Anne Kerr
Biographic Data
| ID | 103792 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anne Kerr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anne |
| FAMILY NAME | Kerr |
| SIGNATURE | KERR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9958-301X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 366 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Laboratory Practices, Potentiality, and Material Patienthood in Genomic Cancer Medicine
Laboratory practitioners working in oncology are increasingly involved in implementing genomic medicine, operating at the intersection of the laboratory and the clinic. This includes molecular diagnostic work and molecular testing to direct entry into molecular-based clinical trials and treatment decision-making based on molecular profiling. In this article, we draw on qualitative interviews with laboratory practitioners in the United Kingdom to …
UK national newspapers' representation of cancer patients and their care during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic: Invoking and undermining solidarity
During the COVID-19 pandemic media narratives of solidarity often cast nations like the UK as if at war, while acclaiming health-care workers as heroic and beloved. However, this solidarity was often fragile and fleeting, as concerns and criticism about workers, citizens and services also circulated. In this article we explore these dynamics of solidarity in more depth, analysing framings of cancer patient suffering, private and public provision …
Unsettling the treatment imperative? Chemotherapy decision-making in the wake of genomic techniques
Social scientists have argued that a treatment imperative shapes experiences of biomedicine. This is evident within oncology, where discourses of hope are tempered by persistent fears surrounding cancer. It is within this context that genomic decision-making tools are entering routine care. These may indicate that a treatment is not appropriate for a particular disease profile. We draw on qualitative interviews and observations centred on gene ex…
Index
Molecular profiling for advanced gynaecological cancer: Prolonging foreshortened futures
Chapter 3 explores another technique that offers personalised predictions of responses to treatments for cancer based on molecular profiling, this time for later stage gynaecological cancer patients seeking to prolong foreshortened futures in a non-curative context. Gynaecological cancers encompass cancer of the womb, ovaries, cervix, vagina and vulva, and mainly, but not exclusively, affect post-menopausal women. Awareness of these cancers is lo…
Going private: Digital culture and personalised medicine
While many cancer patients experience molecular diagnostics and targeted therapies as part of standard treatment or through clinical trials provided free-of-charge through the NHS, others turn to private providers to craft their own care pathways, utilising private health insurance, savings, taking out loans or raising money via crowdfunding online. In Chapter 6, we explore how practitioners, patients and their relatives seek to tailor their care…
Genomics at scale: Participation to build the bioeconomy
Chapter 5 is about large-scale national studies, recruiting patients with a range of cancers to collect extensive molecular information about cancer and ultimately inform routine patient care via precision medicine. We focus on Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes Project. After discussing the rise of these mass-participation initiatives and their strong national imaginaries of economic development and cutting-edge healthcare, we explore how practi…
Genomic techniques in standard care: Gene-expression profiling in early-stage breast cancer
Chapter 2 explores the promise of prediction and prevention of recurrence in personalised medicine for some kinds of breast cancer through the case of a genomic technique already widely adopted within the NHS across the UK: gene-expression profiling. We consider a genomic test, Oncotype DX, which seeks to identify, among early breast cancer patients, those who would or would not benefit from chemotherapy to prevent future recurrence. The aim here…
Optimising personalisation: Adaptive trials for intractable cancers
In Chapter 4 we explore another route by which advanced cancer patients are offered the promise of tailored treatments that may prolong their lives, focusing on an adaptive multi-centre trial for lung cancer that aims to optimise treatments through a process of ongoing adaptation. Lung cancer has a lower public profile than some other cancers and it remains highly stigmatised because of its associations with smoking and higher prevalence among di…
Conclusion: Future-crafting
In today's world, we are offered a constantly expanding number of technologies to integrate into our lives. We now utilise a range of interconnected technologies at work, at home and at leisure. The realm of sport is no exception, where new technologies or enhancements are available to athletes, coaches, scientists, umpires, governing bodies and broadcasters. However, this book argues that in a world where time has become a precious commodity and…
At the limits of participation
Chapter 7 considers non-participation and exclusions as well as reservation, consternation and rejections around genomic medicine in our research and in the public sphere more generally. We investigate the particular social and cultural contexts in which disengagement and resistance are generated. Exploring negative views and experiences or simply a lack of response to genomic medicine, we consider when these kinds of personalised medicine are ‘n…
