Rage against Self-replicating Machines: Framing Science and Fiction in the US Nanotechnology Field

Abstract

Research in the sociology of science has increasingly begun to acknowledge the role that external influences play in shaping the boundaries and content of science. However, a scarce understanding still prevails with regard to the role of peripheral, popular movements in the emergence of scientific fields, and of professional fields in general.Through their attention to boundary work, scientific fields also provide a fruitful yet neglected context to study how actors engage in efforts to alter frames in order to adjust and negotiate community boundaries. This qualitative study of the emergence of the US nanotechnology field from 1986 to 2005 makes several contributions to knowledge about these issues. First, our study shows that peripheral, popular movements open up avenues for scientific fields by generating understanding and receptivity for novel ideas through story-telling, which gives rise to their cultural embeddedness. Second, we find that by capitalizing on such culturally embedded concepts, scientists make science particularly vulnerable to external interventions, limiting the effect of boundary work. Third, the study shows how usually persistent hierarchies between communities are tested, challenged, and reproduced in an emerging professional field. The study therefore provides understanding on how actors in the key communities are able to use framing to negotiate their positions and community boundaries within a complex, emergent field.