Geographies of science, the second domain, focuses on literature that, following David Livingstone (2003), puts science in its place. The Central Experimental Farm is one of those places, home to both experimental fields and laboratories. The places of science exist across a variety of scales, from small allotment gardens to international and imperial networks. Geographers of science have explored not only the sites of research, but also geographies of the more-than-human world including plants and non-human animals. Building on work in science and technology studies, this domain explores the sites, networks, agents, production, performance and distribution of scientific knowledge.
This post has two main parts:
(1) The domain itself; and,
(2) A syllabus created as a thought experience while studying the list.
The List
Arnold, David. 2005.
“Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th Century.” History and
Technology 21 (1): 85–106.
Benson, Keith R. 2009.
“Field Stations and Surveys.” In The Cambridge History of Science Volume 6:
Modern Life and Earth Sciences, edited by Peter J. Bowler and John V.
Pickstone, 76–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bertoni, Filippo. 2012.
“Charming Worms: Crawling Between Natures.” Cambridge Anthropology 30
(2): 65–81.
Braun, Bruce. 2000. “Producing
Vertical Territory: Geology and Governmentality in Late Victorian Canada.” Ecumene
7 (1): 7–46.
Cameron, Laura. 2013.
“Resources of Hope: Wicken Fen Stories of Anthropogenic Nature.” Cambridge
Anthropology 31 (1): 105–18.
Castree, Noel, and Tom
MacMillan. 2001. “Dissolving Dualisms: Actor-Networks and the Reimagination of
Nature.” In Social Nature: Theory, Practice and Politics, edited by Noel
Castree and Bruce Braun, 208–24. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell.
Clifford, James. 1997.
“Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology.”
In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science,
edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 185–222. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Curtis, Bruce. 2000. The
Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada,
1840-1875. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
DeSilvey, Caitlin. 2003.
“Cultivated Histories in a Scottish Allotment Garden.” Cultural Geographies
10 (4): 442–68.
Doubleday, Robert. 2007.
“Organizing Accountability: Co-Production of Technoscientific and Social Worlds
in a Nanoscience Laboratory.” Area 39 (2): 166–75.
Drayton, Richard Harry.
2000. Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement”
of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Finnegan, Diarmid A.
2005. “Natural History Societies in Late Victorian Scotland and the Pursuit of
Local Civic Science.” The British Journal for the History of Science 38
(1): 53–72.
———. 2008. “The Spatial
Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science.” Journal of the
History of Biology 41 (2): 369–88.
Forsyth, Isla. 2013. “The
More-than-Human Geographies of Field Science.” Geography Compass 7 (8):
527–39.
Gardner, Robert. 2009.
“Trees as Technology: Planting Shelterbelts on the Great Plains” 25 (4):
325–41.
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural
Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago ; London:
University of Chicago Press.
Greenhough, Beth. 2006.
“Tales of an Island-Laboratory: Defining the Field in Geography and Science
Studies.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2):
224–37.
Greer, Kirsten A. 2008.
“Placing Colonial Ornithology: Imperial Ambiguities in Upper Canada, 1791-
1841.” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science,
Technology and Medicine 31 (1-2): 85–112.
———. 2013. “Geopolitics
and the Avian Imperial Archive: The Zoogeography of Region-Making in the
Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean.” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 103 (6): 1317–31.
Gupta, Akhil, and James
Ferguson. 1997. “Discipline and Practice: ‘The Field’ as Site, Method, and
Location in Anthropology.” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and
Grounds of a Field Science, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 1–46.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Haraway, Donna. 1984.
“Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City,
1908-1936.” Social Text, 11 (December): 20–64.
Hastrup, Kirsten. 2013.
“Scales of Attention in Fieldwork: Global Connections and Local Concerns in the
Arctic.” Ethnography 14 (2): 145–64.
Hinchliffe, Steve. 2001.
“Indeterminacy In‐decisions – Science, Policy and Politics in the BSE (Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy) Crisis.” Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers 26 (2): 182–204.
Jones, Owain, and Paul J
Cloke. 2002. Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in Their Place.
Oxford; New York: Berg.
Kohler, Robert E.
2002. Landscapes and Labscapes:
Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin.
1999. “What Is a Laboratory?” In Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make
Knowledge, 26–45. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2000. Pandora’s
Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press.
Law, John. 1987.
“Technology and Heterogenous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion.” In
The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the
Sociology and History of Technology, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas
Parke Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, 111–34. MIT Press.
Lightman, Bernard. 2013.
“Mid-Victorian science museums and exhibitions: ‘The industrial amusement and
instruction of the people.’” Endeavour
37 (2): 82-93.
Livingstone, David N.
2003. Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Lorimer, Hayden. 2003a.
