Photo of Boel Berner

Boel Berner

Professor Emerita

My current research is about medical knowledge, controversial therapies and medical mysteries, from the mid-19th century to today. I am also fascinated by the transformations of technical work and the risks and benefits of technology in society.

The role and use of knowledge in society

My research has spanned a wide range of fields - from how the engineering profession has changed over time and the portrayal of domestic labour in “Housewives’ Films” to the risks of technology and how medicine has worked to cure serious diseases and understand their causes. The focus has been on how people develop and use complex knowledge and how they learn technical skills in schools and workplaces. I have often had a gender perspective, and I have combined historical analyses with ethnographic studies of the situation today.

My current research has a medical focus. I have explored the social and medical history of blood and blood donation, and I have studied how doctors and scientists struggled for nearly two hundred years to explain a widespread, deadly and mysterious disease, pellagra – and finally succeeded.

Research

Understanding a disease. The story of pellagra

The book Food, Misery and a Medical Mystery (In Swedish 2024) is about pellagra, a nasty, now almost unknown disease that affected millions of people in 19th-century southern Europe and the early 20th-century United States. Patients suffered from sore skin, exhaustion and severe stomach problems. Many went insane. Hundreds of thousands died. The disease only affected the poor, exploited people in rural areas. What caused it was long a mystery.

Only after more than 150 years of scientific research was the riddle of pellagra answered. It was a deficiency disease, caused by too little vitamin B3 (niacin) in the diet of the poor. Ultimately, it was caused by poverty and exploitation in areas characterised by a single crop -– corn in Italy, cotton in the US. The daily struggles of the researchers, the knowledge they had access to, the dead ends they faced – but also their groundbreaking research – are portrayed in the book against a background of political conflict and wide-ranging economic change.

Blood flows

I have been fascinated by the medical, social and political importance of blood in society. In my book Strange Blood (2020), I describe a strange medical treatment – lamb blood transfusion –and its rise and fall in the 19th century. How could blood from lambs to humans be seen as, it was claimed, ‘enlivening, despite its repulsive animality’? The therapy was adopted by doctors in many countries in Europe, including Sweden, and also in the USA, hoping thereby to cure desperately ill patients. How did this strange transfusion work, how did the patients feel, did they survive? And what happened to the lambs? The book gives detailed insights into the work of physicians – on the battleground, at the bedside, in the laboratory and in the public eye –- addresses the arguments and controversies and reveals why the practice was eventually abandoned.

Today, human-to-human blood transfusion is a routine part of medical practice. It takes place in thousands of hospitals and blood centres around the world, involving millions of donors as well as a multi-billion dollar international industry for life-saving blood products. At the centre of all this activity is the selfless giving of individuals to others. I have analysed this flow of blood through the body of society in my 2012 book Blood Flows (in Swedish) and in several subsequent articles. They describe the technological transformations and economic conditions of blood donation, its medical risks and cultural meanings from the 19th century to the present day.

The politics of blood

At the turn of the 20th century, it was discovered that people's blood was different –- they had different ‘blood groups’. This was important for blood transfusions but also had political and social implications. The Interwar “politics of blood” involved attempts by scientists and politicians to link knowledge of blood groups to ethnic differences, both in Sweden and internationally. At this time, knowledge about the inheritance of blood groups also began to be used in the legal system in paternity cases concerning children born out of wedlock – another politically and socially controversial story. In the 1980s, the politics of what was “in the blood” took another turn, when the risk of HIV contamination via blood transfusion made for difficult and controversial decisions about excluding, especially, gay men from donating blood.

Mat, misär och ett medicinskt mysterium – Historien om pellagra

Open Access

English synopsis

Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in Nineteenth-Century Medicine and Beyond

Podcast about the book

Blodflöden: blodgivning och blodtransfusion i det svenska samhället

Open access

Previous studies

My previous research has discussed the character and social role of technical expertise. Several studies have looked at how such knowledge is used and taught, both within the educational system and in working life. I have studied the work of engineers, historically and today, and I have done participant observation studies within industrial vocational education. A related field of interest has been how risk and uncertainty is understood and handled within complex social and technical environments.

