Scandinavian Journal of Management (2013) 29, 367—376

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It’s the body (that does it)! The production of

knowledge through body in scientific
learning practice
Assunta Viteritti *

Department of Social Science (DiSS), University of Rome ‘‘Sapienza’’, Via Salaria 113, 00198, Italy

KEYWORDS Summary The article focuses on the scientist’s body with the aim of analyzing how knowledge
Body; is produced by the body in scientific practice. This process is mediated by links and interactions
Learning; with the sociomaterial dimension of working practices and may be defined as a learning process.
Practice; The paper investigates how mastery of the body is produced, perceived, defined and narrated by
Science; researchers engaged in laboratory practice. The paper shows how the scientist’s corporeal
Sociomateriality; learning is gradual, the fruit of daily disciplining, and it is only through a process of embodiment
Knowledge that the body develops sensitive ability and expert competency. The article includes three
episodes of knowledge embodiment in the form of immersion in practice and ex-post reflection on
the practice itself.
# 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
This article investigates the process of the production of
knowledge through the body as a situated and sociomaterial
process. Combining a learning approach with the corporeal
turns in social sciences (Yakhlef, 2010), this article analyzes
the processes activated when researchers in the laboratory
acquire bodily expertise. Within the situated learning theory
(Gherardi, 2011; Lave & Wenger, 1991), the corporeal pro-
cesses in which the researchers’ bodies become expert occur
through a wealth of sociomaterial and intra-corporeal rela-
tionships with artifacts, and other bodies (such as those of
animals) involved in working practices. The scientists’ bodies
learn to adopt postures, gestures and particular manual skills
* Tel.: +39 06 49918442/3394212348.
E-mail addresses: assunta.viteritti@uniroma1.it,
assu.viteritti@gmail.com.
(Houdart, 2008; Viteritti, 2012), which are not merely pre-
conditions for the carrying out of experiments or practice
aids of secondary importance. On the contrary, the adoption
of these gestures and postures develops in practice through
daily familiarizing with the objects in the laboratory (Knorr
Cetina, 1999). In the article, three episodes of learning as
bodily knowing in practice are investigated. These episodes
are examples of embodied knowledge in the form of immer-
sion in practice and ex-post reflection on the practice itself.
The first episode narrates the bodily learning process of
researcher, who was observed while dissecting cell colonies
under the chemical hood, and may be defined as disciplined
immersion of the body in working practice. The practice
analyzed is an experimental technique in which the cells
are treated, conserved and multiplied. This technique
requires mastery, confidence, concentration and familiarity
with the tools of the practice, such as the stereomicroscope,
the cell lines and all the instruments necessary for dissection.
Eva’s whole body is involved in developing an expert profes-
sional vision (Goodwin, 1994) under the chemical hood. The

0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2013.09.002
368
two successive episodes narrate how two experts recall,
relive and relate their corporeal learning processes in writ-
ing. At my request, the two experts supplied me with a brief
narrative expressing the process of embodiment of knowl-
edge through a text that performs the re-writing of bodily
expertise by recalling learning episodes.
Theoretical background: the body in social
science
Social sciences have often reduced scientific research to the
institutes that carry it out and to a mere rational activity. The
result is a general displacement of the scientist’s body as
shaped by scientific practice (Bischur, 2011). In the last
decades, many studies have opposed this disembodiment
and marginalization of the body by placing it centre-stage
in social sciences. Although the studies focusing on the body
have not been central to social sciences, there are a number
of significant contributions to this subject. In anthropology
and in the essay Techniques of the Body by Mauss (1934),
there is nothing natural in the body, which is first and fore-
most a cultural product. In the author’s view, body techni-
ques have settled a series of learning procedures within the
body from time immemorial. Mauss believes that human
beings use their bodies as instruments and are engaged in
gesturing practices that shape the bodies that perform them.
Nevertheless, the idea of the body as an instrument fails to
take the other instruments with which it interacts into
sufficient consideration. From a sociological perspective,
Simmel (1998) was the first to speak of sensorial knowledge.
He observed how sensorial perception activates knowledge
processes, thus generating social texture. Successively, from
Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology perspective (1945), the
body becomes the centre of perception, part of the world:
every corporeal experience (seeing, hearing, touching, etc.)
provokes emotions. In the author’s view, the body represents
pre-social, pre-reflexive knowledge: it is firstly an instrument
of perception, then one of knowledge. The body theme is also
central to the works of Foucault (1975). In his analysis of total
institutions, the body is docile and disciplined by institutional
authority: it is induced to adopt the mandatory social pos-
tures that shape it. Goffman (1969) too considers the role of
corporeality to be relevant in social relationships. The body
becomes the principal vehicle for interaction in the social
context of daily life: gestures define exchange in social
situations. Post-modernist, feminist and queer studies (Fuss,
1991; Tretheway, 1999) gradually brought the body back into
the analysis of social practices, founding their reflections on
the consideration that it is the body that performs the
practice.
