine the
have studied phenomena such as changes in unique cultural formation of science.
food habits in local communities, the cultural Early investigations of science as a social phe-
implications of the new Øresund bridge joining nomenon emerged out of history and philosophy
Sweden and Denmark, nature worship, local from investigators such as Ludwig Fleck, Thomas
views of the European Union, the dilemmas of Kuhn, and Karl Popper, who were largely con-
local politics and various aspects of the majority– cerned with rationality and scientific knowledge.
minority relationships resulting from immigra- Robert Merton inaugurated the sociology of
tion. The boundary between anthropologists science through studies investigating its institu-
who carry out fieldwork at home and those who tionalization and professionalization. This divi-
travel overseas is becoming blurred, perhaps sion, between the social institutionalization of
eventually erasing, after two centuries, the nine- science and its status as a form of rational
teenth-century distinction between Volkskunde knowledge, has continued within science studies
and Völkerkunde. and is evident in contemporary feminist and
Copyright 2010. Routledge.

sociological literatures. From the historical tra-

THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN dition have emerged both approaches which
seek rationally to explain the history of scientific
See also: Europe: Northern achievement and discovery, and more radical
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AN: 301239 ; Alan Barnard, Jonathan Spencer.; The Routledge Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Account: s2985883.main.ehost
 science 633

approaches which seek to explore science as an (1990). Recent science studies projects within
emergent cultural phenomenon, examining, for anthropology, therefore, have examined a range
example, its popular representation, visual of topics; from techniques such as Polymerase
dimensions and symbolic resources. Chain Reaction, to concepts such as immunity
In the late 1970s, †Bruno Latour (1976) pro- or heredity. Communities of scientists have been
duced his seminal ethnography of scientific studied in laboratory-based ethnographies, such
research, Laboratory Life. For anthropologists it as Traweek’s account of high-energy physicists
became especially significant; it moved beyond in Japan and the USA (1988), and through more
traditional frontiers of science studies, not multi-sited approaches which follow the cultural
merely problematizing the assumptions of posi- production of science across a range of sites and
tivism, but using anthropological method to cri- locations. †Paul Rabinow’s study of molecular
tique the scientific production of knowledge as biologists integrates multiple concerns of science
an inherently social activity. During the 1970s studies, including the variety of institutional
and 1980s, informed by Foucault’s critique of influences on scientific research, especially fund-
epistemology, anthropologists began to consider ing imperatives, shifts in legal frameworks, and
how science is imbricated in historically and the political and temperamental orientations of
culturally situated practices of power. By the scientists themselves (1996).
mid-1980s, important works in the area of Decreases in public funding for research
science studies began to incorporate other sig- science in many Western nations have con-
nificant critical perspectives, especially feminism tributed to the emergence of renewed dispute
(e.g. Haraway 1989), opening the way for a over the status of scientific truth claims, and
greater diversity of approaches and challenging their corresponding importance to matters of
the equation of science with rational knowledge. local, national and global advancement. Such
As the definition of ‘science’ has become more debates in turn invoke questions about a post-
diffuse, anthropologists have played an increas- modern readjustment to conventional defini-
ing role in its analysis as a cultural field. Of tions of scientific progress, including a greater
particular note is the convergence of critiques of awareness of its risks and its effect on definitions
science with the concerns of postcolonial studies. of the natural and the environment.
Here again Latour has been highly influential.
Latour considered the role of Pasteur Institutes SARAH FRANKLIN
in the creation of French empire (1988). He
pushed analysis of the intimate relation between See also: modernism, rationality, relativism,
science and power further with important theo- science and technology studies, technology
retical reflections on categories such as modernity
and the cultural and historical work that created
these categories (1991). The connections among Further reading
science, colonialism and postcolonialism have Fischer, M.M.J. (2004) Emergent Forms of Life and
remained important for anthropologists. Follow- the Anthropological Voice, Durham, NC: Duke
ing the examples set by Robin Horton and University Press.
Joseph Needham, important recent studies have Franklin, Sarah (1995) ‘Science as Culture, Cul-
begun to address ‘science’ in cross-cultural per- tures of Science’, Annual Review of Anthropology
spective (Marcus 1995). This approach comple- 24: 163–84.
ments both critical accounts of Western science Haraway, Donna (1989) Primate Visions: Gender,
produced by non-Western scholars and debates Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science,
over the uses of scientific knowledge in the con- New York: Routledge.
Heath, Deborah and Paul Rabinow (eds) (1993)
text of development studies. Key to both areas ‘Bio-Politics: The Anthropology of the New
are concerns about the appropriation of indi- Genetics and Immunology’, Journal of Culture,
genous knowledges by Western scientists and Medicine and Psychiatry 17 (special issue).
their elimination in the name of scientific progress. Hess, David and Lina Layne (eds) (1992) ‘The
Latour’s work remains relevant to the concerns Anthropology of Science and Technology’,
of contemporary science studies in anthropology Knowledge and Society 9 (special issue).

