Locating science, locating salmon: institutions, linkages, and spatial practices in early British Columbia fisheries science

摘要

Fisheries scientists established institutions, engaged metropolitan ideas and local knowledge, and worked out particular spatial practices to produce fisheries science in early-20th-century British Columbia. Problems of distance and the mobility of scientific specimens shaped practices. The difficulties of operating in a peripheral location influenced the institutional development of the field and the emphases of science towards commercially important problems focusing on salmon migration and life history. In this case study I compare and integrate approaches to science and distance from Latour's work and postcolonial historiographies of science in an empirical context.