Impure Cultures

by Kleinman, Daniel Lee

• ISBN13: 9780299192341
• ISBN10: 0299192342
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-17
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

How are the worlds of university biology and commerce blurring? Many university leaders see the amalgamation of academic and commercial cultures as crucial to the future vitality of higher education in the United States. In Impure Cultures, Daniel Lee Kleinman questions the effect of this blending on the character of academic science. Using data he gathered as an ethnographic observer in a plant pathology lab at the University of Wisconsin ;Madison, Kleinman examines the infinite and inescapable influence of the commercial world on biology in academia today. Contrary to much of the existing literature and common policy practices, he argues that the direct and explicit relations between university scientists and industrial concerns are not the gravest threat to academic research. Rather, Kleinman points to the less direct, but more deeply-rooted effects of commercial factors on the practice of university biology. He shows that to truly understand research done at universities today, it is first necessary to explore the systematic, pervasive, and indirect effects of the commercial world on contemporary academic practice.

Author Biography

Daniel Lee Kleinman is associate professor in the department of rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Politics on the Endless Frontier and editor of Science, Technology, and Democracy.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Impure Cultures	p. 3
Traversing the Conceptual Terrain	p. 33
Braided Paths: The Intertwined Development of Biocontrol Research and Agro-Industry	p. 65
(Un)Intended Consequences: Commercially Produced Research Materials and the Transformation of University Biology	p. 90
Owning Science: Intellectual Property and Laboratory Life	p. 114
It Takes More than a Laboratory to Raise the World	p. 138
Afterword	p. 160
Notes	p. 163
Bibliography	p. 180
Index	p. 203
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.