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Article ID: CBB219887602

Flipping the Field (2022)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 113
Issue: 1
Pages: 151-156

URI: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/718148

DOI: 10.1086/718148

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The FLoating Instrument Platform (FLIP), a seagoing vessel managed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, offers an unusual vantage point on the sea, one useful for reflecting on how the figure of the “field” is made in oceanography—and how it rotates in and out of alignment with attempts to render portions of the sea more lab-like. FLIP works like this: in its horizontal conformation, the vessel travels like an ordinary oceangoing craft. But by “flipping” 90 degrees into a vertical position once it arrives at its destination—with all the instrumentation inside swiveling correspondingly—it becomes an enormous spar buoy, more or less stationary in the wave field. This essay draws on the author’s anthropology-of-science fieldwork on FLIP to offer prompts for thinking about objectivity, orientation, and perspective in the practice of at-sea fieldwork.

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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

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB219887602/

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