T Dan-Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 48360 |
|---|---|
| NAME | T Dan-Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | T |
| FAMILY NAME | Dan-Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | DAN-COHEN T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2578-2366 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
An entire career in 10 seconds”: On protein chemistry, AI, and the threat of obsolescence
What Ever Happened to the Anthropology of Science? From the Science Wars to the Post-Truth Era
The anthropology of science emerged in the 1980s as a critique of science and technocracy, exposing the social construction of scientific facts and their role in reinforcing ideologies such as capitalism, racism, and gender inequality. This project positioned anthropologists as challengers of scientific authority, culminating in the science wars of the 1990s. By the 2000s, the political landscape shifted as climate skeptics appropriated social co…
Experimental Artefacts
Paul Rabinow (1944-2021)
The future
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Rabinow turned to the study of emergent assemblages, which are rooted in the recent past and possess an uncertain future. The turn to assemblages therefore brings a distinctive temporality into view. Attending to this temporality, this essay examines Rabinow’s interest in “the future” by proposing two observations. First, it argues that Rabinow’s handling of the future is shaped by his thorough rejection of nostalgia…
I Heart Complexity
In 2016, the United States election delivered what seemed like a rebuke of technocracy. At every turn, experts, often to no avail, denounced the logics and arguments by which politicians paired simple solutions with misguidedly simple renderings of complex problems. Complexity has thus become the object of intense rhetoric and strong affective responses. Within this polarized domain, anthropologists can be counted among the lovers of complexity. …
Tracing Complexity: The Case of Archaeology
Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames "complexity" as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge-making. Attributions of relative complexity to different …
Writing Thin
Writing Thin Talia Dan-Cohen In 2006, John Friedman published an article spurred by his own frustration with the poststructuralist takeover of development studies in anthropology. That frustration is to a large extent encapsulated by a particular admonition: "[P]ost-structuralist anthropologists of development fall short;" writes Friedman, "their studies are ethnographically thin" (2006:209). Its target aside, the admonition is, I would venture, …
Some Winks
Among many other things, Boon is a virtuoso of stylistic self-awareness. In this short piece, I highlight this theme by commenting on Boon's discussion of Geertz's writing on Evans-Pritchard
Epistemic artefacts: On the Uses of Complexity in Anthropology
Distinctions between the 'simple' and the 'complex' have enjoyed a long and varied career in anthropology. Simplicity was once part of a collective fantasy about what life was like elsewhere, tingeing studies of tribal life with human longing for simpler ways of being. With the reflexive turn and the rise of cultural critique, simplicity has been all but excommunicated in favour of widespread diagnoses of complexity. In this article, I tease out …
Ignoring Complexity: Epistemic Wagers and Knowledge Practices among Synthetic Biologists
This paper links two domains of recent interest in science and technology studies, complexity and ignorance, in the context of knowledge practices observed among synthetic biologists. Synthetic biologists are recruiting concepts and methods from computer science and electrical engineering in order to design and construct novel organisms in the lab. Their field has taken shape amidst revised assessments of life's complexity in the aftermath of the…
A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles
Small hopes: Humans and the study of insects
Tracing Complexity: The Case of Archaeology
Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames "complexity" as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge-making. Attributions of relative complexity to different …
Writing Thin
Writing Thin Talia Dan-Cohen In 2006, John Friedman published an article spurred by his own frustration with the poststructuralist takeover of development studies in anthropology. That frustration is to a large extent encapsulated by a particular admonition: "[P]ost-structuralist anthropologists of development fall short;" writes Friedman, "their studies are ethnographically thin" (2006:209). Its target aside, the admonition is, I would venture, …
Epistemic artefacts: On the Uses of Complexity in Anthropology
Distinctions between the 'simple' and the 'complex' have enjoyed a long and varied career in anthropology. Simplicity was once part of a collective fantasy about what life was like elsewhere, tingeing studies of tribal life with human longing for simpler ways of being. With the reflexive turn and the rise of cultural critique, simplicity has been all but excommunicated in favour of widespread diagnoses of complexity. In this article, I tease out …
Ignoring Complexity: Epistemic Wagers and Knowledge Practices among Synthetic Biologists
