CULTURES OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Anthropology 260
University of Pennsylvania
Department of Anthropology
Summer II, 2013
Michael Joiner
School of Arts and Sciences
University Museum, Room 325
mjoiner@sas.upenn.edu
Office Hours: 3-5, Tuesdays and by appointment
Course Description:
Science and technology figure centrally in the economic, political, and socio-cultural
changes that impact on our worlds. Happenings in the life sciences, including the discovery of
new genes and genomic processes, pathways, and processes, are redrawing concepts of the
body and human nature and re-figuring social and political relations. The seminar starts from
the premise that scientific facts are made, not things existing a priori in the world and that are
merely picked up by researchers and consumed by lay audiences. Likewise, technologies are
created through a process of intense negotiation between producers and their sophisticated
users. Focusing on the biosciences, we explore the production of science and technology and
how they 1) affect individuals, self-identities, subjectivity, kinship, and social relationships; 2)
have interacted with or reinforced political programs, racial classifications, unequal access to
knowledge, and patterns of social injustice; 3) inform contemporary institutional structures,
strategies of governance, and practices of citizenship. We will combine methods and
perspectives from social and cultural anthropology, the philosophy and history of science, and
the social studies of science and technology, in addition to relying on historical case studies,
ethnographies of science, scientific and medical journals and documentary films.
Class Format:
This is a seminar and not a lecture course. Informed participation by all students is crucial to its
success. Students are expected to thoughtfully engage course materials in class discussions and
activities.
Requirements:

Readings
The class will not use a textbook, but a variety of readings related to course topics.
Assigned readings will be available in Blackboard and must be completed before the
class for which they are listed.

Class Participation
Attendance is mandatory and is considered part of your participation grade. The
seminar format is successful only insofar as participants stay current with the readings
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and come to class prepared to discuss them. That means not just reading the materials,
but also thinking about them as and after you read them, and formulating some
responses to them that you could share with others in the class. Evaluation of your
participation in class discussions and activities will make up 50% of your final grade for
the course.
Grading:
Take-home midterm: 25%
Take-home final: 25%
Class participation: 50%


