ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Data Asymmetries and Network Reproduction in the Making of the IUCN as a “Global Clearing House” for Species Conservation

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives on Data: Revealing Imbalances in Global Scientific Networks_2

English Abstract

This paper examines the formative years of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), during which the accumulation of data on species threatened with extinction played a crucial role in building the organisation’s authority, reputation, and impact as a “global clearinghouse” for species conservation. Rather than treating data as neutral, the study adopts a relational perspective that emphasises how data reflect their origins, purposes, and omissions. It demonstrates that the production, accumulation, and management of threatened-species data were deeply embedded in pre- and post-Second World War diplomatic strategies and in the activities of hybrid transnational networks. These networks consisted of individuals operating across national, institutional, and epistemic boundaries, co-producing both diplomatic influence and conservation knowledge at the intersection of U.S. soft-power projection and the preservation of colonial asymmetries repackaged as global cooperation. This paper, in accordance with the NEWORLD@A ERC project objectives, reinterprets the years leading to the IUCN’s establishment as a politically charged process of centralisation, the reproduction of global asymmetries, and diplomatic positioning within a shifting global order, by foregrounding the relational nature of data and the hybrid transnational networks that mobilised them. In doing so, it aims to contribute not only to a deeper historical understanding of conservation data practices and of how historical configurations of global asymmetries continue to shape them, but also to the improvement of contemporary conservation data tools and infrastructure.

Author

• Sotiris Mikros, CHSTM, University of Manchester