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 634 science and technology studies (STS)

Latour, B. (1976) Laboratory Life: The Social Con- environment within which they take shape.
struction of Scientific Facts, Beverly Hills, CA: When is the time ripe for a particular scientific
Sage. fact to emerge? What negotiations go into making
——(1988) The Pasteurization of France, Cambridge, an innovation succeed or fail? What is the rela-
MA: Harvard University Press. tionship between scientific ideas and the organi-
——(1990) ‘Postmodern? No, Simply Amodern:
Steps toward an Anthropology of Science. An zation and instruments of the laboratory? How
Essay Review’, Studies in History and Philosophy are scientific controversies fought and resolved?
of Science 21: 145–71. Are guinea-pigs natural facts or cultural artefacts?
——(1991) We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, What kind of France made Pasteur a national
MA: Harvard University Press. hero, and how did Pasteurization transform
Marcus, George (ed.) (1995) Technoscientific Ima- French life? Why does a bicycle have two wheels
ginaries: Conversations, Profiles, Memoirs, Chicago: of equal size? Do women really prefer pink
University of Chicago Press. electric shavers? Why are there so few women
Rabinow, P. (1996) Making PCR: A Story of Bio- engineering students in the UK, and so many in
technology, Chicago: University of Chicago Malaysia? STS argues that the emergence and
Press. stabilization of new scientific ideas, objects and
Traweek, Sharon (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes:
identities, like the successful design and dis-
The World of High Energy Physicists, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. semination of new technologies, are hard-won
achievements that depend on the formation of
durable (though not static) associations of people,
ideas, institutions and artefacts. Society changes
science and technology studies science and technology, just as science and tech-
(STS) nology change society. The relationship between
them is one of continuous co-construction.
Science and technology studies (STS) is an Among the most famous (or notorious)
interdisciplinary field which spans the social sci- approaches within STS is †actor network theory
ences and humanities. STS scholars explore (ANT), associated with John Law, Michel Callon
what science and/or technology mean, how they and †Bruno Latour. ANT challenges the ‘genius’
are done, the issues they raise, and the nature of approach to innovation through the principle of
their ‘entanglement’ with society and culture. generalized symmetry, according equal weight to all
STS first emerged in the 1960s as a radical actors, human and non-human (artefacts, lab
approach to technoscience, the characteristically rats, institutions). The actors are not predefined
modern nexus in which the production of but co-create each other. The ‘natural objects’
knowledge (science) and artefacts (technol- of scientific investigation (viruses, soil types) only
ogy) constitutes a ‘seamless dialectic’ (Hakken come into being through the interest of scientists;
2001: 535). Much STS has a radical agenda, likewise scientific identities and practices depend
applying Marxist, feminist, altermundialista or on the extent to which these non-human part-
social democratic critiques to the beliefs and ners can or will cooperate (Latour 1988). ANT
institutions of technoscience, not simply to unmask traces processes of translation, in which all the
the naturalization of social inequalities, but as an actors are persuaded to agree that a new system
activist tool to democratize technoscience, identify is worth building and defending, and work
its risks and improve policy. together to construct it. Attributing agency to
Like the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology scallops or ethics to seat-belts strikes more
of scientific knowledge (SSK), but with much solemn scholars as misleading or even irrespon-
greater emphasis on the material and symbolic sible, and ANT is often criticized for being apo-
dimensions of technoscientific practice, STS litical or even amoral. But ANT can be applied
argues that the truth of new scientific ideas, or to the higher politics of how the social and the
the superior efficiency of technological inven- natural interrelate in modernity (Latour 2005),
tions, is not sufficient to explain their success: and in the hands of witty and audacious practi-
like any other beliefs, they also require explana- tioners like Latour – writing up his studies as
tion in terms of the social, cultural and material poems or detective stories, demonstrating that a

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