Crosscurrents: Social Movements and the Anthropology of Science and Technology

DAVID J. HESS

Citation:

2007 "Crosscurrents: Social Movements and the Anthropology of Science and Technology." American Anthropologist109(3): 463-472.

ABSTRACT Along with growth and acceptance of the anthropology of science and technology has come a narrowing of focus both topically and methodologically. An alternative topic of inquiry (social movements) and an alternative method (a limited return to nomothetic inquiry) offer potential for research that is relevant to both social change actors and social scientists such as sociologists and political scientists. A comparative analysis of existing anthropological research on science, technology, and social movements provides the basis for limited generalizations regarding the types and circumstances of charged cultural repertoires that both social movements and elites invoke. [Keywords: social movements, science, technology, cultural repertoires, theory]

SINCE THE LATE 1980s, the anthropology of science
and technology has developed from a small group of
researchers who faced difficulties of recognition to a subdiscipline with representation and acceptance in major departments. However, along with growth and acceptance has
come a narrowing of focus. To some degree the field has undergone disciplinarization around cultural analyses of the
changes in nature–culture relations associated with emergent biosciences and biotechnologies. In this article, I explore an alternative approach to science and technology
that emphasizes the potential of social and cultural anthropology to contribute to interdisciplinary conversations in
the social sciences as well as to broader political conversations regarding enhanced democratic participation in the
choice of future research agendas and technologies.

BACKGROUND

In the late 1980s, the anthropology of science was defined
largely against the backdrop of laboratory studies, which
used ethnographic methods but were theoretically oriented
to the sociology of scientific knowledge and the philosophy of science (e.g., Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour and Woolgar
1986; cf. Hess 2001). An exception was Sharon Traweek’s
early work (1988), which focused largely on the laboratory but was conceptually oriented to anthropology. Anthropologists soon began pushing ethnography out of the
laboratory to study a range of broader issues (e.g., Downey
and Dumit 1997; Hess and Layne 1992), and as the number of anthropologists reached a critical mass, the ethnography of science and technology became more historical and cultural. A large proportion of the subsequent studies examined the changes in fundamental cultural categories that have occurred as nature has become increasingly manufactured, commodified, digitized, and, in general, socially shaped by new research fields and associated technologies. Ethnographic studies explored that historical and cultural proposition regarding modernity and science for a wide variety of biocultural categories, such as death (Lock 2002), life (Franklin and Lock 2003; Franklin et al. 2000; Haraway 1997; Helmreich 2000), blood (Rabinow 1999),
kinship (Franklin and Ragon´e 1998; Strathern 1992), pregnancy (Layne 2003), the body (Martin 1994), body parts
(Hogle 1999), the self (Dumit 2004), microbes (Helmreich
in press), and plants (Hayden 2003).

The focus on new definitions of nature and culture
was able to bring the anthropology of science and technology into conversation with issues that have been important historically in the four-field approach of U.S. anthropology. The network of research and researchers drew on
and critiqued theories of nature, culture, and kinship that
had been developed in mid-20th-century structuralism and
functionalism and revised later by feminist anthropologists
(e.g., Franklin and Lock 2003; Goodman et al. 2003). Although the focus on nature, culture, and life compellingly
made the case that the anthropology of science and technology could offer significant critical reappraisals of central
concepts in the history of anthropology, the parallel focus
on the biosciences tended to preclude ongoing conversations with ethnographic research on scientific and technical fields that were located outside the triangle of nature, culture, and life. Examples of such work include anthropological studies of engineering (Downey 1998), information
(Forsythe 2001; Hakken 2003; Kelty 2004; Suchman 2007),
mathematics (Eglash 1999), nuclear power expertise (Perin
2005), religious movements (Toumey 1994), science museums (Weinstein 1998), and weapons research (Gusterson
2004).

A second persistent area of attention, the study of cultural diversity and difference with respect to modern science
and technology, has been more comprehensive topically.
Questions of cultural difference permeate the literature
in the anthropology of science and technology, including
Diana Forsythe (2001) on gender and artificial intelligence,
Emily Martin (2000) on mania and new valuations of psychological difference, Rayna Rapp (1999) on amniocentesis
and social difference, and Michael M. J. Fischer (2003) on
"emergent forms of life." Some studies contribute to the
long-standing discussions in anthropology on postcolonialism, marginalization, and lay knowledges (Biehl 2004,
2005; Eglash 1999; Harding 1998; Hayden 2003; Hess 1995;
McNeil and Castaneda 2005; Nader 1996; Redfield 2000),
and comparative projects are underway on engineering
(Downey 2005) and free or libre open-source software
(Hakken 2005; Kelty 2004). Another cluster of interest
tracks questions of nationality and national difference,
such as how being a Japanese physicist (Traweek 1992) or
Japanese genome researcher (Fujimura 2000) affects the
way a scientist thinks about science and research problems.
More generally, research on postcolonialism and cultural
difference explores how (or if) differences in social categories and identities play themselves out in the definition
of research agendas, methods, and technological designs.

