Science Interrupted: Rethinking Research Practice with Bureaucracy, Agroforestry, and Ethnography

by Timothy G. McLellan

Overview

Science Interrupted examines how scientists in China pursue environmental sustainability within the constraints of domestic and international bureaucracies. Timothy G. McLellan offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the formal procedural work of Chinese bureaucracy—work that is overlooked when China scholars restrict their gaze to the informal and interpersonal channels through which bureaucracy is often navigated.

Homing in on an agroforestry research organization in southwest China, the author takes the experiences of the organization's staff in navigating diverse international funding regimes and authoritarian state institutions as entry points for understanding the pervasiveness of bureaucracy in contemporary science. He asks: What if we take the tools, sensibilities, and practices of bureaucracies seriously not only as objects of critique but as resources for re-thinking scientific practice?

Extending a mode of anthropological research in which ethnography serves as source of theory as well as source of data, Science Interrupted thinks with, and not only against, bureaucracy. McLellan shows that ethnographic engagement with bureaucracy enables us to imagine more democratic and more collaborative modes of scientific practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501773327
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2024
Series:	Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge
Pages:	174
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Timothy G. McLellan is a Lecturer in Anthropology at The Australian National University. He has published articles in Social Studies of Science, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, and The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

What People are Saying About This

Katherine Mason

Science Interrupted breaks new ground in illuminating the myriad ways bureaucracies are involved in the creation of new science. A fascinating read.

Sarah E. Vaughn

Timothy G. McLellan seamlessly bridges ethnographic insights about audit cultures with the perils and hopes of contemporary agroforestry in China. Each chapter is packed with vivid theoretical analysis and well-narrated accounts of science, politics, and bureaucracies in action.