UNTANGLING CONTEXT - UNDERSTANDING A UNIVERSITY LABORATORY IN THE COMMERCIAL WORLD

The past twenty years have been an incredibly productive period in sci ence studies. Still, because recent work in science studies puts a spo tlight on agency and enabling situations, many practitioners in the fi eld ignore, underplay, or dismiss the possibility that historically es tablished, structurally stable attributes of the world may systemicall y shape practice at the laboratory level. This article questions this general position. Drawing on data from a participant observation study of a university biology laboratory, it describes five features of the institutional landscape that shape this laboratory's practice.