Following the practices of scientists in integrated ecological research: Understanding the experience of the Tomsk summer schools in the anthropology of science

Abstract

The article discusses the organisation of STS summer schools in the city of Tomsk and more specifically deals with the first one of them held in 2016. These schools are a series of unique research events which bring together social scholars (anthropologists) and natural sciences experts (biologists, pedologists, ecologists, and botanists). The schools aim to allow for in-depth research into scientific practices of fieldwork. The schools' theoretical framework is a combination of actor-network theory (ANT) and principles of contemporary anthropology applied in studying modern societies. Coupled with the ethnographic approach used by K. Knorr Cetina and her followers as well as with some of the ideas from the sociology of taste and attachment by A. Hennion, this framework leads us to consider scientific and engineering practices not only as an agonistic field for 'testing of one''s strengths' among human and non-human actors but also as the point of intersection of the phenomena of passion, attachment, and endurance. The authors suggest the experience of these schools be considered in a broader theoretical and methodological context in the development of laboratory studies over the last 40 years. Their main conclusion consists in that science in general and laboratory practice in particular of the second decade of the XXI century are not the same as they were 40 years ago when major scientific discoveries were made in the field of laboratory studies, and that means they need to be understood through new theoretical thinking and detailed ethnographic research.