How chemo-ethnography puts chemistry in context

Social scientists have historically neglected thinking about chemistry, according to human geographer Andrew Barry from University College London in the UK: ‘[They] have been amazingly oblivious to the significance of chemistry in the economy and society of the 20th and 21st century’. But this is starting to change.

For many chemists, social science disciplines like anthropology, geography and science and technology studies may seem a world away from day to day work at the bench. But engaging with other disciplines to explore the impact of chemistry can provide a wider context for what goes on in the lab.

In anthropology, a new generation of researchers have started to explore how chemistry has changed not only the physical environment, but the experience of being human itself. The emerging subfield of chemo-ethnography was proposed by American anthropologists and environmental researchers Eben Kirksey and Nicholas Shapiro in 2017. Ethnography is the observational research method used by anthropologists to study human culture; chemo-ethnography studies how chemistry impacts this culture.