Students will submit exams electronically via Blackboard.
Citations and references can be in any standard format, provided that they are
consistent and that the source of the materials is clearly stated. Internet citations must
be working web addresses.
Academic Integrity:
The University of Pennsylvania has clear policies regarding academic integrity and plagiarism:
http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/index.html Please make sure you read and
understand these policies. If there is any aspect of these policies that you do not understand,
please ask me about it.
Strategies for Success:
This class will move quickly so it is imperative that you keep up with the readings and come to
class prepared to discuss them. The reading load is moderate, but your participation in class
discussions and activities is crucial, so please make an informed decision as to your ability to
fully participate, and plan accordingly. Your success in this course depends on your
commitment to completing all required readings, critically reflecting on them, actively
participating in the class discussions, and creatively integrating your insights in the two takehome exams. If you are having difficulty understanding course content or are having trouble
meeting course requirements, please contact me as soon as possible so we can discuss the
issue.
“What is the meaning of science as a vocation, now after these former illusions, the
‘way to true being,’ the ‘way to true art,’ the ‘way to true nature,’ the ‘way to true God,’
the ‘way to true happiness,’ have been dispelled? Tolstoi has given the simplest answer,
with the words: ‘Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question
important for us: “What shall we do and how shall we live?”’ That science does not give
an answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the sense in which
science gives ‘no’ answer, and whether or not science might yet be of some use to the
one who puts the question correctly.”
Max Weber 1946: 143
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Session 1 – July 2
Introduction
What is Discovery? The Anthropology of Science and Technology
Durkheim, Emile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London and New York: G.
Allen & Unwin. Pp. 462-496 (Conclusion).
Rabinow, Paul. 2000. Introduction: A Vital Rationalist. In A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings
of Georges Canguilhem. François Delaporte, ed. New York: Zone Books.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Situated Knowledges. In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature. Pp. 183-202. New York: Routledge.
Daston, Lorraine. 1995. The Moral Economy of Science. Osiris 10:2-24.
Film: Secret of Life (history of the double helix)
Session 2 -- July 4 – No Class
Session 3 – July 9
Sociologies of Science
Bloor, David. [1976] 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. Pp. 3-23, 46-54 (Ch. 1 and 3).
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1975. “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the
Progress of Reason.” Social Science Information 14 (6): 19-47.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Pp.1-9, 174-210. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. [1979] 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific
Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pp. 15-53 (Ch. 1 and part of Ch. 2).
Sismondo, Sergio. [2004] 2010. An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Chapters 13. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Session 4 – July 11
Epistemic Cultures 1
Fleck, Ludwik. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. (Selections)
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Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter. 1992. The Image of Objectivity. Representations 40:81128.
Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Pp 1-30 and 65-79.
Haraway, Donna. 1996. Modest Witness: Feminist Diffractions in Science Studies. In The Disunity
of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Peter Galison and David J. Stump, eds. Pp. 428-441.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Session 5 – July 16
Epistemic Cultures 2
Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. 1-110, 241-260 (Chapters 1-4, 10).
Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and
Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,
1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19: 387-420.
Mukerji, Chandra. 1994. “Toward a Sociology of Material Culture: Science Studies, Cultural
Studies and the Meanings of Things.” Pp. 143-162 in The Sociology of Culture: Emerging
Theoretical Perspectives, edited by D. Crane. Oxford: Blackwell.
Session 6 – July 18
Actor-Network Theory
Callon, Michel. 1986. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the
Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” Pp. 196-233 in Power, Action, and Belief, edited
by J. Law. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world. In The Science Studies
Reader. Mario Biagioli, ed. Pp. 258-275. New York: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 1992. “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane
Artifacts.” Pp. 225-258 in Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical
Change, edited by W. E. Bijker and J. Law. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
****Take-home midterm distributed/made available online: This exam will cover all course
material covered so far (including July 18th). You may refer to your notes and readings. You
may not work with your classmates. Exams are due on Blackboard by 10 a.m. on July 23.****
Session 7 – July 23
Flesh-Eating Science: The Case of Kuru Knowledge
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Anderson, Warwick. 2008. The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. (Selections)
Benjamin, Walter. 2007. On the Mimetic Faculty. In Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the
Anthropology of Material Life. Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar, eds. Pp. 130-132. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Lock, Margaret. 2007. Human Body Parts as Therapeutic Tools: Contradictory Discourses and
Transformed Subjectivities. In Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material
Life. Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar, eds. Pp. 224-231. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Truog, Robert D. 1997. Is it time to abandon brain death? Hastings Center Report 27(1):29-37.
Session 8 – July 25
Politics of Science
Kohler, Robert. 1999. Moral Economy, Material Culture, and Community in Drosophila
Genetics. In The Science Studies Reader. Mario Biagioli, ed. Pp. 243-257. New York: Routledge.
Hacking, Ian. 1991. How Should We do the History of Statistics? In The Foucault Effect: Studies
in Governmentality. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. Pp. 181-195.
Chicago: The Chicago University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1999. Making Up People. In The Science Studies Reader. Mario Biagioli, ed. Pp.
161-171. New York: Routledge.
Proctor, Robert. 1988. Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. (Selections)
Raffles, Hugh. 2007. Jews, Lice, and History. Public Culture 19(3):521-566.
Films: Death by Design and/or Deadly Deception
Session 9 – July 30
Biotechnology and Genomics
Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press. (selections)
Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality. In
Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Pp. 91-111. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rajan, Kaushik Sunder. 2005. Subjects of Speculation: Emergent Life Sciences
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and Market Logics in the United States and India. American Anthropologist 107(1):19-30.
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2000. Beyond Nature and Culture: Modes of Reasoning in the age of
Molecular Biology and Medicine. In Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies.
Margaret Lock, Allan Young, Alberto Cambrosio, eds. Pp. 19-30. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Film: Gene Blues: Dilemmas of DNA Testing
Session 10 – August 1
Technology’s Social Life/Human and Non-Human Actors
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Pp. 217-251. New York: Schocken Books.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Pp. 149181. New York: Routledge.
Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology. In The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays. Pp. 3-25. New York: Harper and Row.
Marx, Karl. 1999. The Machine Versus the Worker. In The Social Shaping of Technology (Second
Edition). Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds. Pp. 156-157. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Rapp, Rayna. 1999. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in
America. New York: Routledge (selections).
Session 11 – August 6
Risk Society and Technological Catastrophes
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Pp. 19-46. London: Polity Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Postscript on Control Societies. In Negotiations 1972-1990. Pp. 177-182.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Keck, Frederic. 2008. From Mad Cow Disease to Bird Flu: Transformations of Food Safety in
France. In Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question. Andrew Lakoff and
Stephen J. Collier, eds. Pp. 195-225. New York: Columbia University Press.
Petryna, Adriana. 2002. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. (selections)
Films: Ground Zero America: Chemical and Biological Weapons and Dragon Science
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Session 12 – August 8
Science as a Vocation and the Technical Life
Camic, Charles, Neil Gross, and Michèle Lamont. 2011. “Introduction: The Study of Social
Knowledge Making.” In Social Knowledge in the Making, edited by Camic, Gross, and Lamont.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lamont, Michèle. 2009. How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. 1-106, 202-249 (Ch. 1- 3, 6-7).
Weber, Max. 1958. Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. H. H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. Pp. 129-156. New York: Oxford University Press.
****Take-home midterm distributed/made available online: This exam will cover all course
material covered since July 23. You may refer to your notes and readings. You may not work
with your classmates. Exams are due on Blackboard by 5 p.m. on August 13.****