Fishy Business: Salmon, Biology, and the Social Construction of Nature

by Scarce, Rik

• ISBN13: 9781566397292
• ISBN10: 1566397294
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

For more than a century biologists have tried to unlock the mystery of salmon behavior, and in the process they have made science very much a part of the salmon we know. For sociologist Rik Scarce, salmon represent an opportunity to probe the relationship of science, society, and nature. Using Pacific salmon and the biologists who study the fish, this book explores the question: where does society end and nature begin?

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Nature in the Making	1	(18)
Nature's Beginnings	2	(7)
Scientists, Rivers, and Salmon	3	(3)
Why Salmon?	6	(1)
Constructing Nature	7	(2)
Classical Social Constructivism: An Overview	9	(4)
Macroconstructions and Rationality	13	(2)
Rationalization and the Social Construction of Nature	14	(1)
Storytelling	15	(4)
An Author's Story	18	(1)
Who---Or What---Is in Control Here?	19	(30)
Control, Power, and Slamon Biology	21	(2)
Professionalizing Biologists and Salmon: A Brief History	23	(4)
Schools of Fisheries	25	(2)
Structural Control over Salmon Biology	27	(19)
The Political and Economic Milieu	27	(4)
Funding Salmon Biology	31	(1)
Society and Funding for Salmon Research	31	(5)
Expediency versus Knowledge	36	(4)
The Professional Politics of Funding	40	(2)
``Bootlegging'' Research	42	(4)
Conclusion: Biologists as Bartleby	46	(3)
Biologists in the Driver's Seat	49	(34)
Control of Salmon by Salmon Biologists	50	(24)
Engineering Salmon	50	(3)
Systems	53	(4)
Laboratories, Field Research, and Control	57	(3)
Quantification and Modeling	60	(7)
``Enhancement'': Control by Other Means	67	(3)
Assessing Enhancement	70	(1)
The Interchangeability of Salmon	71	(3)
Salmon Biology and Control over Managers	74	(6)
Biologists and Managers	75	(5)
Conclusion: Salmon and Biology Transformed	80	(3)
Thinking and Making Salmon	83	(38)
Cognitive and Physical Constructions	86	(4)
Cognitive Constructions	87	(2)
Physical Constructions	89	(1)
Salmon Hatcheries as Political-Economic Instruments	90	(21)
Salmon Hatchery Technology	90	(3)
Production in Salmon Biology	93	(3)
Hatchery Politics	96	(2)
Certainty, Prediction, and Tooling	98	(2)
An Agrarian Model for Fisheries	100	(2)
Hatchery Salmon as ``Different''	102	(5)
The Pro-Hatchery Response	107	(4)
New Tools for Tooling Salmon: High-Tech Fish	111	(8)
When Salmon Research Themselves	111	(3)
The Social Context	114	(2)
Genetics and the New Salmon	116	(3)
Conclusion: Salmon as Social Fact	119	(2)
Mythology and Biology	121	(26)
Science: Myth and the Material	123	(2)
Why Mythology?	125	(2)
Mythology and Control	125	(2)
Mythology and Meaning	127	(1)
Contemporary Interpretations of the Myth Concept	127	(2)
Mythology's Contradictions	129	(1)
Uncertainty and Mythology	129	(4)
Uncertainty, Expertise, and Myth	130	(3)
Myths and ``Bad Sciecne''	133	(8)
Funding and Bas Science	134	(1)
Distinguishing Fact from Bad Science	135	(3)
Bad Science: Some Examples	138	(3)
Observer-Created Reality	141	(3)
Conclusions: Infinite Control?	144	(3)
Freedom and Self-Determination in Salmon Biology	147	(30)
Freedom and Control	149	(5)
Freedom in Classical Sociological Theory	149	(2)
Control/Power versus Self-Determination and Freedom	151	(3)
Biologists' Struggle for Freedom	154	(5)
The Scientific Ideal in an Age of Limits	154	(3)
The Importance of Interchangeability	157	(2)
Conservation Biology, Freedom, and Self-Determination	159	(15)
Conservation Biology: The Core	160	(3)
Conservation Biology within Salmon Biology	163	(1)
Identification and Ethics	163	(4)
Advocacy, Acceptance, and Resistance	167	(3)
Commonalities with the Fisheries Perspective	170	(4)
Conclusion: Back to the Future	174	(3)
Salmon Wars and the ``Nature'' of Politics	177	(14)
Power to the People?	177	(3)
Anatomy of a Fish War	180	(6)
Capturing a Fugitive with a Treaty	180	(4)
The Salmon War Gets Hot	184	(2)
Constructing Complete Communities	186	(2)
Conclusion: Nature as We Want It to Be	188	(3)
Constructing Nature---and Experiencing It	191	(8)
Toward a Sociology of Social-Natural Interactions	191	(4)
Knowing a Meaningless Nature	195	(4)
Appendix. Methods and Related Literature	199	(14)
Data Gathering and Analysis for this Study	199	(4)
Grounded Theory	201	(2)
The Intellectual Heritage: Prior Works	203	(10)
Socially Constructing Science and Technology	203	(2)
Socially Constructing Nature	205	(1)
Catton and Dunlap: The First Social Constructivists of Nature	205	(1)
Landscaping Nature	206	(1)
Other Understandings	207	(1)
The Anticonstructivists	208	(1)
A Change of Face	208	(3)
Murphy's Failed Critique of Constructivism	211	(2)
Notes	213	(16)
Index	229