While social and organizational studies in the 20th century
had turned the body into a missing mass, contemporary
philosophical theories (Butler, 1993; Deleuze & Guattari,
1972; Foucault, 1975; Haraway, 1991) and then social
sciences (Crossley, 2001) and organizational studies (Hassard,
Holliday, & Willmott, 2000) have contributed to giving phy-
sical substance to the body. In this perspective, the body is no
longer opposed to the mind, it is not just an instrument, but
an actor that affects and is affected by practice, a learning
body which shapes itself (Crossley, 2004), a knowing body
socially constructed by its relationship with other material
A. Viteritti
entities. In the contemporary debate we witness what Yakh-
lef calls the corporeal turn (2010) in Sociology, which others
had previously referred to as embodied turn (Hassard et al.,
2000) or body turn (Bischur, 2011). This topic had already
been discussed by Biagioli (1995) in his study of the scientist’s
body and bodily skills: expert human bodies shape them-
selves symmetrically in their relationship with other material
objects.
One important source which inspire the work is Laboratory
Studies (Knorr Cetina, 1999; Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Latour,
1987; Pickering, 1992), which gave prominence to the role
played by artifacts and practice networks. In Latour’s view,
human beings establish a crucial and symmetrical relation-
ship with the objects and artifacts they use in practice.
Another source that inspires this paper is that of practice-
based studies, which developed starting from the practice-
turn in social sciences (Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003;
Schatzki, Knorr Cetina, & Von Savigny, 2001) and contributed
to renewing the conception of organization as a texture of
daily practices (Gherardi, 2006). From this viewpoint, knowl-
edge is situated, negotiated, emerging and embedded into
activities, and materiality (technologies, artifacts, tools) is
also a form of situated and distributed cognition (Hutchins,
1995). In practice-based studies, corporeity is constructed
and contributes to constructing working practices. Another
reference point for the aims of this study, also situated within
the framework of practice-based studies, is the situated
learning approach by Lave and Wenger (1991), who propose
a reinterpretation of the concept of learning, which is not to
be considered merely a consequence of teaching. Learning is
rather a social practice (Illeris, 2009). It is situated and takes
place through active participation in a community of practi-
tioners where activities, matter, space and time are shared.
It is through participation in practice that the intention of
learning is expressed and conscious abilities are learnt. These
perspectives are at the basis of the theoretical and empirical
reflections carried out in this article, which intends to cap-
ture the corporeal learning experience in the laboratory, a
place where knowledge is at its most malleable, fluid, tacit
(Collins, 2010; Polanyi, 1966) and sociomaterial (Orlikowski,
2007). Knowledge is not just a heritage that is accumulated
and diffused, the result of individual learning and teaching
processes, but, as we shall try to show here, is a social,
cultural practice (Bruni & Gherardi, 2007; Lahire &
Rosenthal, 2008; Nersessian, 2006), which is embodied, dis-
tributed and shaped collectively starting from the scientists’
spatial and temporal immersion in the world of material
practice. On observing the research inspired by ethnometho-
dology and symbolic interactionism, we can find different
examples regarding the body as a mediator of social learning.
A first example to be remembered is Sibum’s study on
brewers (1998). In it, the gestures and measuring done by
hand perpetuate a type of craftsmanship that has become
scientific and technical knowledge through the centuries.
Another example is a study by Becker (1963) on marijuana
users, who learn how to get high and how to recognize and
exploit the effects of substance usage through socialization
of the senses. The studies by Goodwin (2003) on sensorial
learning and professional vision are even more specifically
relevant. In all the examples that the author cites, he refers
to sensorial knowledge and how this is cultivated through
practice.
It’s the body (that does it)!
What happens, however, when the body investigated is
that of the scientist? Knorr Cetina (1999) highlights the
disappearance of the scientist’s body from science studies.
Two main factors have contributed to what Knorr Cetina
refers to as disembodiment, meaning by that the lack of
focus of science (but also of the studies on science) on the
body. The first is the massive adoption of technical instru-
ments into scientific practice. These have largely substituted
body functions up to the point where the scientist’s body
becomes a mere servant to the experimental machine. The
second is the gradual acceptance of the scientists themselves
underestimating the body as being merely a silent and docile
archive of experience and competency at the service of the
mind and its discoveries. The empirical research that is
presented in the following sections intends to bring the
scientist’s body back into scientific practice, following the
works of other authors, such as Biagioli (1995) and Bischur
(2011). Biagioli places the knowledge of the scientist’s body
in the domain of tacit knowledge and courtliness. Tradition-
ally, he says, the history and philosophy of science were
represented as disciplines dealing with the products of minds
rather than bodies. Slowly, this picture began to change, as a
result of the works of some philosophers of science, such as
Khun and Feyerabend, who started to consider science as an
experimental practice based on tacit knowledge. The con-
struction of scientific knowledge occurs in the connection
established in the laboratory between the scientists’ obser-
vations and the linguistic categories created and used to
name the physical world. Science is therefore seen as the
tacit result of their training and the gestalt they develop
through this process. This is particularly evident when we
analyze how young researchers engage in laboratory prac-
tices. Knowledge, in scientific practice, lies not in textbooks,
but in the successful replication of experiments. In this sense,
scientists perform science through the knowledge acquired
by the body. Bischur’s work also follows the same perspec-
tive, considering the body of the scientist at work not only as
an instrument but as a kind of archive of knowing. His
reflections are relevant to the purposes of this article for
another reason: Bischur’s study investigates the relationship
between the scientists’ bodies and those of the animals
utilized and sacrificed in the laboratory (Birke, 2012; Birke,
Arluke, & Michael, 2007; Lynch, 1988). This mutual corpore-
ality is taken into consideration in two of the episodes
presented in this article. Bischur’s work (and the stories I
collected in the field) shows how in scientific practice animals
and their bodies are transformed into scientific objects,
epistemic things, analytical animals, and this inevitably
raises some ethical issues. The above-mentioned studies
bring the body back to the centre of scientific practice,
considering it not as a subsidiary element but as a vehicle
for embodied and practical knowledge.
