Weekly Reflection Post for 9/29 Class

In the first two chapters or her ethnographic study, Life Exposed, Adriana Petryna explores the political and scientific response to the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl.  She examines how the soviet government tried to downplay the scale of the disaster, saying that this only served to exacerbate the damage down by the radiation exposure.  She also examines the Ukrainian response to Chernobyl after becoming and independent state.  In Ukraine, she shows, a new culture has developed around the “suffering” who are in part supported by government welfare programs.  What strikes me as the most interesting aspect of the culture is that one’s level of suffering is proportional to one’s status within the culture and to one’s ability to access welfare.  People are essentially rewarded for suffering more, causing people to feel the need to exaggerate their medical problems in order to support their families.  This culture has also produced a backlash, where medical experts often claim that their syndromes are caused by something akin to panic disorder, meaning that their suffering is mostly psychological.

What I found most interesting from this section of the ethnography was Petryna’s discussion of the collaboration of American and Soviet medical experts (pgs. 45-47).  This discussion reminded me of the idea that the scientific laboratory encompasses everything and everyone presented in Bruno Latour in his “Give me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World.”  The American scientists were “uninterested in long-term assessments of the health impact of Chernobyl;” instead they treated the crisis as a scientific experiment, and forced across their research motives on the medical treatment of the ARS (acute radiation sickness) cohort.  This discussion also showed how science is seen as a cold and technical practice.  This is best summarized when Petryna says: “From this point of view, causes of death associated with the disaster except bone marrow failure became scientifically insignificant.”

This may be helpful...

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

This is an article about a WHO report on the enormity of Chernobyl released in 2005.  I thought it could be a nice reference for the international response to the disaster and how it compares to the Soviet and Ukrainian responses.

Reflection on Readings for class on 9/22/10

In the second half of her ethnography on the use of DNA technology to identify the “missing” of Srebrenica, Sarah Wagner focuses first on the use of antemortem data in then identification process, then on the communal properties of the burial ceremonies for identified remains, and finally about the evolution in status Bosnian scientists with the ICMP have experienced.

The relationship between antemortem and postmortem data is especially interesting.  DNA evidence is not enough to identify skeletal remains, personal evidence such as old injuries or possessions found on the remains must corroborate the DNA evidence.  This often seems to be as much for the families of the identified as it is for the sake of identification; family members need tangible evidence that they can understand to fully trust the identification.  For someone not trained in science, it is difficult to say “these bones match what my husband’s bones should be on the molecular level, so these must be his bones.”  It is much more intuitive for the family members of the Srebrenica missing to say “they say these bones seem to be my husband’s, and I can see the tooth he chipped when my ring fell in the stew one day and there is the patch I sewed on his pants the day before he went missing and…”  The families need this tangible evidence to relate these cold, hard DNA-based facts and the unrecognizable remains to the man they once knew.  This need for antemortem data is also interesting because it establishes a limit for technology.  DNA-based technology can only do so much, after which more archaic forms of identification such as questionnaires and medical history must be used.

With regard to the burials at Potocari, it is intriguing that most of the families choose to participate in the communal burial instead of performing separate personal burials.  When the Serbs stripped the Bosniaks of any form of traditional identification, they forced the Bosniaks into a mass label that compounded their lack of individual identity.  However, by choosing to have communal burials, the Bosniaks are not only returning identity to the missing, but claiming the communal identity of the missing for their own.  In a way, they are removing any sign of control the Serbs had over the identity of the missing.  Control seems to be a powerful theme in this section of the ethnography.  By allowing the families to choose how the missing will be buried, the ICMP is giving control of the remains and all it entails back to the families, returning what the Serbs stole.

The fact that the Bosnian scientists have become experts in the field of DNA based identification is especially significant to this class.  It shows that current cultures of science and technologies are always changing.  When first starting out, the ICMP needed to call on help from the United States to make any progress; at one point they even outsourced all DNA work to the US.  However, within a few years the Bosnians experts were called on the help the United States and others around the world.  This shows how in a culture that honors and desires advancement and progress as much as the cultures of science and technology, the relative social order is constantly fluctuating as progress comes from different people.

The Generational Gap in Technology

My parents just discovered Skype.  Of course, they immediately wanted to talk to me over Skype since I am essentially the only person they know who has Skype.  They were very impressed and amazed by being able to video chat over the internet.  This reminded me of the generational gap we talked about last class, where our generation is inured to new technology because it has been so much a part of our lives since before we can remember.  My parents are in their 60s and didn’t even own color TVs when they were children, so the idea of instant face-to-face communication is very advanced for them.  I just thought this was an interesting example of how old news to us can be novel to people removed from the technological era we live in.