In this article, I explore a third lens from which the
anthropology of science and technology may be viewed.
The issue of social movements and science connects the
anthropology of science with broader currents in science
and technology studies (STS) and well as with the anthropology of social movements. One enduring topic of STS research has been the problem of how technological innovation and scientific expertise can be made more publicly
accountable and more amenable to democratic participation (e.g., Fischer 2000; Kleinman 2001; Woodhouse and
Nieusma 2001; Woodhouse et al. 2002). Given the lack of responsiveness of governments, global financial institutions,
and multinational corporations to calls for greater accountability and public participation, attention has focused on
the role of social movements as crucial actors in the development of a democratic politics of science and technology
(e.g., Brown and Zavestoski 2004; Epstein in press; Frickel
and Gross 2005; Hess 2004; Hess et al. in press; Jamison
2001; Lanzelius and Dumit 2006; Moore 2006). In recent
years, the study of social movements has also received increasing attention from anthropologists (e.g., Casas-Cort´es et al. n.d.; Edelman 2001, 2005; Escobar 2005; Hodgson
2002; Holland et al. n.d.; Nash 2005; Price et al. n.d.). Social
movements oriented toward scientific and technological issues have been particularly prominent in countries such as the United States, where, for many scientific and technological issues, opportunities are relatively open for protest
but closed for participation in decision making.

By paying closer attention to science, technology, and
social movements, it is not necessary to ignore the rich body
of ethnographic work that has accumulated in a relatively
short period of time around the reconfiguration of fundamental biocultural categories or the roles of cultural differences and colonialism in science and technology. There is
no need to define the choice of problem areas in a zero-
sum relationship. Instead, anthropologists of science and
technology can, and in some cases already do, contribute
to all three areas of inquiry. However, the anthropology of
science and social movements presents some unique challenges that are less evident in other approaches to the anthropology of science and technology. For research in the
anthropology of science and technology (and perhaps social and cultural anthropology in general) to play a significant role in interdisciplinary social science conversations,
it is necessary to rethink the methodological question of
generalization.

SCIENCE, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND
GENERALIZATION

Both STS and social movement studies have a well-
developed literature of social science research and theory.
For sociologists, political scientists, and other social scientists who have been studying the field, a question emerges:
can an anthropological approach to science, technology,
and social movements provide a unique and valuable perspective? To anthropologists the answer may seem to be
an obvious affirmative, but for one’s interdisciplinary colleagues the answer may not be so self-evident. One of the
primary differences between sociology and anthropology
in the study of both science and social movements is the
understanding of what counts as theory. In an interdisciplinary social science context, the work of anthropologists
may appear to be descriptive and atheoretical in the sense
that it does not contribute to a body of generalizations.
Like historians, anthropologists use theoretical concepts as
a means for the elaboration of the specifics of a case, whereas
sociologists tend to use the case as the grounds for developing generalizations. Within anthropology, the closest articulation of the difference in theory cultures is A. R. Radcliffe-
Brown’s distinction (1952) between idiographic and nomothetic inquiry, which was influenced by his use of French sociology. For Radcliffe-Brown, nomothetic inquiry was possible at the broadest scale: "generalizations about the nature
of human society, i.e., about the universal characteristics of
all societies, past, present, and future" (1952:86). More or
less the same distinction appears in a contemporary essay
by Claude L´evi-Strauss (1963:ch. 15; orig. 1953), who contrasted the empirical observation of history and ethnography with the model building of sociology and ethnology.
The generalizing projects of mid-20th-century British and
French social anthropology—and even some articulations of mid-20th-century U.S. cultural anthropology (e.g., Aberle
1966; McEwen 1963)—are largely marginalized today.

