Introduction

Abstract

Over the past couple of decades, scholars have shown that scientific practice and knowledge can be meaningfully analyzed as products of collaboration between marital partners. Generally, the preoccupation has been to compensate for female collaborators’ undervalued contributions to joint scientific work, for which the men typically received fuller professional recognition. The present volume revisits the question of how personal relationships and scientific practice intersected, but beyond the constraints of heterosexual marriage and with particular attention to the influence of cultural factors. Building upon recent trends in gender and science scholarship, the volume’s authors deeply analyze the dynamics of partnerships in relation to scientific work, focusing on how the partners’ social and political agendas, work-life (im-)balances, and public-relations strategies produced distinct forms of collaboration. In so doing, the authors expose collaborative processes as dynamic, malleable constructs as opposed to variations upon a monolithic theme across history. By analyzing particular collaborations – and their politics – in context, the authors avoid judging collaborative successes and failures against anachronistic measures. Indeed, our volume’s emphasis is in explaining how such measures came to be.