In 2006 anthropologists Paul Rabinow and Gaymon Bennett set out to
rethink the role that human sciences play in biological research,
creating the Human Practices division of the Synthetic Biology
Engineering Research Center--a facility established to create design
standards for the engineering of new enzymes, genetic circuits, cells,
and other biological entities--to formulate a new approach to the
ethical, security, and philosophical considerations of controversial
biological work. They sought not simply to act as watchdogs but to
integrate the biosciences with their own discipline in a more
fundamentally interdependent way, inventing a new, dynamic, and
experimental anthropology that they could bring to bear on the center's
biological research.
Designing Human Practices is a detailed account of this
anthropological experiment and, ultimately, its rejection. It provides
new insights into the possibilities and limitations of collaboration,
and diagnoses the micro-politics which effectively constrained the
potential for mutual scientific flourishing. Synthesizing multiple
disciplines, including biology, genetics, anthropology, and philosophy,
alongside a thorough examination of funding entities such as the
National Science Foundation, Designing Human Practices pushes the
social study of science into new and provocative territory, utilizing a
real-world experience as a springboard for timely reflections on how the
human and life sciences can and should transform each other.
