Sophie Houdart, La cour des miracles. Ethnologie d’un laboratoire Japonais, CNRS Éditions, 2007
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Sophie Houdart, The Court of Miracles: Ethnology of a Japanese Laboratory, CNRS Editions, 2007
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Sophie Houdart, The Court of Miracles: Ethnology of a Japanese Laboratory, CNRS Editions, 2007
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                                                                        TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)          133



                                                                   Sophie Houdart
                                                        La cour des miracles. Ethnologie
References                                                  d’un laboratoire Japonais
                                                           [The Court of Miracles: Ethnology
Bakhtin M.M. (1990) Author and hero in aesthe-                 of aJapanese Laboratory]
    tic activity, in M. Holquist and V. Liapunov            2007, CNRS Éditions, 335 pp.
    (eds), Art and Answerability: Early Phi-
    losophical Works by M.M. Bakhtin, Austin,
                                                                    Assunta Viteritti
    University of Texas Press (orig.: Avtor i
    geroj v ėstetičeskoj dejatel’nosti, in “Ėstetika              (Università di Roma)
    slovesnogo tvorčestva”, Moskva, Iskusstvo,
    1979).
Cole M. (1998) Cultural Psychology, Cambridge,
                                                           In this very absorbing book, Sophie
    Harvard University Press.                          Houdart flits ably from one role to an-
Graham L.R. (1975) The formation of Soviet Re-         other, becoming in turn an ethnologist,
    search Institute: A Combination of Revolu-         an anthropologist and a sociologist of
    tionary Innovation and International Bor-
                                                       science. Laboratory life – that of hu-
    rowing, “Social Studies of Science”, 3, pp.
    303-329.                                           mans both divided and united by cul-
Graham L.R. (1990) Science and the Soviet Social       ture (national, scientific, professional)
    Order, Cambridge, Harvard University               and that of other species, in this case
    Press.                                             the drosophila fly – is enriched
Holquist M. (1990) Dialogism, London, Rout-
    ledge.
                                                       through a totally cultural vision of sci-
Kelle V. Ž., E.Z. Mirskaja and A.A. Ignat’ev           entific knowledge (Pickering 1992;
    (1988) Sovremennaja zapadnaja sociologija          McCarthy Doyle 1996; Goodwin
    nauki. Kritičeskij analiz, Moskva: Nauka.          1994).
Mongili A. (1998) La chute de l’U.R.S.S. et la
                                                           The author tells the fascinating sto-
    recherche scientifique, Paris, L’Harmattan.
Shapin, S. (1995), Here and Everywhere – Socio-        ry of how a Japanese research labora-
    logy of Scientific Knowledge, “Annual Re-          tory describes and characterizes the
    view of Sociology”, 21, pp. 289-321.               homosexual gene of the drosophilia fly
Sloterdijk P. (2010) Devi cambiare la tua vita.        in the 1990s. In fact, man is believed to
    Sull’antropotecnica, Milano, Raffaello Corti-
    na Editore (orig.: Du mußt dein Leben
                                                       be the ultimate branch on the tree of
    ändern. Über Anthropotechnik, Frankfurt            life. The research hypothesis is that the
    am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009).                   “forebears” of our sexual behaviour
Todorov T. (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin. The Dialo-          patterns can be found in animals, bac-
    gical Principle, Minneapolis, The University
                                                       teria or flies. In its behaviour and in its
    of Minnesota Press (orig.: Mikhaïl Bakhtine.
    Le principe dialogique, Paris, Seuil, 1981).       genetic mutations, the fruit fly mani-
                                                       fests many intermediate stages between
                                                       hetero-and homosexuality. Above all,
                                                       it focuses on the laboratory manager,
                       ***                             Yamamoto, who evolves from being a
                                                       lover of insects (mushi mushi maniac)
                                                       according to the “naturalistic” culture
                                                       prevalent in Japan, and becomes a la-
                                                       boratory scientist in line with the more
                                                       “rational” western vision, without ever
                                                       losing his cultural identity.