This article aims to move a step forward in this analytical
direction by showing how knowing and learning occurs and is
performed through the constant interconnection and articu-
lation with the social, technical and biotechnical materials of
practice.
Material and methods
Empirical research was carried out using ethnographical
methods (Atkinson, Coffey, Delamont, Lofland, & Lofland,
369
2001; Bruni, 2003; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Goodwin, 2003),
through observation, interviews, and personal accounts from
the scientists themselves. This paper forms part of a wider
study carried out in a leading Italian research laboratory
active in the field of stem cell research applied to disorders
of the brain, in particular Huntington’s disease. Stem cell
research, which is the core scientific interest in the labora-
tory under examination, is a relatively new field and has
enjoyed controversial success (Franklin, 2005). It is, how-
ever, still a developing sector which is extremely competi-
tive, ethically delicate and of major importance in social and
scientific debate, due to the scenarios it opens up and its
potential developments in the biomedical field. I conducted
semi-structured interviews, attended meetings, seminars,
working round-tables: I observed people at work, at the
microscope, under the chemical hood, at the computer. I
watched them write up their logbooks, while they were
taking notes, preparing presentations, working together
and coordinating their activities, talking amongst themselves
in the corridors or in the presence of an unexpected, surpris-
ing or disappointing result. I attempted to follow the shop
work and shop talk activities referred to by Lynch (1985)
closely. These are activities that distill daily practices and
render them particular from a social and material viewpoint.
Gradually, the researchers began to ponder with me how one
learns through working practice, and started to consider
themselves not only to be working heads in experimental
practice, but also rediscovered the importance of their
hands, eyes, bodies, touch, posture and sight. Then, when
I decided to write about body learning, I reflected that it
would be possible to have the researchers take part in the
stories I wanted to relate. The three following episodes aim
to accompany the body as it learns through sociomaterial
practices, and were collected by different means: through
observation, photos, interviews and brief personal accounts
in the form of episodes written by the researchers them-
selves. The episodes try to provide a thick description
(Geertz, 1973) of how the sensitivity of the researcher’s
body is refined, focusing on some specific moments of prac-
tice: working postures (e.g. at the bench or under the
chemical hood), using technological devices, taking care of
biotechnological partners (such as cells, for example), learn-
ing to observe the various cell cultures (embryonic, cerebral,
human and animal) through the microscope, learning to
perceive through touch when working with transgenic ani-
mals, etc. The gradual way in which the researchers learn
through the above-mentioned practices matches that of the
process where knowledge is embodied. He or she has accu-
mulated knowledge that has become tacit, but can be
socially transmitted working side by side professionally. In
the first of the three accounts, that of Eva, a particularly
delicate and stressful practice is described — dissecting the
colonies of stem cells. This allowed Eva to develop a certain
corporeal mastery in the tacit sense. In the other two stories
we find Elisa and Luca, two laboratory researchers who writes
short narratives on how their bodies learnt to stay in a
laboratory. I asked two expert researchers to re-evoke and
relate brief episodes of embodied knowledge in writing,
enrolling them as my partners in observation. My reason
for adopting this method was that self-narrative places
corporeal experience centre-stage, and tells the story of a
body that learns through practice. Both kinds of stories tell of
370
bodies that have learned how to discipline themselves and
are now able to demonstrate their practical competence.
These episodes are given as examples of reflection on the
action by bringing the reflection in at the end, and therefore
the texts elaborated are meant to be taken as post hoc
reflexive practice (Czarniawska, 2009).
The body’s immersion in sociomaterial
practice: Eva dissects human embryonic
stem cell lines under the chemical hood
One day I decide to observe Eva as she prepares to work under
the hood in order to dissect the colonies of human stem cells.
I have often observed researchers under the chemical hood,
working with human or animal stem cells in the laboratory. I
have learnt to recognize the delicacy involved in this activity,
due to their particular concentration and attention to pos-
ture and because they prepare their field of action with such
care. They work in sterile conditions under the chemical hood
and carry out diverse functions, which must be carefully
protected from any risk of contamination. The episode of
Eva shows how the learning process, which consists in the
acquisition and mastery of techniques through the body, is a
sociomaterial practice. Eva and the materials she is in con-
tact with are interdependent and this is what Koschmann, Le
Baron, Goodwin, and Feltovich (2011) call ‘‘a simple matter
of trust’’ i.e. the embodiment of expert knowledge consists
in learning how to establish a relationship of trust with the
material field of practice. By now, Eva is not a novice: she has
gained some practical experience. She no longer needs a
tutor, someone who checks the time she takes, indicates the
various steps, corrects her mistakes, describes and explains
how to carry out actions and also their expected results,
constantly by her side. She is able to coordinate her gestures
and postures, identify and utilize instruments, follow proce-
dures, adapt a protocol or write up a result. Eva is able to
operate with a certain degree of self-sufficiency within the
socio-material confines of the laboratory, and has accumu-
lated greater experience. She has developed sensorial
experience and is capable of controlling her field of action
with greater dexterity. Eva is now self-sufficient and must
face the task of dissecting the colonies of stem cells under
the chemical hood, all alone with only her body and her
senses. Eva is skillful in facing a particularly stressful situa-
tion and controlling her body in the course of the events.
