Rees, Amanda (Author)
The ideals and realities of field research have shaped the development of behavioural primatology over the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper draws on interviews with primatologists as well as a survey of the scientific literature to examine the idealized notion of the field site as a natural place and the physical environment of the field as a research space. It shows that what became standard field practice emerged in the course of wide ranging debate about the techniques, personal qualities and site conditions best suited to the scientific study of the natural behaviour of apes and monkeys. Although the laboratory was a constant presence in this debate, the export of techniques from the laboratory to the field was limited, due to concerns that experimental manipulation would destroy the naturalness of the behaviour. The paper goes on to demonstrate the central significance given by primatologists to the unique social, historical and ecological circumstances of particular field sites, and to sketch some of the complexities that fieldworkers contend with in trying to realize their ideals. Primatologists seek field sites that answer their questions; but once their studies become long term, they also need to find questions that answer to ever changing conditions at those sites.
...MoreArticle Rees, Amanda; Radick, Gregory (2006) Introduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 269).
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Jane Goodall: A Biography
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Rees, Amanda;
(2009)
The Infanticide Controversy: Primatology and the Art of Field Science
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Kimler, William;
(2012)
Case Studies, Controversy and the “Fieldworker's Regres”s
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Radick, Gregory;
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What's in a Name? The Vervet Predator Calls and the Limits of the Washburnian Synthesis
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Peterson, Dale;
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Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man
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Singes et grands singes: la découverte des primates par les naturalistes et leur représentation dans la gravure et le dessin au cours des cinq derniers siècles
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Rees, Amanda;
(2001)
Practising Infanticide, Observing Narrative: Controversial Texts in a Field Science
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Nicolas Langlitz;
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Chimpanzee Culture Wars
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Laura Stark;
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Reservations
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Stefan Helmreich;
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Flipping the Field
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Karafantis, Layne;
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Sealab II and Skylab: Psychological Fieldwork in Extreme Spaces
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Richard W. Burkhardt;
(2018)
An Orangutan in Paris: Pondering Proximity At the Muséum D’histoire Naturelle in 1836
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Wilson, Emily K.;
(2012)
Modeling Man: The Monkey Colony at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, 1925--1971
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van Wyhe, John;
Kjaergaard, Peter C.;
(2015)
Going the Whole Orang: Darwin, Wallace and the Natural History of Orangutans
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Rees, Amanda;
Radick, Gregory;
(2006)
Introduction
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Dale Peterson;
(2018)
The Ghosts of Gombe: A True Story of Love and Death in an African Wilderness
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Robert E. Kohler;
(2019)
Inside Science: Stories from the Field in Human and Animal Science
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Burt, Jonathan;
(2006)
Solly Zuckerman: The Making of a Primatological Career in Britain, 1925--1945
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Lys Alcayna-Stevens;
(December 2016)
Habituating field scientists
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Thesis
Montgomery, Georgina Mary;
(2005)
Primates in the Real World: Place, Practice and the History of Primate Field Studies, 1924--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001561603/)
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