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Biodiversity Datadiversity

Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0503, USA; fax: +1 858 534 7215; bowker{at}ucsd.edu

Biodiversity is a data-intense science, drawing as it does on data from a large number of disciplines in order to build up a coherent picture of the extent and trajectory of life on earth. This paper argues that as sets of heterogeneous databases are made to converge, there is a layering of values into the emergent infrastructure. It is argued that this layering process is relatively irreversible, and that it operates simultaneously at a very concrete level (fields in a database) and at a very abstract one (the coding of the relationship between the disciplines and the production of a general ontology). Finally, it is maintained that science studies as a discipline is able to (and should) make a significant contribution to the design of robust and flexible databases which recognize this performative character of infrastructure.

Key Words: archives • interdisciplinarity • metadata • social informatics

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 30, No. 5, 643-683 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/030631200030005001


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