STRUCTURE AND PRACTICE IN THE CULTURAL IDENTITIES OF SCIENTISTS: NEGOTIATING NUCLEAR WASTES IN NEW MEXICO

The cultural status ofscientists in contemporary American society is both elite and insecure. Although science commands authority as the cultural source of knowledge about "nature," individual scientists must struggle to achieve and maintain "credibility." This ethnographic study examines the strategies ofparticipants in a public dispute over nuclear waste disposal as they negotiated the credibility ofcompeting scientists. I advance the theoretical concept of cultural identity to show how the credibility of scientists in the public domain is at once a culturally-structured and a contextually-variable phenomenon. It may prove fruitful to view cultural identity more generally as a mediating concept between cultural structures and actors' practices. [cultural analysis, American culture, anthropolbgy of science, ideology, nuclear waste]