Jackson Pope (Author)
Pandora, Katherine A. (Advisor)
Hale, Piers J. (Advisor)
Weldon, Stephen P. (Advisor)
Trachtenberg, Zev (Advisor)
University of Oklahoma
Pandora, Katherine A.
Hale, Piers J.
Weldon, Stephen P.
Trachtenberg, Zev
Physical Details: vi + 115 pp.
Language: English
Professionalization within the sciences has often been presented as a process of separation between scientists and the public. Implicit within this conception of professionalization is a hierarchical conception of knowledge which is diffused from the laboratory to the public. However, the history of ornithology reveals very different dynamics which requires historians to challenge this notion of professionalization. From its origins as a science oriented toward the collection of specimens for the purposes of taxonomy, ornithologists have formed a community of practice with amateurs. Amateur bird watching fostered a new set of skills for bird identification at a time when professional ornithologists became reliant upon such skills in order to study birds in the field. A study of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology reveals the extent to which professional ornithologists were embedded within the community of bird watchers and depended upon them for the very survival of the institution. The interaction between professional ornithologists and a wider culture of bird watchers as seen through the recording activity of the CLO is inadequately explained by models the isolate “science” and the “public” and assume a one-way flow of scientific knowledge. The example of sound recording shows how amateurs were important figures in scientific networks which were maintained by personal relationships. The rise of citizen science at the CLO in the late 1980s demonstrates its reliance upon the participation of large numbers of amateur bird watchers to produce data published in scientific literature. Rather than a diffusionist model of professionalization, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology points to a model of professionalization through popularization built upon a common culture of bird watching.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Joeri Bruyninckx;
(2015)
Trading twitter: Amateur recorders and economies of scientific exchange at the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds
Article
Sean Nixon;
(2024)
Watching birds: observation, photography and the ‘ethological eye’
Article
Robert P. Prŷs-Jones;
(2022)
Allan Octavian Hume (1829–1912): His development as an ornithologist until his departure from Etawah district, India, in 1867
Book
Carlson, Douglas;
(2007)
Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography
Article
Winearls, Joan;
(2008)
The Travails of an Early-Twentieth-Century Wildlife Illustrator in North America
Article
Alexandra Hui;
(2021)
Listening to Extinction: Early Conservation Radio Sounds and the Silences of Species
Article
McCracken, Donal P.;
(2012)
Leslie McCracken and Charles Bethune Horsbrugh: Collecting Birds' Eggs in Northern Ireland in the 1920s and Early 1930s
Article
Morris, P. A.;
(2006)
J. B. Nichols' Purchasing Code
Article
Dean, W. R. J.;
Sandwith, M.;
Milton, S. J.;
(2006)
The Bird Collections of C. J. Andersson in Southern Africa, 1850--1867
Article
Medway, David G.;
(2011)
The Contribution of Thomas Pennant (1726--1798), Welsh Naturalist, to the Australian Ornithology of Cook's First Voyage (1768--1771)
Chapter
Barrow, Mark V., Jr.;
(2010)
On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species
Thesis
Matthew Hayden Anthony;
(2020)
‘Surgical and Rigorous (Yet Always Fun)’: Science, Sport, and Community in American Birding, 1950-1980
Book
Leaf, Sue;
(2013)
A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts
Book
Ian J. Mason;
Gilbert H. Pfitzner;
(2020)
Passions in ornithology: A century of Australian egg collectors
Book
Canfield, Michael R.;
(2011)
Field Notes on Science and Nature
Article
Bont, Raf de;
(2011)
Poetry and Precision: Johannes Thienemann, the Bird Observatory in Rossitten and Civic Ornithology, 1900--1930
Article
Kristoffer Whitney;
(2020)
Valuing Shorebirds: Bureaucracy, Natural History, and Expertise in North American Conservation
Book
Anderson, Ted R;
(2013)
The Life of David Lack: Father of Evolutionary Ecology
Chapter
Greenwood, Jeremy J. D.;
(2005)
Science with a Team of Thousands: The British Trust for Ornithology
Book
Mike Unwin;
David Tipling;
(2020)
Flights of Passage: An Illustrated Natural History of Bird Migration
Be the first to comment!