Methoden vergleichen

	Laboratory Ethnography	Boundary-Work Analysis
Fachgebiet	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Familie	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Entstehungsjahr	1979	1983
Urheber	Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar; Karin Knorr-Cetina	Thomas F. Gieryn
Typ	Ethnographic field method	Qualitative rhetorical and interpretive method
Wegweisende Quelle	Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN: 9780691028323	Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48(6), 781-795.
Aliasnamen	Laboratory studies, Ethnography of the laboratory, Anthropology of science	Boundary-work analysis, Demarcation analysis, Credibility contest analysis
Verwandt	4	4
Zusammenfassung	Laboratory ethnography is the anthropological study of scientists at work, observing how scientific facts are constructed through the mundane practices of the laboratory rather than discovered ready-made in nature. Pioneered by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's Laboratory Life and Karin Knorr-Cetina's The Manufacture of Knowledge in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it brought the gaze of the field anthropologist into the lab as if studying an exotic tribe. The method follows benchwork, inscription devices, and the conversational and material labour through which claims are stripped of their qualifications until they harden into facts. It treats knowledge as manufactured, local, and contingent, and renders that manufacture visible through immersive observation and thick description.	Boundary-work analysis studies how the line between science and non-science is drawn, defended, and contested—not by philosophers laying down timeless criteria, but by actors doing rhetorical work to secure authority, resources, and credibility. Introduced by Thomas Gieryn in 1983 and elaborated in his 1999 book Cultural Boundaries of Science, the approach treats demarcation as a practical, strategic, and historically variable accomplishment. The method examines the discourse of demarcation episodes to reveal the strategies—expansion, expulsion, and protection of autonomy—through which the cultural map of science is redrawn whenever its credibility is on the line.