Author(s):
Gavan P.L. Watson* - Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University
Abstract:
Using a theoretical framework of actor-network theory and animal geography, this paper investigates the relationship between official ornithological knowledge making and amateur birdwatchers. Acting as a kind of lay scientist, there has been a long history of amateur birders adding to the official body of bird knowledge through "citizen science" projects. Without any formal training, and with only an interest in birds, anyone has the opportunity to participate in these knowledge making enterprises. Thus, these citizen-science projects act to order, integrate and legitimize this knowledge into the dominant ornithological field. Through the diffused location of the actors involved in this knowledge-making, birders generate data that would normally be unavailable to the dominant practices of ornithology.
While this work has yielded important longitudinal information about the health and ecosystem status of bird populations, a tension exists within these practices. Movement is now occurring within ornithology where technological advances are threatening to replace the amateur. For example, robots are now being used remotely to attempt to record rare birds in flight and mobile phones are deployed to play bird calls and record responses. If ornithology has remained one scientific discipline where power has been flattened through the importance of amateur observation and reporting, what does the movement away from including amateur knowledge mean for the discipline, for the amateurs now involved and the structure of power between the two?