Of course, the distinction that is more well-known, and
in fact is widely quoted even by scholars who have never
taken an anthropology course, is the one articulated by Clifford Geertz, who famously described the project of anthropology as "not an experimental science in search of law but
an interpretive one in search of meaning" (1973:5). In the
essay "Thick Description" (1973), Geertz provided a fairly
lengthy articulation of what counted to him as "theory," a
discussion that, notwithstanding all the subsequent deconstructions of his essay on the Balinese cockfight, has stood the test of time well: a "repertoire of concepts" that ethnographers draw on to make ethnographic description thick.
Although the list of concepts that he provided shows some
signs of age, the idea of cultural theory (at least when contrasted with an ideal typical sociologist’s understanding of
theory as a quest for generalization, or even the nomothetic
inquiry of mid-20th-century social anthropology) does not.

In the historicist tradition of U.S. cultural anthropology, Geertz rejected the nomothetic approach to theory,
particularly versions of it that involved a quest for cultural
universals. In his essay on L´evi-Strauss, Geertz voiced a suspicion about generalization that one hears echoed today:
"What is presented as High Science may really be an ingenious and somewhat roundabout attempt to defend a metaphysical position, advance an ideological argument, and
serve a moral cause" (1973:347). The equations are familiar
even if they are not entirely explicit: generalization equals
universalization equals ethnocentrism equals colonialism.
However, Geertz also took his argument to an extreme, eschewing not only a universalizing form of generalization
but also arguing that the role of theory is "not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them" (1973:26).
In this tradition, discussions of "theory" have tended to become largely metamethodological.

Three decades later, in an academy that has become
much more interdisciplinary, the taboo on nomothetic inquiry does not travel well in the conversations that anthropologists are having and will have with sociologists, political scientists, and other social scientists. In fact, it can lead to a condition of intellectual involution for anthropologists. One might argue "so what?" and reject the value of cultural anthropology as, at least in part, a social science, but when anthropologists take themselves out of the interdisciplinary social science theoretical debates, both anthropologists and the interdisciplinary theories lose. There should be a way of preserving the sensitive powers of cultural interpretation and critique for which anthropologists
have become known across the disciplines while also continuing a general conversation with the social sciences that
was more prominent in the early and middle decades of the
20th century.

The alternative to ethnographic particularism does
not require a return to the universalizing aspirations of
mid-20th-century nomothetic inquiry in anthropology.
Rather, there is an alternative somewhere between the Geertzian reduction of social and cultural anthropology to
ethnography—that is, a task akin to writing history—and
a universalizing form of generalization—specifically, a
"law" stated as a relationship between independent and
dependent variables, which, for example, would apply
to all social movements everywhere, or at least some
more specific universe of cases, such as all interactions
between social movements and scientific communities
during the 20th century. Somewhere in between is a rich
but self-disciplined and limited comparative analysis that
might find its social theory source less in Franz Boas or
Emile Durkheim and more in the Max Weber of The City
(e.g., 1978:1323–1324). Weber’s use of generalization does
not sweep historical differences under the rug of a single
template but instead establishes a framework for finding
limited regularities amid a sea of comparative differences.
There is a tradition of such work in anthropology, both
in archaeology and in social and cultural anthropology;
the point here is not to claim that limited generalization
would be methodologically new for anthropology as much
as it is to suggest that it deserves more attention. Furthermore, as research fields become more interdisciplinary, the
historical transformations of the 21st-century academy
may create opportunities for the reconsideration of limited
generalization and conditions for its return.

To provide an example of what the research repertoire
of limited nomothetic inquiry in the anthropology of science and technology might entail, I focus in this article on
the study of meaning in social movement studies. Because
work by anthropologists on social movements generally
attends to meaning, sociologists may, at least on first pass,
translate such work as a version of frame analysis (Benford
and Snow 2000). The argument is superficially compelling,
particularly because occasional references to frames and
framing appear in the ethnographic work of anthropologists, and in fact anthropologists may legitimately claim to
have invented frame analysis.1 However, a close comparison
of, for example, a frame analysis of the nuclear disarmament
movement by a sociologist (e.g., Benford 1993) and a cultural interpretation by an anthropologist (e.g., Gusterson
1996) suggests fundamental differences. The anthropologist pays much greater attention to the detailed meaning
of texts, statements, and their significance with respect to
broader cultural contexts. Although the equation of the
ethnographic interpretation of anthropologists with frame
analysis is ultimately misleading, there are some more convincing points of overlap between the work of sociologists
and anthropologists in a small portion of the sociological
literature on the cultural dimensions of social movements,
such as research on the cultural resonance of frames and the
use of symbolic repertoires by social movements (e.g., Johnston and Klandermans 1995; Polletta 2004; Williams 2002).
Specifically, the anthropological study of social movements
is well positioned to contribute to understanding the place
of charged cultural repertoires—that is, meaningful historical events and narratives that are invoked to interpret new
political struggles and to provide maps for future action.

