[Sci-tech-public] Stefan Helmreich at Harvard STS Circle (December 10) - RSVP

[Debbie Meinbresse]

>Subject: Harvard STS Circle (December 10) -

>RSVP by Friday, December 7th, please 
><mailto:sang-hyun_kim at ksg.harvard.edu>sang-hyun_kim at ksg.harvard.edu
>
>
>Harvard STS Circle: December 10 (Monday), 2007
>
>
>How the Ocean Got Its Genome:
>Bodies of Knowledge and Bodies of Water
>in Marine Microbiology
>
>
>Stefan Helmreich
>(Anthropology Program, MIT)
>
>
>12:15-2:00 PM at Room 106, Suite 100, 124 Mt. Auburn Street
>
>
>Abstract:
>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.
>
>Biography:
>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 Silicon Second Nature: 
>Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World (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 Alien Ocean: An 
>Anthropology of Marine Biology and the Limits of Life, 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.
>
>================================================
>
>For more information about the Harvard STS circle, please visit our 
>website at: 
><http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm>http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm 
>
>or e-mail to: 
><mailto:jhurlbut at fas.harvard.edu>jhurlbut at fas.harvard.edu or 
><mailto:sang-hyun_kim at ksg.harvard.edu>sang-hyun_kim at ksg.harvard.edu.


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