Science, Observation and Entertainment: Competing Visions of Postwar British Natural History Television, 1946-1967

Ecumene (continues as Cultural Geographies)

Volumn 7, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 432-460

  Davies, Gail ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84993709282     PISSN: 09674608     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/096746080000700403     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. C. Parsons, True to nature: Christopher Parsons looks back on 25 years of wildlife filming with the BBC Natural History Unit (London, Patrick Stephens, 1982), p. 58.
2. J. Murdoch, ‘Inhuman/nonhuman/human: actor-network theory and the prospects for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society’, Environment and planning D: Society and space 15 (1997), pp. 731-56; S. Whatmore ‘Hybrid geographies: rethinking the “human” in human geography’ in D. Massey, J. Allen and P. Sarre, eds, Human geography today (Oxford, Polity Press, 1999), pp. 22-39.
3. See e.g. J. Murdoch, ‘Towards a geography of heterogeneous associations’, Progress in human geography 21 (1997), pp. 321-37; D. Livingstone, ‘The spaces of knowledge: contributions towards a historical geography of science’, Environment and planning D: Society and space 13 (1995), pp. 5-34; N. Thrift, F. Driver and D. Livingstone, ‘The geography of truth’, Environment and planning D: Society and space 13 (1995), pp. 1-3; S. Shapin, ‘Placing the view from nowhere: historical and sociological problems in the location of science’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23 (1998), pp. 5-19.
4. J. Wolch and J. Emel, Animal geographies: place, politics and identity in the nature-culture borderlands (London, Verso, 1998); C. Philo, ‘Animals, geography and the city: notes on inclusions and exclusions’, Environment and planning D: Society and space 13 (1995), pp. 655-82; C. Philo and J. Wolch, ‘Through the geographical looking glass: space, place and human-animal relations’, Society and animals 6 (1998), pp. 103-18.
5. J. Law, Organizing modernity (Oxford, Blackwell, 1994); W. Kaghan and N. Phillips, ‘Building the tower of Babel: communities of practice and paradigmatic pluralism in organization studies’, Organization 5 (1998), pp. 191-215.
6. G. Davies, ‘Narrating the Natural History Unit: institutional orderings and spatial strategies’, Geoforum (forthcoming).
7. S. Hilgartner, ‘The dominant view of popularization: conceptual problems, political uses’, Social studies of science 20 (1990), pp. 519-39; R. Cooter and S. Pumfrey, ‘Separate spheres and public places: reflections on the history of science popularisation and science in popular culture’, History of science 32 (1994), pp. 237-67; M. Bucchi, Science and the media: alternatives routes in science communication (London, Routledge, 1998).
8. S. Shapin, ‘Science and the public’, in R. C. Olby, ed., Companion to the history of modern science (London, Routledge, 1990), p. 1001.
9. T. Gieryn, ‘Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists,’ American sociological review 48 (1983), pp. 781-95; T. Gieryn, Cultural boundaries of science (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1999).
10. S. L. Star and J. R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional ecology, ‘‘translations’’ and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907-1939’, Social studies of science 19 (1989), pp. 387-420.
11. Gieryn, ‘Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science’, p. 782.
12. For example, whilst publics may be important to the constitution of a field of enquiry as a scientific realm, once established the public legitimation of science begins to rest precisely on its autonomy vis-à-vis public questions.
13. F. Turner, ‘Public science in Britain 1880-191’ Isis 71 (1980), pp. 589-608; T. Gieryn, G. Bevins and S. Zehr, ‘Professionalisation of American scientists: public science in the creation evolution trials’, American sociological review 50 (1985), pp. 392-409; in geography, see C. Withers, ‘Towards a history of geography in the public sphere’, History of Science 37, 115 (1999), pp. 45-78.
14. Turner, ‘Public science in Britain’, pp. 589-90.
15. Shapin argues that ‘the differentiation and specialisation of science. created an opportunity for the explicit “popularisation” of science, and thus, for literary forms designed to convey otherwise inaccessible or impenetrable scientific knowledge to sectors of the public: ‘Science and the public’, p. 1001.
16. R. Barton, ‘Just before nature: the purposes of science and the purposes of popularization in some English popular science journals of the 1860s’, Annals of Science 55 (1998), pp. 1-33.
17. H.M. Collins, 1988, quoted in Livingstone, ‘Spaces of knowledge’, p. 23.
18. A. Holmquest, ‘The rhetorical strategy of boundary work’ Argumentation 4 (1990), pp. 235-58.
19. G. Myers, Writing biology: texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
20. Exploring the narratives of nature in popular writings on animal behaviour studies in the 1940s, Dewsbury explains the prominence European ethologists, such as Nikolaas Tinbergen, achieved over the more diffuse field of comparative psychology through the content of their well-targeted promotional activities: D. Dewsbury, ‘Rhetorical strategies in the presentation of ethology and comparative psychology in magazines after World War II’, Science in context 10 (1997), pp. 367-86.