Table 1. Movements and Cultural Repertoires

Author	Movement	Location	Cultural Repertoires
Downey	antinuclear	New Mexico	anticolonial
Masco	antinuclear	New Mexico	anticolonial, antigenocide, sacred action
Hayden	antibiopiracy	Mexico	anticolonial
Harper	anti–GM food	Hungary	anticolonial
Gusterson	antinuclear weapons	California	antigenocide, sacred action
Rabinow	muscular dystrophy patients	France	antigenocide
Hess	alternative cancer therapies	United States	antigenocide, sacred action
Redfield	Doctors without Borders	Global	antigenocide
Taussig, Rapp, and Heath	"Little People"	United States	antigenocide

In the remainder of this article, I demonstrate what
is intended by the method of limited generalization by
presenting a comparative or "meta-"analysis of cultural
repertoires in the existing U.S. anthropological literature
on social movements and modern science and technology.
Although the issue is not always the central focus of the
studies that will be reviewed below, the value of good
ethnography is that it can be reread for insights that were
not the primary focus of the ethnographer. The method is
based on a comprehensive familiarity with the entire literature on science, technology, and social movements (for an
entry point, see Hess et al. in press). Within that literature, I
have selected work by anthropologists who pay attention to
social movements and include some analysis, either explicit
or implicit, of cultural repertoires. Furthermore, given limitations of accessibility and space and the publication venue,
the analysis is restricted to work in U.S. anthropology.

The analysis that follows will also be limited to social
movements understood as collective action rather than as
the activism or acts of resistance of individuals. Social movements can be distinguished from related forms of social action by their goal of fundamental social change (in contrast
with interest groups), broad scope (in contrast with smaller
activist networks and short-term campaigns), and extrainstitutional action such as protest and civil disobedience (in contrast with the institutionalized advocacy work of reform movements). Although typological distinctions can be
made between social movements and related forms of social action, in practice the boundaries are fluid, and in some
cases other terms may be more appropriate (Hess 2007). For
example, in the case of disease-based advocacy movements,
which Phil Brown and Stephen Zavestoski (2004) describe as
one type of "health social movement," often the action does
not involve protest, and there may only be one advocacy
organization. However, for the present purposes, patient-
advocacy groups and movements will be considered under
the broader rubric of social movements.

With those limitations in mind, nine examples in the
existing U.S. anthropological literature on science, technology, and social movements provided enough detail to identify cultural repertoires. In those nine examples, three types
of cultural repertoires were identified: anticolonialism, op

position to genocide and mass extinction, and enactment
of sacred action. Although the movements may use other
repertoires, those three were the most prominent in the existing literature (see Table 1). In addition, a corresponding
rational, secular, progress narrative of elites was also identified and will be examined.

ANTICOLONIAL REPERTOIRES

Probably the first anthropological study of social movements and modern science and technology was Gary
Downey’s work (1986, 1988) on the antinuclear movement in New Mexico.2 Activists who opposed the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant linked their position to a common
New Mexican identity, whereas they associated the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant with the nonlocal nuclear industry
and federal government. Activists noted that the state of
New Mexico was ranked 46th in per capita income and
was "politically weak and disorganized," a condition that
resulted in the people being "exploited in the form of
cheap labor in dangerous, poorly regulated jobs" by "outof-state corporations from California, Pennsylvania, and
Massachusetts" (Downey 1988:29). Although the term colonialism was not explicit in the passages that Downey examined, Joseph Masco’s subsequent ethnographic study
of popular representations of and opposition to the nuclear industry in New Mexico noted a billboard produced
by activists that described the state as "America’s nuclear
weapons colony" (2006:218). Activists also formed "citizen
verification teams" and drew explicit parallels with the colonization of Iraq by the United States; they even suggested
that New Mexico was a good place to find weapons of mass
destruction (Masco 2006:215–219). However, because New
Mexico is characterized by a layered colonial history (indigenous First Peoples who had been colonized by Spanish
settlers and both, in turn, by the United States and an Anglo population), colonialist repertoires pointed to a history
that divided as much as united a local "New Mexican" identity. For example, Nuevomexicanos were often supportive
of the state’s nuclear industry because of the jobs that it
provided, whereas First Peoples utilized a post–Cold War
opening of political opportunities to leverage recognition of nationhood rather than an end to nuclear weapons research (Masco 2006:chs. 3–4).