Personalising cancer treatment and diagnosis through genomic medicine
Chapter 1 sets the scene for the case studies in the book, drawing on STS and related literatures to trace the development of molecular understandings of cancer, tests and treatments and their place in the cancer clinic. The chapter covers the evolution of clinical trials and biobank research, including the rise of adaptive, basket and umbrella trials. We also explore the development of new molecular taxonomies of cancer and the implications of t…
Accessing targeted therapies for cancer: Self and collective advocacy alongside and beyond mainstream cancer charities
As precision oncology has evolved, patients and their families have become more involved in efforts to access these treatments via fundraising and campaigning that take place outside of the larger cancer charities. In this paper, we explore the solidarities, networks, and emotional work of the UK-based access advocates, drawing on the stories of nine advocates, which included interviews and content analyses of their social media posts and coverag…
Personalised cancer medicine: Future crafting in the genomic era
What does it mean to personalise cancer medicine? Personalised cancer medicine explores this question by foregrounding the experiences of patients, carers and practitioners in the UK. Drawing on an ethnographic study of cancer research and care, we trace patients', carers' and practitioners' efforts to access and interpret novel genomic tests, information and treatments as they craft personal and collective futures. Exploring a series of case stu…
Diagnostic layering: Patient accounts of breast cancer classification in the molecular era
Social scientific work has considered the promise of genomic medicine to transform healthcare by personalising treatment. However, little qualitative research attends to already well-established molecular techniques in routine care. In this article we consider women's experiences of routine breast cancer diagnosis in the UK NHS. We attend to patient accounts of the techniques used to subtype breast cancer and guide individual treatment. We introd…
Accomplishing an adaptive clinical trial for cancer: Valuation practices and care work across the laboratory and the clinic
Polygenic risk-stratified screening for cancer: Responsibilization in public health genomics
In this article, we examine professional discourse around the development of polygenic risk-stratified screening (PRSS) for cancer. Analyzing a range of contemporary professional literatures from Europe, North America and Australia, we explore how the drive to screen for molecular markers of cancer risk makes professionals, screening recipients and publics responsible, in different ways, for acquiring, curating and analyzing molecular data. Inves…
Online accounts of gene expression profiling in early‐stage breast cancer: Interpreting genomic testing for chemotherapy decision making
BACKGROUND: Genomic techniques are being developed within oncology and beginning to be experienced within routine cancer care. Little is known about how these tools feature in patients' experiences of treatment decision making. OBJECTIVE: This research explores the ways in which women interpret and discuss gene expression profiling for breast cancer treatment decision making, as articulated within online accounts. DESIGN: This study used a qualit…
Genomic research and the cancer clinic: Uncertainty and expectations in professional accounts
This paper explores clinicians' and scientists' accounts of genomic research in cancer care and the complexities and challenges involved with delivering this work. Contributing to the sociology of (low) expectations, we draw on sociological studies of uncertainty in medicine to explore their accounts of working with uncertainty as part of the management of patient and institutional expectations. We consider their appeals to the importance of mode…
Personalized medicine: Empowered patients in the 21st century
Identity, community and care in online accounts of hereditary colorectal cancer syndrome
Sociological literature has explored how shifts in the point at which individuals may be designated as diseased impact upon experiences of ill health. Research has shown that experiences of being genetically "at risk" are shaped by and shape familial relations, coping strategies, and new forms of biosociality. Less is known about how living with genetic risk is negotiated in the everyday and over time, and the wider forms of identity, communities…
The limits of responsible innovation: Exploring care, vulnerability and precision medicine
Drawing on insights from feminist and Science and Technology Studies writing on care and vulnerability, this paper will critically explore conceptualisations of responsibility, care and vulnerability in relation to contemporary approaches to Responsible Innovation (RI). Drawing on examples of some of the social and ethical challenges of precision medicine, we highlight the on-going, distributed and complex nature of innovation and responsibilitie…
The sociology of cancer: A Decade of Research
Biomedicine is often presented as the driving force behind improvements in cancer care, with genomics the latest innovation poised to change the meaning, diagnosis, treatment, prevention and lived experience of cancer. Reviewing sociological analyses of a diversity of patient and practitioner experiences and accounts of cancer during the last decade (2007-17), we explore the experiences of, approaches to and understandings of cancer in this perio…
