Journal
SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE
Volume 41, Issue 6, Pages 769-790Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0306312711423432
Keywords
biodiversity; perception; virtuosity; visual skilling; UK naturalists
Categories
Funding
- UK Economic and Social Research Council [R000239804]
- Natural Environment Research Council [ceh010010] Funding Source: researchfish
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Approaches to visual skilling from anthropology and STS have tended to highlight the forces of discipline and control in understanding how shared visual accounts of the world are created in the face of potential differences brought about by multi-sensorial perception. Drawing upon a range of observational and interview material from an immersion in naturalist training and biological recording activities between 2003 and 2009, I focus upon jizz, a distinct form of gestalt perception much coveted by naturalist communities in the UK. Jizz is described as a tacit and embodied way of seeing that instantaneously reveals the identity of a species, relying upon but simultaneously suspending the arduous and meticulous study of an organism's diagnostic characteristics. I explore the potential and limitations of jizz to allow for both visual precision and an enchanted and varied form of encounter with nature. In so doing, I explore how the specific characteristics of wild, intangible and irreverent virtuoso performance work closely together with disciplining taxonomic standards. As such, discipline and irreverence work together, are mutually enabling, and allow for an accommodation rather than a segregation of potential difference brought about by perceptual variety.
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