Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:44:52.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Right Time for the Job? Insights into Practices of Time in Contemporary Field Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2015

Isabelle Arpin
Affiliation:
Irstea – UR DTGR E-mail: [email protected]
Céline Granjou
Affiliation:
Irstea – UR DTGR E-mail: [email protected]

Argument

Temporal issues appear to be crucial to the relationship between life scientists and their field sites and to the making of science in the field. We elaborate on the notion of practices of time to describe the ways life scientists cope with multiple and potentially conflicting temporal aspects that influence how they become engaged and remain engaged in a field-site, such as pleasure, long-term security, scientific productivity, and timeliness. With this notion, we seek to bring enhanced visibility and coherence to the extensive but rather scattered and limited treatments of temporal practices in field sciences that already exist.

Type
Research Article
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

Anker, Peder. 2007. “Science as a Vacation: A History of Ecology in Norway.” History of Science 45:455479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Karen, and Bowker, Geoffrey C.. 2007. “Information Ecology: Open System Environment for Data, Memories and Knowing.” Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 29:127144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowker, Geoffrey C. 2005. Memory Practices in the Sciences. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Burkhardt, Richard W. 1999. “Ethology, Natural History, the Life Sciences, and the Problem of Space.” Journal of the History of Biology 32:489508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Adele, and Fujimura, Joan. 1992. The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth Century Life Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2012. “The Sciences of the Archive.” Osiris 27:156187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dudley, Nigel. 2008. Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnegan, Diarmid. 2008. “The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science.” Journal of the History of Biology 41:369388.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucault, Michel. [1984] 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 6:2227.Google Scholar
Gieryn, Thomas. 2002. “Three Truth-Spots.” Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences 38:113132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gieryn, Thomas. 2006. “City as Truth-Spot: Laboratories and Field-Sites in Urban Studies.” Social Studies of Science 36:538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haberl, Helmut, Winiwarter, Verena, Andersson, Krister, Ayres, Robert U., Boone, Christopher, Castillo, Alicia, Cunfer, Geoff, Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, Freudenburg, William R., Furman, Eeva, Kaufmann, Rüdiger, Krausmann, Fridolin, Langthaler, Ernst, Lotze-Campen, Hermann, Mirtl, Michael, Redman, Charles L., Reenberg, Anette, Wardell, Andrew, Warr, Benjamin, and Zechmeister, Harald. 2006. “From LTER to LTSER: Conceptualizing the Socio-Economic Dimension of Long-Term Socioecological Research.” Ecology and Society 11:256289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14:575599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henke, Christopher R. 2000. “Making a Place for Science: The Field Trial.” Social Studies of Science 30:483511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hessels, Laurens K., van Lente, Harro, and Smits, Ruud. 2009. “In Search of Relevance: The Changing Contract between Science and Society.” Science and Public Policy 36:387401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hine, Christine. 2008. Taxonomy as Cyberscience. Computers, Change and Continuity in Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2002a. Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2002b. “Place and Practice in Field Biology.” History of Science 40:189210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, Robert E. 2002c. “Labscapes: Naturalizing the Lab.” History of Science 40:473501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2006. All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850–1950. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2011a. “History of Field Science: Trends and Prospects.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Vetter, Jeremy, 212240. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2011b. “Paul Errington, Aldo Leopold, and Wildlife Ecology: Residential Science.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41:216254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2012. “Practice and Place in Twentieth-Century Field Biology: A Comment.” Journal of the History of Biology 45 (4):579–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuklick, Henrika, and Kohler, Robert E.. 1996. “Introduction.” Osiris 11:114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kupper, Patrick. 2009. “Science and the National Parks: A Transatlantic Perspective on the Interwar Years.” Environmental History 14:5881.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kupper, Patrick. 2012. Wildnis schaffen. Eine transnationale Geschichte des Schweizerischen Nationalparks. Bern, Stuttgart, Wien: Haupt Verlag.Google Scholar
Landon, Julie. 2010. “Bilan de la réserve intégrale du Lauvitel.” Parc National des Ecrins: Gap.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1983. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World.” In Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, edited by Knorr-Cetina, Karin and Mulkay, Michael J., 141170. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno, and Woolgar, Steve. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Livingstone, David N. 1995. “The Spaces of Knowledge: Contributions towards a Historical Geography of Science.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13:534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingstone, David N. 2003. Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingstone, David N. 2005. “Text, Talk and Testimony: Geographical Reflections on Scientific Habits, An Afterword.” British Journal for the History of Science 38:93100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorimer, Hayden, and Spedding, Nick. 2005. “Locating Field Science; A Geographical Family Expedition to Glen Roy, Scotland.” British Journal for the History of Science 38:1333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magnuson, John J. 1990. “Long-Term Ecological Research and the Invisible Present.” BioScience 40:495501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauz, Isabelle, and Granjou, Céline. 2013. “A New Border Zone in Science: Collaboration and Tensions between Modelling Ecologists and Field Naturalists.” Science as Culture 22 (3):314343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Naylor, Simon. 2005. “Historical Geographies of Science: Places, Contexts, Cartographies.” British Journal for the History of Science 38:112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ophir, Adi, and Shapin, Steven. 1991. “The Place of Knowledge: A Methodological Survey.” Science in Context 4:321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oreskes, Naomi. 1996. “Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science.” Osiris 11:87113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pestre, Dominique. 2003. “Regimes of Knowledge Production in Society: Towards a More Political and Social Reading.” Minerva 41:245261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Richard C. 2007. “The Rigours of an Arctic Experiment: The Precarious Authority of Field Practices in the Canadian High Arctic 1958–1970.” Environment and Planning A 39:17941811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1994. “Experimental Systems: Historiality, Narration, and Deconstruction.” Science in Context 7:6581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosa, Hartmut. [2005] 2010. Accélération. Une critique sociale du temps. Translation by Renault, Didier. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Roth, Wolff-Michael, and Bowen, G. Michael. 2001. “Of Disciplined Minds and Disciplined Bodies: On Becoming an Ecologist.” Qualitative Sociology 24:4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozwadowski, Helen M. 2011. “Playing By and On and Under the Sea. The Importance of Play for Knowing the Ocean.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Vetter, Jeremy, 162189. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Saldanha, Arun. 2008. “Heterotopia and Structuralism.” Environment and Planning A 40:20802096.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Daniel 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 91:681705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Secord, Anne. 1994. “Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire.” History of Science 32:269315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shapin, Steven. 1998. “Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23:512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shinn, Terry, and Marcovich, Anne. 2012. “Regimes of Science Production and Diffusion: Towards a Transverse Organization of Knowledge.” Scientiae Studia 10:3364.Google Scholar
Strasser, Bruno J. 2011. “Data-Driven Sciences: From Wonder Cabinets to Electronic Databases.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43:8587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vetter, Jeremy. 2011a. “Introduction.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Vetter, Jeremy, 116. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Vetter, Jeremy. 2011b. “Rocky Mountain High Science: Teaching, Research, and Nature at Field Stations.” In Knowing Global Environments: New Historical Perspectives on the Field Sciences, edited by Vetter, Jeremy, 108134. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Vetter, Jeremy. 2012. “Labs in the Field? Rocky Mountain Biological Stations in the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of the History of Biology 45 (4):587611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed