Introduction: Launching a Labor History of Science

Abstract

This introduction to the Focus section “Let’s Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together” considers the need for and implications of a labor history of science. What would the broad contours of such an approach be? And what new insights, into both the past and the present, could be revealed? The contributions to this Focus section show how a labor history of science broadens our understanding of the practice and practitioners of science. They also use these historical narratives recursively, to reflect on the practice of doing history of science. And they suggest that we come up short in our obligations to the labor of our field’s past and present. This introduction offers a brief overview of the points of intersection between the fields of labor history and history of science and indicates where these intersections might be more profitably developed.