Under the chemical hood, the cells are plated, filtered,
dissected (in order to favor the growth of new colonies)
and the processes of cellular characterization, proliferation,
multiplication and differentiation begin. When operating
under the chemical hood, the researchers need to monitor
the timing carefully (from reserving the hood itself to plan-
ning the work and managing the time available). Under the
hood, the temporization of events becomes fundamental and
no time can be wasted, especially as when the cells are
removed from the incubator and taken under the hood, they
are subjected to particular environmental stress. For this
reason, once the cells are under the hood work must never be
interrupted and must proceed swiftly. This is an extremely
delicate activity, which requires both concentration and
dexterity. The researcher who is about to work under the
chemical hood must dress carefully. Gloves must be worn and
A. Viteritti
hands and instruments must be treated with alcohol con-
tinuously. This job is entrusted to people who already have a
certain degree of manual dexterity and who know how to
manage the rapid succession of events and any possible
unexpected occurrences. It is an extremely delicate task
for two reasons. The first is due to cost — cell lines are very
expensive, and in this case we are dealing with human
embryonic stem cell lines, which cannot be produced in Italy
and therefore must be purchased abroad. The second is that
if the lines are not correctly dissected, they become useless
or damaged, and this reflects also on the timing for the
development of the experiments. Cell dissection is not a
relevant activity, but just part of the routine. However, it
requires mature ability as the cells are fundamental partners
in laboratory work, and need to be dissected well in order to
perform well. Dissecting human embryonic cells means being
capable of keeping them in culture, keeping them alive,
making them reproduce without differentiating: in short,
knowing how to look after them. If one knows how to do
this, one has already developed the ability to handle cellular
material and has acquired a certain experience. On various
occasions alongside researchers in cell chambers, I have
heard comments such as ‘‘Look, these are fine, look how
they adhere well’’ or ‘‘No, these are worse, look how small
and separated they are’’. Essentially, a researcher working
under the chemical hood can evaluate the health of the cells
by looking in the microscope, but is also capable of evaluating
a whole series of parameters which cause him or her to say
‘‘Look, these are growing well, they’re multiplying well’’
with the naked eye. Knowing how to see how the cells are
cannot be learnt by oneself, but only by observing with
others, both with the naked eye and the help of the micro-
scope, aided by the glance and the advice of others.
This skill forms part of the professional vision training
referred to by (Goodwin, 1994), and acquiring it is a slow,
highly sensitive and always participatory process. As men-
tioned previously, it is a routine operation, but one that
requires great concentration and total discipline of the body
involved in the operation, because if the cells are not dis-
sected properly, they will die. I ask if I can stay alongside her,
take some photos and film her at work and she agrees.
She prepares herself for working under the chemical hood:
she dons gloves, cleans the workbench with alcohol and
meticulously lays out all the necessary items under the hood
as once the work begins she will not be able to move away
from the sterile conditions under it without running the risk
of contaminating the cells. Stereomicroscopic technology is
used for viewing and dissecting under the chemical hood: a
special microscope allows the researcher to observe the
biological material in 3D. To do this, Eva positions her eyes
in correspondence with an opening in the glass of the hood. To
better explain how the use of the stereomicroscope is learnt,
I let Eva speak of the difficulties she experienced.
‘‘The stereomicroscope is shaped anatomically, but with it
you see an image that you should see vertically, because
you’re looking at it from above, horizontally. When you’re
working with it, you’re caught on the hop because you’re
looking at something below you, but you see it in front of
you, and you’re moving your hands in relation to a thing
you’re not looking at with your eyes but rather through
binoculars, so it’s really difficult because you regulate the
It’s the body (that does it)!
movement of your hands much better by touching an
object you can see with the naked eye: you know how
to move and the capacity for precision that your hands
have. On the other hand, in these focuses you start to
understand that your hands have to move absolutely
imperceptibly, but that movement in your plate, through
binoculars, through the oculars, becomes a huge move-
ment (. . .). Inside the colony, which is quite round, you
draw a grid with a needle point and then you take each
tiny piece of the grid and put it on a new plate. When you
do this, the movement of your hand is infinitesimal but
when you observe that movement, which can’t be seen by
the naked eye, through the stereomicroscope, it’s huge.
To trace the grid inside the colony, you have to make
parallel lines intersected with perpendicular ones. The
movement is inexistent, you move your hand so gently but
decidedly in an instant and almost imperceptibly, but
when you look through the stereomicroscope and see
the line you traced, it’s so precise! You need to coordinate
your vision to the movement you have to make’’.
The relationship with the stereomicroscope makes a kind
of sensorial readjustment necessary. The process of embody-
ing the use of the instrument requires not only that the
microscope become a kind of extension or prolongation of
the expert’s vision, but also requires a re-articulation of the
link between vision, hand and artifacts (e.g. the chemical
hood, the microscope, the cells, the needle, the plate), as
that which is below is seen from above, that which is tiny
becomes large. Thus Eva’s body re-orients itself, and her
gestures, postures and movements are spatially reorganized
to achieve a new order where the relationships between the
artifacts and the body become linked. In daily working
practices, the use of the instruments becomes embodied
through mediation with the artifacts. The technologies that
come into play are not mere prostheses which extend and
amplify the perceptive functions, but require new articula-
tion, a learning process of new corporeal functions. Let us
follow closely how this process of perceptive re-articulation
between the microscope, the biotechnological object — the
cells — and the corporeal functions occurs under the chemical
hood. Eva takes the plate with the cells from the incubator,
places it under the chemical hood and, before sitting down,
tells me:
‘‘(. . .) please stay, but I have to ask you something, I’d
rather you didn’t ask me any more questions now, look on
if you like, watch what I’m doing up close, but I have to
concentrate hard and I won’t be able to answer any
questions. I have to be very careful, I’ll almost have to
try not to breathe, for what I’m about to do I have to stay
almost motionless’’.
