Experimental Spaces : Knowledge Production and its Environments in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This introduction conceptualizes man-made social environments as ex-perimental spaces and arenas for scientific observation. First, it offers a broaddefinition of the term environment following Etienne Benson’s conceptualizationof environments as relational, mental and physical realms that exerted influenceon various entities. It then discusses the investigative framework of experimentalspaces including both a physical and discursive dimensions as well as the embed-ding of this special section in the history of knowledge. The central part of thisintroduction refers to the historiography on experiments in Science and Technol-ogy Studies (STS) and highlights how our approach is distinct linking conceptuali-zations of experiments with recent scholarship on intentional settlements as sitesof knowledge production. We relate Bruno Latur’s concept of the laboratory topractices of knowledge production in intentional settlements and agriculturalcommunities. The third part addresses the entanglements between experimentalspaces and settler colonialism, discussing a) how knowledge production couldsupport imperial expansion, even for regions that were not (yet) imperial powers,b) how colonial infrastructures and a colonial mindset of settlers aided knowl-edge production in intentional settlements and c) how historiographical researchabout colonies as laboratories of modernity emphasizes that colonies became en-abling spaces for utopian settlement projects in itself.