In the example of ethnobotanical research in Mexico
studied by Cori Hayden (2003), anticolonialist repertoires
faced a complication similar to that encountered in New
Mexico: layers of colonialism, whereby indigenous groups
and the Mexican government both claimed some property rights for local ethnobotanical knowledge. However,
unlike in New Mexico, the outside actors—Mexican and
North American ethnobotanical researchers—shared a similar anticolonial repertoire by arguing that intellectual property agreements between local communities and the pharmaceutical industry could strengthen local economies, enhance environmental sustainability, and reverse the colonialist pattern of biopiracy. Within indigenous groups a
range of positions emerged, from a hard line that advocated a complete moratorium on bioprospecting to a probioprospecting position advocated by Zapotec and Chinanteca communities, which viewed resource extraction
agreements as a right of indigenous communities. In addition to the differences among indigenous communities
and groups, NGOs and journalists in both Mexico and
the United States played a role in articulating opposition.
Claims to local intellectual property were difficult to ground
because of a century of Mexican ethnobotanical research
that had interacted with local knowledge, not to mention
centuries of trading of plants among indigenous societies
and between them and the Spanish colonizers. As a result,
the anticolonialist repertoires could be applied both to local
groups and the Mexican nation, with the result of increased
division rather than unification.

In Hungary, environmental activists were more successful at making anticolonial repertoires compelling to the
country. According to Krista Harper (2004), the environmental movement faced various internal divisions, such as
between the capital city and the provinces and between the
preservationist and industrial-pollution sides of the movement. However, Hungarian environmentalists could draw
on the relatively fresh memories of Soviet domination, a
unifying experience that cut across social divisions, to build
on concerns with new forms of colonialism. Specifically,
environmentalists argued that their campaign against genetically modified (GM) food supported the small nation
against "ecocolonialism" and "corporate colonialism" in
the new historical situation of membership in the European
Union. Activists also noted that a biotechnology company
in Germany decided to move its research to Poland, where
the anti-GM movement was weaker, and they suggested that
the dumping of GM research on Eastern Europe was similar to the expansion of the nuclear power industry in the
region.

ANTIGENOCIDE AND RELATED REPERTOIRES

Although charged cultural repertoires of opposition to
genocide and mass extinction can, like the histories that
they draw on, overlap with anticolonialist repertoires, the two are analytically distinct and may appear under different conditions. One example of overlap occurs among
antinuclear weapons activists in New Mexico, who utilized
anticolonialist repertoires but also described the state as
a "national nuclear sacrifice zone" (Masco 2006:223). Although the two types of repertoires overlap in this case,
the antigenocide–extinction repertoires can also be less
place-based than the repertoires of colonial resistance. One
example in the antinuclear weapons movement that involved a repertoire of mass extinction was the frequent
use of BBs to demonstrate the potential for annihilation.
As Hugh Gusterson described (1996:199–201), to symbolize the power of all weapons used in WWII, activists began
with one BB and dropped it into a metal bucket. Then they
slowly poured in 5,000 more pellets to provide an increasingly loud and overwhelming demonstration of the firepower of the international effects of a full thermonuclear
war. The deafening sound provided some sense of the potential for mass annihilation and extinction in the event
of full or even widespread use of the world’s nuclear arsenal. Another example of the repertoire of genocide and
mass extinction in the antinuclear weapons movement is
the "die-in," where activists lie on the ground to mimic
the effects of a nuclear attack (Gusterson 1996:198; Masco
2006:235).3 In both cases the cultural repertoire is not necessarily place based, nor is it necessarily linked to the anticolonialist repertoire discussed above.

Repertoires of resistance to genocide are also prominent in health-related social movements, which generally
rely on the mobilization of non-place-based identities such
as disease or physical condition. For example, under the
leadership of Bernard Barataud, a parent who had become
outraged at the mistreatment of his son, the Association
Franc¸aise contre les Myopathies (AFM) developed a general
critique of French medical research, initiated a T´ethon,

el´ and raised money for genetic research in its G´ethon

en´ laboratory. Paul Rabinow notes that the group’s opposition to the medical establishment was framed in military
metaphors, with Barataud even calling one doctor a "Vichy
collaborator of health" (1999:38). Although the AFM was
not a central focus of Rabinow’s research and the point is
not developed, the comparison with the Nazi collaborators
suggests a highly charged repertoire with associations of
genocide.

