IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB277458520

Parasite Labs: Laboratory Protocols of Do-It-Yourself Biology (2015)

Fortun, Michael (Advisor)
Jonathan Isaac Cluck (Author)

Fortun, Michael
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Publication date: 2015
Language: English

URI: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1765210300?accountid=12964

Outside Links

This project examines and documents the workings of DIYbio (do-it-yourself biology), a loosely-affiliated global group of “amateur” biological researchers, and the ways in which they construct their laboratories, produce new scientific methodologies, and change what it means to be a scientist. I argue throughout this work that the laboratories that DIY biologists construct are materially and conceptually “parasitic” on institutionalized science: they are structured through deep connections to the traditional places and spaces of scientific practice, and differentially reproduce them through the development of adjacent scientific practices. In the creation of and the elaboration of meanings about these “parasite labs,” DIY biologists develop new means of producing biological knowledge and produce material critiques of contemporary institutional science, and also operate as a frontier for the future of biology. I seek to answer three questions about DIY biologists: how do they affirmatively refigure what it means to be a scientist; how do they differentially reproduce the contents and contexts of laboratories; and how do they alter scientific knowledge, its meanings, and its means of production? I draw upon four years of participant observation fieldwork across two primary sites and many conferences and meetings to answer these questions, and to describe the emergent cultures of DIY biology. My ethnographic work is supplemented by an analysis of electronic discussions (chat rooms, forums, mailing lists, websites, and personal or group weblogs) that DIY biologists use to record their methods and disseminate their findings, popular culture and print/electronic media which shape the particular historical moment in which DIYbio has developed, and historical literatures on “amateur science” which provide comparative accounts of conflicts over who may produce scientific knowledge and where it may be produced. To analyze and examine these source materials, I use a theoretical framework derived from various meanings of “parasite” from Michel Serres, J.L. Austin, George Marcus, and Jacques Derrida.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB277458520

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Roman Gilmintinov; (2019)
“We can and we must”: The scientificity of trade-union history-writing in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (/p/isis/citation/CBB397639123/)

Book Aya H. Kimura; Abby Kinchy; (2019)
Science by the People: Participation, Power, and the Politics of Environmental Knowledge (/p/isis/citation/CBB605020733/)

Book Tobias Scheidegger; (2017)
"Petite Science": Außeruniversitäre Naturforschung in der Schweiz um 1900 (/p/isis/citation/CBB493764349/)

Article Laura Miralles; Eva Garcia-Vazquez; Eduardo Dopico; (2021)
Game-based learning for engaging citizens in biopollution control (/p/isis/citation/CBB727121914/)

Article Dana Mahr; Sascha Dickel; (2019)
Citizen Science Beyond Invited Participation: Nineteenth Century Amateur Naturalists, Epistemic Autonomy, and Big Data Approaches Avant La Lettre (/p/isis/citation/CBB695305682/)

Article Martin Rohde; (2019)
Local knowledge and amateur participation. Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1892–1914 (/p/isis/citation/CBB769100915/)

Article Karen Kovaka; (2021)
Evaluating Community Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB988749229/)

Article Veronica della Dora; (2023)
From the Radio Shack to the Cosmos: Listening to Sputnik during the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) (/p/isis/citation/CBB770612333/)

Article Stefano Giovanardi; Gabriele Catanzaro; Giangiacomo Gandolfi; Gianluca Masi; (2018)
E Lucevan Le Stelle: Engaging the Public of Rome in a Cultural Repossession of the Urban Sky (/p/isis/citation/CBB444510701/)

Thesis Britt Dahlberg; (2015)
Envisioning Post-Industrial Futures: Community Activism and Government Environmental Health Science in Southeastern Pennsylvania (/p/isis/citation/CBB822110081/)

Article Hilary Stewart; Nick Watson; (2020)
A Sociotechnical History of the Ultralightweight Wheelchair: A Vehicle of Social Change (/p/isis/citation/CBB010116845/)

Article Olga Kuchinskaya; (2019)
Citizen Science and the Politics of Environmental Data (/p/isis/citation/CBB990120305/)

Article Phil Brown; (2021)
From the Radical Psychology Movement to STS: A Journey From the 1960s in Multiple Parts (/p/isis/citation/CBB099951762/)

Article Jan-Peter Voß; Nina Amelung; (October 2016)
Innovating public participation methods: Technoscientization and reflexive engagement (/p/isis/citation/CBB261047944/)

Article Barbara L. Allen; (November 2018)
Strongly Participatory Science and Knowledge Justice in an Environmentally Contested Region (/p/isis/citation/CBB069762669/)

Article Irwin, Alan; Jensen, Torben Elgaard; Jones, Kevin E.; (February 2013)
The good, the bad and the perfect: Criticizing engagement practice (/p/isis/citation/CBB809766452/)

Article Jérôme Baudry; Élise Tancoigne; Bruno J Strasser; (June 2022)
Turning crowds into communities: The collectives of online citizen science (/p/isis/citation/CBB205266249/)

Article Courtney Addison; Hallam Stevens; (May 2022)
Crowdfunding Conservation Science: Tracing the Participatory Dynamics of Native Parrot Genome Sequencing (/p/isis/citation/CBB774118711/)

Article Dick Kasperowski; Thomas Hillman; (August 2018)
The epistemic culture in an online citizen science project: Programs, antiprograms and epistemic subjects (/p/isis/citation/CBB246996426/)

Article Hallam Stevens; Monamie Bhadra Haines; (September 2020)
TraceTogether: Pandemic Response, Democracy, and Technology (/p/isis/citation/CBB988746979/)