Embodied Practices: Boundary Construction and Transgression in Ecological Science

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the stakes of doing contemporary ecological research. Based on five weeks of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at an ecology lab in Northern California, I respond to existing scholarship that focuses primarily on either the construction or deconstruction of boundaries in science, but does not trace boundary work from its initial impetus to the transgression of its construction in the final instance. I begin by showing how a “straight-up science” is discursively constructed to be opposed to politics and more-than-scientific ways of knowing. Crucial to this construction is the uptake of norms related to scientific objectivity and neoliberalism. I then show how ecologists’ embodied practices defy the boundaries erected around “straight-up science.” Sensory experience, affect, and emplacement of the body allow ecologists to contest scientific objectivity and partake in more-than-scientific knowledge production. Pleasurable experiences—also involving sensory experience but mindlessness, stasis, and groundedness as well—lead ecologists to refuse neoliberalism and construct a politics of perseverance amid the progression of anthropogenic climate change.