%0 Journal Article
%T Friendship as a scientific method
%A Meritxell Ram¨ªrez-i-Oll¨¦
%J The Sociological Review
%@ 1467-954X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0038026119829760
%X 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
%K epistemology
%K friendship
%K methodology
%K science
%K sociology
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038026119829760