Human Genome and the Science of Life
Although the double helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, it was not until the 1980s that powerful sequencing and information technologies were developed that enabled scientists to identify particular genes associated with hereditary diseases and to begin to map all of the genes in human DNA: the so‐called human genome. The Human Genome Project was a massive internati…
Feminism and Science, Feminist Epistemology
Feminist scholars began to systematically focus on the gender values in the biological and medical sciences in the 1970s, drawing on and developing a radical social constructivism where facts were treated as social products rather than as objective value‐free entities, and knowers were seen to be part of communities rather than as lone scholars. This work ran alongside other developments in social studies of science but was shaped by political co…
Shifting Subject Positions: Experts and Lay People in Public Dialogue
Public dialogue about science, technology and medicine is an established part of the activities of a range of charities, private corporations, governmental departments and scientific institutions. However, the extent to which these activities challenge or bridge the lay—expert divide is questionable. Expertise is contested, by the public and the community of scholars who study and/or facilitate public engagement. In this paper, we explore the dyn…
On Ambivalence and Risk: Reflexive Modernity and the New Human Genetics
This critical examination of theories of reflexive modernity with respect to the new human genetics draws on a range of empirical studies and conceptual critiques. In it we explore the ways in which genetic knowledge and testing technologies offer new choices, construct new risks and generate public and professional ambivalence. We contrast this with the processes of ordering, reduction and control suffusing these developments. We argue that redu…
Personalised cancer medicine: Future crafting in the genomic era
What does it mean to personalise cancer medicine? Personalised cancer medicine explores this question by foregrounding the experiences of patients, carers and practitioners in the UK. Drawing on an ethnographic study of cancer research and care, we trace patients', carers' and practitioners' efforts to access and interpret novel genomic tests, information and treatments as they craft personal and collective futures. Exploring a series of case stu…
The New Genetics: Professionals' Discursive Boundaries
In this paper we examine new genetics professionals' accounts of the social context of their work. We analyse accounts given in interview by an 'elite' group of scientists and clinicians. Drawing on the work of Gilbert and Mulkay (1984), we consider interviewees' discourse about knowledge, exploring the way in which they separate science from society through the use of what we have called the 'micro/macro split'. We then go on to consider the rea…
The Palaeoindian-Archaic transition in North America: New evidence from Texas
The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety…
The sociology of cancer: A Decade of Research
Biomedicine is often presented as the driving force behind improvements in cancer care, with genomics the latest innovation poised to change the meaning, diagnosis, treatment, prevention and lived experience of cancer. Reviewing sociological analyses of a diversity of patient and practitioner experiences and accounts of cancer during the last decade (2007-17), we explore the experiences of, approaches to and understandings of cancer in this perio…
Defining the 'social: Towards an Understanding of Scientific and Medical Discourses on the Social Aspects of the New Human Genetics
The way in which 'the social' is treated in discourses about the new human genetics is an important marker of the interests and relative power of the groups it concerns. Scientists and clinicians are powerful players in such discussions and seem to be able to direct attention towards the social implications of genetics, often viewed as beneficial, rather than to the science and technology itself. This can serve to protect their cognitive authorit…
(Re)Constructing Genetic Disease: The Clinical Continuum between Cystic Fibrosis and Male Infertility
In this paper I explore the construction of a clinical continuum between a genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), and male infertility. I provide a brief outline of the history of cystic fibrosis and its association with male infertility, before examining the contention that a growing number of cases of male infertility are a form of CF. I explore various processes involved in the construction of the clinical continuum between CF and male inferti…
Experiencing Food Allergy and Food Intolerance: An Analysis of Lay Accounts
This article offers an analysis of 28 lay accounts of the experience of living with either food allergy or food intolerance in England. We structure the presentation of our data in terms of Mike Bury's three types of narrative form - contingent, moral and core. We suggest that people with food allergies at risk of acute, severe and potentially fatal symptoms on exposure to allergens find their condition to be less socially problematic than do tho…
Interdisciplinarity and the social sciences: Capital, Institutions and Autonomy1
