IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001320031

Labs in the Field? Rocky Mountain Biological Stations in the Early Twentieth Century (2012)

Vetter, Jeremy (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 45
Pages: 587--611

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special issue on 20th-Century Field Biology
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Laboratories Biology Field work Research institutes; research stations 20th century, early United States Rocky Mountains (U.S.)

Biological field stations proliferated in the Rocky Mountains region of the western United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay examines these Rocky Mountain field stations as hybrid lab-field sites from the perspective of the field side of the dichotomy: as field sites with raised walls rather than as laboratories whose walls with the natural world have been lowered. Not only were these field stations transformed to be more like laboratories, but they were also embedded within the particular regional environmental and institutional context of the Rocky Mountains. Using the University of Colorado's Mountain Laboratory at Tolland and other contemporaneous sites as examples, this essay analyzes key features of these sites, including their location within transportation networks, buildings, equipment, personnel, scheduling, recreational and social activities, and other material and social practices on the ground. Considering both the distinctive and shared characteristics of the Rocky Mountain field stations in comparison to other types of field stations provides a more complete picture of the diversity and range of lab-field hybrid sites in the biological sciences in the early twentieth-century United States.

...More

Included in

Article Kohler, Robert E. (2012) Practice and Place in Twentieth-Century Field Biology: A Comment. Journal of the History of Biology (p. 579). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001320031/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Jenna Tonn; (2018)
Laboratory of Domesticity: Gender, Race, and Science at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, 1903–30 (/isis/citation/CBB188270251/)

Thesis Doing, Park Atkinson; (2003)
Velvet Revolutions: Accounting for Epistemic and Political Change at a Modern Physics Laboratory Amid the Second Rise of Biology in Synchrotron Science (/isis/citation/CBB001562302/)

Article Alagona, Peter S.; (2012)
A Sanctuary for Science: The Hastings Natural History Reservation and the Origins of the University of California's Natural Reserve System (/isis/citation/CBB001320033/)

Book Wolfe, Douglas A.; (2000)
A history of the federal biological laboratory at Beaufort, North Carolina 1899-1999 (/isis/citation/CBB000111936/)

Book Kohler, Robert E.; (2002)
Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (/isis/citation/CBB000201440/)

Thesis Spurlock, James William; (2007)
The Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Military-Industrial Complex: TheJewett-Buckley Years, 1925--1951 (/isis/citation/CBB001561474/)

Thesis Ilerbaig, Juan Francisco; (2002)
Pride in Place: Fieldwork, Geography, and American Field Zoology, 1850--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001562443/)

Article Vanessa Heggie; (December 2016)
Higher and colder: The success and failure of boundaries in high altitude and Antarctic research stations (/isis/citation/CBB453806040/)

Article Anderson, Warwick; (2013)
Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States (/isis/citation/CBB001212629/)

Chapter Milam, Erika Lorraine; (2009)
“The Experimental Animal from the Naturalist's Point of View”: Behavior and Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History, 1928--1954 (/isis/citation/CBB001022524/)

Article Rudge, David Wÿss; (2000)
The Complementary Roles of Observation and Experiment: Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics of Natural Populations IX and XII (/isis/citation/CBB000770045/)

Article Kohler, Robert E.; (2002)
Place and Practice in Field Biology (/isis/citation/CBB000200320/)

Article Laura Stark; (2022)
Reservations (/isis/citation/CBB560352909/)

Article Kingsland, Sharon E.; (2009)
Frits Went's Atomic Age Greenhouse: The Changing Labscape on the Lab-Field Border (/isis/citation/CBB000932218/)

Article Karafantis, Layne; (2013)
Sealab II and Skylab: Psychological Fieldwork in Extreme Spaces (/isis/citation/CBB001320517/)

Article Kohler, Robert E.; (2012)
Practice and Place in Twentieth-Century Field Biology: A Comment (/isis/citation/CBB001320030/)

Article Mitman, Gregg; (2003)
Natural History and the Clinic: The Regional Ecology of Allergy in America (/isis/citation/CBB000340823/)

Article Haffer, J.; (2008)
The Origin of Modern Ornithology in Europe (/isis/citation/CBB000931205/)

Article Jiang, Yu-ping; (2003)
Twenty Years of the Institute of Botany of National Academy of Peiping (/isis/citation/CBB000340107/)

Article Rankin, William J.; (2009--2010)
The Epistemology of the Suburbs: Knowledge, Production, and Corporate Laboratory Design (/isis/citation/CBB001033584/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}