Friendship as a scientific method

Abstract

Friendships formed in the course of scientific research are common and should be foregrounded in discussions of how the sciences are done. Inspired by the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, I propose a ‘symmetrical’ analysis of friendships in both the social and natural sciences as a way of comparing knowledge-making practices. The research question that derives from this approach is: How are friendships with and between subjects generative of new forms of scientific knowledge and new types of relating? I provide an answer based on my experience of befriending a group of dendroclimatologists to whom I referred metaphorically as ‘my chimps’ in an analogy with the primatologist Jane Goodall’s affectionate relation with her research subjects. In my case, befriending dendroclimatologists involved cultivating a curiosity about each other’s research and worlds through different means. As a result, my work also came to matter to them and we produced it collaboratively. The instrumentalisation of friendships for the purpose of achieving a certain control and agreement with subjects and beings is, I argue, a normal aspect of knowledge formation, and should not be seen as unethical. If anything, befriending subjects promotes better research ethics as it generates a form of mutuality based on partial relatedness, constructive dissent and playfulness, rather than hybridity, totalising consensus and domination. Overall, my argument about friendship as a method in science seeks to criticise the ideal that isolation and indifference are at the heart of the way scientific knowledge, both social and natural, is and should be made.