Maryon McDonald (University of Cambridge)
On the merits and difficulties of detachment
When contemplating detachment, we may be faced with two categories that have been historically linked in conceptual and activist opposition: science and society. Where the second has appeared to be the repository of engagement and attachment of various kinds, the first has been seen, for better or for worse, as a world of detachment. Social science critiques of scientific practice have often been keen to show detachment or objectivity to be in some way profoundly partial and attached. Rather than participating in such critiques, the approach taken here is to treat criticism of detachment or objectivity as ethnographically interesting. Through ethnographic illustration drawn from the medical field, particularly that of organ transplantation, this paper tries to suggest some of the difficulties posed by professional practices of detachment. It draws ethnographic attention to some of the difficult work involved in keeping science and society distinct. This work is especially difficult where the one is dependent on the other and where the required 'society' has itself apparently been stripped of the social.
