Myth of the Natural Laboratory : Science, Empire and Their Derangements on Pi...

by Young, Adrian

$91 · Offered by eBay

Myth of the Natural Laboratory : Science, Empire and Their Derangements on Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, Hardcover by Young, Adrian, ISBN 9798880700721, ISBN-13 9798880700721, Like New Used, Free shipping in the US Outsiders have construed Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands as isolated natural laboratories since the 19th century. The islands’ inhabitants, descended from the 18th-century mutineers of the British naval vessel Bounty and their partners from Tahiti, Tubuai, Huahine, and Raiatea, have long been idealized by investigators as incomparable research subjects, uniquely suited for the study of racial, cultural, and linguistic “hybridity.” But how did these two Pacific islands come to be seen as natural experiments in the first place? How was that idea shaped and contested in encounters between knowledge makers and the people they studied? And how can we dismantle the myth of the Pacific Island as human laboratory today? The Myth of the Natural Laboratory answers these questions by tracing two centuries of interest in both of these communities. Across chapters on sailors, colonial administrators, anthropologists, historians, and linguists, it critically historicizes the trope of the island as laboratory and argues for more critical examination of colonial science’s reliance on Indigenous subjects. Over time, Pitcairn and Norfolk Islanders became, on a per capita basis, among the most studied people on earth, often subject to dozens of investigations across their lifetimes—to t

• ISBN: 9798880700721
• Condition: Fine

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