Recent discussions about disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the social sciences have tended to map and critique methods, theories and approaches to knowledge production, but spend less time exploring the ways in which institutional constraints and personal trajectories produce different kinds of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. In this paper we present findings on interdisciplinarity from UK research undertaken as part of an EC proj…
Rights and Responsibilities in the New Genetics Era
This article critically explores the distribution of rights and responsibilities associated with recent developments in genetic testing and DNA donation. The author identifies two key discourses in various accounts of genetics in the clinical and policy domains: patients' rights to informed choice and the public's right to involvement in policy decisions. However, other discourses among professionals, patients and members of the public around res…
Affective Practices, Care and Bioscience: A Study of Two Laboratories
Scientific knowledge-making is not just a matter of experiments, modelling and fieldwork. It also involves affective, embodied and material practices ( Wetherell, 2012 ) which can be understood together as 'matters of care' ( Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011 ). In this paper we explore how affect spans and connects material, subjective and organizational practices, focusing in particular on the patterns of care we encountered in an observational study …
Understanding genetic disease in a socio-historical context: A Case Study of Cystic Fibrosis
In this article I present a socio-historical analysis of the definition and diagnosis of one particular genetic disease - cystic fibrosis (CF) - in an effort the better to understand its social context both before and after the advent of molecular genetics. I begin my analysis with some background on the history of CF, before moving on to consider the emergence of the notion of classic CF, the development of the sweat test, early approaches to mi…
Giving up on geneticization: A comment on Hedgecoe's 'Expansion and uncertainty: cystic fibrosis, classification and genetics
In his latest paper on the issue of geneticization, Adam Hedgecoe explores the expansion of the cystic fibrosis (CF) continuum (Hedgecoe 2003), drawing on my previous paper on the relationship between CF and a form of male infertility called Congenital Bilateral Absence of the Vas Deferens (CBAVD) (2000). He extends my story beyond the 1990s, noting some recent disagreements about the expansion of CF to include CBAVD. He suggests, however, that t…
Eugenics and the New Genetics in Britain: Examining Contemporary Professionals' Accounts
This article explores the accounts of eugenics made by a small but important group of British scientists and clinicians working on the new genetics as applied to human health. These scientists and clinicians used special rhetorical strategies for distancing the new genetics from eugenics and to sustain their professional autonomy. They drew a number of boundaries or distinctions between eugenics and their own field, describing eugenics as politic…
The limits of responsible innovation: Exploring care, vulnerability and precision medicine
Drawing on insights from feminist and Science and Technology Studies writing on care and vulnerability, this paper will critically explore conceptualisations of responsibility, care and vulnerability in relation to contemporary approaches to Responsible Innovation (RI). Drawing on examples of some of the social and ethical challenges of precision medicine, we highlight the on-going, distributed and complex nature of innovation and responsibilitie…
Body work in assisted conception: Exploring Public and Private Settings
Body work has been foregrounded in recent sociological writings on health and social care, particularly the emotional labour of patient care. In this article I explore the social and emotional dimensions of body work in assisted conception in private and public National Health Service (NHS) clinics. Drawing on an ethnographic study, I explore how tensions around bodily attributes, treatment costs, clinic performance and the extent of consumer sov…
Food allergy and food intolerance: Towards a Sociological Agenda
This article asks what sociological insights an analysis of food allergy and food intolerance might afford. We outline the parameters of debates around food allergy and food intolerance in the immunological, clinical and epidemiological literatures in order to identify analytic strands which might illuminate our sociological understanding of the supposed increase in both. Food allergy and food intolerance are contested and contingent terms and it…
Diagnostic layering: Patient accounts of breast cancer classification in the molecular era
Social scientific work has considered the promise of genomic medicine to transform healthcare by personalising treatment. However, little qualitative research attends to already well-established molecular techniques in routine care. In this article we consider women's experiences of routine breast cancer diagnosis in the UK NHS. We attend to patient accounts of the techniques used to subtype breast cancer and guide individual treatment. We introd…
Women and Science: What's the Problem
In recent years the issue of gender and SET (science, engineering, and technology) careers has become prominent in policies and debates in the UK. This paper explores the ways in which equalities solutions pertaining to women and science are locked into a narrow stock of taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of the problem. Drawing on Foucauldian models of the productive nature of discourse, we examine the proliferation of reports and in…