134   BOOK REVIEWS



          The book opens with the film: Sex-        ingredient in its various forms and
      ual behaviour – Mechanisms and evolu-         shades. The book is a play on mirrors,
      tion – which Yamamoto made to allow           all the characters being observed
      us to observe both the heterosexual           through the eyes of the other charac-
      and fluctuating behaviour of the fly.         ters: only through comparison and
      Does nature communicate through the           analysis of the reciprocal differences
      images or is this the story as told by        can the characteristics of the various
      Yamamoto? He tells us about his dro-          actors emerge. The author goes on to
      sophila fly and we can see it, we watch       highlight the cultural changes deriving
      with him more than 30 scenes narrated         from the fact that in the research field
      by the author: all appears simple, evi-       of ethnologists, anthropologists and
      dent. In the visual tale, the story seems     sociologists of science, we find our-
      like a rosary of natural facts. The actors    selves in the presence of non-humans -
      in the film are the flies, which demon-       not only in the form of technologies
      strate both hetero and homosexual be-         and artifacts (according to the consoli-
      haviour. Then come the genes which            dated ANT tradition) but also in the
      embody these characteristics, then the        material form of other species, such as
      areas of the flies’ brains where these        scarab beetles and flies, and even cells,
      genes act. Then come Yamamoto and             molecules and genes which behave like
      his story, the researchers who work           active entities, repopulating the fields
      with him, the other laboratories, his         of inquiry in social sciences (Houdart
      centre collaborates with. The film, like      and Thiery 2011).
      the book, shows how nature and cul-               Sophie Houdart begins by telling
      ture are questioned. The “natural” his-       her personal story, that of a young
      tory of the drosophila becomes the            PhD student in social sciences who ar-
      “cultural” history of Yamamoto, his           rives in Japan to study in a laboratory
      laboratory, his successes and his prob-       which had become a talking-point in
      lems. The author moves ably from one          the West. The author gives a detailed,
      type of culture in practice to another:       very personal account of how she in-
      natural and mutant drosophila flies;          troduced herself into the laboratory
      types of genes (canoe, tamou, satori,         environment, how she integrated with
      fruitless, etc.); types of laboratory loca-   daily life in order to relate the group’s
      tion – Japan, Hawaii, France; types of        working modalities, silences, personal
      research practices – more interdipend-        pathways, their difficulties with the
      ent, more individualistic, more ration-       English language. The author speaks of
      al, more natural, more polyphonic, etc.       the professional pathway of the labora-
      In each difference, in each stage of the      tory manager, Yamamoto, a typically
      story, we see how the natural is trans-       Japanese story, yet exemplary in its
      formed, and how each distance or              singularity. As related to the ethnolo-
      nearness between the elements repre-          gist, the anthropologist, the sociologist
      sents a cultural experience.                  of science with the certain measure of
          Houdart’s book presents the tradi-        rhetoric which one might expect and
      tion of laboratory life competently and       forgive in a scientist, Yamamoto is first
      innovatively, ably adding the cultural        and foremost Japanese and then a re-
                                                            TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)          135



searcher, first a lover of insects and      field: how the foreign ethnologist from
then a scientist. The text guides the       a European culture arrives as a guest in
reader through the adventurous met-         Yamamoto’s laboratory, how Yama-
amorphosis of this naïf ethnologist         moto himself evolves from being a lov-
who loves the mountains and insects,        er of insects to scientist (after his long
transforming him into an almost West-       experience in the USA), and speaks of
ern scientist capable of producing          the differences between the Japanese
knowledge for articles in important in-     laboratory and the second Hawaiian
ternational science magazines.              laboratory set up by Yamamoto, high-
    She then tells of how Yamamoto          lighting the cultural differences be-
put together his team, how he set up        tween the two working teams. The
other laboratories, how he gradually        chapters in Part two introduce the an-
began to interact with Western col-         choring to nature through the dro-
leagues, how he maintained the modal-       sophila fly and its transformations in