“The Geographical Field Course as Active Archive.” Cultural Geographies
10 (3): 278–308.
———. 2003b. “Telling
Small Stories: Spaces of Knowledge and the Practice of Geography.” Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 28 (2): 197–217.
Martin, Emily. 1997.
“Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science: From Citadels to String
Figures.” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field
Science, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 131–46. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Massey, Doreen. 1999.
“Space-Time, ‘Science’ and the Relationship between Physical Geography and
Human Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
24 (3): 261–76.
McTavish, Lianne. 2006.
“Learning to See in New Brunswick, 1862-1929.” Canadian Historical Review
87 (4): 553–81.
Naylor, Simon. 2005.
“Historical Geographies of Science: Places, Contexts, Cartographies.” British
Journal for the History of Science 38 (1): 1-12.
———. 2010. Regionalizing
Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England. London: Pickering and
Chatto Publishers Limited.
Neves, Katja. 2009.
“Urban Botanical Gardens and the Aesthetics of Ecological Learning: A
Theoretical Discussion and Preliminary Insights from Montreal’s Botanical
Garden.” Anthropologica 51 (1): 145–57.
Sander-Regier, Renate.
2008. “Earthways: Opportunity, Community and Meaning in the Personal Garden.” Brock
Review 10 (1): 1–20.
Sandilands, Catriona.
2013. “Dog Stranglers in the Park?: National and Vegetal Politics in Ontario’s
Rouge Valley.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue D’études Canadiennes 47
(3): 93–122.
Sismondo, Sergio. 2009. Introduction
to Science and Technology Studies.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Smith, Mick. 2013.
“Ecological Community, the Sense of the World, and Senseless Extinction.” Environmental
Humanities 2: 23–43.
Whatmore, Sarah. 2002. Hybrid
Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. London: SAGE.
Whatmore, Sarah, and
Lorraine Thorne. 2000. “Elephants on the Move: Spatial Formations of Wildlife
Exchange.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18 (2):
185–203.
Withers, Charles. 1999.
“Geography, Enlightenment, and the Paradise Question.” In David N Livingstone
and Charles Withers (eds). Geography and
the Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 67-92.
———. 2004. “Writing in
geography’s history: Caledonia,
networks of correspondence and geographical knowledge in the late
enlightenment.” Scottish Geographical
Journal 120 (1-2): 33-45.
———. 2013. “Science,
Scientific Instruments, and Questions of Method in Nineteenth-Century British
Geography.” Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers 38 (1): 167-179.
Zeller, Suzanne. 2009. Inventing
Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
The Syllabus
Geographies of
Science
GPHY 3XX
Peter Anderson
Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-4pm or by appointment
Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursday 1-2:30pm
Outline
Geographers of science, following David Livingstone, seek to
put science in its place. The places of science exist across a variety of
scales, from small allotment gardens to international and imperial networks and
from experimental fields to laboratories. Geographers of science have explored
not only the sites of research, but also geographies of the more-than-human
world including plants and non-human animals. Building on work in science and
technology studies, this course explores the sites, networks, agents,
production, performance and distribution of scientific knowledge.
Assessments and Late Policy
Progress in this course consists of six assessments. Unless
otherwise noted, assessments are due in class at the beginning of Thursday’s
lectures:
1.
Presentation Notes (throughout) – 10%
2.
Term Paper Proposal (Week 5) – 5%
3.
Book Review (Week 8) – 20%
4.
Term Paper (Week 11) – 30%
5.
Exam Review Questions – 5%
6.
Essay-style Exam (Exam period TBD) – 30%
Late assignments are subject to the department’s standard
penalty. Extensions will only be made with proper documentation.
1. Presentation Notes
(10%)
Every student will be assigned one-to-two readings to
prepare a short (2-3 minute) presentation and research notes for. Students must
also provide one power point slide. As more than one student will be assigned
to each day, not everyone will have a chance to present. Grades are based on
the student’s notes and slide content.
Slides must be submitted by 5pm on the Sunday before the
student’s assigned day and presentation notes are due at the end of the lecture
on the student’s assigned day.
2. Term Paper Proposal
– Week 5 (5%)
Students are to choose a topic based on course themes and
write a term paper proposal. The proposal will be no more than 3 pages in
length, inclusive of its preliminary bibliography. The first page will describe
the chosen topic and research questions. The remaining pages will present an
annotated bibliography containing at least 5 scholarly journal articles or book
chapters (no more than 2 from course readings). Annotations should demonstrate
the relation of the source to the topic and research question. Students are
encouraged to meet with the instructor or teaching assistant before submitting
their proposal.
3. Book Review – Week
8 (20%)
Students will write a 4-5 page critical book review of one
of the following books (available at the University bookstore):
·
Latour, Bruno. 2000. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
· Livingstone,
David N. 2003. Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific
Knowledge. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
· Naylor,
Simon. 2010. Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England.
