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dc.contributor.authorLeonelli, S
dc.date.accessioned2017-02-24T09:49:25Z
dc.date.issued2019-07-01
dc.description.abstractIt is widely recognised that social scaffolding is crucial to the entrenchment of new technologies and related standards and practices in scientific research, as well as to its manifestations and results. At the same time, there is little understanding of the circumstances under which, and the reasons why, some forms of sociality are effective in promoting particular types of scientific work. This chapter explores these questions by focusing on two forms of social scaffolding involved in the development of practices of data dissemination through digital means – and particularly infrastructures such as online databases – within the contemporary life sciences: (1) ontology consortia, which have recently emerged as de facto regulatory bodies for data curation in the US and Europe, and (2) steering committees for model organism communities, which play significant roles in the governance of biological research in the UK. I discuss the successful transformation of these initially ad hoc groups into scientific institutions with political and epistemic visibility and power. Drawing on political theory, I then argue that viewing these organisations as social movements is a fruitful strategy to understand their development from informal gatherings into well-recognised regulatory bodies, and how this process of institutionalisation builds on highly entrenched forms of group socialisation. This in turn facilitates an analysis of the interrelation between institutional and infrastructural scaffolding involved in the evolution of scientific knowledge-making activities.en_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipThis research was funded by the European Research Council grant award 335925.en_GB
dc.identifier.citationIn: Beyond the Meme: Articulating Dynamic Structures in Cultural Evolution, edited by Alan C. Love and William Wimsatten_GB
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/26055
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherUniversity of Minnesota Pressen_GB
dc.relation.urlhttps://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/beyond-the-meme
dc.subjectSocial scaffoldsen_GB
dc.subjectsocial organisation of scienceen_GB
dc.subjectdata curationen_GB
dc.subjectdata infrastructuresen_GB
dc.subjectresearch practiceen_GB
dc.subjectbiological dataen_GB
dc.subjectontology consortiaen_GB
dc.subjectsteering committeesen_GB
dc.subjectsocial movementsen_GB
dc.titleScientific Agency and Social Scaffolding in Contemporary Data-Intensive Biologyen_GB
dc.typeBook chapteren_GB
dc.contributor.editorLove, Aen_GB
dc.contributor.editorWimsatt, Wen_GB
dc.identifier.isbn978-1-5179-0689-4
dc.relation.isPartOfBeyond the Meme: Articulating Dynamic Structures in Cultural Evolutionen_GB
dc.descriptionThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from University of Minnesota Press via the link in this record
rioxxterms.versionAM
refterms.dateFCD2017-02-24T09:49:25Z
refterms.versionFCDAM
refterms.dateFOA2019-08-08T13:37:49Z


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