Environmental Research from Here and There

Numerical Modelling Labs as Heterotopias

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7174479
AutoresSarah Laborde (0000-0002-3985-0200, The Ohio State University, autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume33
Fascículo2
Páginas265-280
Data de publicação2015-03-23
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1068/d14128p
OpenAlexW2117441532
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas42

This paper examines the production of local and remote knowledge about the flows of a large Italian lake (Lake Como) on the basis of a dual ethnographic engagement with lake fishermen and computer modellers. The focus is the relationship between these two ways of knowing a lake, in relation to the lake itself and the places where the knowledge is produced. I first argue that despite being seemingly located at different edges of the environmental knowledge spectrum—the local and the remote and computer-mediated—the fishermen's and scientists' knowledges emerge from similar forms of skilled engagement in their respective environments. In other words, knowledge develops in place and fisherman and scientist do not know the same place in different ways; rather they know different places in similar ways. This raises the question of what kind of places these environmental modelling labs and offices are, and how they relate to the places they talk about, which are located elsewhere. I propose here the use of Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia to model this complex articulation of the ‘here’ and ‘there’ in environmental modelling

Articulation (sociology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Focus (optics · Heterotopia (medicine · Political science · Relation (database · Sociology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Spatial and Cultural Studies