A comparison with Nazism was also invoked during
the 1970s by a leader of the U.S. alternative cancer therapy movement. The doctor, who had been put on trial for
using laetrile, referred to the Nuremberg Principles as part of
his defense strategy: "When the laws of one’s government
require a man to condemn innocent people to death, he
must reject those laws and stand with his conscience. If he
does not, then he is no different from the Nazis, who were
hanged for war crimes" (Richardson and Griffin 1977:103).4
By invoking the Nuremberg Principles, the doctor was able
to reframe his own action as a form of civil disobedience
and establish a parallel between the genocidal policies of the
Nazis and the massive deaths of cancer patients who were not being permitted access to alternative therapies. (The
point also deflected attention away from his own right-wing
politics.) As a result, his trial invoked the cultural repertoire
of resistance to Nazi persecution and offered the jurors an
opportunity to reenact the Nuremberg Principles.

The Nazi experience and repertoire of opposition to
genocide has also been central for Doctors Without Borders
(Redfield 2006). The organization distinguishes itself from
the Red Cross, which remained silent on the Holocaust,
and it has actively publicized human suffering worldwide
as well as specific instances of genocide, including in Biafra, Rwanda, and Kurdistan. The organization also defines
its work as more than a medical-humanitarian assistance
project. Unlike the Red Cross, the organization engages in
"witnessing" or "advocacy" (t´emoignage), that is, acts of public denunciation against injustice and genocide.

Repertoires of opposition to genocide can also be mobilized with some ambivalence. Karen-Sue Taussig and colleagues (2003) note that advocates for little people carefully
negotiate research within a framework of individualism and
choice that would allow them to select some genetic interventions but limit others. The organization Little People of
America is concerned that advances in genetic knowledge
could be combined with prenatal screening to generate eugenic practices. Although the information on the meaning
of eugenics is not detailed, the discussion suggests how a
genetically defined population could simultaneously welcome medical assistance in the form of new research and
technology while also fearing that advances in science and
technology could lead to their extinction.

SACRED ACTION REPERTOIRES

One would not necessarily expect religious traditions to provide an important source of repertoires of action in social
movements oriented toward science and technology, but
religious repertoires have been prominent in other social
movements (such as the civil rights movement), and the
ethnographies of science and technology also suggest at
least a few examples of the enactment of religious repertoires. For example, Gusterson describes how antinuclear
activists developed the "bombing run," a speech in which
a doctor or other credible expert describes in detail the
effects of nuclear warfare, as an enactment of repertoires
of religious damnation: "Similar in some ways to fire-andbrimstone preachers’ evocation of hell, the aim is to terrify
the audience and make them seek salvation, in this case
through political action" (1996:199). Masco (2006:chs. 3–
4) also explores how traditional cultural repertoires of the
sacred, such as First People’s rituals of sacred land stewardship and Nuevomexicano Catholic pilgrimages, have been
mobilized to raise questions about the effects of nuclear
weapons research and testing. However, given the differences of religious traditions between the two groups, religious repertoires can, like anticolonialist repertoires, potentially weaken opportunities for coalition building across
ethnic divisions.

Disease-based opposition to conventional cancer therapies can also draw on religious traditions. For example, some
of the leading alternative cancer therapy clinics in Tijuana
have roots in evangelical Christianity, and even secular advocates of alternative cancer therapies talk about the value
of healing body, mind, and spirit (Hess 1999). Some patient-
activists also view their healing trajectories as simultaneously acts of political resistance and spiritual awakening, in
which they confront the disease itself, conventional cancer therapies of limited efficacy, and the spiritual emptiness
and toxicity of their precancer lifestyles (Wooddell and Hess
1998). For some patients, immersion into the world of complementary and alternative cancer therapies, as well as the
associated politics of resistance to conventional treatments,
enacts a repertoire of spiritual development (Wooddell and
Hess 1998).5