I therefore position myself alongside her, trying not to
cause any obstruction. I can see her hands under the chemical
hood, the cell container and how she positions herself for
using the stereomicroscope. Eva sits at the hood, back
straight, almost rigid, and leans forward slightly. The whole
operation is carried out adopting this posture, with her arms
up to the elbows under the sterile hood. She positions her
eyes on the oculars and with her hands manages the plate
with the cells on the microscope base. She holds the little
plate with six small wells in her left hand, while in her right
371
she has a very fine needle extracted from a sealed plastic
envelope, which she uses for dissecting, and which she later
tells me will appear ‘‘big as a very sharp knife’’. In her
outstretched position, Eva is concentrated and evidently
under pressure, it seems that she doesn’t use only her hands,
her eyes and the stereomicroscope to dissect the cells, but
rather her whole body. She is completely immersed in her
vision at the stereomicroscope, looking ahead at what she
really has beneath her. Under the lenses, her hands now
appear gigantic, the needle big. The cell colonies, invisible to
the naked eye, are a population she knows well because she
has seen them so often and knows how to deal with them, and
to her eyes they now appear distinct and clearly visible. Eva
knows she has to be extremely careful with the cells, which
are faithful and constant partners in the operation and a
guarantee of success in differentiation experiments. Out-
stretched, silent, holding her breath, rapidly coordinating
her eyes, her hands, the artifact, the cells and the space
under the hood, Eva has disciplined her corporeal coordina-
tion in the sociomaterial space. The procedure, which neces-
sitated a re-articulation of some of her body’s perceptions, is
not merely cognitive. Certainly, Eva has had to learn to use
the protocols, the specific procedures, the measurements.
Dissecting the cells, however, is in the first place a perceptive
task and it was necessary for her to develop corporeal
mastery of the specific environment. To the ethnographer’s
eyes, the ability demonstrated by Eva in re-articulating her
corporeal functions in order to mediate with the artifacts is
clear evidence of a knowing that has become embodied. This
activity should not be considered an individual task, rather it
is a collective practice, part of a professional knowledge. Eva
has learnt this working practice from others and will in turn
teach others the type of practical activities that must be
shared, transferred and learnt. In fact, she flanks two PhD
students who are learning from her how to treat stem cells
and all the methodologies that go with them. The knowledge
of these practices is not in Eva’s head, but is produced and
acquired by her body through interaction with the socio-
material world. It is not her eye, or her hand, or the needle
that dissects, but the interconnection between all the cog-
nitive, social, corporeal and material events in the field.
Embodying the uses of artifacts in a disciplined way produces
an ability, which allows Eva to feel no distinction between her
body and the artifacts themselves. Eva’s hands become more
certain, her perceptive spectrum and instrumental manip-
ulation are incremented, resulting in a more extensive cor-
poreal competency distributed throughout the space in
which the body is operating. The embodiment of distributed
knowledge in the social and material field of practice
requires the body to be re-articulated in order to acquire
what Knorr Cetina (1999) has named the golden touch, that
ability of knowing how to touch and handle the events with
which you are interacting effectively. The body in the labora-
tory seeks trust, and in doing so anticipates that which it
cannot yet know fully. It is involved in a kind of athletic work
made up of postures, which are sometimes taught, some-
times improvised, experimented and learnt. Eva’s sensitive
body moves autonomously, but is still afflicted by fears and
wonderings. She experiments the dexterity of the senses
(touch, sight, hand), and in doing so one can glimpse the
tension between an emerging creativity, fruit of mastering
practice, and the necessary disciplining of the body. The
372
expert’s experience becomes progressively more profound
and the body more skilled.
The episode of Eva shows a scientist at work while she uses
her body not only as an instrument but also as a resource for
knowing-in-practice. In this sense, the body is an integral
part of a situated practice and it is a knowledgeable body
trained by learning postures, gestures and professional
visions, which are essential part of the scientific practice.
Fully immersed in practice, the body is therefore shaped by
its relationship with the technical and biotechnological
materials in the laboratory (chemical hood, stereomicro-
scope, cells, etc.). Objects are partners in laboratory work,
and are subject to training: together in their relationships,
they show their shared expertise in the space and time of
practice.
Bodily learning and self-reflectivity: Elisa,
Luca and the animal bodies
The following two episodes are further examples of how
scientists learn through their bodies. To investigate this
bodily learning I used a self-reflection methodology and
asked the scientists to describe the process of learning
embodiment. I asked the two researchers to write a brief
account of episodes, which evoked a description of their
learning through the body. Thanks to the relationship of trust,
which had built up over the observation period, this request
did not sound weird or inappropriate to them. The two
researchers immediately agreed to write their stories in
response to the question: do you remember when you first
had the feeling that your body had gained mastery of labora-
tory practice? Can you recall a specific episode that illus-
trates this process? Researchers were asked to adopt a post
hoc reflexive perspective to re-evoke and relate brief epi-
sodes of embodied knowledge in writing (Pullen, 2006). Two
issues arose from the analysis of the texts produced by them:
(1) The postures and words used to describe the process of
learning through the body are ‘‘gendered’’ (I will elaborate
further on this point at the end of this section); (2) Both
choose to recount an episode centered on their body in
relation to laboratory animals.
In the laboratory, Elisa deals with transgenic animals
(mainly mice and guinea pigs), which are used for transplants
when cellular differentiation processes have to be verified,
or for testing or checking neural development processes in
mice affected by Huntingdon’s disease. Elisa works daily in
the pound, where the animals live and where she raises and
takes care of them, and in the laboratory, where she exam-
ines tissue samples from the animals and supports the work of
the other researchers. She is renowned in the laboratory for
being able to ‘‘get her hands round things’’ (an expression I
heard her colleagues use several times) and in fact she
described how she learnt to ‘‘palpate’’ a pregnant female
mouse from which embryos could be extracted. This is her
story.
‘‘This technique is used when embryos at a very preco-
cious gestational stage are needed, or it’s used to try and
evaluate the precise gestational age. When I started to
work with mice, I was doing my thesis in a Developmental
Biology laboratory where working with mouse embryos
A. Viteritti
was a daily occurrence. After a few months, I was assigned
to two lines of transgenic mice and had to study the
formation of certain neuronal populations in the course
of their development. These populations are generated at
a very early stage, after only 9.5 days of embryonic
development, and at that stage a mouse embryo is about
half the size of a cherry pit! So I had to have the mice
mate, and take the embryos starting from 9.5 up to birth. I
started to collect pregnant females from both lines, and
not knowing how to palpate, a lot of those I sacrificed
didn’t have embryos. . . I felt really cruel, sacrificing
animals uselessly. I began to ask how I could tell, with a
degree of certainty, whether a female was pregnant or
not. They told me I could use the palpating technique. . .
but it was difficult to recognize the presence of embryos
at such an early stage: however I could try. It’s done by
touching the area of the belly of the pregnant female that
corresponds to the uterus with the thumb and index finger.
In particular, the index finger is positioned on the belly and
the thumb on the back, in correspondence with each
other. They told me that if there were embryos, I would
feel a series of little balls under my fingers. . . one after
another, a bit like a pearl necklace. Obviously, the animal
isn’t happy about it, so the first few times I didn’t even
manage to hold it, never mind keep it still. I therefore
learnt to immobilize it, wait till it relaxed and then I
started to understand how to palpate it. Once, when I
began palpate. . . I noticed something that seemed like a
sphere, I sacrificed the female. . . but no embryos. . . prob-
ably they were the kidneys! In truth, there was no neck-
lace-type formation. . . Anyway, I repeated the
experiment, this time concentrating on feeling for the
necklace. . . it was there, I could feel it. . . so I sacrificed the
female. . . but there were no embryos. . . probably in this
case it was feces. I realized that the pressure I exerted
when I palpated should be less penetrating, more exter-
nal. I repeated the experiment, palpating a female for
15 minutes and using a non-pregnant female as a control
mechanism. . . I memorized the shape and the position of
the kidneys in the control, then I tried to memorize the
form and above all the size of the feces. . . I went back to
the supposedly pregnant female, there were some little
spheres, rounder and more external than the kidneys, and
there were lots of them. . . hoping I wasn’t making another
mistake, I sacrificed the female. . . there were embryos, 13
to be exact! I kept them as a souvenir for a few months,
stored at 4 8C. . . from that day on, I can say that I’ve learnt
how to palpate a pregnant female mouse without making a
mistake (well, hardly ever. . .)’’.
Elisa’s story tells of touch. The sensitive body learns to
feel, perceive, accumulate memories, compare sensitivity,
make mistakes and then new attempts. Elisa re-learns her
sensitivity at work, in her writing she re-evokes the practice,
the ability to modulate and correct gestures. In her account,
Elisa terms pressure the capacity for prehension (Bessy &
Chateauraynaud, 1995). Through her new bodily capacity,
she matured the perceptive experience: then she it related in
her text, not forgetting to include the mistakes that show
how she achieved competency of touch. The body kept her on
the alert. Elisa palpated, touched, grasped the object in
order to reach a judgment. Her text shows us how she used
It’s the body (that does it)!
her body, holding the object at a distance. In her account,
Elisa preserved the memory of her previous experiences,
which allowed her to reutilize that knowledge in other
situations. Elisa’s knowledge of the hands was acquired
through time and experience: it is social, as the idea of that
certain prehension as competence to be matured comes from
external suggestions which she had to embody into her
personal capacity for pressure. Her discipline of the body
and dexterity of touch are the result of this process, in which
she had to find her own perceptive pathway, act creatively
and in a formative way in order to reach a judgment and a
result. In relating her tactile competence, Elisa has rendered
it explicit, recognizable and communicable.
Luca is one of the senior researchers in the laboratory.
Many times, I have observed Luca working at the bench with
the people he coordinates, in meetings and seminars, in
lessons and have had several interviews with him. Luca is
keen for me to understand what they do in the laboratory,
and tries to keep me informed of any developments in the
research or any expected or disappointing results. During one
of my visits to the laboratory I see Luca busy at the micro-
scope. I realize that he is involved in a long and painstaking
job — the dissection (or sample-taking) of nerve tissue from
mouse embryos at the 12th—14th day of embryonic devel-
opment. As I watch, I decide to ask him to write of how he
learnt this procedure. He gave me this account two days
later.
