Between the Lab and the Field: Plants and the Affective Atmospheres Of Southern Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110551
Author(s):  
Sandra Calkins
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Scientific Collaboration ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Biology I ◽  
Term Field

In view of persistent global inequalities in scientific knowledge production with clear centers and peripheries, this paper examines a lingering concern for many scientists in the Global South: why is it, at times, so hard to have scientific insights from the South recognized? This paper addresses this big question from within a long-term field immersion in a Ugandan–Australian scientific collaboration in molecular biology. I show how disciplinary hierarchies of value affect the distribution of labor between Uganda and Australia and thematize the role of place and its affective atmospheres that texture the quotidian scientific work in this project. Unsurprisingly, they tend to devalue Ugandan sites and contributions, and turn Uganda into a rather unlikely site for new insights to emerge. However, in spite of doing devalued and outsourced “menial” labor such as fieldwork, Ugandan biologists’ fieldwork involves affective encounters with their experimental banana plants that thereby become differently thinkable. The paper argues that attending to affective atmospheres that infuse research sites offers clues about scientists’ position in global hierarchies and at the same time can help make room for insights that emanate from unexpected places.

Illicit Ecologies: Queer Animacy and Epistemological Erasure in History of Wolves

Meliora ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Christian Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
History Of

This thesis attends to the slippages between life and nonlife in Emily Fridlunds 2017 novel History of Wolves. It traces the matter that is granted life or animacy, as well as the matter that is devitalized. Through the protagonist, Linda, the novel investigates the role of both scientific knowledge production and Christian Science in placing arbitrary biological limits on life forms, making some visible and others unseeable and unsayable. The thesis fleshes out the characters’ climate denial as yet another erasure of the animate agents. Ultimately, the thesis asks: if we can expand what is worthy of life, can we, in turn, expand what agents, actors, and matters are deserving of care?  

Feminist Theory in Science: Working Toward a Practical Transformation

Hypatia ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deboleena Roy
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Science Working

Although a rich tradition of feminist critiques of science exists, it is often difficult for feminists who are scientists to bridge these critiques with practical transformations in scientific knowledge production. In this paper, I go beyond the general bases of feminist critiques of science by using feminist theory in science to illustrate how a practical transformation in methodology can change molecular biology based research in the reproductive sciences.

Deliberative Democracy and Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 639-654
Author(s):  
Alfred Moore
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Consensus Conferences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Emergence Of Institutions

What might a deliberative politics of science look like? This chapter addresses this question by bringing together science studies and the theories and practices of deliberative democracy. This chapter begins by discussing the importance of considering the role of deliberation within scientific communities and institutions, particularly as it bears on the production of scientific judgments and decisions at the boundary between science and politics. The chapter then discusses the emergence of institutions for communicating scientific knowledge to policy-makers, public officials and citizens, which include not only expert tribunals but also the development of citizen panels, consensus conferences, and other forms of mini-publics. Finally, the chapter considers the role of “uninvited” ’ participation in science, emphasizing the role of social movements and critical civil society in both challenging and informing scientific knowledge production.

Scientific Knowledge Production Processes

2004 ◽  
pp. 136-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Boden ◽  
Deborah Cox ◽  
Maria Nedeva ◽  
Katharine Barker
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production

scholarly journals Known unknowns: Filling the gaps in scientific knowledge production in the Caatinga

PLoS ONE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. e0219359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thainá Lessa ◽  
Janisson W. dos Santos ◽  
Ricardo A. Correia ◽  
Richard J. Ladle ◽  
Ana C. M. Malhado
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Known Unknowns

scholarly journals How Does Indonesian Scientific Production on Renewable Energy Successfully Support the Policy Design? A Journey Towards Sustainable Energy Transition

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Iqbal Akbar ◽  
◽  
Dhandy Arisaktiwardhana ◽  
Prima Naomi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Policy ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Sustainable Energy ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Scientific Publication ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production

