Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Sociological Study of a Social Movement at the Interface of Science and Religion

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Introduction This award supports doctoral dissertation research in the sociology of science on relations between science and religion. It shifts the focus of analysis away from longstanding controversies involving religion and science from courtroom battles and textbook-adoption squabbles to a new setting for exhibitions that opened in Kentucky in 2007. The researcher will examine this struggle for credibility and cultural authority in a new way, by focusing on the materialization of religious beliefs and in particular on the exhibition technologies used to legitimate those beliefs for visitors. This sociology of science case study draws on interviews with informants involved with the new setting, content analyses of pertinent primary documents and literatures, secondary media coverage, and on extensive field notes prepared during successive visits to the site. Intellectual Merit Science, Technology, and Society scholars have an enduring interest in sites of knowledge production, such as gentleman's houses, laboratories, field sites, courtrooms, and exhibition halls. Until now, exhibition halls have been examined primarily as places where the cultural authority of mainstream science is reproduced, not as places where scientific understandings are challenged. Science, Technology, and Society scholars have recently turned their attention to social movement organizations such as patient-rights advocacy groups and scientist-activists, but the increased understandings resulting from those studies have not yet been applied to a religious social-movement organization that seeks unequivocally to challenge scientific worldviews. This dissertation extends Science, Technology, and Society interests to sites of knowledge-production by asking how places such as museums get implicated in social movement organization efforts to secure credibility and legitimacy for beliefs widely denounced by mainstream science. Potential Broader Impacts Analyzing religious social-movement goals, tactics, and outcomes will shed light on how a movement that is marginalized by the scientific community can nevertheless have an impact on public understandings of science. The cultural authority of science is buttressed by a network of exhibition halls designed and built on the premise that scientific worldviews are "right." What are the consequences for popular opinions about science when a natural history museum uses similar displays and artifacts to convince visitors of the legitimacy of an alternative worldview? This project raises issues of considerable importance for science education policies and for the negotiation of epistemic plurality in the public sphere.