My research focuses on how various communities of practice are linked. In order to clarify the nature of linkage, first, I analyze the case of transfer of technology in plant biotechnology. In biotechnology, including gene engineering, as Lynch and Jordan (1998) demonstrated, experiments are situatedly organized and instructions such as experimental protocol is not sufficient to replicate previous research. I show that the ' situatedness' of experiments comes from the fragile nature of objects such as DMNA, RNA, cell and callus, and these fragile objects provide specific direction for ways of organizing linkage among labs.
The second case is of mutual constitution of technology between different research domains such as breeding and biotechnology. In the research lab of a chemical corporation, the biotech team proposed various methods that facilitate the breeding of hybrid Indica + Japonica rice. However, at first, the proposed methods of the biotech team were not accepted by the breeding team. This is because the continuity between lab and field were not visible for the members of the breeding team. Here, the fragile nature of objects such as DNA, cell and callus and that of biotechnology made linkage between teams difficult. Because of this, the biotech team had to demonstrate the continuity between lab and field.
The cases I described show that the linkage among communities is not just a social matter but is also about how objects and technologies are made visible in various practices. In other words, while the objects and the technologies are made visible in the context of making linkage between practices, the nature of objects and the technologies also give direction for a way of organizing link among practices.
In scientific practice, making an object visible is embedded in socio-technological order. Simultaneously, socio-technological order is embedded in order of an object. Through an analysis of scientific discourse, this presentation explores how individuals and communities are constituted technologically. First, I explore how scientists in a plant biotechnology lab situatedly and interactionally constitute "IT" (an object), or make IT visible with juxtaposition of various resources. The scientists' practice of constituting IT, however, is not confined to making IT visible. In other words, IT does not become visible as IT itself. Making IT visible also makes the subjects who describe IT visible. Second, I argue that making IT visible is inseparable from making skill or technique visible. In addition, following the technologies around in the lab, I examine how making technologies visible is inseparable from making individual skill, communities, and boundaries visible. Describing the difficulties in technologies, the scientists make visible of the division between "the skilled" and "the unskilled", between the communities of the skilled and the unskilled, and between specialists in the lab and amateurs like us, interviewers. Describing the technology can be regarded as the scientists' practice of making communities visible, or organizing communities.