Jane Maienschein's video lecture

Jane Maienschein's lecture on transplanational stem cell research and translation issues. She is such a good public speaker. Dig in!

Interactional schmoozing or contributory conversation?

I got a chance to talk to a regular member of this team, a junior faculty from EE just before today's meeting. He was the one who asked me my professional interests and career path at the last meeting. We ran into each other at the door entrance and walked together to the boardroom. Along the way, he related his entrepreneurial engagement with his own company handling technology licensing and selling biosensors. I told him stories about the collaboration between EE and Physics at SLAC, partly because the article I read is still fresh in my memory drawer and partly because I assumed it paved the road for his collaboration for this team doing Biophysics stuff. He shared his interest and vision in exploring the intersecting spaces between Biology and EE. Right now the two areas are largely taken to be far afield to have any kinship whatsoever. His company is using an analytic tool in EE called frequency domain analysis to analyze the dynamics of cells and membranes and population of cells based on high frequency impetus. His vision is that fostering a stronger bond between the two disparate disciplines would benefit both disciplines, which is exactly what M. Crow strives to achieve.

This conversation is enlightening to my study. Then I realized how little talking/sharing is allowed in the boardroom. Scientists and grad students are highly focused on presenting their work progress that seldom do they talk about stuff considered to be unrelated/peripherally related to the problems at hand. To me, I think what this guy just told me is absolutely relevant to the meeting as his entrepreneurial acumen and trans-disciplinary endeavor partly shape his presence at the meeting. Recall that I met him at the BioD entrance with backpack and everything, which suggested that he probably is not a regular dweller at BioD. I'd like to know more about how he's involved with this team, assuming that I have any luck to hunt him down in the future.

"Whatever our subjects make of us and how they make use of us is continuously negotiated with what we make of them and how we make use of them" From Sharon Traweek's essay appeared in Choreographing History, 1995.

What have my research subjects make of me so far? Let's see. I got a passing acquaintance with barely anyone in the lab except the lab director and the only woman researcher in the group at the last meeting. I learned the news during the meeting that this woman was leaving the next day to Germany for a post-doc position. I caught her after the meeting and obtained some basic information. Her hometown, her current position and where she is heading to, in less than 5 minutes– perfectly understandable, as she is leaving this place the very next morning, which leaves her a lot of packing to do. As I asked her for her contact number, she said she's mainly focusing on theoretical physics and her affiliation with this team is just peripheral. Interestingly, her engagement with the core research activity of this team is what she thought of my primary concern. She assumed that my role in this lab is tangential to my engagement with this team doing certain kinds of science that does not fit squarely with her professional profiles. Another reading is that she just wants to get ride of me as soon as possible. I wouldn't know anyway.

It seems that what the subjects make of the ethnographers are socially enacted and materially reinforced simultaneously. Socially, the dynamics of my non-participation in the boardroom and the seat I picked actively (re-) construct my role in the research process. Whether I chose to "hide in the back" (quote from the lab director) or took the exit seat near the entrance in case of exigency say something about my personality; whether I was the first one or the last one arriving at the meeting also tell something about my public persona. My sense is that many, if not all team members are constantly bewildered about my role and the proper etiquette in interacting with me. Due to the previous uneasy experience as the last one to walk into the door, I deliberately came 10 min. early, didn't quite expect I would be the first one walking into that door this time. After around 5 picoseconds, another senior researcher came in. He smiled at me and asked me politely what kind of work I did as a "political scientist". I don't think the underlying motive is so much about getting acquaintance with me than performing a social ritual. This is confirmed as he swiftly turned his attention away from me soon after a bunch of team members let themselves into the room. I can see how awkward this senior researcher felt in conversing with me as compared to fellow team members. My use of "jargons" in clarifying my research interests both confound him (such as ethnographic account, participant-observation, even anthropology) and bored him in less than 1 picosecond. He found solace as he mentioned the efficacy of the latest computer imaging technology in simulating the molecular conductance of base pairs, something both he and his partners are comfortable and knowledgeable to discuss. My point is that it is not a problem between the dichotomy of subject/object and male/female. It is a co-constructed role play of inter-subjectivity, which bracketed with Traweek's quote.

