Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer

Joan H. Fujimura

Published by Harvard University Press 1996

Crafting Science

A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer

Joan H. Fujimura

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674332874

Overview
Contents

About this book

During the late 1970s and 1980s, "cancer" underwent a remarkable transformation. In one short decade, what had long been a set of heterogeneous diseases marked by uncontrolled cell growth became a disease of our genes. How this happened and what it means is the story Joan Fujimura tells in a rare inside look at the way science works and knowledge is created. A dramatic study of a new species of scientific revolution, this book combines a detailed ethnography of scientific thought, an in-depth account of science practiced and produced, a history of one branch of science as it entered the limelight, and a view of the impact of new genetic technologies on science and society.

The scientific enterprise that Fujimura unfolds for us is proto-oncogene cancer research--the study of those segments of DNA now thought to make normal cells cancerous. Within this framework, she describes the processes of knowledge construction as a social enterprise, an endless series of negotiations in which theories, material technologies, and practices are co-constructed, incorporated, and refashioned. Along the way, Fujimura addresses long-standing questions in the history and philosophy of science, culture theory, and sociology of science: How do scientists create "good" problems, experiments, and solutions? What are the cultural, institutional, and material technologies that have to be in place for new truths and new practices to succeed?

Portraying the development of knowledge as a multidimensional process conducted through multiple cultures, institutions, actors, objects, and practices, this book disrupts divisions among sociology, history, anthropology, and the philosophy of science, technology, and medicine.

Author / Editor information

Fujimura Joan H. :

Joan H. Fujimura is Associate Professor and Henry R. Luce Professor of Biotechnology and Society in the Department of Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Program in History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford University.

Reviews

This is an elegant and subtle book; it will become a model for the new interdisciplinary studies of science, technology, and medicine being written at the intersection of anthropology, history, sociology, and philosophy. The current challenge in technoscience studies is to identify how ideas, techniques, equipment, labs, careers, colleagues, funding, and policy combine and intersect with local, regional, and global cultures and political economies in making science. Joan Fujimura has done it in this book, and she gives us a map of how she did it. Everyone interested in science and technology studies now needs to read and teach this book.

Fujimura...explores the development of the proto-oncogene theory in cancer research to illustrate the process of change and continuity in science...[She] provides an objective, scholarly work.

In Crafting Science, Joan Fujimura provides her readers with a detailed, sociologically grounded introduction to one of the major and most innovative areas of contemporary biomedical research, the search for the causes and treatment of cancer. She considers the roles played by a bewildering array of actors, ranging from biomedical scientists and their research materials, inbred murine lines bearing the traces of mysterious oncogenes, to shareholders in companies dedicated to the commercial exploitation of these scientists' findings.

I would describe the main contribution of Crafting Science as the synthesis of the American pragmatist tradition in sociology with the largely European, post 1960s sociology of scientific knowledge, particularly the successor program known as actor-network theory associated with Michel Callon and Bruno Latour. By bringing the two traditions together, Fujimura both develops science studies theory and provides a new perspective on a research program that has come to dominate cancer research: the study of oncogenes, or genes thought to play a crucial role in tumor genesis and growth.

This is a book that rewards the reader's attention, and the real payoff comes at the end. In the final chapter, Fujimura works from the particular history of cancer and oncogenes to the general idea of scientific progress. Here, in the most rewarding part of Crafting Science, she develops an account of how scientific ideas change through time, a "pragmatic" account that differs from at least two of the more familiar ideas about progress in science. Because she stresses the way in which scientific terms shift in meaning as interests and technology change, Fujimura rejects the view that information simply accumulates. Her picture also differs from the common idea of "revolution" in science, in which theories are thought to change so fundamentally that no real conversation is possible between competing outlooks. Despite major twists and reversals in the history of scientific ideas, the overall landscape may remain recognizable. To Fujimura, the coherence and continuity of theories and theoretical entities are as important as the changes and discontinuities, and these all are in need of explanation. Satisfying explanations are those that show how scientific problems and solutions mesh with society's priorities and prejudices.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Creating a New Realm Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Tools of the Trade: A Brief History of Standardized Experimental Systems in Cancer Research, 1920-1978 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Molecular Genetic Technologies: The New Tools of the Trade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Crafting Theory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
Distributing Authority and Transforming Biology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Problems and Work Practices: Improvising on the Shop Floor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
The Articulation of Doable Problems in Cancer Research Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
Conclusion: Crafting Oncogenes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Appendix: Social and Cultural Studies of Science Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Edition: Reprint 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 322
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 5
- Tables: 4
- Other: 5 halftones, 4 tables
Keywords: MEDICAL / Oncology; SCIENCE / History; SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Genetics & Genomics; Cancer -- Genetic aspects -- Research -- History.; Medical anthropology.

eBook

Published: October 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780674332874

Hardcover

Published: February 5, 1996
ISBN: 9780674332867