21. A. Secord, ‘Science in the pub: artisan botanists in early 19th century Lancashire’, History of science 32 (1994), pp. 269-315.
22. The work of Tucker on scientific claims in the context of Victorian ballooning considers popular culture as a competitive field where ‘scientists had to work against - or redirect - stereotypes of discoverers and explorers to fashion a credible identity for themselves’: J. Tucker, ‘Voyages of discovery on oceans of air: scientific observation and the image of science in an age of “balloonacy” ‘, Osiris 11 (1996), p. 175.
23. Thrift et al., ‘The geography of truth’, p. 2.
24. ‘A trust relationship is central to the very idea of empirical science [and] that relationship is inscribed in space: those who have not seen these things know them by trusting those who have’: Shapin, ‘Placing the view from nowhere’, p. 8.
25. H. Kuklik and R. Kohler, ‘Science in the field’, Osiris (1996); N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary, eds, Cultures of natural history (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
26. H. Kuklik and R. Kohler, ‘Introduction’, Osiris 11 (1996), pp. 1-14.
27. R. W. Burkhardt, ‘Ethology, natural history, the life sciences, and the problem of place’, Journal of the history of biology 32 (1999), pp. 489-508; see also D. Outram, ‘New spaces in natural history’, in Jardine et al., Cultures of natural history, pp. 249-65.
28. See also Secord, ‘Science in the pub’.
29. Star and Griesemer, ‘Institutional ecology’, p. 393.
30. B. Latour, Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
31. B. Winston, ‘The documentary film as scientific inscription’, in M. Renov, ed., Theorizing documentary (London, Routledge, 1993), pp. 37-57.
32. D. Haraway, Primate visions: gender, race and nature in the world of modern science (London, Routledge, 1989); G. Mitman, ‘Hollywood technology, popular culture and the American Museum of Natural History’, Isis 84 (1993), pp. 637-61.
33. G. Mitman, ‘When nature is the zoo: vision and power in the art and science of natural history’, Osiris 11 (1996), pp. 117-43.
34. Mitman, ‘Hollywood technology’, p. 639.
35. Haraway, Primate visions, p. 44.
36. Television transmission in the UK had begun in 1922; however, television broadcasting was abandoned during the war since it was thought the transmitter at Alexandra Palace would act as a target for the bombing of London.
37. P. Marren, The new naturalists (London, Collins, 1995).
38. J. Sheail, Nature in trust: the history of nature conservation in Britain (Glasgow, Blackie, 1976); J. Sheail, ‘War and the development of nature conservation in Britain’, Journal of environmental management 44 (1995), pp. 267-83.
39. D. Matless, ‘Visual culture and citizenship: England in the 1940s’, Journal of historical geography 22 (1996), p. 433.
40. See Marren, The new naturalists.
41. Haley liked to use the image of British society as a cultural pyramid slowly aspiring upward, with the BBC acting as the lever that activated this progressive upward movement. Quoted in K. Kumar, ‘Holding the middle ground: the BBC, the public and the professional broadcaster’, in J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Woollacott, eds, Mass communication and society (London, Edward Arnold, 1977), p. 246.
42. J. Cain, The BBC: 70 years of broadcasting (London, BBC Publications, 1992).
43. Parsons, True to nature, p. 27.
44. Television had only one-tenth of the funding of radio. In 1950 the television signal only covered 33-50% of the British population, focused on London, the south-east and six other major cities, and broadcasting was limited to 30 hours a week. By 1953 only around 1 million television licences had been sold at a cost of £1 each: Cain, The BBC, p. 63.
45. Parsons, True to nature, p. 27. For example, television news began simply as a reading of the news with no presenter in vision; pictures did not accompany news bulletins until July 1954: Cain, The BBC, p. 64.
46. For further information on the role of audience measures in shaping broadcasting output, see I. Ang, Desperately seeking the audience (London, Routledge, 1991); J. Ettema and D. Whitney, Audiencemaking: how the media create the audience (London, Sage, 1994).
47. M. Allaby, ‘The Natural History Unit’, Vole 12 (1978), p. 3.
48. P. Klopfer, Introduction to animal behaviour (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 34.; Burkhardt, ‘Ethology, natural history, the life sciences and the problem of place’.
49. W.H. Thorpe, The origins and rise of ethology (London, Heinemann, 1979).
50. A. Bramwell, Ecology in the twentieth century (London, Yale University Press, 1989).
51. On the importance of the visual in the study of ethology, Mitman writes: ‘Lorenz and Tinbergen developed a theoretical framework for animal behaviour that centred on animal posture and visual display as signs of stimuli that triggered innate releasing mechanisms in organisms’: ‘Hollywood technology’, p. 652.
