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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><b>Subject:</b> Harvard STS
Circle (December 10) - </blockquote><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><b>RSVP by Friday, December 7th,
please</b>
<a href="mailto:sang-hyun_kim@ksg.harvard.edu"><font size=2>
sang-hyun_kim@ksg.harvard.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><b>Harvard STS Circle: December 10 (Monday),
2007<br>
</b><font size=2> <br>
<br>
</font><font size=5><b>How the Ocean Got Its Genome: <br>
Bodies of Knowledge and Bodies of Water <br>
in Marine Microbiology<br>
</b></font><font size=2> <br>
<br>
</font><font size=4><b>Stefan Helmreich<br>
</b></font>(Anthropology Program, MIT)<br>
<font size=2> <br><br>
</font><b>12:15-2:00 PM at Room 106, Suite 100, 124 Mt. Auburn
Street</b><font size=2><br>
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<br>
<br>
<b>Abstract:<br>
</b>This paper examines how a new generation of marine biologists is
coming to see the sea as animated and maintained by its smallest
inhabitants: marine microbes. Many such microbes thrive in the extreme
environments of deep-sea volcanoes, methane-rich coastal areas, and the
open ocean. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among marine biologists at
sea and in laboratories in the United States, I offer an anthropological
account of how scientists render extremophilic organisms meaningful -- as
vestiges of early earthly life, barometers of climate change, and
potentially profitable raw materials for biotechnology. The task
scientists set for themselves, I argue, is one of making biological life
forms significant for our social, cultural and ethical forms of life.
Marine microbiologists -- ecologically minded and primarily secularist --
engage their research in debates about evolution versus intelligent
design, ecological stewardship, and the politics of turning the ocean
commons into a site for capital expansion. Some participants in this new
research -- including Craig Venter, who has modeled his "Ocean
Microbial Genome Survey" on the voyage of the Beagle -- are
beginning to speak of Earth's "ocean genome," a phrasing that
defines life as a property that scales from gene to globe. In the making
are new relations between bodies of knowledge and bodies of water.<br>
<br>
<b>Biography:</b> <br>
Stefan Helmreich received his B.A. from University of California, Los
Angeles (Anthropology, 1989) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford
University (Anthropology, 1995). He has worked as a Postdoctoral
Associate in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, an
External Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of
Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University, and as Assistant Professor of
Science and Society at New York University. Helmreich's anthropological
research centers on contemporary biologists puzzling through the
conceptual and technical boundaries of the category of life itself. He
has written extensively on Artificial Life, a field dedicated to the
computer simulation of living systems, notably in <i>Silicon Second
Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World</i> (University of
California Press, 1998), which in 2001 won the Diana Forsythe Book Prize
from the American Anthropological Association. He is at work on a book
about how scientific portraits of the oceans are transforming as marine
biologists reimagine the sea through the language and techniques of
genomics, bioinformatics, biotechnology, biodiversity mapping, and
systems modeling. Entitled <i>Alien Ocean: An Anthropology of Marine
Biology and the Limits of Life</i>, the monograph zeroes in on recent
work in marine microbiology, reporting on fieldwork undertaken with
scientists at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and in areas of the open ocean
outside national sovereignty.<br>
<br>
================================================<br><br>
For more information about the Harvard STS circle, please visit our
website at:
<a href="http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm">
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm</a> <br>
or e-mail to:
<a href="mailto:jhurlbut@fas.harvard.edu">jhurlbut@fas.harvard.edu</a> or
<a href="mailto:sang-hyun_kim@ksg.harvard.edu">
sang-hyun_kim@ksg.harvard.edu</a>.</blockquote>
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