ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

When Knowing Becomes Caring: Taxonomic Epistemologies, Engagement with Nature, and Activism

• In Event: Citizen Science in a Global Perspective

English Abstract

Our paper examines how amateur entomologists have sustained taxonomic knowledge in a period marked by the professional decline of taxonomy. The taxonomic knowledge these amateurs have produced, we argue, is characterised by an epistemology that is different to the professional one and which tends to promote activism. We illustrate this through focusing on the Israeli Lepidopterists’ Society as a case study.
During the twentieth century, the experimental turn in biology and the growing prestige of molecular approaches marginalized classical taxonomy. As a result, there has been an acute shortage of taxonomists. At the same time, scientists and environmentalists have been becoming aware of the increasing biodiversity crisis and working to conserve global and local biodiversity. However, they found themselves facing what has been termed the ‘taxonomic impediment’—as many species have simply never been described. This is especially true for insects: of an estimated 5.5 million species, fewer than one million have been formally described.
Against this background, amateur entomologists have kept alive modes of field-based inquiry that professional institutions have largely abandoned. Their epistemology differs from the professional one. It is embodied, multi-sensory, and tacit, and is transmitted through an apprenticeship system. It is also a very local epistemology. This epistemology is tied to a kind of engagement with nature that often produces strong emotional ties to species and their environment. As we show through the example of the Israeli Lepidopterists’ Society, this epistemology and the affective engagement it engenders goes hand in hand with environmental activism.

Authors

• Leore Joanne Green, Dan David Fellowship

• Nurit Kirsh, The Open University of Israel