Kjøkken og laboratorium

Noen betraktninger om naturvitenskap som etnologisk forskningsfelt belyst med maten som eksempel

Abstract

What actually happened when vitamins were discovered, designed or defined as vitamins? What consequences did this have for thinking and action on the level of day-to-day life? This article, a presentation of a doctoral study in progress, focuses attention on the cultural consequences of citamins as expressed during the interwar years before the Norwegian nutrition campaign that promoted new and better nutrition. This propaganda had knowledge on vitamins as a necessary underpinning. This knowledge led to the creation of a new concept of health, in that food and health were linked in entirely new ways. This primarily affected the housewife in her day-to-day work; now it was no longer sufficient to get enough food, now the food also had to be properly composed with respect to vitamins.

In addition to focusing on the empirical topic — food and health — such a study may also shed light on how scientific knowledge is transformed in different cultural contexts. This article argues that food, particularly everyday food, is an extremely apt topic for such science-in-culture studies.