In place-based science, location is key to scientific inquiry. Thus, place-based science expands the focus from the rituals of laboratory practices within a laboratory to the actual placement of research in a landscape, on parcels of land often controlled by governmental or corporate entities. Although there is a deep understanding of the administration of the traditional laboratory space, analysis focused on the administration of place-based science is fairly new. This shift in focus produces questions, such as: In what ways has governmental control of land predetermined or created fields of scientific inquiry? How does such administration dictate siting, research protocols, experimental containment, and required alterations to the sites? Conversely, how does geographic specificity affect administration of research under place-based science?
In addressing these questions, this panel will apply Scott Kirsch’s holistic concept of geographical histories, Peter Galison’s technical landscapes, and other new perspectives to place-based science sites administered by governmental entities. Each paper explores these concepts to explain and interrogate the role of the nation state in defining, administrating, and even hindering experimental spaces through the following place-based science examples: experimental stations in Central America, nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, scientific infrastructure building on Cape Canaveral, and conducting physics on formerly active Cold War sites in the Western United States.
