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===Biography===
Sharon Traweek is an American anthropologist of science, associate professor in the History Department and the Gender Studies Department at UCLA. She has previously held positions in the Anthropology Department at Rice University and in the Program in Anthropology and Archaeology and the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT, with visiting positions at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke, the Anthropology Department at UC San Diego, and the Program in Values, Technology, Science and Society at Stanford.


===History===
She received her doctorate in 1982 from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, advised by Hayden White and Gregory Bateson, with a thesis committee including James Clifford, Shelly Errington, Triloki N. Pandey, Thomas Rohlen and Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo. Her earlier degrees are an MA in modern European history from San Francisco State (adviser Vartan Gregorian) and a BA in history from UC Berkeley (adviser Robert O. Paxton).
Ph.D. University of California at Santa Cruz, 1982, from the Program in the History of Consciousness (Advisers: Hayden White and Gregory Bateson; thesis committee: James Clifford, Shelly Errington, Triloki N. Pandey, Thomas Rohlen, Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo)--M.A. Calif State Univ at San Francisco in Modern European History. Vartan Gregorian, adviser.--B.A. University of California at Berkeley in History (Adviser: Robert O. Paxton)
 
===Beamtimes and Lifetimes===
''Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists'' (Harvard University Press, 1988; paperback 1992) is her principal work and a founding text of the anthropology of science.<ref>Traweek, Sharon. ''Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674063488 Publisher's page].</ref>
 
The book is an ethnography of particle physicists, based on fieldwork at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and at Japan's KEK laboratory over more than a decade. Traweek's method is the ordinary method of anthropology applied to a community that regards itself as standing outside culture: she studies detectors, career paths, laboratory architecture, the allocation of beam time, gossip, apprenticeship and the stories physicists tell novices, and treats all of it as the culture of a group rather than as the neutral machinery of discovery.
 
Her most quoted formulation describes the physicists' self-understanding as producing "a culture of no culture" — a community whose members believe their practices to be determined by nature rather than by convention, and whose account of themselves therefore has to be studied rather than accepted. The comparison between the American and Japanese laboratories is what makes the argument stick: the same physics, organised through visibly different social arrangements, career structures and relationships between senior and junior researchers.
 
The book is also an early and careful account of how gender operates in a scientific community — not through explicit exclusion but through the shape of the career, the apprenticeship system and the definition of what counts as commitment.


===Research Interests===
===Research Interests===
I am an associate professor in the History Department at UCLA; I have also been on the faculty of the Anthropology Department at Rice University and the Program in Anthropology & Archeology and to the Program in Science, Technology, & Society at MIT. I have held visiting faculty positions at the Mt Holyoke Five College Women's Studies Research Center, the Anthropology Department at the University of California at San Diego, and the Program in Values, Technology, Science, and Society at Stanford University. I received my Ph.D. in 1982 from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  
Traweek's continuing work concerns Japanese big science, the crafting of cultural studies of science, technology and medicine, and the comparative study of how scientific communities in different countries are organised. She has published widely across anthropology, Asian studies, communications, cultural studies, history and women's studies, and has lectured internationally.


My first book is Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists (Harvard University Press, 1988, paperback 1992). My next book, which is on Japanese big science, and a third on crafting cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine are both nearly completed; I have also published 25 articles in books and journals of anthropology, Asian studies, communications, cultural studies, history, and women's studies.  
===Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology===
Traweek established that laboratories can be studied as field sites and that scientists constitute a culture with kinship structures, initiation rites, sacred objects and origin myths. That move is the precondition for cyborg anthropology: if the people who build technologies are working inside a culture, then the technologies carry that culture's assumptions, and both can be described. Her "culture of no culture" is also the most useful phrase available for the technical community's persistent belief that its choices are dictated by the problem rather than made by people.


Since receiving my Ph.D. I have given over 180 talks in 11 countries for researchers in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, history, international relations, Japan studies, science and technology studies, science education, and women's studies; during the coming academic year twelve more are already scheduled. My work has been supported by, among others, the Danforth Foundation, the Fulbright Association, the Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, MIT, Rice University, UCLA, the University of California, and the Japanese government.
===Related Reading===
* [[Russ Bernard]]
* [[The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT|The Idea Factory]]
* [[Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory]]
* [[Sandy Pentland]]
* [[Digital Anthropology]]


For health reasons [increasing limitations in my physical mobility] I focused the last few years on doing research [usually requiring travel], writing articles, deferring writing books until later, although writing books are still required for promotion in history. Three years ago I had major surgery [relieving severe compression on my spinal cord in my neck]; that and ongoing physical therapy has alleviated many of my long-standing health problems.
===References===
<references/>


[[Category:People]]
[[Category:People]]
[[Category:Traditional Anthropology]]
[[Category:Digital Anthropology]]

Latest revision as of 13:59, 25 August 2026

Biography

Sharon Traweek is an American anthropologist of science, associate professor in the History Department and the Gender Studies Department at UCLA. She has previously held positions in the Anthropology Department at Rice University and in the Program in Anthropology and Archaeology and the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT, with visiting positions at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke, the Anthropology Department at UC San Diego, and the Program in Values, Technology, Science and Society at Stanford.

She received her doctorate in 1982 from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, advised by Hayden White and Gregory Bateson, with a thesis committee including James Clifford, Shelly Errington, Triloki N. Pandey, Thomas Rohlen and Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo. Her earlier degrees are an MA in modern European history from San Francisco State (adviser Vartan Gregorian) and a BA in history from UC Berkeley (adviser Robert O. Paxton).

Beamtimes and Lifetimes

Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists (Harvard University Press, 1988; paperback 1992) is her principal work and a founding text of the anthropology of science.[1]

The book is an ethnography of particle physicists, based on fieldwork at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and at Japan's KEK laboratory over more than a decade. Traweek's method is the ordinary method of anthropology applied to a community that regards itself as standing outside culture: she studies detectors, career paths, laboratory architecture, the allocation of beam time, gossip, apprenticeship and the stories physicists tell novices, and treats all of it as the culture of a group rather than as the neutral machinery of discovery.

Her most quoted formulation describes the physicists' self-understanding as producing "a culture of no culture" — a community whose members believe their practices to be determined by nature rather than by convention, and whose account of themselves therefore has to be studied rather than accepted. The comparison between the American and Japanese laboratories is what makes the argument stick: the same physics, organised through visibly different social arrangements, career structures and relationships between senior and junior researchers.

The book is also an early and careful account of how gender operates in a scientific community — not through explicit exclusion but through the shape of the career, the apprenticeship system and the definition of what counts as commitment.

Research Interests

Traweek's continuing work concerns Japanese big science, the crafting of cultural studies of science, technology and medicine, and the comparative study of how scientific communities in different countries are organised. She has published widely across anthropology, Asian studies, communications, cultural studies, history and women's studies, and has lectured internationally.

Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology

Traweek established that laboratories can be studied as field sites and that scientists constitute a culture with kinship structures, initiation rites, sacred objects and origin myths. That move is the precondition for cyborg anthropology: if the people who build technologies are working inside a culture, then the technologies carry that culture's assumptions, and both can be described. Her "culture of no culture" is also the most useful phrase available for the technical community's persistent belief that its choices are dictated by the problem rather than made by people.

References

  1. ↑ Traweek, Sharon. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Publisher's page.
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