Affiliation:
1. Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University
of Oslo, P.O. Box 1108 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo,
Abstract
In `Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object' Michael Lynch (1988) explores how the animal body is transformed into a scientific object in the laboratory. How did the laboratory become a (relatively) closed space in which scientists, the experts, were delegated the task of negotiating and transforming the interpretative sense of the animal — from sentient beings to analytic objects — as tools in a scientific machinery? By exploring a parliamentary controversy on experimental medicine at the turn of the 20th century I argue that this depended on a reworking of the status of the animal body, as well as the status of the laboratory. Crucial to this was social theory; specifically, utilitarian reasoning. Thus, what we need to study — this paper argues — is not simply the ways in which the practices of annual experimentation were met with opposition and critiques, but also how these practices came to be culturally and politically accepted, and what this implied for science - society relations. In analysing this controversy, the author attends to recent turn to politics in STS and argue for the significance of studying conventional political sites such as `Parliament' and the role that social theory plays in renegotiating and remaking sites and objects.
Subject
History and Philosophy of Science,General Social Sciences,History
Reference83 articles.
1. Stortingstidende 1901/1902 I. Forhandlinger I Odelstinget [Negotiations in Parliament (Odelsting) . No. 51 (1901/1902)] 3 December 1901, 15 January 1902, and 22-24 January 1902: 743-802 (Centraltrykkeriet: Kristiania).
Cited by
32 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献