gene

__Fortun__

//Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.// ~ W. Somerset Maugham

"Even when genomics and genomicists are reductionist, positivist, technocratic, biologically determinist, or ideologically driven, they also exceed these categories. These excesses can help shake up social scientists' 'habits of thinking..." (28). Scientists exceed the category of "scientist" because they are also ethicists, in addition to many other possible labels. Ethics are often seen as "outside" the scientist's enterprise and is relegated to a distinct bioethics industry. But, as always, there's folding of the so-called "outside" with the "inside" (double invagination?).

Reading scientists statements "ethnographically" means paying attention to the context ("genome-space") and "genomicists can provide detailed readings of the 'networks of networks' in which they work - and which they are experts in soliciting" (28). A "feeling for the context" is key to weaving together arguments that are //effective// in particular material-semiotic spaces (cultures).

Ethnographers, like geneticists, are faced with a deluge of data. They have 'always already' had to deal with an excess of data, but the contemporary historical moment would seem to be characterized by an unprecedented number of social worlds/actors/technologies/connections/relationships that need to be dealt with and for which new ethnographic methods and tools need to be developed. I would point to A. Clarke's "theory/methods package" that she calls "situational analysis" and is colored as "grounded theory after the postmodern turn." If anyone wants this paper, I can send it over.