1. Full citation.
Franklin, S. (1995). Science as Culture, Cultures of Science. Annual Review of Anthropology,
24(1), 163–184. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.001115
2. Where did/does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his
credentials?
Sarah Franklin has a Master’s in Women’s Studies from the University of Kent (1984), a
Master’s in Anthropology from New York University (1986) and a PhD from Birmingham
University’s Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1992). Franklin was known for her
feminist views and her distinguished research career which focused on the study of reproductive
and genetic technology, science studies as well as gender and cultural studies. Currently she a
professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge but has also taught at the London School
of Economics. She has published numerous articles and books and is considered a very
influential figure in her field.1
3. What are the topics of the text? / 4. What is the main argument of the text? / 5. Describe
at least three ways that the argument is supported.
Sarah Franklin begins her text with an introduction to science studies. Franklin asserts
that “science should be subjected to a form of critical social scientific inquiry challenging the
supposed neutrality and transparency of objective scientific inquiry.” (Franklin, 1995) To
support her assertions Franklin draws heavily upon work by Annette Weiner, the president of the
American Anthropological Association. Franklin provides a historical background illustrating the
roots and growth of the notion that science should be studied from an anthropological standpoint.
As with the rise many new methodologies and ideologies it was originally shunned by the
scientific community but gained traction during the 1990’s amid a controversial “science war”
between traditional and emerging modes of thought. Franklin argues that anthropology played a
key role in the science wars due to the ability for anthropology to analyze the cultural and
scientific aspects of all forms of science including anthropology itself.
Franklin states that the science wars represent the divide between traditional “realism”
focused forms of science and the emerging “relativism” focused forms. She argues that new
anthropological approaches to science studies are dissolving these boundaries and leading
science on a more sustainable path. Franklin articulates how new science studies combine
“anthropological relativism with ethnographic empiricism” which creates “a less knowledgedependent…view of science…along with a greater appreciation of its thorough enculturation at
every layer of the onion, and likewise a thicker account of the scientization of both local and
global cultures.” (Franklin, 1995)
A major topic Franklin discusses is the role that feminist anthropologists played during
the 1970s. She demonstrates how the similarities between the core ideologies of the
anthropology of science and feminist anthropology led to many feminist anthropologists
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Franklin
becoming involved in the anthropology of science field. Franklin uses the work of two prominent
feminist anthropologists, Marilyn Strathern and Donna Haraway, to illustrate how feministic
ideals fit into the anthropology science. Both women focused on the duality of natural and ‘real’
science and aimed to redefine what a true sense of understanding entailed. Their approaches
aimed to understand cultural and scientific phenomenon from the perspective of those being
researched, rather than from the own foreign and imposed perspectives. Franklin articulates their
significance to the anthropology is this manner: “Both Haraway and Strathern exemplify a
cultural hermeneutics of knowledge practices that foregrounds the constitutive role of metaphor,
analogy, classification, narrative and genealogy in the production of natural facts. Both also
expand greatly on what it is to ‘know,’ such that knowing is inseparable from being, imagining,
or desiring.” (Franklin, 1995) Franklin argues that feminist principles and research methods
played a key role in the proliferation of the anthropology of science which contradicted the
distinction between “real” and natural sciences, as well as critiqued traditional assumptions made
in “real” science.
Franklin illustrates several other researchers which used methods derived from the
anthropology of science to research various cultural and scientific phenomenon. She illustrates
the work done by researchers that examined the culture of scientists within laboratories. The
researchers used multi-sited approaches in order to allow them to conceptualize the culture
within the labs from a global perspective. Franklin describes research done on the emerging
virtual culture created by new technologies. She conveys the challenges faced by researchers in
this field and “the potential for science studies in anthropology to contribute to ongoing
redefinition of the culture concept, as well as fieldwork, participant observation, and
ethnographic writing.” (Franklin, 1995) One researcher, Arturo Escobar aims to answer
numerous questions about the emergence of new alternate realities resulting from new
technologies, from ethnographic perspective. Franklin also references the work of other
researchers that engaged in comparative studies which examined “science-in-action” from both
emic and etic perspectives. Franklin argues that studies of these genres all utilized anthropology
to analyze cultures, therefore contributing to the institutionalization of the anthropology of
science.
