Beyond the Lab and the Field : Infrastructures As Places of Knowledge Production since the Late Nineteenth Century / Eike-Christian Heine and Martin Meiske.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heine, Eike-Christian, author.

Meiske, Martin, author.

Series:

Intersections (Series) ; Volume 11.

Intersections Series ; Volume 11

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

General semantics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (301 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2022]

Summary:

Beyond the Lab and the Field analyzes infrastructures as intense sites of knowledge production in the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the late nineteenth century. Moving beyond classical places known for yielding scientific knowledge, chapters in this volume explore how the construction and maintenance of canals, highways, dams, irrigation schemes, the oil industry, and logistic networks intersected with the creation of know-how and expertise. Referred to by the authors as "scientific bonanzas, " such intersections reveal opportunities for great wealth, but also distress and misfortune.This volume explores how innovative technologies provided research opportunities for scientists and engineers, as they relied on expertise to operate, which resulted in enormous profits for some. But, like the history of any gold rush, the history of infrastructure also reveals how technologies of modernity transformed nature, disrupting communities and destroying the local environment. Focusing not on the victory march of science and technology but on ambivalent change, contributors consider the role of infrastructures for ecology, geology, archaeology, soil science, engineering, ethnography, heritage, and polar exploration. Together, they also examine largely overlooked perspectives on modernity: the reliance of infrastructure on knowledge, and infrastructures as places and occasions that inspired a greater understanding of the natural world and the technologically made environment.

Contents:

Introduction. Scientific bonanzas : infrastructures as places of knowledge production / Eike-Christian Heine and Martin Meiske

A subversive bonanza : the construction of the Panama Canal, the biomedical and life sciences, and the birth of tropical ecology / Paul S. Sutter

Exploring the earth through its anthropogenic scars : geology and the construction of the Panama Canal / Martin Meiske

Hydropower and dams : an entangled history of academic engineers, local knowledge, and environmental features, 1880-1930 / Christian Zumbrägel

Constructing dams' global success story : knowledge production, staging, and exchange in US American and Spanish dam building from the 1920s to the 1970s / Benjamin Brendel

Autobahn and archaeology : intersections of infrastructure, knowledge, and ideology during the Third Reich / Eike-Christian Heine

"From the stone age into socialism" : ethnographic expertise and sovietization at West Siberian oil deposits / Valentina Roxo

Slaves to the yield : scientific bonanza and irrigation-megalomania in the Kuban River Basin / Timm Schönfelder

NIMBY bonanzas : European tinfrastructures and local protest as system building / Vincent Lagendijk

Detour along the way : obstacles and knowledge production at the Ayalon Highway / Neta Feniger and Roy Kozlovsky

Landing strips and penguins : ecological oppositions to the scientific exploration of Antarctica / Christian Kehrt.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822987789

0822987783

OCLC:

1309056851