Article ID: CBB194903324

The Post-Heroic Field (2022)

unapi

This essay argues for taking fieldwork seriously, but not too seriously. It focuses on geologists and geomorphologists in the United States in the post–World War II decades who used irony, satire, and self-conscious staging to negotiate the contradictions between the tradition of frontier fieldwork that they had inherited from the late nineteenth century and the realities of mid-twentieth-century fieldwork, which they often found hard to fit into the heroic mold. Poking fun at the fieldwork tradition, the essay argues, helped them claim that tradition as their own even while constructing new scientific personas and practices that diverged from it in a number of ways.

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Associated with

Article Cameron Brinitzer; Etienne Benson (2022) Introduction: What Is a Field? Transformations in Fields, Fieldwork, and Field Sciences since the Mid-Twentieth Century. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 108-113). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB194903324/

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Authors & Contributors
Benson, Etienne Samuel
Beyer, Ann
Dale, T. Nelson
Dove, William F.
Fedoroff, Nina V.
Filipowicz, Witold
Journals
Science
American Scientist
British Journal for the History of Science
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Publishers
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
Aarhus Universitetsforlag
Los Libros de la Catarata
Oxford University Press
The MIT Press
Concepts
Scientists
Biographies
Field work
Geology
Cold War
Science and society
People
Armstrong, Neil
Asimov, Isaac
Bethe, Hans Albrecht
Crow, James Franklin
Einstein, Albert
Erdös, Paul
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
19th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Africa
Great Britain
Sahara
Soviet Union
Spain
Institutions
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Human Genome Project
National Institute of Health (U.S.)
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (U.S.)
United States Navy
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