52. Dewsbury suggests that ethologists and comparative psychologists came into direct conflict in 1953 through an exchange over Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctive behaviour. Dewsbury, ‘Rhetorical strategies in the presentation of ethology’.
53. K. Vernon, ‘Desperately seeking status: evolutionary systematics and the taxonomists’ search for respectability 1940-60’, British journal for the history of science 26 (1993), pp. 207-27.
54. Dewsbury, ‘‘Rhetorical strategies in the presentation of ethology’.
55. As Bramwell observes ‘the idea that animal behaviour could be understood by close observation in the wild found opposition. It was difficult to carry out controlled experiments in these conditions’: Ecology in the twentieth century, p. 41.
56. See e.g. K. Lorenz, King Solomon's ring: new light on animal ways (London, Methuen, 1952); N. Tinbergen Curious naturalists (London, Country Life, 1958); N. Tinbergen, ‘The field is our laboratory’, Country life 110 (1951), pp. 70-72.
57. Parsons, True to nature, p. 259.
58. E. Hall, ‘A conversation with Nobel Prize winner Niko Tinbergen’ Psychology today 7 (1974), p. 66.
59. H. van Rappard, ‘Book review - The world of instinct: Niko Tinbergen and the origin of ethology in the Netherlands 1920-1950 by D. R. Roell’, Journal of the history of the behavioural sciences 34 (1998), pp. 63-65.
60. Dewsbury, ‘Rhetorical strategies in the presentation of ethology’. See also D. Dewsbury, ‘Comparative psychology and ethology: a reassessment’, American Psychologist 47 (1992), pp. 208-15; D. Dewsbury, ‘Americans in Europe: the role of travel in the spread of European ethology after World War II’, Animal behaviour 49 (1995), pp. 1649-63.
61. For a discussion of this book in English, see Rappard, ‘Book review’.
62. D. Hawkins, When I was: a memoir of the years between the wars (London, Macmillan, 1989).
63. Parsons, True to nature, p. 52.
64. This extract is from an undated, unsourced article on Eric Hosking in the Natural History Unit archives.
65. John Sparks, series producer, Natural History Unit, interviewed 13 June 1995.
66. David Attenborough, quoted in J. Burgess and D. Unwin, ‘Exploring The Living Planet with David Attenborough’, Journal of geography in higher education 8 (1984), p. 112.
67. Parsons, True to nature, p. 26.
68. For a full filmography of BBC natural history films from 1953 to 1995, see G. Davies, ‘Networks of nature: stories of natural history film-making from the BBC’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1998).
69. J. Ryan, Picturing empire : photography and the visualization of the British Empire (London, Reaktion, 1997); J. MacKenzie, The empire of nature: hunting, conservation and British imperialism (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988).
70. This form of film-making retains the characteristics of a hunt without harm to the animal; as Roosevelt suggests, ‘the chief attractions lie in the physical hardihood for which the life calls, the sense of limitless freedom which it brings, and the remoteness and wild charm and beauty of primitive nature. All of this we get exactly as much in hunting with the camera as in hunting with the rifle’: quoted in P. Schmitt, Back to nature: the arcadian myth in urban America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 146.
71. Quoted in Ryan, Picturing empire, p. 137
72. R. Neumann, ‘Ways of seeing Africa: colonial recasting of African society and landscape in Serengeti National Park’, Ecumene 2 (1995), pp. 149-69; R. Neumann, ‘Dukes, earls and ersatz Edens: aristocratic nature preservationists in colonial Africa’, Environment and planning D: Society and space (1996), pp. 79-98.
73. This extract is taken from Search for Gertie, post-production script (NHU library, transmission date 1958).
74. Audience measures were introduced following the advent of ITV, which put pressure on the BBC to compete with the ITV companies for a respectable audience share to support its statutory fee. The BBC's audience research department was introduced after 1955 to monitor the number of people who had seen a programme, counting in total those who had watched more than half of a given programme. They also established a numerical code or percentage indices for measuring audience appreciation, using structured questionnaires to gauge how educational and interesting the audience found each programme.
