Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise (Inside Technology) by Michael E. Gorman

by Michael E. Gorman

Cross-disciplinary collaboration increasingly characterizes today'sscience and engineering research. The problems and opportunities facing society donot come neatly sorted by discipline. Difficulties arise when researchers fromdisciplines as different as engineering and the humanities work together and findthat they speak largely different languages. This book explores a new framework forfostering collaborations among existing disciplines and expertise communities. Theframework unites two ideas to emerge from recent work in trading zones, inwhich scientific subcultures, each with its own language, develop the equivalents ofpidgin and creole; and interactional expertise, in which experts learn to use thelanguage of another research community in ways that are indistinguishable fromexpert practitioners of that community. A trading zone can gradually become a newarea of expertise, facilitated by interactional expertise and involving negotiationsover boundary objects (objects represented in different ways by differentparticipants). The volume describes applications of the framework to servicescience, business strategy, environmental management, education, and practicalethics. One detailed case study focuses on attempts to create trading zones thatwould help prevent marine bycatch; another investigates trading zones formed tomarket the female condom to women in Africa; another describes how humanistsembedded in a nanotechnology laboratory gained interactional expertise, resulting inimproved research results for both humanists and nanoscientists.Contributors BradAllenby, Donna T. Chen, Harry Collins, Robert Evans, Erik Fisher, Peter Galison, Michael E. Gorman, Lynn Isabella, Lekelia D. Jenkins, Mary Ann Leeper, Roop L.Mahajan, Matthew M. Mehalik, Ann E. Mills, Bolko von Oetinger, Elizabeth Powell, Mary V. Rorty, Jeff Shrager, Jim Spohrer, Patricia H. Werhane

Hardcover

First published November 19, 2010