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33 - Science

The Anthropology of Science As an Anthropology of Ethics (and Vice Versa)

from Part V - Institutional Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
Matei Candea
Edited by
James Laidlaw
James Laidlaw
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Ethical self-formation and epistemic virtues have been a focus of attention in the history of science for over three decades, and yet, despite some important early contributions, anthropologists of science have only recently started to pay more sustained and explicit attention to the ethical. This chapter argues that anthropologists of science could benefit from taking a closer and more systematic look at recent developments in the anthropology of ethics. Conversely it suggests that anthropologists of ethics might gain from a closer consideration of some of the specificities of Euro-American science as an (internally and externally contested, multiple, and perhaps in part fictitious) ethical tradition. The first half of the chapter explores the rather fitful genealogy of an interest in the ethical in the history, sociology, and anthropology of science, and points to some of the elements from which the anthropology of science as an anthropology of ethics might be (re)built. The second half of the chapter gives one extended, ethnographically grounded example of what such a (re)building might produce, and suggests some of the ways in which anthropology’s exploration of both science and ethics might benefit.

Keywords

scienceethicsobjectivityepistemologydisciplinarity
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 839 - 870
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Science
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.033
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  • Science
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.033
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  • Science
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.033
Available formats
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