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Three different versions of assemblage (Deleuzian, actor-network theory and Haraway's companionship) are discussed in terms of the insights they offer into spatial relations between life science, medicine and society. Using the example of a proposal to turn Iceland into an island laboratory for gene discovery research, I ask how assemblages gain friction and tenacity in the world, especially if we accept the post-structuralist insistence on the fragility of any seemingly fixed, isolated and bounded construction of space. Why did so many people (including academics) buy in to the idea of Iceland as an ideal genetic laboratory? How were the pieces of that island laboratory made to fit together and at what price? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the ways in which field sites are defined in both science and science studies. Drawing on the example of how Iceland became a laboratory for both genetic science and science studies, it suggested that the spaces of science social scientists critique are also, to some extent, endorsed and reproduced through their own critical representations and practices. It is argued that this complicity between science studies and science both poses challenges and offers opportunities for geographers studying the relationship between life sciences, science studies and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reviews debates surrounding the Icelandic government's Act on a Health Sector Database (139/1998), which provided for the licensing of a private company to build and operate a centralised database of Icelandic medical records for use in gene-discovery research. Using the concept of the `boundary object' drawn from actor-network theory, the author argues that, through their exploitation as bodily commodities, medical records are actively engaged in redefining existing boundaries between medical and scientific space, between civic and individual concerns, and between human subjects and scientific objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]