The aim to achieve the target of a 23% share of sustainable energies in the total Indonesia’s primary energy supply requires enormous amounts of works. Indonesia’s scientific knowledge production can support a successful transition to renewables. However, policy makers struggle to determine how the transition benefits from the scientific production on renewable. A bibliometric study using scientific publication data from the Web of Science (WoS) is used to probe how Indonesian scientific knowledge production can support the policy design for transition to sustainable energy. The seven focused disciplines are geothermal, solar, wind, hydro, bio, hybrid, and energy policy and economics. Based on the data from the above-listed disciplines, a deeper analysis is conducted, and implications to the policy design are constructed. The study reveals that bio energy is the focus of the research topics produced in Indonesia, followed by solar and hydro energy. Most RE research is related to the applied sciences. The innovation capability in the form of technology modifiers and technology adapters supports the transition to sustainable energy in Indonesia. The research on bio energy, however, is characterized by higher basic knowledge than research on solar and hydro energy. This suggests low barriers to the access to the resources and to the completion of bio research in Indonesia. Designing Indonesian energy policy by comprising discriminatively specific sustainable energy sources in the main policy instruments can therefore accelerate the sustainable transition and development.

scholarly journals Ontological Opportunism

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Anne Dippel
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Energy Physics

Understanding inanimate ‘nature-as-such’ is traditionally considered the object of physics in Europe. The discipline acts as exemplary discursive practice of scientific knowledge production. However, as my ethnographic investigation of doing and communicating high energy physics demonstrates, animist conceptions seep into the ontological understanding of physics’ ‘objects’, resonating with contemporary concepts of new materialism, new animism and feminist science and technology studies, signifying an atmospheric shift in the understanding of ‘nature’. Drawing on my fieldwork at CERN, I argue that scientists take an opportunist stance to animate concepts of ‘nature’, depending on whom they’re talking to. I am showing how the inanimate in physics is reanimated especially in scientific outreach activities and how the universalist scientific cosmology overlaps with indigenous cosmologies, as for example the Lakota ones.

scholarly journals Forest, forest, forest. Sometimes we sleep. Walking, sleep, walking, sleep. It’s dangerous on this way

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (44) ◽  
pp. 204-221
Author(s):  
Marijana Hameršak ◽  
Iva Pleše
Keyword(s):  
Field Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Exclusionary Policies ◽  
The One ◽  
External Interventions ◽  
Place And Route ◽  
Term Field

Hidden migrant routes through Croatia lead through forest areas (among other types of terrain) which include those along state borders, but also forests in the interior of the territory. Those forests can variously be seen as shelters for migrants, albeit harsh, or as green tunnels leading to desired destinations, and as scenes of suffering and violence. This article approaches the forests in question as landscapes that have been transformed from a neutral natural environment into active factors for creating and maintaining border control regimes and deterring and expelling unwanted migrants. Based on our long-term field research and publicly available (archival, media and other) sources, we seek to document, interpret, and interconnect the objects and practices involved in constructing the forest as a hostile terrain and perilous environment for migrants, and as an important element in controlling unwanted migrations. These are, on the one hand, objects and practices that intervene into forests, such as setting up cameras or cutting down trees, and, on the other, interventions that take place in forests, such as police interception or expulsion. Apart from these external interventions, in this context of remodeling forests into dangerous environments, one can also discuss the role of nature itself and its characteristics, as well as the causes of why migrants find themselves in nature in the first place. Although, at first glance, it seems that people on the move choose the forest as the place and route of their movement of their own volition, they are pushed and expelled into these forests by exclusionary policies (visa regimes, asylum systems, etc.). This, ultimately, classifies forests in Croatia as weaponized landscapes of exclusion and death, such as the desert (e.g., De León 2015), mountain (Del Biaggio et al. 2020), maritime (e.g., Albahari 2015) or archipelago (Mountz 2017) landscapes

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