London: Pickering and Chatto Publishers Limited.
· Whatmore,
Sarah. 2002. Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. London:
SAGE.
It is highly recommended to choose the book most closely
related to your term paper in order to facilitate both writing projects. In
addition, students are expected to have read and engage with Sergio Sismondo’s Introduction to Science and Technology
Studies (2nd Edition) and relate this text to their chosen book
in the review.
4. Term Paper – Week
11 (30%)
Building on the research topic and question approved in the
term paper proposal, students will prepare a 12-15 page research paper. Grades
will be based on the depth of research, strength of argument and the student’s
ability as a writer.
5. Exam Review
Questions – Week 12 (5%)
Students are required to think about course themes and
concepts and bring two possible exam questions to the last class in Week 12.
Attendance and question submission guarantees the full 5%
6. Essay-style Exam –
TBD (30%)
Students will sit a 3 hour essay-style exam, answering two
short answer questions (of 5—each worth 5%) and two long answer question (of
5—each worth 10%) based on course themes and readings.
Topics and Readings
Note: While there is no textbook, students are expected to
have bought and read Sismondo’s Introduction
to Science and Technology Studies by the end of week 8. Whatmore’s Hybrid Geographies, Livingstone’s Putting Science in its Place, Latour’s Pandora’s Hope and Naylor’s Regionalizing Science are available in
the bookstore. All other readings are available through the library’s catalogue
or the course’s Moodle page.
Week 1: Placing
Science
·
Tuesday – Introduction
o No
readings.
·
Thursday – Geographies of Science
o
Finnegan, Diarmid A. 2008. “The Spatial Turn:
Geographical Approaches in the History of Science.” Journal of the History
of Biology 41 (2): 369–88.
o
Livingstone, David N. 2003. Putting Science
in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.
o
Naylor, Simon. 2005. “Historical Geographies of
Science: Places, Contexts, Cartographies.” British
Journal for the History of Science 38 (1): 1-12.
Week 2: Defining
Science (Studies)
·
Tuesday – Approaches to studying science
o
Latour, Bruno. 2000. Pandora’s Hope: Essays
on the Reality of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press. Introduction only.
·
Thursday – Thinking about more-than-human worlds
o
Forsyth, Isla. 2013. “The More-than-Human Geographies of Field Science.”
Geography Compass 7 (8): 527–39.
o
Jones, Owain, and Paul J Cloke. 2002. Tree Cultures: The Place of
Trees and Trees in Their Place. Oxford; New York: Berg. Introduction only.
Week 3: Networks and
Circulating References
·
Tuesday – Actors, Networks, Theories
o
Castree, Noel, and Tom MacMillan. 2001. “Dissolving Dualisms:
Actor-Networks and the Reimagination of Nature.” In Social Nature: Theory,
Practice and Politics, edited by Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, 208–24.
Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell.
o
Hinchliffe, Steve. 2001. “Indeterminacy In‐decisions – Science, Policy
and Politics in the BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) Crisis.” Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (2): 182–204.
·
Thursday – Circulating References and
Heterogeneous Engineering
o
Latour, Bruno. 2000. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Chapter 1 only.
o
Law, John. 1987. “Technology and Heterogenous Engineering: The Case of
Portuguese Expansion.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems:
New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, edited by Wiebe
E. Bijker, Thomas Parke Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, 111–34. MIT Press.
Week 4: Places of
Science I – Laboratories
·
Tuesday – Traditional Labortatories
o
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1999. “What Is a Laboratory?” In Epistemic
Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, 26–45. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press.
o
Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes
and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1
only.
·
Thursday – Blurring borders between the lab and
the field
o
Doubleday, Robert. 2007. “Organizing Accountability: Co-Production of
Technoscientific and Social Worlds in a Nanoscience Laboratory.” Area 39
(2): 166–75.
o
Greenhough, Beth. 2006. “Tales of an Island-Laboratory: Defining the
Field in Geography and Science Studies.” Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers 31 (2): 224–37.
Week 5: Places of
Science II – Situating “the field”
·
Tuesday – Fields in social science research
o
Clifford, James. 1997. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the
Disciplining of Anthropology.” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and
Grounds of a Field Science, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson,
185–222. Berkeley: University of California Press.
o
Lorimer, Hayden. 2003. “The Geographical Field Course as Active Archive.”
Cultural Geographies 10 (3): 278–308.
·
Thursday – Fields in natural and physical
science research *Term paper proposal
due*
o
Benson, Keith R. 2009. “Field Stations and Surveys.” In The Cambridge
History of Science Volume 6: Modern Life and Earth Sciences, edited by
Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone, 76–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
o
Hastrup, Kirsten. 2013. “Scales of Attention in Fieldwork: Global
Connections and Local Concerns in the Arctic.” Ethnography 14 (2):
145–64.