‘‘Dissection is used to take samples of specific embryonic
tissues or organs in order to study them. It’s a difficult
procedure, and getting the embryos requires us to sacri-
fice the mouse. At this stage, the embryos are very small
and situated in line one after another in the uterine tube,
just like the beads of a rosary. Their dimensions are very
much reduced, and the dissection is carried out using a
dissecting microscope in order to amplify the image, and
special dissecting tweezers with very fine, sharp-pointed
ends for moving and cutting the tissue precisely. The first
time I carried out this procedure was when I was a student
about 16 years ago, after only a few months’ experience in
the laboratory. I remembered having seen this operation
done two or three times, and previously I had only done
some of the preliminary steps such as sacrificing the
animal (the worst part in the whole procedure) and
recuperating the uteri with the embryos inside. I had also
attempted to free the embryos from the muscular tissue
of the uterus and the vitelline sac. I remember how the
first time I was fascinated by how similar they were to
human ones, just like I’d seen in textbooks, with all the
main parts (head, paws, tail, heart, liver, spinal cord,
eyes) already formed. It was a strange sensation, which I
however tried to ‘‘rationalize’’ right away. Those animals
and embryos were there for a precise scope: that is,
because they were necessary for the experiments, other-
wise they would never have existed. Before beginning, the
person I was doing the experiment with the first time
showed me the procedure using sketched diagrams. The
first time, the most difficult part is coordinating your
movements so that they follow the micro-movements
under the microscope without being too much or too
clumsy, and consequently destroying the embryo and
the tissue. Furthermore, a lot of time is wasted in placing
373
your body and neck (which is, in fact, extremely rigid) in
the correct position, your eyes on the microscope and your
arms and hands with the tweezers under it. That first
time, in fact, I managed to take a sample of the area of the
brain I wanted (the striate) only with the 4th or 5th
embryo. Naturally it took me ages and most times I ruined
the embryo. It must be said that at the beginning you can
lose your coordination very easily, and above all find
yourself in difficulty searching for the tissue, as the
embryo is reduced to such a ‘‘pulp’’ that it’s hard to
distinguish the brain from the other parts. After a few
weeks I tried again, but beforehand I got out the sketches
and looked at the textbook illustrations regarding the
positioning of the different areas of the brain in mouse
embryos at the developmental stage in question, so that I
could find reference points that could help me in orienting
myself under the microscope. I immediately noted that I
had acquired greater familiarity, I could pinpoint the parts
I had seen in the textbook illustrations under the micro-
scope. My movements were more confident, and I made
fewer unnecessary ones. I managed to hold the embryo
still with one pair of tweezers and with another pair cut
into the area in question to free the brain. After that, I
held the brain firmly with one pair of tweezers and with
the other I cut away and removed the striate, freeing it
from pieces of adjacent tissue. I found myself more at
ease, and although my movements were still rather slow,
they were more precise compared to the previous time.
This second time I managed to recuperate the cerebral
striate of about 6 samples out of ten. On the following
occasion, my rapidity, coordination and precision im-
proved even more’’.
The expert’s story begins far from the body, which
appears only afterwards and remains in the background.
At the beginning of the story, the body is almost an impedi-
ment, something that makes the researcher waste time. The
most difficult thing is coordinating with the material ele-
ments, supporting the micro-movements of the body under
the microscope. Luca finds himself in the same situation as
Eva: he has to re-articulate the corporeal functions that are
to connect with the biological material — the artifacts
(tweezers and microscope), the eyes on the microscope
and arms and hands with the tweezers under it — and
notwithstanding all this, ‘‘the neck always stays rigid’’. Luca
illustrates all the difficulties in composing the socio-mate-
rial events through his self-perceptive experience. His body
does not appear to respond — it is rigid, and at first the
artifacts seem to be alienating elements. However, codified
knowledge come to his aid, and when Luca recognizes how
those biological elements (head, paws, tail, heart, liver. . .)
were ‘‘just like I had seen in textbooks’’ he is able to
rationalize his ‘‘strange sensation’’. These animals are
raised for this purpose: their bodies are transformed into
scientific objects. There are no practices or rituals in the
sacrifice in question, but a sequences of procedures through
which the animal’s body is transformed into an abstract
analytical object capable of generating meaning for the
members of the group (Lynch, 1988). This sacrifice trans-
forms the animal’s body into a scientific object. To Luca, the
little embryos seem like rosary beads, while to Elisa, a pearl
necklace. The story gives us a close-up of the fatigue that
374
disciplining and incorporating knowledge involves (Yakhlef,
2010). Luca has reread his story several times, making some
little changes as he was struck by how it might risk appearing
‘‘too crude’’. He re-perceived his body and almost became
shy about it, wanting to be sure that the mind were free of
‘‘strange sensations’’. In his account, Luca veers between
abstract and embodied knowledge, and comes down in favor
of the latter.
In both episodes, the learning process is narrated as a
bodily interaction of scientists and animals. Natural animals
are turned into analytical animals (Birke, 2012; Bischur,
2011; Lynch, 1988), they are exhibited as artifacts produced
by human intervention and transformed into scientific
objects. In both accounts, the researchers distance them-
selves from the animals, which are objectified as products of
the experimental process. Sacrificed animals thus become
investigative tools to be treated with the care reserved for
the most valuable objects. In the laboratory, working with
animal bodies is certainly an extraordinary practice that is
delegated to particularly expert researchers able to perform
this abstraction process from bodies to tissues, cells and any
other element that will be treated in experimental practice
and transformed into research data, diagrams and results.