Weekly Reflection Post for 9/15 Class

Sarah Wagner’s To Know Where He Lies attempts to consolidate and explain how science is intimately involved with such emotionally charged subjects such as genocide and missing loved ones.  Two aspects of To Know Where He Lies were especially interesting for me.  The first, and the more pervasive of the two, is the juxtaposition of cold, hard facts with personal stories and memories from the Wagner or people she interviewed.  This is especially evident when Wagner uses Bosnian words; for instance on pages 68-69 Wagner systematically and factually describes the goals and circumstances of different Srebrenica advocacy groups (including the Women of Srebrenica) and then switches to a small reminiscence of conversations with a leader of the Women of Srebrenica and how she would spend time with her “sipping coffee out of a fildjan.”  Wagner also frequently used the terms nestali and nije dosao when describing the missing peoples, placing cultural meaning into what would otherwise be lists of disturbing but faceless facts.  By doing this, Wagner takes away much of the distant, scientific feeling of her research and creates a relatable and cultural façade over her facts.  This mimics what happened in Bosnia, where at first technology dehumanized the bodies through secondary mass graves and then DNA technology works to reattach personhood to skeletal remains.  This is especially relevant to this class since Wagner is essentially taking something from the world of science and technology, research, and stripping it of what makes it scientific so that it can be accessible to cultures outside of science and technology, including the Bosniaks about whom it is written.

The second aspect comes from a moment in chapter one where Wagner describes a scene from a play based on the violence in Srebrenica.  On pages 36-37, she provides the scene about a family’s response to Srebrenica being a UN safe area which includes a father character with very little knowledge of science and technology putting blind trust in technology.  This provides an interesting example of how people outside any culture of science and technology view those who belong to cultures with extensive access to and knowledge of science and technology.  Essentially, this man believes that all wrongs can be fixed with this mysterious technology and that, since the technology is on his side, he is invincible to attack.  This view represents a unique culture of science and technology—the culture created by exclusion from science and technology.

Michael Lynch and Sheila Jasanoff’s “Contested Identities: Science, Law and Forensic Practice” details the use of DNA identification technology such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) or Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms (RFLPs) in criminal trials, specifically the O.J. Simpson trial due to its large presence in the mainstream media.  The most interesting part of this article is that it shows how reluctant the criminal justice system is when it comes to using new forensic technology.  In both the Castro and the Simpson case, judges and juries were unwilling to trust this new form of data.  This was not limited to the judicial system, but also included the public and even the scientific experts, who were divided on both the cases.  This seems to underline a seemingly inherent distrust people have for technology—people would much rather put their trust in another human capable of reasoning for himself than to trust blindly in minuscule molecule or a computer program, especially when it involves such important aspects of life like law and order.

Facebook Profile Pictures

This may be more relevant later in the semester, but this just popped in my head and I thought it would be worthwhile to the class at some point.

So today, the first item on my newsfeed on Facebook was that 26 of my friends had changed their profile picture. This isn’t that big a number, but considering these news stories pop up every day or so, we, the people of Facebook, change our profile picture way more than necessary. This got me thinking, why do we feel the need to change this picture so many times? We don’t change other, far more official pictures of ourselves nearly as often; in the three years I have had Facebook I have had 30 profile pictures, but in the five years I have had a driver’s license I haven’t changed the picture a single time. The same holds true for me passport, my school I.D. card and essentially every representation of me not on the internet. So why do we change our profile pictures so often? It’s not because we change appearances. I certainly didn’t change much between September 1st and October 1st in 2007, but I had five different profile pictures in that time span. I think we change our pictures so often because of a merit system. We want to reward important memories, happy moments, or simply a really good hair day and we do so by allowing pictures of these worthy moments to be our representation to our network of friends, family, and peers. Moments that are especially important to us stay up for longer, until enough time has passed that its import has faded and pictures from a recent important event inspire us to recognize a new moment. A photo from my last world championships in November, 2008 remained my picture until June, 2009 because it represented one of the most important moments of my life. Often, the moments that inspire us are nostalgic rather than new. For instance, the photo that replaced the world championship photo was a year old photo of me and some friends, a change inspired by the fact that I was home for the summer and missed my closest friends from school. The reason we feel the need to update this picture is the social aspect of Facebook. We want to show everyone what moments are important to us, and the profile picture is a quick way of keeping those closest to us updated in our life. They say a picture says a thousand words, but on Facebook a picture says those thousand words to the thousand people closest to you, allowing us to easily express ourselves to everyone who cares.

Weekly Reflection Post for 9/8 Class

“What is a Laboratory?” by Karin Knorr-Cetina


Knorr-Cetina argues that the laboratory is more than just a place to do science but functions as a site of reconfiguration and reordering of social contexts. Moreover, she argues that the laboratory and experimentation are separate units. She provides ample evidence on how laboratories offer the ability to alter social contexts, most explicitly through her discussion of a psychoanalyst’s office. However, she doesn’t distinguish how a laboratory acting as a place to reorganize social context is any different than a laboratory acting as a place to do science. This, I believe, is the major flaw in her argument. She does make her point about laboratories and experiments being separable. This is most obviously shown through her discussion of astronomy, which is analyzed in a laboratory but is not an experimental science.

Overall, Knorr-Cetina shows the similarity of many different scientific communities. Many of these communities seem to use similar constructs of laboratories and experiments; these constructs seem to be cultural indoctrinations placed on these communities and hint at their common origins.



“Pilgrim’s Progress: Male Tales Told During a Life in Physics” by Sharon Traweek


The argument that Traweek explicitly states she is making is that the community of particle physics is an almost exclusively male community. However, she also makes implicit arguments about how the evolution of particle physicists mirrors that of heroes and how the culture of particle physicists is greatly shaped by the fear of obsolescence.

She provides compelling evidence for her implicit arguments. She explicitly relates the undergraduate student to heroes through her commentary on textbooks and relates the graduate student to a hero with the story of “rescuing” information. She then implicitly shows the need for post-docs to be a charismatic and talented hero so that they can out compete their fellow post-docs; this competition continues through the group leader story until reaching the statesman story, which seems to be the stage of victory for a hero where the hero is honored and wields political power. She demonstrates the importance of avoiding obsolescence for a physicist by showing the high rate of failure and the incessant need to anticipate the future to stay current.

However, Traweek does not do a very good job supporting her gender argument. She ignores the role of gender, with a few exceptions, until the end of the article, and then relies on stereotypes to make her point. This served to severely weaken her argument about why the particle physics field is male dominated.

The five tales, on a whole, say a lot about what a competitive environment the physics community is. It also shows how competition from all over the world has driven physicists to strive to be heroes to outshine their competitors. Lastly, it provides an interesting example of an anthropological study of a community based on the modern ideas of science and technology.


“Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World” by Bruno Latour


Through the story of Pasteur’s work with anthrax in cows and eventual creation of the first artificial vaccine, Latour argues that there is no “outside” the laboratory and that there is no difference between “micro” and “macro” levels, meaning that there is no separation of the ordinary work in a lab and the contextualization of results that come from that work. Latour shows that in order for Pasteur to approach the anthrax problem scientifically, he must treat the farms “outside” his laboratory as extensions of his laboratory; in other words the world is transformed into a network of laboratory so that nothing exists “outside” of a laboratory. Also, by using his commentary on how Pasteur maintained social interest in his work, Latour shows how Pasteur’s work on a “micro” level resulted in his results on a “macro” level. This effectively makes these two levels inseparable and continuous.

The most interesting aspect of Latour’s narrative about Pasteur was how it contextualized the laboratory with the rest of the world. Latour characterized the laboratory as a political entity that had motivations and strategies for success. This contrasts with the established view of science as objective. Latour shows how scientists and laboratories are as much a part of the larger economic and intellectual society as any other community and are subject to the same biases, needs, and motivations. Lastly, this article provides a nice context for Latour’s study of a scientist at his lab bench; this article provides the larger, subjective context to what seemed to be a secluded, objective world.

This is awfully meta of me...

I am a fairly private person, so this blog is very strange for me.  Therefore, I decided to be a little meta and make my first blog post about my first blog.

I have facebook, but I rarely update my status and have very little information about my self.  However, I decided to leave this blog open to anyone and everyone, probably because I feel a sort of anonymity connected with it.  It's refreshing to put my thoughts out in the universe from the comfort of own room where nobody I'm close with will ever see it or connect it with me.  I can see why people like blogging; it's a way of expressing oneself in a very open way while still maintaining a sense of privacy.  On the other hand, it seems to be another forum for judgement even if it does have veiled anonymity.  I still haven't decided which is more powerful: the freedom of expression without repercussion or the exposure to criticism from people with equal anonymity.

It's not much, but that is my initial impression of blogging.