Week 6: Scales of
Science I – Local Sciences
·
Tuesday – Vernacular science
o
Cameron, Laura. 2013. “Resources of Hope: Wicken Fen Stories of
Anthropogenic Nature.” Cambridge Anthropology 31 (1): 105–18.
o
DeSilvey, Caitlin. 2003. “Cultivated Histories in a Scottish Allotment
Garden.” Cultural Geographies 10 (4): 442–68.
o
Lorimer, Hayden. 2003. “Telling Small Stories: Spaces of Knowledge and
the Practice of Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers 28 (2): 197–217.
·
Thursday – Regional science
o
Finnegan, Diarmid A. 2005. “Natural History Societies in Late Victorian
Scotland and the Pursuit of Local Civic Science.” The British Journal for
the History of Science 38 (1): 53–72.
o
McTavish, Lianne. 2006. “Learning to See in New Brunswick, 1862-1929.” Canadian
Historical Review 87 (4): 553–81.
o
Naylor, Simon. 2010. Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in
Victorian England. London: Pickering and Chatto Publishers Limited. Introduction only.
Week 7: Scales of
Science II – National and imperial science
·
Tuesday – National science in pre-confederation
Canada
o
Zeller, Suzanne. 2009. Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and
the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press. Introduction and Part III
(Botany) only.
·
Thursday – Imperial scientific networks
o
Arnold, David. 2005. “Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th
Century.” History and Technology 21 (1): 85–106.
o
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility
on the Line. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 5 only.
o
Greer, Kirsten A. 2013. “Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive: The
Zoogeography of Region-Making in the Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean.”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103 (6): 1317–31.
Week 8: Periods of
Science I – The Enlightenment and Early Victorian Science
·
Tuesday – Enlightenment science
o
Withers, Charles. 1999. “Geography, Enlightenment, and the Paradise
Question.” In David N Livingstone and Charles Withers (eds). Geography and the Enlightenment.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 67-92.
o
Withers, Charles. 2004. “Writing in geography’s history: Caledonia, networks of correspondence
and geographical knowledge in the late enlightenment.” Scottish Geographical Journal 120 (1-2): 33-45.
·
Thursday – Early Victorian science *Book review due*
o
Drayton, Richard Harry. 2000. Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial
Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World. New Haven: Yale University
Press. Chapter 4 only.
o
Greer, Kirsten A. 2008. “Placing Colonial Ornithology: Imperial
Ambiguities in Upper Canada, 1791- 1841.” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian
Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 31 (1-2):
85–112.
Week 9: Periods of
Science II – Late Victorian and Early 20th Century Science
·
Tuesday – Late Victorian Science
o
Braun, Bruce. 2000. “Producing Vertical Territory: Geology and
Governmentality in Late Victorian Canada.” Ecumene 7 (1): 7–46.
o
Lightman, Bernard. 2013. “Mid-Victorian science museums and exhibitions:
‘The industrial amusement and instruction of the people.’” Endeavour 37 (2): 82-93.
·
Thursday – Early 20th Century Science
o
Haraway, Donna. 1984. “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of
Eden, New York City, 1908-1936.” Social Text, 11 (December): 20–64.
o
Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes
and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. Chapter 2
only.
Week 10: More-Than-Human Geographies
·
Tuesday – Plants
o
Gardner, Robert. 2009. “Trees as Technology: Planting Shelterbelts on
the Great Plains” 25 (4): 325–41.
o
Jones, Owain, and Paul J Cloke. 2002. Tree Cultures: The Place of
Trees and Trees in Their Place. Oxford; New York: Berg. Chapter 7 only.
o
Sandilands, Catriona. 2013. “Dog Stranglers in the Park?: National and
Vegetal Politics in Ontario’s Rouge Valley.” Journal of Canadian
Studies/Revue D’études Canadiennes 47 (3): 93–122.
·
Thursday – Animals
o
Bertoni, Filippo. 2012. “Charming Worms: Crawling Between Natures.” Cambridge
Anthropology 30 (2): 65–81.
o
Smith, Mick. 2013. “Ecological Community, the Sense of the World, and
Senseless Extinction.” Environmental Humanities 2: 23–43.
Week 11: Hybrid
Geographies
·
Tuesday and Thursday – Sarah Whatmore’s Hybrid Geographies *Term
paper due on Thursday*
o
Whatmore, Sarah. 2002. Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces.
London: SAGE. Read the entire book.
Week 12: Wrap-up
·
Tuesday – Course conclusion and summary
o
No readings.
·
Thursday – Study and review workshop with TAs *Sample exam questions due*
o
No readings.