Scientists, says Bischur (p. 426), turn mutilated bodies into
mathematical data, photographs, fragments of tissue. In
doing so, they distance themselves from the ethical issues
posed by the use of animals. It is a process of the scientific
objectification of animal bodies, which transforms them
into scientific models. ‘‘Indeed, perhaps the only tombstone
for all these animals, their only epitaph, is the mountain
of knowledge we call biomedical science’’ (Birke, 2012,
p. 173).
Discussion and conclusions
The aim of the article is to question the disembodiment of
science as the researchers’ bodies learn from daily working
practice, together with others and in strict interconnection
with the objects and materiality from which they learn. Two
processes are investigated through the stories collected in
the fieldwork. The first is the embodiment of practical knowl-
edge as immersion in and with the socio-materiality of work
practices, a process in which the knowing body is both the
object and subject of learning. The second process analyzed
is the self-reflection of the expert body, which re-evokes and
relates the bodily learning process in relation to social,
technical, bio-technological and animal materiality in the
laboratory. In both processes investigated emerges that
the learning occurs through the relationship between
the body, the social and material space of laboratory prac-
tices, and is formed within circuits of perceptive immersion
and reflection.
The scientist’s corporeal learning is gradual, the fruit
of daily disciplining, and it is only through a process of
embodiment that the body develops sensitive ability and
expert competency. As the scientists’ narratives show,
having a body (or better, being a body) means learning
the effects produced by the expert connection with other
entities, both human and non-human. The body becomes
expert in scientific practice only if it engages in this kind
of sociomaterial learning, which is attached to events in
A. Viteritti
an inter-objectual and inter-subjective space. The learn-
ing process, which is enduring and endless (both for
novices and seniors), consists in this progressive, and also
problematic, process of embodiment. Bodies and objects
are partners, they are trained to exhibit their shared
learning experience in the space and time of laboratory
practice. In the scientist’s body, this experience takes the
form of bodily skills. The working practice in which the
bodies are immersed is therefore a vital experience
stretched between forms of disciplining, as well as a
creative experience. In the laboratory, the bodies are
disciplined through action, they become docile in order
to connect and articulate with the objectuality of acting.
The workspace imposes posture formation, and the body is
thus transformed and perfected constantly and meticu-
lously. Discipline of acting increases the body’s power, and
this power is expressed in tiny things, details, in that
which Foucault calls day-to-day mysticism (1975). As we
saw in the stories, practice imposes a corpus of rules,
prescriptions, coded knowledge inscribed in the materi-
ality of the objects and bodies, which become expert and
competent as well as disciplined. Training practice is
invention in acting, and is always a specific method of
doing that particular activity and a disciplined and
detailed action that is also creative. The corporeal experi-
ence is at the outset vital and perceptive, as the body is
still enacted in its immersion in the world of measure-
ments, postures, control of the senses, space governed by
time, but the sensitive competency is already evident
even in the little episodes of clumsiness and insecurity
we can note. Learning, daily discovery, means the appro-
priation of perceptions, of the sensitive expertise of the
hands: it is the embodiment of materiality.
Scientific work inscribes and forms professional knowl-
edge, language and identities that are exhibited in corporeal
expertise. In the adoption of skilled postures, scientific
knowledge is enacted as craft practice (Gamble, 2004; Sen-
net, 2008), continuous do-it-yourself, whose focus goes from
the standards and aesthetic aspects of the action to manual
abilities, creative intelligence and interpretative capacity;
from the necessity of recognizing and sticking to routines to
the necessary situated adaptations (to protocols, methodol-
ogies, artifacts) and the formative ability which addresses
itself continuously to knowledge yet unknown. In this way, a
dual relationship between shaping the body and shaping
knowledge is implemented. Day after day, in the expert body
— the hands, the glance, the movements of the trunk, the
posture, the flourish, the tense and uncertain expression,
both concentrated and absorbed — embodied knowledge, the
daily knowledge of the scientist at work is inscribed and
subsides. Practice — the regularity impressed upon the com-
petencies exhibited by people and embodied into routine
daily activities — binds bodies and materiality together in
expert embodiment.
The scientist’s body, as described by the gradualness of
learning in the stories presented, is therefore operated and
immersed in its practice. It acquires experience continuously
from the objects it works with and is linked to, re-articulating
its functions in this link with the artifacts. It is capable of self-
perception and reflexive self-narration. From this new view-
point, practices are embodied and learning — acquiring
gradual, practical expertise — is produced by the body’s
It’s the body (that does it)!
effort in the course of this action, through daily immersion in
the socio-material learning environment. In this sense, the
learning process is always unfinished, because laboratory
practice, even in its routine operations, is made up of
repetitions but is also open to modifications and variations
which require a docile, perceptive, concentrated body, able
to coordinate itself with the material world and continuously
question the role of objects. In this direction, the expert
embodiment of practical knowledge is always an unfinished
and never-ending sociomaterial process.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Silvia Gherardi who had the courtesy,
and I hope also the pleasure, to read and discuss the different
versions of this article with me. I would also like to thank all
the researchers of the Cattaneo laboratory for their avail-
ability and interest in my ethnographic work.
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