The inter-subjectivity is not only negotiated verbally, also materially. Everyone knows the sequencial procedure of getting access to the BioD-I: paper work, safety test, iris fingerprinting all boil down to a badge, with your photo ID and the name of your sponsor printed nicely on the laminated plastic case. The inscription on the badge is part of the process of constructing what we are and who we are. It does not reveal a lot of information, but enough to distinguish visitors (with a nondescript visitor badge) from non-visiotors; employees working under the same sponsor from those working for other sponsors. My presence slightly broke the norm as I am not employed by the BioD-I. I am just an ordinary ASU citizen claiming regular access to this gargantuan building. I don't quite have a "sponsor" inside this PanOpticon. A core informant, yes; maybe future collaborator; but definitely not a sponsor. I don't think I am the first one who violated this inscription of "sponsorship", yet the material inscription of "sponsorship" forms an important part of the negotiation process of inter-subjectivity with the research subjects. For now the badge publicly announced my research affinity and sponsorship in the BioD-I, unless I hide the badge intentionally (everyone wears the badge in front of the chest with a prideful look)

I wonder how long the bewilderment and negotiation process will last. Do not take my point otherwise: I do not want it to end. I hope that same researcher will be puzzled by some other features of me in a different way the next time he talks to me; I hope the lab director will interpret my engagement in his lab from sources other than my choice of seat; and I hope the Korean woman researcher will characterize our relationship from more diverse grounds if she ever comes back to ASU.

Yaron Ezrahi

"Any stabilities are temporary and local. It is in these highly situated encounters that we all are producing knowledges, we are both subjects and objects to each other, neither subjective nor objective. " Excerpts from Traweek's essay in Choreographing History, a book nobody is going to read except you are a fan of one of the contributors.

Same with Yaron Ezrahi and Sheila Jasanoff. They are good writers and prominent scholars, but who is going to read their 400-page rambling on the instrumental functions of science in justifying political purposes in liberal-democratic states? Let alone the differences between the history of republicanism and the history of instrumentalism in Machiavelli's writings. I understand the differences between 1) spontaneous equilibrium, 2) educating free educated citizen in decentralized democratic state, and 3) generating science knowledge hat constrains and defends public action in centralized democratic state. But what is the point? I mean, who cares? When Cyndy asked Clark whom is/are Ezrahi writing for, Clark's first question is "his tenure committee". Then he noticed the negativity he just projected so he qualified the answer a bit. But the immediate answer is usually the most candid, revealing one. Yes, nobody cares about these stuff ok? Ezrahi and Jasanoff have years of experience and firm academic positions to afford writing in highly theoretical, esoteric terms, but it's not going to work for us, the young grad students who are building up the careers.

So gimme a break from deep-level theorizing, gimme a break from Knorr-Cetina's style of writing. Jasanoff's style is more of a middle ground. You can skip the body part and always manage to get by. This is a lesson for me. Read a book a day. Skim as fast as you can, and if you cannot get the points, don't worry. It's not your fault. Because noone else is gonna spend more time than I do on these lit. either (other than fellow grad students). It might reflect the shallowness of the material culture, it is true nonetheless.

Pipi my idol

Love Pipi Longstocking. She is my heroine and quite a feminist role model. She lives alone, with 2 animals. She is bizarrely strong, resilient, creative and lively. In one episode, she was watering the plant while raining. Her friend Anna asked her why she watered in a rainy day. She said "when I make up my mind to rain, I do it, and it can rain as much as it wants." What a line! She inspires me, despite the ostensible surrealism (such as raising a quadroped with her bare arms, and jumping off the cliff without injuries). When I make up my mind to run a project, I do it, and people can be as much indifferent or critical as they want. I don't care. Pipi always believes in herself. She is righteous and she outperformed men in many areas. She is unbelievably strong enough to protect herself and others. She is unusally rich enough to live on her own and buy confectionery and toys for other kids.

Defiant of authority, overflow of confidence, independence, bravity.....she is exactly what every girl needs to aspire to. I know I would be much better off if I can keep her in my heart forever.