Modernity and Postmodernity are both discussed by Franklin. Franklin articulates that
scientific knowledge is “is a key force reshaping life, labor, language, not only in terms of how
they are named, classified, or worked, but in terms of understanding such operations as power
effects.” (Franklin, 1995) Due to this cultural force, Franklin argues that it inevitably results in
cultural changes from “self-making” natural orders to “capital accumulation strategies.”
(Franklin, 1995) Franklin conveys the relations between these cultural shifts and discusses
modernity-postmodernity, risk, globalization and new technologies. Arturo Escobar describes
modernity as “organic and mechanical models of physical and social life…centered on the
production and maximization of life itself, including the coupling of the body and machines in
new ways, in factories, schools, hospitals and family homes.” (Franklin, 1995) Franklin argues
that theories discussing the “implosion of orders of meaning” between traditionally opposing
topics (such as nature and culture, bodies and machines) often result in “oversensationalization
of novelty and crisis.” (Franklin, 1995) Franklin address these dramatizations by arguing that no
matter what cultural changes occur the core essence of the cultural methods remain the same.
Franklin criticizes the defensiveness of the scientific community and their delay in addressing
these cultural shifts. She states that interdisciplinary analysis methods should be used to tackle
these cultural shifts in an effort to contribute new intellectual knowledge which can be used to
spawn productive action.
In conclusion Franklin emphatically argues that it is essential for anthropology
methodologies to be used in the cross-examination of science studies as well as anthropological
studies. She attests that anthropology has the necessary tools to account for the globally
connected complex system of variables which effects science and culture today. She states that
“anthropology is arguably a better, more inclusive, less naively Eurocentric and even a more
objective form of scholarly inquiry because of the sustained critique of its own practices that has
kept it ‘in crisis’ since at least mid-century.” (Franklin, 1995) She contradicts the notion that
interdisciplinary scientific collaboration is unattainable and states that it is in fact necessary and
already underway. Franklin also deems the use of terms such as “relativism, constructivism, and
perspectivism” as being misleading and ill-defined. Her perspective is that such concrete terms
cannot be used to define the constantly changing conditions of societies and cultures. Franklin
ends on a positive note, illustrating her belief that anthropologists and scientists alike are in a
favorable position to tackle the plethora of globally interconnected challenges facing the world if
collaborative and reflexive measures are undertaken.
6. What three quotes capture the message of the text?
“Anthropology is a science and has the tools to understand science as a form of culture. The
culture concept has been reshaped by the necessity for anthropology to interrogate its own
knowledge practices. This same move enables anthropologists to operationalize analytical
models that are understood as both cultural and scientific.” (Franklin, 1995)
“Combining anthropological relativism with ethnographic empiricism, has begun to establish a
trajectory that interrogates…[the] history and foundations of ideas of the natural within
anthropology, which in turn work at a deeper level to provide…a bridge between the two
cultures in anthropology…It is through this work that a less knowledge-dependent…view of
science has emerged, along with a greater appreciation of its thorough enculturation at every
layer of the onion, and likewise a thicker account of the scientization of both local and global
cultures.” (Franklin, 1995)
“Whether we are post-nature or postmodern, or whether there is a greater, shared cultural
consciousness that we appear to be, the cultural method remains the same. The steady production
of recent scholarly reassessment of the status of ‘the natural’ indicates, in the way of a cultural
fact in itself, that its apparent contingency and vulnerability comprise a consequential shift in
both knowledge of nature and the nature of knowledge.” (Franklin, 1995)
7. What three questions about research methods does this article leave you with?
1. What specific methods are beneficial to the anthropology of science?
2. How can researchers gain access to defensive scientific communities?
3. How has technology redefined anthropological methods in the present age?
8. What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance
your understanding of and skill with HASS research methods?
This article did an excellent job portraying the development of the anthropology of
science and they key projects which aided in the process. I felt that the article provided a more
philosophical argument, aiming to illustrate the significance of the anthropology of science for
various reasons. In an attempt to understand the specifics of the research methods I examined
three research projects which Franklin mentions in the text:
a) Haraway DJ. 1978. Animal sociology and a natural economy of the body politic.
Part I: A political physiology of dominance. Signs 4: 21-36
b) Strathern M. 1987. Out of context: the persuasive fictions of anthropology.
Current Anthropology. 28:251-81
c) Escobar E. 1994. Welcome to cyberia: notes on the anthropology of cyberculture.
Current Anthropology. 35(3):211-32