ANTH 571Q - Cultures of Expertise

Credits: Variable

We will explore in this seminar the challenges posed in adapting ethnographic practices to examine such diverse settings as science labs, news agencies, experimental arts programs, and financial institutions. The issue that draws together these studies is how experts create, manage, and manipulate knowledge. Centrally, this means expanding approaches developed initially within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the Philosophy of Science and applying them to a wide range of contexts: specifically, cultural realms in which research, broadly conceived, plays a decisive role. This will also continue the discussions developed in my other seminars (Cultures of Capitalism and Ethnographic Analysis) in which we investigated the nature of knowledge production under the sway of supranational markets. Occasional.