ities of “naturalistic” knowledge which     the multiple court of natural mutants:
derived from his culture of origin. All     the court of miracles. In this part of
this took place within the socialization    the book, other cultural diversities en-
to western scientific culture with which    ter the picture. Through a particular
he needed to measure himself in order       modality of comparison, adopting dif-
to export the Japanese cultural systems     ferences rather than similarities, the au-
which through him had evolved into          thor tells of the modes of action exert-
something new.                              ed by humans on the drosophila. Two
    The insects from his mountain           laboratories, one in France in which
childhood lead him towards science.         Yamamoto develops his project on the
His love of nature, intrinsic to Japanese   drosophila and the Japanese laboratory
culture directs his footsteps towards       are compared. The two research expe-
rational science: from the mountain         riences, the two teams, act differently
butterfly to the laboratory drosophila,     when observing the drosophila’s be-
from natural to artificial adaptation.      havior, the diverse types of mutant flies
Yamamoto’s trip to Chicago does the         (either more or less heterosexual or
rest, making it necessary for him to ac-    more or less homosexual). Also in this
quire a posture, a conduct, a psychic       case nature is tested by cultures and
experience, a sense of perseverance, a      diversities, with the polyphonics and
disciplining of mind and body, as Fou-      multiple existences in the behavior pat-
cault (1975) would say, thus transform-     terns of humans and flies under exam-
ing him from collector into electro-        ination: the ethnologist widens his field
physiologist. In this transformation,       of observation populated by various
Yamamoto also becomes one who has           subjects and watches the researcher
to master other people, genes, flies,       who watches the drosophila, then
colleagues, as well as mastering him-       watches the drosophila itself through
self.                                       the researchers experiments and re-
    The book is divided into three          ports. What is questioned here is the
parts. The first narrates the cultural      relationship between local and univer-
transformations of the actors in the        sal, between specific research practices
136   BOOK REVIEWS



      and how these are represented recip-           References
      rocally as a part of more universal sci-
      entific practices: local is different in the   Foucault, M. (1975) Surveiller et punir. Nais-
      more general sense. In the third part,             sance de la prison, Editions Gallimard, Paris.
                                                     Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional Vision, “Amer-
      we are told that scientific practice is            ican Anthropologist”, 96 (3), pp. 606–633.
      above all social practice. Houdart de-         Houdart, S. and Thiery, O. (2011) Humains non
      scribes how Yamamoto exhibits his                  humains: comment repeupler le sciences so-
      charisma, his way of orchestrating the             ciales, Paris, La Découverte.
                                                     Kaiser, D. (2005) Pedagogy and the practice of
      events, his authority over the group
                                                         science: historical and contemporary perspec-
      and at the same time how order is es-              tives, London, The MIT Press.
      tablished within the laboratory, how           McCarthy Doyle, E. (1996) Knowledge as Cultu-
      objects are distributed in practical               re. The New Sociology of Knowledge, Lon-
      terms and how the human actors dom-                don-New York, Routledge.
      inate the others (the flies and genes) in
      the process. Yamamoto has produced
      his own practical pedagogy (Kaiser
      2005).
          In conclusion, it may be said that
      Houdart’s work is not a comparison,
      not a multi-situated ethnography, not a
      case study but rather all of these in
      part. It can certainly be said that it is
      rich in bibliography, rich in literary
      composition, wide-reaching in its nar-
      ration of the research field and compe-
      tent in its use of scientific terminology,
      accurate in its use of the many citations
      – from literature, philosophy, science -
      which open the chapters. It is a very
      French book in the certain sarcasm
      and recurring elegance which sustain
      the narrative. It is a book which cer-
      tainly continues along a pathway rich
      in possibilities in terms of the cultural
      studies of practices and knowledge,
      and which young academics (of social
      sciences, but also biologists, physicists,
      chemists, etc.) from the U.K., Italy,
      France, Japan, the U.S.A., Spain, etc.,
      ought to read to obtain a close-up of
      the lives of others (both human and
      non-), which are also theirs, and ours.