This paper links two domains of recent interest in science and technology studies, complexity and ignorance, in the context of knowledge practices observed among synthetic biologists. Synthetic biologists are recruiting concepts and methods from computer science and electrical engineering in order to design and construct novel organisms in the lab. Their field has taken shape amidst revised assessments of life's complexity in the aftermath of the…
What Ever Happened to the Anthropology of Science? From the Science Wars to the Post-Truth Era
The anthropology of science emerged in the 1980s as a critique of science and technocracy, exposing the social construction of scientific facts and their role in reinforcing ideologies such as capitalism, racism, and gender inequality. This project positioned anthropologists as challengers of scientific authority, culminating in the science wars of the 1990s. By the 2000s, the political landscape shifted as climate skeptics appropriated social co…
Experimental Artefacts
I Heart Complexity
In 2016, the United States election delivered what seemed like a rebuke of technocracy. At every turn, experts, often to no avail, denounced the logics and arguments by which politicians paired simple solutions with misguidedly simple renderings of complex problems. Complexity has thus become the object of intense rhetoric and strong affective responses. Within this polarized domain, anthropologists can be counted among the lovers of complexity. …
Small hopes: Humans and the study of insects
A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles
Ignoring Complexity: Epistemic Wagers and Knowledge Practices among Synthetic Biologists
This paper links two domains of recent interest in science and technology studies, complexity and ignorance, in the context of knowledge practices observed among synthetic biologists. Synthetic biologists are recruiting concepts and methods from computer science and electrical engineering in order to design and construct novel organisms in the lab. Their field has taken shape amidst revised assessments of life's complexity in the aftermath of the…
Some Winks
Among many other things, Boon is a virtuoso of stylistic self-awareness. In this short piece, I highlight this theme by commenting on Boon's discussion of Geertz's writing on Evans-Pritchard
Epistemic artefacts: On the Uses of Complexity in Anthropology
Distinctions between the 'simple' and the 'complex' have enjoyed a long and varied career in anthropology. Simplicity was once part of a collective fantasy about what life was like elsewhere, tingeing studies of tribal life with human longing for simpler ways of being. With the reflexive turn and the rise of cultural critique, simplicity has been all but excommunicated in favour of widespread diagnoses of complexity. In this article, I tease out …
Writing Thin
Writing Thin Talia Dan-Cohen In 2006, John Friedman published an article spurred by his own frustration with the poststructuralist takeover of development studies in anthropology. That frustration is to a large extent encapsulated by a particular admonition: "[P]ost-structuralist anthropologists of development fall short;" writes Friedman, "their studies are ethnographically thin" (2006:209). Its target aside, the admonition is, I would venture, …
I Heart Complexity
In 2016, the United States election delivered what seemed like a rebuke of technocracy. At every turn, experts, often to no avail, denounced the logics and arguments by which politicians paired simple solutions with misguidedly simple renderings of complex problems. Complexity has thus become the object of intense rhetoric and strong affective responses. Within this polarized domain, anthropologists can be counted among the lovers of complexity. …
Tracing Complexity: The Case of Archaeology
Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames "complexity" as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge-making. Attributions of relative complexity to different …
The future
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Rabinow turned to the study of emergent assemblages, which are rooted in the recent past and possess an uncertain future. The turn to assemblages therefore brings a distinctive temporality into view. Attending to this temporality, this essay examines Rabinow’s interest in “the future” by proposing two observations. First, it argues that Rabinow’s handling of the future is shaped by his thorough rejection of nostalgia…
Paul Rabinow (1944-2021)
Experimental Artefacts
An entire career in 10 seconds”: On protein chemistry, AI, and the threat of obsolescence
What Ever Happened to the Anthropology of Science? From the Science Wars to the Post-Truth Era
The anthropology of science emerged in the 1980s as a critique of science and technocracy, exposing the social construction of scientific facts and their role in reinforcing ideologies such as capitalism, racism, and gender inequality. This project positioned anthropologists as challengers of scientific authority, culminating in the science wars of the 1990s. By the 2000s, the political landscape shifted as climate skeptics appropriated social co…
Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (4 works) · History (4 works)