SECULAR PROGRESS REPERTOIRES

Although religious repertoires can provide powerful maps
for the performance of social movement action, industrial and political elites can also draw on powerful secular
counterrepertoires of rationality and progress. The dominant repertoires tend to emphasize scientific neutrality as a
source of objective assessment of health and environmental risk, and they also emphasize broader programs of economic progress and security over local concerns. For example, Gusterson noted that the nightmare scenarios of annihilation seemed to have less purchase for nuclear weapons
scientists. As one scientist commented, "It’s not rational
to have nightmares about nuclear weapons" (Gusterson
1996:197). For the nuclear industry and government, nuclear weapons ensure world peace and domestic security,
and nuclear energy also serves a broader national interest
by reducing dependence on foreign oil (Downey 1988). Laboratories such as Los Alamos can also enact repertoires of
progress for local populations, such as for the Neuvomexicanos who believe that they have benefited from the industry (Masco 2006:ch. 4). Likewise, as Harper (2004) explored in the case of anti-GM campaigns in Hungary, the activists contended with cultural associations among Hungarian scientists, policymakers, and journalists that linked biotechnology to repertoires of progress in the form of "Euro-readiness," whereas the movement against GM food could be framed as antiprogress.

Given the way that governments and industries draw
on repertoires of economic and scientific progress, it is
not surprising that social movements will attempt to recruit some scientists to their side. For example, the anti-GM
movement in Hungary received a boost when a prominent
Hungarian scientist was suspended from a research institute in Scotland because he made statements on television
against GM food. As he toured Hungary, he noted that he
had fled the country during the 1950s to escape Stalinism,
but the problem of censorship in science also occurred in
the West via the economic domination of science (Harper
2004). More generally, as Downey (1988) noted in his analysis of counterexpertise, social movements can break
the neutrality of scientific expertise by recruiting dissident
scientists to their side (Downey 1988). There are many examples of counterexpertise in the antinuclear energy and
weapons movements, as well as examples of scientists who
have risked their careers to question the health and environmental benefits of GM food and alternative cancer
therapies.6

Counterexperts may stick to scientific discourse by
restricting their interventions to critiques of existing evidence and the development of new counterevidence, but in
some cases they also shift into a social scientific diagnosis
of the devolution of science—that is, an analysis of how
science has become corrupted by economic and political
interests. Such critiques of mainstream medical research
are widespread in the movement for complementary and
alternative cancer care (Hess 2005). By portraying the
suppression of alternative therapies as the enactment of a
long-standing repertoire of profiteering and self-interest,
advocates of complementary and alternative therapies
counter the dominant repertoires of paternalistic progressivism and neutral rationality. They also transfer the
repertoire of progress and rationality to their own efforts
to fund alternative research agendas and make alternative
therapies more widely accessible.

A somewhat different type of counterexpertise appears
in the case of Doctors Without Borders, an organization that
views itself as "resolutely secular" in contrast with the religiously oriented Red Cross. For Doctors Without Borders,
the practice of t´emoignage is more than an act of denunciation against genocidal practices; it also includes reporting
on local conditions that, somewhat akin to ethnography
and investigative journalism, can contradict official government declarations (Redfield 2006). Although not necessarily "counterexpertise" in a scientific sense, the practice has
a similar effect of undermining official repertoires of secular progress and politically neutral rationality, especially
where government interventions in episodes of genocide
have been inadequate if not deceptive.

In the case of antinuclear weapons activism, Gusterson
shows that the critique of dominant scientific rationality
can also shift from the gender-neutral terrain of contested
facts and economic corruption to cultural critiques of
science (1996:209–214). He charts out a range of feminist
critiques of militarism and nuclear weapons research developed by feminist peace and antinuclear organizations.
They counter the repertoires of rational progress based on
a balance of terror with a range of counterimages, such as
masculine fantasies of "missile envy" and "toys for boys"
as well as the threat that nuclear warfare poses to the social
categories that it claims to protect: children, mothers,
grandmothers, and the home.

CONCLUSIONS

To date, the existing ethnographic literature in U.S. anthropology that discusses social movements, science, and technology is largely limited to the exploration of cultural
meanings associated with the discourses and practices of
activists and their opponents. As a result, anthropological
inquiry is not well positioned to contribute to broader
interdisciplinary discussions of structural and related
approaches in science studies, such as the new political sociology of science (e.g., Frickel and Moore 2006), and social
movement studies, such as the contentious politics-research
program (e.g., McAdam et al. 2001). However, the anthropological literature on science, technology, and social
movements has become developed enough to permit
some limited generalizations that could advance a broader
interdisciplinary literature on theories of culture, meaning,
and social movements.

