What the Collection Folds: Knowledge, Scientists and Specimens for other Possible Sciences
No. 41 (2020-10-01)Author(s)
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Santiago Martínez MedinaInstituto Alexander von Humboldt, Colombia
Abstract
This article experiments with the way in which ethnographic work on scientific practice can open new possibilities of articulation for the sciences, particularly for taxonomy, in times of global environmental crisis. In concrete terms, it examines the practice of collecting, in which biological specimens, the central evidence for this science, are produced. We analyze the way in which this practice folds into the specimen as well as the knowledge of the local guides who participate in the scientific expedition. It is therefore interesting to give an account of what the collection also collects and how, from this, the asymmetry between science and the knowledge considered as local is produced as a result of the encounter. Thus, the material work from which the scientific evidence comes is involved in making both a common and a univocal nature. This ethnography of scientific evidence in tension with non-scientific knowledge is nourished by my experience in three expeditions in 2018, as well as visits to biological collections between 2018 and 2019. The article concludes on a more speculative tone by reflecting on other possible scientific practices, in which, without renouncing the obligations and requirements of biology, it can articulate the taxonomic task with the kind of questions that interest the human and beyond human communities involved. I consider that this articulation is key to expanding efforts for the study, protection, restoration, and conservation of Colombian biodiversity.
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