Des mouches et des hommes, dans un laboratoire japonais de génétique du comportement

Abstract

Anthropology of science allows to consider scientific practices as well as scientific statements from the point of view of their social and cultural context of elaboration. In this respect, the ethnographic study of a Japanese laboratory of behavioral genetics provides data on the articulation of local dimension (a laboratory, in Japan) and global dimension (the international scientific community). In this paper, the author analyses some of the processes through which researchers give birth to scientific facts. It shows finally how the Japanese laboratory constitutes a place where people own specific means of expression and action to extend outside the wall of the laboratory new cultural configurations.