"[8] The modes of inquiry Traweek employs include collecting oral histories, conducting archival research, and performing ethnographic fieldwork.
[12] In Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Traweek describes variations in the way physicists approach their work and the nature of knowledge in physics; for example, she compares how experimentalists and theorists relate to detectors and the results that are produced from them.
In the mid 1980s, the high energy physic facility in Japan, KEK, mushroomed because construction of TRISTAN (Transposable Ring Intersecting Storage Accelerator in Nippon) was completed.
[15] Looking at strategic uses of national, regional, class, & gender differences throughout her work, Traweek explores the ethics, aesthetics, and narrative strategies of physicists and their social environments.
In contrast to Traweek and social constructionists who describe these cultural nuances, conventional theorists prefer to focus only on the cognitive content or “laws of nature”.
[16] Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge criticized Traweek for a passage that calls attention to genital metaphor in the naming of scientific instruments at SLAC.
"[18] Bloor's criticism echoed the earlier judgments of philosopher Bruno Latour, a leading practitioner of science and technology studies, who found that "in spite of her claim to 'thick description', Traweek is unable to relate the contents of physics to the social organization.