David Turnbull

• Research Fellow at Deakin University and University of Melbourne

The term ‘body of knowledge’ has a double meaning, implying a unified assemblage of knowledge as well as embodied cognition. But knowledge is not naturally unified, as was apparent in the first Body of Knowledge Conference, where the internalist neurosciences presenting themselves as universalist and objective were clearly divided from the external...

The term ‘body of knowledge’ has a double meaning, implying a unified assemblage of knowledge as well as embodied cognition. But knowledge is not naturally unified, as was apparent in the first Body of Knowledge Conference, where the internalist neurosciences presenting themselves as universalist and objective were clearly divided from the external...

South American rock art and prehistory with all its controversies is a rich site for exploring the processes of territorialization through which humans shape their understanding of the world in their earliest movements through the environment, and also for examining how narratives of prehistory are woven. The paper examines the debate over the Ceru...

The question of the boundary between the mappable and the unmappable is brought into focus by the recent announcement of the map of dark matter and its parallels with paradoxes that have long defined Venice. The dark matter map, in bringing into visibility that which was previously invisible, seems to have forced a reconfiguration of thought and kn...

The social, political, and cultural consequences of attempts to cheat death by freezing life. As the planet warms and the polar ice caps melt, naturally occurring cold is a resource of growing scarcity. At the same time, energy-intensive cooling technologies are widely used as a means of preservation. Technologies of cryopreservation support global...

This paper explores a variety of approaches to the assemblage of knowledges from differing traditions without subsuming them into the overarching suppositions and prerequisite standards of any given tradition. The paper is in two parts; the first draws on recent thinking about complex adaptive systems, and about narrative and movement in the constr...

Explorations of design, use, and reuse of information technology in diverse historical and cultural contexts. This book explores alternative cultural encounters with and around information technologies. These encounters are alternative because they counter dominant, Western-oriented notions of media consumption; they include media practices as form...

The paper develops a performative account of the ways in which knowledge and space are co-produced as humans move, develop social networks, and extend their cognitive practices. Such an account enables alternative ways of conceiving what counts as knowledge and as modernity to be held in tension, thus allowing the emergent generative effects of the...

Bacteria, pigs, rats, pots, plants, words, bones, stones, earrings, diseases, and genetic indicators of all varieties are markers and proxies for the complexity of interweaving trails and stories integral to understanding human movement and knowledge assemblage in Southeast Asia and around the world. Understanding human movement and knowledge assem...

If maps are conceived as representations of reality or as spatially referenced data assemblages, a dilemma is raised by the nature of Indigenous knowledge traditions and multiple ontologies. How can differing knowledge traditions, differing ways of mapping be enabled to work together without subsumption into one common or universal ontology? The pa...

Without Abstract

This is a story about the boundaried nature of stories and the storied nature of boundaries. It concerns a modern 'scientific' boundary: the West Australian border. In the process of trying to locate Aboriginal boundaries in a native title claim, this border is revealed as problematic and bent, and as rooted in the colonial history of the last 500...

The article explores the ways knowledge and space are co-produced performatively through bodily movement in an examination of the Maltese megaliths the first complex stone structures in the world. It is argued that knowledge is best seen as spatialized narratives of human actions and objects as materialized forms of those spatial narratives. Rewrit...

The canonical model of science as a unified body of universal, objective truth has now to be set against a variety of studies locating science in historical, philosophical and sociological perspectives. Detailed analyses on the history of epistemology, on the cultural origins of science and on the practice of science reveal science as diverse, hete...

By recognizing science as a set of local practices it becomes possible to ‘decentre’ it and develop a framework within which all knowledge systems can be equitably compared. It is argued that all knowledge traditions are spatial in that they link people, sites and skills. In order to ensure the continued existence of the diversity of knowledge trad...

Science and cartography have had an intimate history which has not been simply the creation of ever more accurate scientific maps but one in which science, cartography and the state have co‐produced the knowledge space that provides the conditions for the possibility of modern science and cartography. The central cartographic process is the assembl...

Turbulence research lacks an agreed paradigm and is riven with controversy, yet the practitioners are able to construct a coherent field of research. They succeed in this through the creation of assemblages. These ad hoc contingent linkages are contrived through the development of social strategies and technical devices for moving and connecting lo...

This article argues that all knowledge is inherently local and that localness provides the basis for comparison between indigenous scientific traditions or knowledge production systems. As collective bodies of knowledge, many of the significant differences between knowledge production systems lie in the work involved in creating assemblages from di...

Gothic cathedrals like Chartres were built in a discontinuous process by groups of masons using their own local knowledge, measures, and techniques. They had neither plans nor knowledge of structural mechanics. The success of the masons in building such large complex innovative structures lies in the use of templates, string, constructive geometry,...

In recent years, there has been a wide, interdisciplinary focus on experiment in science (Batens & Van Bendegem, 1988; Collins, 1985; Galison, 1987; Hacking, 1983; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Knorr-Cetina & Mulkay, 1983; Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Pinch, 1986; Rouse, 1987; Shapin & Schaffer, 1985). All are agreed in portraying the laboratory as a site where a...

Why is there a push to develop a vaccine for malaria? A consideration of the Australian-Papua New Guinea collaboration in developing a malaria vaccine shows the seeming inevitability of the development of a successful vaccine to be the consequence of a complex of technical, social, economic and political factors. They include: the importance of a l...

This paper describes the content, approach and rationale of the courses in social studies of science currently being taught at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. It sets these courses in their national and intellectual contexts, and describes the publications which have been devised to support them.