The Right Time for the Job? Insights into Practices of Time in Contemporary Field Sciences

Abstract

Temporal issues appear to be crucial to the relationship between life scientists and their field sites and to the making of science in the field. We elaborate on the notion of practices of time to describe the ways life scientists cope with multiple and potentially conflicting temporal aspects that influence how they become engaged and remain engaged in a field-site, such as pleasure, long-term security, scientific productivity, and timeliness. With this notion, we seek to bring enhanced visibility and coherence to the extensive but rather scattered and limited treatments of temporal practices in field sciences that already exist.

Les sciences de la nature aux prises avec la ville

“…Or le rapport au terrain constitue un élément essentiel des sciences de la nature, structurant non seulement les pratiques et les agendas des chercheurs, mais aussi leurs identités professionnelles (Mauz & Granjou, 2015). Dumoulin-Kervran ( 2018) pointe par exemple le rôle des voyages transcontinentaux et autres expéditions d'exploration de contrées lointaines dans la stabilisation des motivations et des ancrages identitaires des écologues et biologistes tropicaux.…”

Attachment and the archive: barriers and facilitators to the use of historical sociology as complementary developmental science

“…Klein (2010) and Kalela (2011) have observed that collaboration between disciplines depends upon their relative commitments and compatibility, and this relates to the wider question of in what way or ways, exactly, historical knowledge is useful or seen as capable of being timely. The importance of perspectives on time for how scientists appraise research possibilities has also been highlighted by Arpin and Granjou (2015). In this regard, another factor that reduced the barriers to collaboration has been that, despite their very substantial differences, history and attachment theory have points of overlap in their philosophies of time.…”