Abstract
This chapter argues that gender both as embodied performance and as a subject matter participates in (dis)enabling much needed contact zones between the physical sciences, science studies and gender studies, albeit in ways that often go unnoticed. Here I take scientists’ propensity to object to, or cast as irrelevant, particular gender performances as a resource to rethink how we might present asymmetrical gender relations in science in ways that incite concern and responsibility. Taking the example of a research presentation, I re-examine how my embodied collaboration with graphs, voices and theory geared to render gender a tangible matter of fact was in part achieved by bracketing the practices and technologies of particular research strategies, casting gender as a social construct rather than a socio-natural hybrid and enacting a mode of critique rather than foregrounding multiple ontologies. I argue that a lack of concern and responsibility is better engaged by making the entanglements, practicalities and tensions of gender and accountability explicit.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Teaching encounters at departments of physics included the course Physics and Gender (http://www.fysik.su.se/~sararyd/fog/Kursinformation-Fysik-och-genus.pdf) and the International Summer School: Diversity in the Cultures of Physics (http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/einrichtungen/ag/ag-scheich/projekte/archiv_summer_school/index.html). Research encounters included the two international symposia: Interferometric Investigations of Physical Knowledges and Gender in the Making (2011) and Materialities and (Dis)embodiments of Naturecultures (2012) that we co-organised at the Centre for Gender Research as well as individual research projects by the group members. On this basis an interdisciplinary reader develops the notion of interference to bring into conversation heretofore dispersed texts that explore the situated interactions of gender and physics in the making. Here the physical phenomena of propagation, diffraction, resonance and refraction are used to conceptualise the histories, epistemologies, cultures and knowledge transfers of physics and gender.
- 2.
The research that we reported on had been conducted as part of the project ‘Knowledge, Institutions and Gender: An East-West Comparative Study’ (KNOWING) that explored epistemic contexts and cultures in the natural and social sciences in five European countries. For more information, see www.knowing.soc.cas.cz.
- 3.
As Law has argued referring to Haraway’s notion of interference, ‘some things are endlessly produced and are very real. Others are not. Interference takes the form of enacting realities, tropes in speech and action, that will make a difference in the configurations of the real’ (Law 2004a: 4).
- 4.
A disaggregation of Eurostat data by countries shows that the percentage of women in grade A positions continues to be highest in countries and sectors where wages, resources and prestige are lowest. In 2010 these were the higher education sectors in Romania, Latvia and Croatia.
References
Ahmed, S. (2002). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. London/New York: Routledge.
Despret, V. (2004). The body we care for: Figures of anthropo-zoo-genesis. Body & Society, 10, 111–134.
European Commission. (2009). She figures 2009: Statistics and indicators on gender equality in science. Brussels: Directorate General for Research.
European Commission. (2012). She figures 2012: Gender in research and innovation. Statistics and indicators. Brussels: Directorate General for Research.
Gunaratnam, Y. (2007). Where is the love? Art, aesthetics and research. Journal of Social Work Practice, 21, 271–287.
Haraway, D. (1997). Modest_Witness @Second_Millenium. New York/London: Routledge.
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Hird, M. (2009). The origins of sociable life: Evolution after science studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Hirschauer, S., & Mol, A. (1995). Shifting sexes, moving stories: Feminist/constructivist dialogues. Science, Technology and Human Values, 20, 368–385.
Keller, E. F. (1987). On the need to count past two in our thinking about gender and science. New Ideas of Psychology, 3, 275–287.
Latour, B. (2000). When things strike back: A possible contribution of “science studies” to the social sciences. The British Journal of Sociology, 51, 107–123.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matter of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30, 225–248.
Law, J. (2004a). Enacting naturecultures: A note from STS. Published by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sociology/research/publications/papers/law-enacting-naturecultures.pdf. Last accessed 4 Mar 2014.
Law, J. (2004b). Matter-ing: Or how might STS contribute. Published by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sociology/research/publications/papers/law-matter-ing.pdf. Last accessed 4 Mar 2014.
Lawson, V. (1995). The politics of difference: Examining the quantitative/qualitative dualism in post-structuralist feminist research. Professional Geographer, 47, 449–457.
Linková, M., & Stöckelová, T. (2012). Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment. Science and Public Policy, 39, 618–629.
Lorenz-Meyer, D. (2014). Reassembling gender: On the immanent politics of gendering apparatuses of bodily production in science. Women: A Cultural Review, 25, 78–98.
Manning, E. (2011). Fiery, luminous, scary. SubStance, 40, 41–48.
Moore, H. (2004). Global anxieties: Concept-metaphors and pre-theoretical commitments in anthropology. Anthropological Theory, 4, 71–88.
Pratt, M.-L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 186, 33–40.
Pratt, M.-L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. London: Routledge.
Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science, 41, 85–106.
Scully, M. A. (2002). Confronting errors in the meritocracy. Organization, 9, 396–401.
Star, S. L. (1991). Power, technology and the phenomenology of conventions: On being allergic to onions. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters (pp. 26–56). London: Routledge.
Wareing, S., & Sabri, D. (2013). ‘Institutional research: Symbiosis or oxymoron?’. Paper given at the conference Ethnographies of higher education: Researching and reflecting “at home”, Prague 22–24 May 2013.
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1, 125–151.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of the GenPhys group for their interest and encouragement to revisit this material and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Part of the empirical material has been previously discussed in a Czech publication on boundary contestations in Socialní studia (2012/2013).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lorenz-Meyer, D. (2016). Failed Encounters or the Challenges of Rendering Gender a Matter of Concern. In: Bull, J., Fahlgren, M. (eds) Illdisciplined Gender. Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15272-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15272-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15271-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15272-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)