A global player from the South: the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires and the transnational network of zoos in the early twentieth century.

Under the directorship of Clemente Onelli (1904-1924), the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires became a major public attraction and gained an international reputation for its innovations in animal keeping and as a supplier of Latin American fauna. It was a hybrid institution that combined the tasks of public instruction, zoological research, and acclimatization of useful animals, and also served as a symbol of national pride. Despite its seemingly peripheral geographical location, the institution was firmly integrated in the global network of zoological gardens. This paper utilizes a transnational perspective to tease out the numerous, multidirectional exchanges of animals and knowledge between the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires and Northern metropolises.

A global player from the South: the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires and the transnational network of zoos in the early twentieth century / Um player global do Sul: o Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires e a rede transnacional de zoológicos no início do século XX

Abstract Under the directorship of Clemente Onelli (1904-1924), the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires became a major public attraction and gained an international reputation for its innovations in animal keeping and as a supplier of Latin American fauna. It was a hybrid institution that combined the tasks of public instruction, zoological research, and acclimatization of useful animals, and also served as a symbol of national pride. Despite its seemingly peripheral geographical location, the institution was firmly integrated in the global network of zoological gardens. This paper utilizes a transnational perspective to tease out the numerous, multidirectional exchanges of animals and knowledge between the Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires and Northern metropolises.

Resumo Sob a direção de Clemente Onelli (1904-1924), o Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires se tornou uma importante atração pública e ganhou reputação internacional por suas inovações no abrigo e fornecimento de fauna latinoamericana. Era uma instituição híbrida que combinava instrução pública, pesquisa zoológica e aclimatação de animais úteis, sendo também símbolo de orgulho nacional. Apesar da localização geográfica aparentemente periférica, a instituição estava fortemente integrada na rede global de jardins zoológicos. O artigo utiliza a perspectiva transnacional para lançar luz sobre as muitas trocas multidirecionais de animais e conhecimento entre o Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires e as metrópoles do Norte.

Spain's magic mountain: narrating prehistory at Atapuerca.

The Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain is ranked among the most important excavation sites in human origins research worldwide. The project boasts not only spectacular hominid fossils, among them the 'oldest European', but also a fully fledged 'popularization industry'. This article interprets this multimedia industry as a generator of different narratives about the researchers as well as about the prehistoric hominids of Atapuerca. It focuses on the popular works of the three co-directors of the project. Juan Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell make deliberate use of a variety of narrative devices, resonant cultural references and strategies of scientific self-commodification. All three, in different ways, use the history of science and of their own research project to mark their place in the field of human origins research, drawing on mythical elements to tell the story of the rise of a humble Spanish team overcoming all odds to achieve universal acclaim. Furthermore, the co-directors make skilful use of palaeofiction - that of Björn Kurtén and Jean Auel, as well as writing their own - in order to tell gripping stories about compassion and solidarity in human prehistory. This mixture of nationalist and universalist narratives invites the Spanish audience to identify not just with 'their ancestors' but also with the scientists, as objects and subjects of research become conflated through popularization.

How to Write an Urban History of STM on the "Periphery".

Within the STEP research agenda there has never been an explicit focus on the city as a central place for knowledge production. Scholars of the urban history of science tend to concentrate on the metropolis and have not looked in any systematic way at the scientific culture in "peripheral" urban contexts. To fill this gap, this essay proposes to focus on: (1) the role of science, technology and medicine in everyday life and the experiences of the citizens; (2) the plurality of the often conflicting notions of urban modernity; (3) the complex networks of interurban connections between the "peripheries."

Los públicos de la ciencia. Expertos y profanos a través de la historia / No disponible

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A boom of bones and books: The "popularization industry" of Atapuerca and human-origins research in contemporary Spain.

Atapuerca is an important prehistoric site in northern Spain that yielded the oldest hominid fossils in Europe in 1994. Since 1998 the three co-directors of the research team have in sum (co-)authored more than twenty-five popular science books, a boom without precedent in human-origins research. This paper will put forward three hypotheses. First, that these books were instrumental in achieving public recognition and financial support for the research project. Second, popular books on human origins serve as "enlarged battlefields" and as a meta-forum to expose new ideas to the scientific community. Third, the public visibility of these publications enables their authors to assume new roles that go well beyond their part as paleoanthropologists.

The multiple Eudald Carbonell: The various roles of Catalonia’s most popular archaeologist

Eudald Carbonell is mainly known for being the co-director of the Atapuerca research project, a hominid site in Northern Spain that boasts the «oldest European». In the course of his career as an archaeologist, he has become a highly visible figure, not least because of his incessant attempts to communicate his ideas to the general public. In these past four decades, Carbonell has taken on a host of diverse roles: scientific but also social and political ones. The political and scientific context of Catalonia and Spain since the early 1970s proves crucial in these activities. Carbonell’s claim to belong to a «peripheral» scientific community (be it Catalan or Spanish) is a central element in the construction of these roles. At the same time, Carbonell provides an instructive example of the «medialization» of science, transforming himself from an outsider into a celebrity and ultimately into a commodity (AU)

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Palaeoanthropology in the periphery. An introduction

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Science in the 19th-century zoo.

The 19th century saw the advent of the modern zoological garden. The newly founded zoos not only claimed to educate and entertain their audiences, but also to serve science by providing direct access to exotic animals. However, reality did not live up to the promise of such rhetoric. The vast majority of biologists preferred to use dead bodies as the material for their morphological research. Nevertheless, there was still a strong interaction between the zoo and science. In the debate on Darwinism, the apes in the cage played a vital role.