Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:31:40.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Models of Cloning, Models for the Zoo: Rethinking the Sociological Significance of Cloned Animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2009

Carrie Friese
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Cloned animals are often understood as ‘models’ whose embodiments demonstrate the viability of somatic cell nuclear transfer and its applicability to a species body. In conceptualizing models through the trope of technoscience, Evelyn Fox Keller has argued that scientific models are not simply cognitive representations of something else, but are also embodiments of action and practice that constitute the kinds of scientific questions that can be asked and how those questions can be answered. Drawing on Keller’s language, I would say that, while we understand cloned animals as ‘models of’ somatic cell nuclear transfer, little empirical scholarship has explored what these animals are ‘models for’. This article asks what practices cloned animals embody, focusing on endeavours to clone endangered wildlife in the United States. Based on a multi-sited, ethnographic study, I show that these animals are models for conducting science in zoological parks, which entails questions regarding the kinds of knowledge practices that should be used to reproduce zoos and, in turn, meaningfully reconstitute wildlife. Based on this analysis, I contend that cloned animals not only model technique and scientific practices, but also new assemblages in the reproduction of zoos and, in turn, nature.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, K. (1998). Animals, science, and spectacle in the city. In Wolch, J., & Emel, J. (Eds), Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, an Identity in the Nature–Culture Borderlands (pp. 27–50). London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Baratay, E., & Hardouin-Fugier, E. (2002). Zoo: A history of zoological gardens in the West, trans. Welsh, O.London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Benirschke, K. (Ed.) (1986). Primates: The road to self-sustaining populations. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, N., Rappert, B., & Webster, A. (Eds) (2000). Contested futures: A sociology of prospective techno-science. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1999 [1986]). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. In Biaglio, M. (Ed.), The science studies reader, 67–83. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (1987). Research materials and reproductive science in the United States, 1910–1940. In Geison, G.L. (Ed.), Physiology in the American context, 1850–1940, 323–350. Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (1991). Social worlds/arenas theory as organizational theory. In Maines, D. (Ed.), Social organization and social process: Essays in honor of Anselm Strauss, 119–158. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (1995). Modernity, postmodernity, and reproductive processes, ca. 1890–1990, or ‘Mommy, where do cyborgs come from anyway?’. In Gray, C.H. (Ed.), The cyborg handbook. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (1998). Disciplining reproduction: Modernity, American life sciences, and the problems of sex. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (2003). Situational analyses: Grounded theory mapping after the postmodern turn. Symbolic Interaction, 26, 553576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E. (2007). Reflections on the reproductive sciences in agriculture in the UK and US, c. 1900–2000+. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 38, 316339.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E., & Friese, C. (2007). Grounded theorizing using situational analysis. In Bryant, A., & Charmaz, K. (Eds), Handbook of grounded theory. London and Thousand Oaks: SAGE.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E., & Fujimura, J.H. (1992). The right tools for the job: At work in twentieth-century life sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, A.E., & Montini, T. (1993). The many faces of RU486: Tales of situated knowledges and technological contestations. Science, Technology and Human Values, 18, 4278.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E., Shim, J.K., Mamo, L., Fosket, J.R., & Fishman, J.R. (2003). Biomedicalization: Technoscientific transformations of health, illness, and U.S. biomedicine. American Sociological Review, 68, 161194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, A.E., & Star, S.L. (2003). Symbolic interactionist science, technology, information and biomedicine studies. In Herman, N. & Reynolds, L. (Eds.), Handbook of symbolic interaction. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, A.E., & Star, S.L. (2007). The social worlds framework: A theory/methods package. In Hackett, E.J., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M., & Wajcman, J. (Eds), Handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd edn, 113–138. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
de Chadarevian, S., & Hopwood, N. (Eds) (2004). Models: The third dimension of science. Stanford: Stanford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Emel, J., & Wolch, J. (1998). Witnessing the animal moment. In Wolch, J., & Emel, J. (Eds), Animal geographies: Place, politics, and identity in the nature–culture borderlands, 1–24. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction, trans. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc.Google Scholar
Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll (2002). Do you think it is acceptable to use cloning? URL (accessed June 2007): http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htmGoogle Scholar
Franklin, S. (1997). Dolly: A new form of transgenic breedwealth. Environmental Values, 6, 427437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, S. (1999). Review essay: What we know and what we don’t about cloning and society. New Genetics and Society, 18, 111120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, S. (2003). Ethical biocapital: New strategies of cell culture. In Franklin, S., & Lock, M. (Eds), Remaking life and death: Toward an anthropology of the biosciences. Santa Fe and Oxford: School of American Research Press and James Currey.Google Scholar
Franklin, S. (2006). The cyborg embryo: Our path to transbiology. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(7–8), 167187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, S. (2007). Dolly mixtures: The remaking of genealogy. Durham, NC and London: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Franklin, S., & Roberts, C. (2006). Born and made: An ethnography of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Friese, C. (2007). Enacting conservation and biomedicine: Cloning animals of endangered species in the borderlands of the United States. PhD thesis, University of California, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Friese, C. (forthcoming). Classification conundrums: Classifying chimeras and enacting species preservation. Theory and Society.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, E. (2002). Animal attractions: Nature on display in American zoos. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (1989). Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (2003). Cloning mutts, saving tigers: Ethical emergents in technocultural dog worlds. In Franklin, S., & Lock, M. (Eds), Remaking life and death: Toward an anthropology of the biosciences, 293–327). Santa Fe and Oxford: School of American Research Press and James Currey.Google Scholar
Haraway, D.J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, J., Becker, G., & Nachtigall, R. (2008). Non-reproductive technologies: Re-mediating kin structure with donor gametes. Science, Technology & Human Values, 33, 393420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, C. (2003). When nature goes public: The making and unmaking of bioprospecting in Mexico. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Hedgecoe, A., & Martin, P. (2003). The drugs don’t work: Expectations and the shaping of pharmacogenomics. Social Studies of Science, 33, 327364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoage, R.J., Roskell, A., & Mansour, J. (1996). Menageries and zoos to 1900. In Hoage, R.J. & Deiss, W.A. (Eds), New worlds, new animals: From menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century, 8–16. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopwood, N. (1999). ‘Giving body’ to embryos: Modelling, mechanism, and the microtome in late nineteenth-century anatomy. Isis, 90, 462496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jasanoff, S. (2004). The idiom of co-production. In Jasanoff, S. (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order, 1–21. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Keller, E.F. (2000). Models of and models for: Theory and practice in contemporary biology. Philosophy of Science, 67(Supplement), S72S86.Google Scholar
Kohler, R.E. (1994). Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life. Chicago: U Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Landecker, H. (2007). Culturing life: How cells became technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1988). The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986 [1979]). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Lowy, I. (1992). From guinea pigs to man: The development of Haffkine’s anticholera vaccine. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science, 47, 270309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowy, I., & Gaudilliere, J.P. (1998). Disciplining cancer: Mice and the practice of genetic purity. In Lowy, I., & Gaudilliere, J.P. (Eds), The invisible industrialist: Manufacturers and the production of scientific knowledge, 209–249. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Maienschein, J. (2001). On cloning: Advocating history of biology in the public interest. Journal of the History of Biology, 34, 423432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maienschein, J. (2002). What’s in a name? Embryos, clones, and stem cells. American Journal of Bioethics, 2, 1219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maienschein, J. (2003). Whose view of life? Embryos, cloning, and stem cells. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitman, G. (1999). Reel nature: America’s romance with wildlife on film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham, NC and London: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Myers, N. (2008). Molecular embodiments and the body-work of modeling in protein crystallography. Social Studies of Science, 38, 163199.Google Scholar
