Technology, magic, anthropology, Cambodia

‘Technoscientific practices rely on their own kind of magic, such as translating ultrasound signals into the language of pregnant women, or data points into definitive outcomes.’ In her chapter, ‘Science and a little bit of magic’, Lynn Morgan writes that scientific knowledge and technologies of reproduction involve notions of magic and ‘irrationality’ – qualities for which other knowledge practices are disparaged – in addition to their more public qualities of rationality and objectivity.