Accomplishing an adaptive clinical trial for cancer: Valuation practices and care work across the laboratory and the clinic
Genetics and citizenship
Let's Get Organised: Practicing and Valuing Scientific Work inside and outside the Laboratory
Over the past thirty years there has been a significant turn towards practice and away from institutions in sociological frameworks for understanding science. This new emphasis on studying 'science in action' ( LATOUR 1987 ) and 'epistemic cultures' ( KNORR CETINA 1999 ) has not been shared by academic and policy literatures on the problem of women and science, which have focused on the marginalisation and under-representation of women in science…
Wilson-Leonard An 11,000-year Archeological Record of Hunter-Gatherers in Central Texas Volume II: Chipped Stone Artifacts
Study of the archeology of the Wilson-Leonard site has opened broad new vistas for the reexamination and improved interpretation of regional prehistory. Beyond that, it is of national importance in terms of both data and interpretation (for example, on the Paleoindian era) and the concepts used in its excavation and analysis. It is unique in other ways. In most cases, deep, stratified, multicomponent sites of this integrity are rarely excavated (…
Toward a feminist natural science
The New Genetics: Professionals' Discursive Boundaries
In this paper we examine new genetics professionals' accounts of the social context of their work. We analyse accounts given in interview by an 'elite' group of scientists and clinicians. Drawing on the work of Gilbert and Mulkay (1984), we consider interviewees' discourse about knowledge, exploring the way in which they separate science from society through the use of what we have called the 'micro/macro split'. We then go on to consider the rea…
Drawing the line: An analysis of lay people's discussions about the new genetics
“Where do we draw the line?” is a question that is frequently asked in discussions about the new genetics. In this paper we explore a range of lay people's accounts of drawing the line. We show that, beyond its rhetorical function, answering this question involves important discussions about genetic research, testing, regulation, and social provision for people who are sick or disabled. It raises difficult questions about clients' and service pro…
The new genetics and health: Mobilizing lay expertise
Public understanding of the new genetics is often criticized in discussions about the social and ethical issues the new genetics raise. In this paper we challenge the “deficit model” evident in this dominant discourse, and offer a constructivist approach. We explore lay expertise about the new genetics, presenting an analysis of data from ten focus group discussions with a range of lay people. After distinguishing four different types of knowledg…
Wilson-Leonard An 11,000-year Archeological Record of Hunter-Gatherers in Central Texas Volume II: Chipped Stone Artifacts
Study of the archeology of the Wilson-Leonard site has opened broad new vistas for the reexamination and improved interpretation of regional prehistory. Beyond that, it is of national importance in terms of both data and interpretation (for example, on the Paleoindian era) and the concepts used in its excavation and analysis. It is unique in other ways. In most cases, deep, stratified, multicomponent sites of this integrity are rarely excavated (…
Toward a feminist natural science
Eugenics and the New Genetics in Britain: Examining Contemporary Professionals' Accounts
This article explores the accounts of eugenics made by a small but important group of British scientists and clinicians working on the new genetics as applied to human health. These scientists and clinicians used special rhetorical strategies for distancing the new genetics from eugenics and to sustain their professional autonomy. They drew a number of boundaries or distinctions between eugenics and their own field, describing eugenics as politic…
Double trouble: Social analyses of the new human genetics
The Troubled Helix: Social and Psychological Implications of the New Human Genetics, edited by Teresa Marteau and Martin Richards, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 359 pages, hardback £37.50
Defining the 'social: Towards an Understanding of Scientific and Medical Discourses on the Social Aspects of the New Human Genetics
The way in which 'the social' is treated in discourses about the new human genetics is an important marker of the interests and relative power of the groups it concerns. Scientists and clinicians are powerful players in such discussions and seem to be able to direct attention towards the social implications of genetics, often viewed as beneficial, rather than to the science and technology itself. This can serve to protect their cognitive authorit…
(Re)Constructing Genetic Disease: The Clinical Continuum between Cystic Fibrosis and Male Infertility
In this paper I explore the construction of a clinical continuum between a genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), and male infertility. I provide a brief outline of the history of cystic fibrosis and its association with male infertility, before examining the contention that a growing number of cases of male infertility are a form of CF. I explore various processes involved in the construction of the clinical continuum between CF and male inferti…
On Ambivalence and Risk: Reflexive Modernity and the New Human Genetics