Orland, B. (2003). Turbo-cows: Producing a competitive animal in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Schrepfer, S.R., & Scranton, P. (Eds), Industrializing organisms: Introducing evolutionary history. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pickering, A. (1992). From science as knowledge to science as practice. In Pickering, A. (Ed.), Science as practice and culture. Chicago and London: U Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rabinow, P. (1999). French DNA: Trouble in purgatory. Chicago and London: U Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reardon, J. (2005). Race to the finish: Identity and governance in an age of genomics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Ritvo, H. (1987). The animal estate: The English and other creatures in the Victorian age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Ritvo, H. (1995). Possessing Mother Nature: Genetic capital in eighteenth-century Britain. In Brewer, J., & Staves, S. (Eds), Early modern conceptions of property 413–426. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ritvo, H. (1996). The order of nature: Constructing the collections of Victorian zoos. In Hoage, R.J., & Deiss, W.A. (Eds), New worlds, new animals: From menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century, 43–50. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP.Google Scholar
Rothfels, N. (2002). Savages and beasts: The birth of the modern zoo. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP.Google Scholar
Ryder, O.A. (2002). Cloning advances and challenges for conservation. Trends in Biotechnology, 20(6), 231232.Google Scholar
Ryder, O.A., & Benirschke, K. (1997). The potential use of ‘cloning’ in the conservation effort. Zoo Biology, 16, 295300.Google Scholar
Shostak, S. (2007). Translating at work: Genetically modified mouse models and molecularization in the environmental health sciences. Science, Technology and Human Values, 32, 315338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Star, S.L. (1991). Power, technologies and the phenomenology of contentions: On being allergic to onions. In Law, J. (Ed.), A sociology of monsters? Essays on power, technology and domination, 26–56. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Star, S.L., & Griesemer, J.R. (1999 [1989]). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’, and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. In Biagioli, M. (Ed.), The science studies reader, 505–524. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1992). After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Strauss, A. (1988). The articulation of project work: An organizational process. Sociological Quarterly, 29, 163178.Google Scholar
Sunder Rajan, K. (2006). Biocapital: The constitution of postgenomic life. Durham, NC and London: Duke.Google Scholar
Takacs, D. (1996). The idea of biodiversity: Philosophies of paradise. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP.Google Scholar
Thomas, K. (1983). Man and the natural world: Changing attitudes in England, 1500–1800. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Thompson, C. (2002). When elephants stand for competing philosophies of nature: Amboseli National Park, Kenya. In Law, J., & Mol, A. (Eds), Complexities: Social studies of knowledge practices, 166–189. Durham, NC: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Thompson, C.C. (1999). Confessions of a bioterrorist: Subject position and reproductive technologies. In Kaplan, A.E., & Squier, S. (Eds), Playing Dolly: Technocultural formations, fantasies, and fictions of assisted reproduction, 189–219. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers UP.Google Scholar
Timmermans, S. (2000). Technology and medical practice. In Bird, C., Conrad, P., & Fremont, A.M. (Eds), Handbook of medical sociology, 309–321. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Timmermans, S., & Berg, M. (2003). The practice of medical technology. Sociology of Health & Illness, 25, 97114.Google Scholar
van Lente, H. (1993). Promising technology: The dynamics of expectations in technological developments. Enschede: University of Twente.Google Scholar
Veltre, T. (1996). Menageries, metaphors, and meanings. In Hoage, R.J., & Deiss, W.A. (Eds), New worlds, new animals: From menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century, 19–29. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP.Google Scholar
Waldby, C., & Mitchell, R. (2006). Tissue economies: Blood, organs, and cell lines in late capitalism. Durham, NC and London: Duke.Google Scholar
Western, D., Strum, S., & Wright, R.M. (1994). Natural connections: Perspectives in community-based conservation. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Wildt, D.E. (2004). Making wildlife research more meaningful by prioritizing science, linking disciplines, and building capacity. In Gordon, M.S., & Bartol, S.M. (Eds), Experimental approaches to conservation biology, 282–297. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wyatt, S. (2008). Technological determinism is dead: Long live technological determinism. In Hackett, E.J., Amerdamska, O., Lynch, M., & Wajcman, J. (Eds), The handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, S.S. (1959). Mechanisms involved in contraception. Science, 30, 12601264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuckerman, S.S. (1978). From apes to warlords. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar