Lynch1988b
| Lynch1988b | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Lynch1988b |
| Author(s) | Michael Lynch |
| Title | Sacrifice and the transformation of the animal body into a scientific object: laboratory culture and ritual practice in the neurosciences |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Sacrifice, Objects, Neuroscience |
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| Year | 1988 |
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| Journal | Social Studies of Science |
| Volume | 18 |
| Number | 2 |
| Pages | 265–289 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1177/030631288018002004 |
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Abstract
The term 'sacrifice' is used by experimental biologists to describe methods for killing laboratory specimens. In Western societies, 'sacrifice' usually connotes a process of `making sacred', a process Durkheim and his followers interpreted as a ritual transformation between `profane' and `sacred' realms. This paper examines whether 'sacrifice' in the experimental context bears any relation to such traditional usage, or whether, as animal rights advocates argue, the term is no more than a euphemism for brutal and unnecessary slaughter. Drawing on ethnographic observations of laboratory practice, the paper argues that 'sacrifice' means much more than simply killing a specimen, and that the violence done to the animal victim is part of a systematic 'consecration' of its body to transform it into a bearer of transcendental significances. While scientists do not treat their practices as ceremonial rituals endowed with religious meaning, laboratory 'sacrifice' is a part of a sequence of procedures through which the naturalistic animal body is transformed into an abstracted analytic object with generalized significance for members of the research community.
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