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
Robinson, Walter V.
Lipton, Beryl C. D.
Brown, J. Patrick
Sáez de Adana, Francisco
Morisy, Michael
Aftergood, Steven
Concepts
Scientists
Biographies
Field work
Geology
Cold War
Science and society
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
United States
West Virginia (U.S.)
Spain
Soviet Union
Sahara
Great Britain
Institutions
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Project Sealab
Skylab Program
Federation of American Scientists
Census of Marine Life (1999-2009)
United States Navy
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