Another important area of research has been gender, science and technology. I have in several studies discussed the relationship between masculinity and technology and the different positions of women and men within science and technology. I have also investigated the history of household technology, for example in studies of the moral and social importance of cleaning around the year 1900 and of the ideal of the ”modern housewife” as depicted in films during the 1950s and 60.

I have also written extensively on interdisciplinarity and on research methodology.

Publications

2024

Boel Berner (2024) Mat, misär och ett medicinskt mysterium: Historien om pellagra

2021

Boel Berner (2021) Book Review: Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics Technology and culture, Vol. 62, p. 908-909 (Article, book review) Continue to DOI
Boel Berner (2021) "Upplifvande ... trots dess motbjudande djuriskhet"?: lammblodstransfusionens användning i 1870-talets medicin Inom/utom: kropp, själ och samhälle i medicinens gränsland förr och nu, p. 55-59 (Chapter in book)

2020

Boel Berner (2020) Strange blood: the rise and fall of lamb blood transfusion in 19th century medicine and beyond

2019

Boel Berner (2019) Sanningen om faderskapet, via blodet [The truth about fatherhood, via the blood]: "Lösaktiga kvinnor", blodgruppsundersökningar och faderskapsmål 1917-1949 ["Loose women", blood group analysis and paternity cases 1917-1949] Historisk Tidskrift, Vol. 139, p. 34-67 (Article in journal)

2017

Boel Berner, Maria Björkman (2017) Modernizing the flow of blood: Biomedical technicians, working knowledge and the transformation of Swedish blood centre practices Social Studies of Science, Vol. 47, p. 485-510 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2015

Boel Berner (2015) Utbildning på gränsen mellan skola och arbete: Pedagogisk förändring i svensk yrkesutbildning 1918-1971 Nordic Journal of Educational History, Vol. 2, p. 69-73 (Article, book review)
Boel Berner (2015) Review of Åsa Broberg, Utbildning på gränsen mellan skola och arbete: Pedagogisk förändring i svensk yrkesutbildning 1918-1971 Nordic Journal of Educational History, Vol. 2, p. 69-73 (Article, book review)
Boel Berner (2015) Women in Industrial Research - A Complicated History: Review of Renate Tobies et al (eds) Women in Industrial Research Neue Politische Literatur, Vol. 60, p. 133-134 (Article, book review)
Boel Berner (2015) Det ligger i blodet?: Vetenskap och ideologi i mellankrigstidens blodgruppsundersökningar Ikaros. Tidskrift om människan och vetenskapen., Vol. 12, p. 22-26 (Article in journal)

2014

Boel Berner (2014) Technology The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society (Chapter in book) Continue to DOI
Boel Berner, Isabelle Dussauge (Editorship) (2014) Kön, kropp, materialitet: Perspektiv från fransk genusforskning
Boel Berner, Isabelle Dussauge (2014) Introduktion: Perspektiv på fransk genusforskning Kön, kropp, materialitet: Perspektiv från fransk genusforskning, p. 11-28 (Chapter in book)
Boel Berner, Tobias Samuelsson (2014) Effektivare vård på distans med multidisciplinära medicinska videokonferenser? Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv, Vol. 20, p. 23-37 (Article in journal)
Boel Berner (2014) Eftertankar: paradoxer och moraliteter Kulturella perspektiv - Svensk etnologisk tidskrift, Vol. 23, p. 72-76 (Article in journal)
Boel Berner (2014) De sociologiska utmaningarna - då och nu. Det personliga är sociologiskt: 14 professorer om svensk sociologi, p. 131-143 (Chapter in book)

2013

Boel Berner, Corinna Kruse (Editorship) (2013) Knowledge and evidence: investigating technologies in practice

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