Epistemic networks and the problem of place in science

摘要

Science must be performed in a specific location, but the knowledge that results is also obligated to be transferable anywhere. Scholars have focused on networks as the solution to this problem of place, but the processes through which this occurs have not been examined thoroughly in agricultural science. In this ethnographic study I observed that depending on the epistemic culture one is examining, plants unfold into networks differently. Model organisms in molecular plant sciences extended through networks into crops, while plant breeders worked to develop alternative grain crops into models for networked innovation. Each of these approaches established conceptions of space that are critical to socializing new members: one was globally based, while the other was molecular. Regardless of the scale of these spatial frameworks, scientists bent space similarly through enrollment of key biological actants. Over time, epistemic networks emerged as places of and for experimentation. Plant breeders in alternative agriculture generated places through seed networks, while biotechnologists performed similar place-generating processes with genes and proteins. The plants and the scientists developed agency over time through the networked knowledge necessary to sustain these geographies. This finding requires re-imagining the laboratory and field trial in new contexts, moving towards a full geographical network paradigm by redefining place in science as an epistemic network that develops over time.