Shaping Science

Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on Nasa's Teams

Janet Vertesi

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Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
06 November 2020

History of science; Space science

In Shaping Science, Janet Vertesi draws on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams to create a comparative account of two great space missions of the early 2000s. Although these missions featured robotic explorers on the frontiers of the solar system bravely investigating new worlds, their commands were issued from millions of miles away by a very human team. By examining the two teams’ formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices in the day-to-day process of mission planning, Vertesi shows just how deeply entangled a team’s local organizational context is with the knowledge they produce about other worlds.

Using extensive, embedded experiences on two NASA spacecraft teams, this is the first book to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment in order to analyze the production of scientific knowledge itself. Engaging and deeply researched, Shaping Science demonstrates the significant influence that the social organization of a scientific team can have on the practices of that team and the results they yield.

By: Janet Vertesi
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780226691084
ISBN 10: 022669108X
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 06 November 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Janet Vertesi is assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited and digitalSTS.

Reviews for Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on Nasa's Teams

"""Vertesi takes us on a mission. Based on extraordinary access among the research teams of interplanetary spacecraft, she makes a convincing case that organizational differences make a difference in the types of knowledge produced by these scientists. The analysis is solid, the argument bold, and the writing lively.""-- ""David Stark, Columbia University"""