Stephen Hilgartner

The Human Genome Project (HGP) entailed building new kinds of facilities capable of mapping and sequencing on an unprecedented scale. I choose the word facilities carefully; for much was at stake in deciding how to describe these new entities and position them in relation to extant categories. As these facilities emerged and grew, genome scientists, critics of the HGP, policy makers, and others used a variety of formulations to characterize what these facilities were, would be, or had become. Often, they deployed concepts associated with the “factory” to compare and contrast these facilities with more familiar places, such as the “ordinary” molecular biology “laboratory.” These discursive moves were ubiquitous in scientific meetings, in science policy discussions, and in the genome facilities themselves. Laboratory/factory discourse, clearly a form of boundary work, offered a means to define the nature of the tasks, people, products, and research programs associated with genomics. This paper analyzes the use of this discourse for specifying, and at times contesting, the nature of genome research, the identities of the people involved, and the proper shape of regimes for managing it .