Communicative patterns and social networks between scientists and technicians in a culture of care: discussing morality across a hierarchy of occupational spaces

Nuyts, Nathalie and Friese, Carrie ORCID: 0000-0001-7144-8046 (2023) Communicative patterns and social networks between scientists and technicians in a culture of care: discussing morality across a hierarchy of occupational spaces. Social and Cultural Geography, 24 (1). 11 - 30. ISSN 1464-9365

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Abstract

Communication between scientists and animal technicians is considered important for creating a ‘culture of care’ in facilities that use animals in scientific research. For example, the Brown report, which investigated alleged failures of animal care at Imperial College London, noted the physical and social separation between animal technicians and scientists as a problem that delimited a culture of care. This paper seeks to better understand the communicative relationships between scientists and animal technicians in this context. We conducted a survey of scientists working in the UK who use animals in their research (n=230), asking who they spoke with about various aspects related to using animals in research. We found that scientists communicated with technicians about operational issues, while they spoke with other scientists about experimental design as well as moral questions and concerns. We probe the meaning of these communicative relationships using narrative analysis of semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with consenting survey respondents (n=14). Analytically, this paper seeks to bridge social network analysis with geographies of care through a shared concern with relations of power.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscg20/current
Additional Information:	© 2021 The Authors
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Date Deposited:	18 Jan 2021 13:12
Last Modified:	15 Apr 2024 07:51
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/108472

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