Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:46:53.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Keeping a House for Science: Sofia Kristensson as Matriarch and Gatekeeper at Kristineberg Zoological Station as a Scientific Household, 1877–1889

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2015

Helena Ekerholm
Helena Ekerholm*
Affiliation:
Centre for History of Science, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Argument

Field research stations are households as a result of allegoric notions of the scientific family, and because they fulfill the purpose of a home in the field in a literal sense. They meet the practical and physical need for bed and board, as well as the emotional and intellectual need for social cohesion. I argue that this, in combination with local gender identity, opened the door for a woman of lower social strata, the daughter of a fisherman, to take upon herself the role as station household matriarch, thus gaining an integral role within an inner circle of influential scientists. Secondly, I argue that locally employed members of the research station were valued primarily for their social skills. For the sake of ensuring necessary conditions for scientific work, being abrasive was just as important as being agreeable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 587 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aubin, David. 2009. “The Hotel that Became an Observatory: Mount Faulhorn as Singularity, Microcosm, and Macro-Tool.” Science in Context 22:365–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrow, Mark V Jr. 2011. “On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Vetter, Jeremy, 135–161. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Catherine Nisbett. 2009. “Professionals on the Peak.” Science in Context 22:487–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckman, Jenny. 1999. Naturens palats: nybyggnad, vetenskap och utställning vid Naturhistoriska riksmuseet 1866–1925 [Nature's Palace: Constructing the Swedish Museum of Natural History]. Stockholm: Atlantis.Google Scholar
Bergwik, Staffan. 2014. “An Assemblage of Science and Home: The Gendered Lifestyle of Svante Arrhenius and Early Twentieth-Century Physical Chemistry.” Isis 105:265–291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Bont, Raf. 2009. “Between the Laboratory and the Deep Blue Sea: Space Issues in the Marine Stations of Naples and Wimereux.” Social Studies of Science 39:199–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Bont, Raf. 2015. Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Bosstraeten, Truus. 2011. “Dogs and Coca-Cola: Commemorative Practices as Part of Laboratory Culture at the Heymans Institute Ghent, 1902–1970.” Centaurus 53:1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerini, Jane. 1996. “Wallace in the Field.” Osiris 11:44–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlén, Emilie Flygare. 1869. “En resa till vestra kusten 1867” [A Trip to the West Coast 1867] In Samlade romaner, vol. 1. Stockholm: P.B. Eklunds förlag.Google Scholar
Coen, Deborah R. 2006. ”A Lense of Many Facets: Science through a Family's Eyes.” Isis 97:395–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eigen, Edward. 2003. “The Place of Distribution: Episodes in the Architecture of Experiment.” In Architecture and the Science: Exchanging Metaphors, edited by Picon, Antoine and Ponte, Alessandra, 52–79. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.Google Scholar
Eliasson, Pär. 1999. Platsens blick: Vetenskapsakademien och den naturalhistoriska resan 1790–1840 [The Place's Glance: The Royal Academy of Science and Scientific Travel, 1790–1840]. Umeå: Umeå University.Google Scholar
Fara, Patricia. 2004. Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science & Power in the Enlightenment. London: Pimlico.Google Scholar
le Gars, Stéphane, and Aubin, David. 2009. “The Elusive Placelessness of the Mont-Blanc Observatory (1893–1909): The Social Underpinnings of High-Altitude Observation.” Science in Context 22:509–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasslöf, Olof. [1949] 1985. Svenska västkustfiskarna: studier i en yrkesgrupps näringsliv och sociala kultur [Swedish West Coast Fishermen: Studies in an Occupational Group's Industry and Social Culture]. Uddevalla: Bohusläns museum.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2008. “From Farm and Family to Career Naturalist: The Apprenticeship of Vernon Bailey.” Isis 99:28–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuklick, Henrika, and Kohler, Robert E.. 1996. “Introduction.” Osiris 11:1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Katarina. 2010. “’Let Her own Work Praise Her' (Proverbs 31:31: Christian Vocation Expressed in Everyday Toil among Schartauan Women.” In Perspectives on Women's Everyday Religion, edited by Keinänen, Marja-Liisa, 79–94. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis.Google Scholar
Maienschein, Jane. 1989. 100 Years Exploring Life, 1888–1988: The Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCook, Stuart. 1996. “’It May Be Truth, But It Is Not Evidence': Paul du Chaillu and the Legitimation of Evidence in the Field Sciences.” Osiris 11:177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordlund, Christer. 2007. “Between Science and Industry: On the Establishment, Organisation and Practices of the Swedish Geological Survey in the Nineteenth Century.” Earth Sciences History 26:127–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhart, Lynn K. 2009. Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pauly, Philip J. 1991. “Summer Resort and Scientific Discipline: Woods Hole and the Structure of American Biology, 1882–1925.” In The American Development of Biology, edited by Rainger, Ronald, Benson, Keith R., and Maienschein, Jane, 121–150. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Rozwadowski, Helen M. 1996. “Small World: Forging a Scientific Maritime Culture for Oceanography.” Isis 87:409–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, David W. 2000. “Local Knowledge, Environmental Politics, and the Founding of Ecology in the United States: Stephen Forbes and ‘The Lake as a Microcosm’ (1887).” Isis 91:281–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, Stephen. 1989. “The Invisible Technician.” American Scientist 77:554–563.Google Scholar
Théel, Hjalmar. 1895. Om Sveriges zoologiska hafsstation Kristineberg [About Sweden's Zoological Marine Station Kristineberg]. Stockholm: Norstedts & S:r.Google Scholar
Théel, Hjalmar. 1908. ”Om utvecklingen af Sveriges zoologiska hafsstation Kristineberg och om djurlifvet i angränsande haf och fjordar” [About the Development of Sweden's Zoological Marine Station Kristineberg and about the Fauna in Adjacent Ocean and Fjords]. Arkiv för zoologi 4:No. 5.Google Scholar
Théel, Hjalmar. 1928. Bidrag till Kristinebergs historia [Contribution to the History of Kristineberg]. Stockholm: Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien.Google Scholar
Vetter, Jeremy. 2008. “Cowboys, Scientists, and Fossils: The Field Site and Local Collaboration in the American West.” Isis 99:273–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vetter, Jeremy. 2011. “Introduction.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Jeremy Vetter, 1–16. New Brunswick: Rutgers.Google Scholar
Widmalm, Sven. 2001. Det öppna laboratoriet: uppsalafysiken och dess nätverk 1853–1910 [The Open Laboratory: Uppsala Physics and Its Networks, 1853–1910]. Stockholm: Atlantis.Google Scholar
Withers, Charles W. J., and Finnegan, Diarmid A.. 2003. “Natural History Societies, Fieldwork and Local Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Towards a Historical Geography of Civic Science.” Cultural Geographies 10:334–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar