Physics and Anthropology: An Anthropological Study of the High-Energy Physicist Community

Author: (American) Traverick, translated by Liu Junjun, Zhang Dachuan, et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-07-01
Features: This book is a monograph on the ethnography of a scientific community by a sociocultural anthropologist. In this normative work of ethnographic research in science and technology anthropology, the author examines the high-energy physics community from an anthropological perspective, exploring its organizational structure, the different stages of the scientific careers of its members, the shared physics theories among members, and the environments and equipment built by physicists for their work. Through a delicate description of the differences among various groups with distinct divisions of labor within the laboratory—experimental physicists and theoretical physicists, researchers and administrative staff, men and women, graduate students and mentors—their relationships, the competition and cooperation among similar laboratories, and the marriages and friendships of physicists, the author clearly reveals the social networks of the people here. The book focuses on and provides an explanation for the question: Where do the social boundaries of physicists, the physics community, and physics culture lie? According to anthropological terminology, this book describes the organizational structure, developmental cycle, cosmology, and material culture of the physics community.