
Genomics with Care
Minding the Double Binds of Science
Mike Fortun(Author)
Duke University Press
Published on 4. August 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-1-4780-2040-0 (ISBN)
Description
In Genomics with Care Mike Fortun presents an experimental ethnography of contemporary genomics, analyzing science as a complex amalgam of cognition and affect, formal logics and tacit knowledge, statistics, and ethics. Fortun examines genomics in terms of care-a dense composite of affective and cognitive forces that drive scientists and the relations they form with their objects of research, data, knowledge, and community. Reading genomics with care shows how each resists definition yet is so entangled as to become indistinguishable. Fortun analyzes four patterns of genomic care-curation, scrupulousness, solicitude, and friendship-seen in the conceptual, technological, social, and methodological changes that transpired as the genetics of the 1980s became the genomics of the 1990s, and then the "post-genomics" of the 2000s. By tracing the dense patterns made where care binds to science, Fortun shows how these patterns mark where scientists are driven to encounter structural double binds that are impossible to resolve, and yet are where scientific change and creativity occur.
Reviews / Votes
"Genomics with Care is an inventive, generous, funny, rigorous, and path-opening contribution to the anthropology of science that teaches readers new methods of understanding science as a vocation. Mike Fortun deftly fuses attention to the social affects and effects that accompany research in today's molecular biology. This utterly splendid book reminds us what science and science studies are for." - Stefan Helmreich, author of (A Book of Waves) "This brilliant and much-needed intervention into science and technology studies provides an affecting model for reading not just genomics, but the sciences in general. It opens a new path for thinking and writing differently in relation to the natural sciences. Indeed, it is a superb model for scholars and students who wish to read any text, community, or epistemology in a caring and critical way." - Elizabeth A. Wilson, author of (Gut Feminism) "While scientific practice is often thought to be devoid of affective influence from practitioners, it is nonetheless a human endeavor and often defenseless against the affective nature of the human condition. Fortun employs the scientific literature as a source of observational data to produce an ethnographic exploration of the process of science within the context of genomics research. . . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - J. A. Hewlett (Choice)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
20 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
575 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2040-0 (9781478020400)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2023
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€39.49
Available for download
Person
Mike Fortun is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Promising Genomics: Iceland and deCODE Genetics in a World of Speculation.
Content
Acknowledgments vii
Poem-Like Tolls 1: A Prelude 1
Part I. Genomics, Double Binds, Affects
1. Fors 13
2. Labyrinth Life: Affect Excess Infrastructure 42
3. Double Binds of Science 80
Poem-Like Tolls 2: An Interlude
Part II. Minding the Infrastructure of Genomics
4. Curation: Of Data's Limits 111
5. Scrupulousness: Of Experiment's Limit 141
6. Solicitude: Of Science's Limit 183
7. Friendship: Of Community's Limits 221
Poem-Like Tolls 3: An Appendix 253
Postscript 259
Notes 277
Works Cited 311
Index 337
Poem-Like Tolls 1: A Prelude 1
Part I. Genomics, Double Binds, Affects
1. Fors 13
2. Labyrinth Life: Affect Excess Infrastructure 42
3. Double Binds of Science 80
Poem-Like Tolls 2: An Interlude
Part II. Minding the Infrastructure of Genomics
4. Curation: Of Data's Limits 111
5. Scrupulousness: Of Experiment's Limit 141
6. Solicitude: Of Science's Limit 183
7. Friendship: Of Community's Limits 221
Poem-Like Tolls 3: An Appendix 253
Postscript 259
Notes 277
Works Cited 311
Index 337