Ocean thinking. The work of ocean sciences, scientists, and technologies in producing the sea as space
Crockford, S. (2020). Ocean thinking. The work of ocean sciences, scientists, and technologies in producing the sea as space. Environment and Society 11(1): 64-81. https://hdl.handle.net/10.3167/ares.2020.110105
In: Environment and Society. Berghahn Books: New York. ISSN 2150-6779; e-ISSN 2150-6787
How do scientists produce the ocean as space through their work and words? In this article, I examine how the techniques and tools of oceanographers constitute ocean science. Bringing theoretical literature from science and technology studies on how scientists “do” science into conversation with fine-grained ethnographic and sociological accounts of scientists in the field, I explore how ocean science is made, produced, and negotiated. Within this central concern, the technologies used to obtain data draw particular focus. Juxtaposed with this literature is a corpus by ocean scientists about their own work as well as interview data from original research. Examining the differences between scientists’ self-descriptions and analyses of them by social scientists leads to a productive exploration of how ocean science is constituted and how this work delineates the ocean as a form of striated space. This corpus of literature is placed in the context of climate change in the final section.
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