Configurations

How do we recognize a laboratory as a laboratory? Where are laboratories located, and how do they stand out from their surroundings? Which disciplines are particularly characterized by laboratory work? Are there any helpful criteria for defining laboratories, and who actually sets these criteria: institutions, individuals, corporations, or other stakeholders? The three authors of The Lab Book argue that precisely such questions of definition and distinction arise today because "classical" scientific laboratories—or what entered the cultural imagination as the workplaces of Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie, their apparatuses, test tubes, chemicals, and invisible technicians—are still ascribed a predominant role in defining "the" laboratory as opposed to other assemblages of equipment, people, and practices. Based on this assumption, but more importantly, based on the observation that in recent years the number of so-called laboratories has expanded to include experimental music spaces, the beauty industry, haute cuisine, cocktail bars, agriculture, media studies, sociology, and the digital humanities, The Lab Book suggests that laboratories have become increasingly "hybrid" (p. 8). Laboratories are now tropes in performative acts and descriptors in public discourse or, as the authors put it, laboratories result from "situated practice" (p. 9).

By broadening the concept of the laboratory beyond previous notions and suggesting that laboratories can no longer be assigned to individual disciplines (hence, they are hybrid), The Lab Book makes an important contribution to the field of laboratory studies. The Lab Book relies almost exclusively on the most familiar names (e.g., Bruno Latour, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Ian Hacking, Steven Shapin, and Simon Schaffer), but this only underscores that laboratory studies have evolved little in the past three decades. Indeed, given the popularity of the term "laboratory" today, a reexamination seems necessary. In doing so, The Lab Book does not chronicle a historical development but rather tests analytical categories of a "checklist" (p. 11). This goal of developing a new heuristic makes the results an engaging study book.

Six categories provide the framework for the body chapters, presented in support of the "extended lab model" (p. 11). First, laboratories are either a space or, [End Page 188] more broadly, a definition of spatial relationships. Second, laboratories are defined by the devices, tools, and media they house, or by a configuration of different apparatuses working together. (A particle accelerator, I suggest as an example, is not only a tunnel in which particles are brought to high energies; accelerators need targets to separate particles, as well as detectors to measure and then study the results.) Third, laboratories are part of a larger infrastructure (including PR agencies, communication networks, and material suppliers, I would add). Fourth, laboratories are the product of social actors and their power relations. Fifth, laboratories derive from and are challenged by imaginaries, myths, and representations. Sixth, laboratories are the product of techniques and practices (which means that a laboratory use may change over time). The case studies in the body chapters are organized according to these categories, which bring existing categories neatly together. These categories, the authors argue, draw on the vocabulary of several disciplines: science and technology studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, design studies, architecture, and media archaeology, which the three authors have in common and is the focus of several chapters.

Chapter 1 addresses spaces, using the Thomas Edison Menlo Park facility as a historical example of hybrid laboratories. Edison's industrial complexes allowed collaboration and blurred the boundaries between tinkering, play, and "real work," which illustrates life in modern machine shops. Menlo Park can thus be seen as foreshadowing today's start-up culture that became popular in the United States. A second prominent example is the MIT Media Lab, which the authors describe well as a place of unseparated workspace with glass doors to convey openness and flexibility and encourage interaction. Chapter 2 argues that laboratories are generally recognized for the objects they house. The chapter highlights material qualities and cultures by offering interesting insights into the media archaeology...