This critical examination of theories of reflexive modernity with respect to the new human genetics draws on a range of empirical studies and conceptual critiques. In it we explore the ways in which genetic knowledge and testing technologies offer new choices, construct new risks and generate public and professional ambivalence. We contrast this with the processes of ordering, reduction and control suffusing these developments. We argue that redu…
Experiencing the New Genetics: Family and Kinship on the Medical Frontier
Experiencing the New Genetics: Family and Kinship on the Medical Frontier. Kaja Finkler. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. xiv. 277 pp
The Palaeoindian-Archaic transition in North America: New evidence from Texas
The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety…
Governing genetics: Reifying choice and progress
The governance of genetics involves a wide range of policy networks and covers a considerable array of genetic technoscience. Despite this apparent diversity, the uniformity of some genetic governance requires investigation. Reviewing policy documents on genetic patenting and embryonic stem cell research, I shall argue that policy networks often conceive of the ethical aspects of these practices in similar ways. In particular, I shall argue that …
Rights and Responsibilities in the New Genetics Era
This article critically explores the distribution of rights and responsibilities associated with recent developments in genetic testing and DNA donation. The author identifies two key discourses in various accounts of genetics in the clinical and policy domains: patients' rights to informed choice and the public's right to involvement in policy decisions. However, other discourses among professionals, patients and members of the public around res…
Genetics and citizenship
Genetics and society: A Sociology of Disease
Genetic science has advanced rapidly. This work looks at the history of this science and the wide-ranging impact it has had on contemporary society
Giving up on geneticization: A comment on Hedgecoe's 'Expansion and uncertainty: cystic fibrosis, classification and genetics
In his latest paper on the issue of geneticization, Adam Hedgecoe explores the expansion of the cystic fibrosis (CF) continuum (Hedgecoe 2003), drawing on my previous paper on the relationship between CF and a form of male infertility called Congenital Bilateral Absence of the Vas Deferens (CBAVD) (2000). He extends my story beyond the 1990s, noting some recent disagreements about the expansion of CF to include CBAVD. He suggests, however, that t…
Understanding genetic disease in a socio-historical context: A Case Study of Cystic Fibrosis
In this article I present a socio-historical analysis of the definition and diagnosis of one particular genetic disease - cystic fibrosis (CF) - in an effort the better to understand its social context both before and after the advent of molecular genetics. I begin my analysis with some background on the history of CF, before moving on to consider the emergence of the notion of classic CF, the development of the sweat test, early approaches to mi…
Exploring Ambivalence about Genetic Research and its Social Context
Shifting Subject Positions: Experts and Lay People in Public Dialogue
Public dialogue about science, technology and medicine is an established part of the activities of a range of charities, private corporations, governmental departments and scientific institutions. However, the extent to which these activities challenge or bridge the lay—expert divide is questionable. Expertise is contested, by the public and the community of scholars who study and/or facilitate public engagement. In this paper, we explore the dyn…
A problem shared…? Teamwork, autonomy and error in assisted conception
Testing for Food Intolerance: New Markets in the Age of Biocapital
Women and Science: What's the Problem
In recent years the issue of gender and SET (science, engineering, and technology) careers has become prominent in policies and debates in the UK. This paper explores the ways in which equalities solutions pertaining to women and science are locked into a narrow stock of taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of the problem. Drawing on Foucauldian models of the productive nature of discourse, we examine the proliferation of reports and in…
Food allergy and food intolerance: Towards a Sociological Agenda
This article asks what sociological insights an analysis of food allergy and food intolerance might afford. We outline the parameters of debates around food allergy and food intolerance in the immunological, clinical and epidemiological literatures in order to identify analytic strands which might illuminate our sociological understanding of the supposed increase in both. Food allergy and food intolerance are contested and contingent terms and it…
Let's Get Organised: Practicing and Valuing Scientific Work inside and outside the Laboratory
Over the past thirty years there has been a significant turn towards practice and away from institutions in sociological frameworks for understanding science. This new emphasis on studying 'science in action' ( LATOUR 1987 ) and 'epistemic cultures' ( KNORR CETINA 1999 ) has not been shared by academic and policy literatures on the problem of women and science, which have focused on the marginalisation and under-representation of women in science…
Sociology (36 works) · Medicine (26 works) · Political science (26 works) · Biology (18 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Public relations (16 works) · Biomedical Ethics and Regulation (14 works) · Ethics in Clinical Research (14 works)