One generalization that emerges from the foregoing
analysis is that in addition to articulating frames for current
events and actions, social movements enact cultural repertoires that often draw on charged historical events and cultural traditions to provide templates for future action. In the
small body of existing ethnographic work by U.S. anthropologists on science, technology, and social movements,
the repertoires include resistance to colonialism, opposition to genocide and mass extinction, and the enactment
of sacred action. Further research might reveal other cultural repertoires, but the ones identified in the comparative
analysis above are the most prominent in the existing literature. One might further generalize (or hypothesize) that
repertoires of anticolonialism and sacred traditions may
be undercut by layered colonial histories and multicultural
identities, and that the repertoires may be more successfully deployed where place-based identities are less divided.
Repertoires of opposition to genocide and mass extinction
may be more prominent in the less place-based movements
of the health field. To counter the cultural repertoires of
movement groups, political and industrial elites will mobilize their own repertoires, which in the cases examined involved scientific and societal progress. In turn, movements
sometimes recruit counterexperts to break down the dominant repertoires, and they mobilize their own counterrepertoires of scientific devolution and corruption.

The outline of a theory of cultural repertoires for science, technology, and social movements is also a proposal
for an alternative research repertoire for the anthropology
of science and technology and perhaps more generally for
social and cultural anthropology. The search for limited
generalizations could guide future ethnographic research
and also be integrated into interdisciplinary social science
conversations. In the case of social movement studies, theorizing on cultural repertoires could become part of general
social theories of mobilization that take into account political opportunities, strategy, organization, and resources. The
middle ground between the resolutely idiographic method
of ethnographic particularism and the overstated nomothetic method of universalizing theory promises to make the
anthropology of science and social movements—and many
other forms of cultural anthropology, for that matter—
more relevant both inside and outside the academy. Inside the academy, anthropologists could contribute to interdisciplinary social science conversations by opening up new
topics of inquiry that may not have been previously visible
and by bringing a form of generalization that is rooted in
the comparative knowledge of cultural and historical difference. Outside the academy, activists and advocates may find
the kind of generalization that I am suggesting to be more
useful than either quantitative analysis, which is often too
abstract to translate into strategic insight, or detailed histories and ethnographies, which are generally not relevant
to current campaigns without further analysis and comparative insight. One might argue that a politically sensitive, critical, humanistic ethnographic text is more valuable
to a world troubled by nuclear weapons, biocolonialism,
and orphaned patients, but I would counterargue that understanding the complex interplay of general patterns and
historical specificities is a more valuable starting point for
activists and advocates who wish to plot a strategy and anticipate possible moves of their opponents. For those who
wish to discipline such work as "not anthropology," I would
reply that the field might benefit by becoming a little more
undisciplined.

DAVID J. HESS Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590

NOTES

Acknowledgments. An earlier draft of this article was presented as the annual joint anthropology lecture of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I appreciate the comments given after the lecture as well as specific suggestions from Arturo Escobar, Hugh Gusterson, and Krista Harper on drafts of the article, as well as the comments from the AA reviewers and editor Benjamin Blount.

1. As Oliver and Johnston (2000) have noted, the history of
frame analysis extends beyond Goffman to an essay by Bateson
(1972:177–193).

2. Of the half-dozen studies that Downey produced at this time on environmental activism, each of which is carefully crafted for a specific journal audience, I have chosen Downey 1988 because it was written for an anthropology journal and is thematically continuous with later work discussed below. Also of relevance is Downey 1986, which contrasts the progress frame with those that emphasize the pollution of nature and either an unbalanced collectivity or domination.

3. The discussion draws on Gusterson’s first book (1996); his
second book (2004) is less focused on the relationship between
weapons scientists and activists. One would also expect to find
repertoires of genocide in social movement responses to disasters such as Chernobyl (Petryna 2002) and Bhopal (Fortun 2001). Those two ethnographies are not discussed here because the former does not focus on social movements and the latter focuses more on remediation through the legal system. Although imagery of genocide appears in some of the documents cited for the Bhopal case, the primary repertoire for activists appears to be compensation, a topic that could also be explored comparatively but is beyond the scope of this article.

4. Laetrile is a nontoxic chemotherapy that can be derived from
a variety of foods. During the 1970s, a huge controversy erupted over the politics of its evaluation and its lack of availability in the United States.

5. Complementary therapies are used alongside conventional therapies, whereas alternative therapies are used in place of them.

6. Gusterson (2005) also explores the utilization of expertise by
both activists and GM-food advocates.

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David J. Hess

Crosscurrents: Social Movements and the Anthropology of Science and Technology