Trajectories and division of labor in a laboratory of human genetics

Abstract

The article discusses the division of scientific labour among senior and junior researchers in a Brazilian research center for human and medical genetics. Starting with the contemporary debate on the progressive intertwining of science and technology - with progressive fusion of both, evoking notions such as technoscience - it is possible to verify, in this specific subarea, rising speed in data production that pressure scientists in different manners: through the rising cost of technological innovations and through the necessity for more complex methods of analysis. In this context I analyze issues concerning the specialization of scientific work, the separation between conception and execution as well as correlate changes in the formation of new researchers. The theoretical-methodological pressupposition is that scientific activity cannot be treated in a homogeneous way, and that there exist distinct configurations according to the disciplinary space, the institucional organization and local scientific tradition, understood as a historically rooted and socially and culturally contingent undertaking.