Title:

Modest Witnesses: Fieldwork, Indigenous Knowledges and Truth-Making I

Description:

Since at least the seventeenth century, claims to objectivity in science have been linked to the presentation of the self as the modest and humble witness of nature. As Steven Shapin, Simon Shaffer, Donna Haraway, and others have shown, these affectations defined the role of the scientist as the "legitimate and authorized ventriloquist for the object world" (Haraway, 1997: 24). The conflation of modesty and objectivity was, moreover, a situated concern—linked to the socially regulated space of the laboratory, where the world was observed in abstract. What, though, of the geographer, explorer, and traveller who acquired knowledge 'in the field'? How did (and do) geographers seek to establish the credibility of such knowledge?

This session seeks to interrogate the epistemological bases of claims to truth in the context of fieldwork and travel. How is it that geographers evaluate the relative significance of direct observation, oral and textual testimonies of informants, and indigenous or 'local' knowledges? How does knowledge acquired in the field become, through a series of epistemic and material translations, established as reliable? How is it that the testimony of travellers, explorers, and geographers in the field continues to serve as the basis for understandings of 'out-of-the-way' places (Tsing 1993: 27) and, through the published versions of work, establish their accounts as 'truth'?

Anticipated Attendance:

30

Organizers:

Chairs:

Participants:

Sponsorships:

Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group