75. Parsons, True to nature, p. 70.
76. Ryan, Picturing empire, p. 99.
77. Neumann, ‘Dukes, earls and ersatz Edens’.
78. John Sparks, series producer, Natural History Unit, interviewed 13 June 1995.
79. Quoted in an interview with David Attenborough in the Independent Magazine (29 Sept. 1990), p. 48.
80. J. Berger, ‘Why look at animals?’, in About looking (London, Writers & Readers, 1980), pp. 1-26.
81. S. Montgomery, ‘The zoo: theatre of the animals’, Science as culture 4 (1995), pp. 565-600.
82. From the end of Animal magic in 1982 until the animal hospital and zookeeper documentaries in the mid-1990s, zoos ceased to feature on television as places of entertainment or amusement, with programmes on animals in the zoo more typically taking a campaigning or critical stance. See e.g. Zoo 2000, transmitted in 1984, and The state of the ark, produced by Features in London in 1986. One exception to this was a 1987 live broadcast from the zoo, Zooweek, produced at the peak of the BBC's experiments with the short regular visits to outside broadcast locations in the live watch format,
83. Parsons, True to nature, p. 103.
84. Guardian ‘The man from the Zoo: an obituary of George Cansdale’ (26 Aug. 1993).
85. K. Anderson, ‘Culture and nature at the Adelaide Zoo: new frontiers in “human” geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20 (1995), pp. 275-95; R. J. Hoage and W. A. Deiss, eds, New worlds, new animals: from menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century (London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
86. Quoted in B. Crowther, ‘Towards a feminist critique of television natural history programmes’, in P. Florence and D. Reynolds, eds, Feminist subjects: multi media (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 136-7.
87. D. Hawkins, quoted in post-production script, Wildlife jubilee, produced by George Inger and Peter Bale (BBC Natural History Unit Library, transmission date 1982).
88. Desmond Hawkins, quoted in post-production script TV50 natural history, written and presented by Desmond Morris, produced by Sue Bourne (BBC Natural History Unit library, transmission date 1986).
89. P. Scott, The eye of the wind (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1961), p. 601.
90. An anniversary programme made to celebrate the 21st edition of the series introduces the people and animals involved in these early film sequences. Transmitted at 7.50 p.m. on 23 May 1956 with the title The twenty first, the programme opens with scenes from Peter Scott's footage of Iceland and his film of birds including phalaropes and limpkins; then more familiar seals; Heinz Sielmann's pioneering footage of woodpeckers; and swans, flamingos and storks. Footage of mammals revealed hamsters, pine martens, polecats and koala bears. Further film of birds showed penguins, gannets and golden eagles. Other families of animals were represented by frogs and swallowtail butterflies. These short film extracts were counterpoised by cuts to discussions with Peter Scott in the studio. The closing credits introduce the early filming sources, listing film sequences by: Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, Australian News and Information Bureau, Dick Bagnall-Oakley, BBC Film Unit, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, Walter Higham, H. G. Hurrell, G. T. Kay, Captain C. W. R. Knight, Bernard Kunicki, Roger Tory Peterson, RSPB Film Unit, Peter Scott, Heinz Sielmann, William Sladen and G. K. Whitehead. The programme's film editor was Christopher Parsons and the programme was produced by Brandon Acton-Bond. Post-production script, Look no. 21: the twenty first, introduced by Peter Scott and Desmond Hawkins, produced by Brandon Acton Bond (BBC Natural History Unit Library, transmission date 1956).
91. Tony Soper, quoted in post-production script, Wildlife jubilee.
92. A hunting history was clearly still important to some individuals: ‘This involved achieving the power of death over the quarry without exercising it. This advance was no sudden change in my outlook. I was still too much captivated by the ritual aspects of wildfowling to give it up altogether. So many things went with the actual shooting - the beauty, the natural history, the exercise, the memories, and particularly the technical skills which in the course of years I had acquired’: Scott, Eye of the wind, p. 173.
93. Shapin, ‘Placing the view from nowhere’, p. 8.
94. Latour, Science in action, p. 71.
95. G. Myers, ‘Every picture tells a story: illustrations in E.O. Wilson's sociobiology’, in M. Lynch and S. Woolgar, eds, Representation in scientific practice (London, MIT Press, 1990), p. 261.
96. Parsons, True to nature, p. 46.
97. John Sparks, series producer, Natural History Unit, interviewed 13 June 1995.
98. D. Matless, ‘Moral geography in Broadland’, Ecumene 1 (1994), pp. 127-55.
99. Shapin, 1988, quoted in Livingstone, ‘The spaces of knowledge’, p. 21.
100. Anecdotal evidence suggests this achievement cannot be taken for granted. The Collins New Naturalist series had pioneered the extensive use of modern photographic techniques in the production of these popular field guides to natural history. However, other natural history field guides were very slow to adopt such new techniques, suggesting that the camera took a long time to be accepted as the main form of scientific form of animal representation. The first Audubon field guide to use photographs of birds rather than paintings and drawings was not issued until 1977. B. Winston, ‘The documentary film’, p. 39.
101. F. Harvey and N. Chrisman, ‘Boundary objects and the social construction of GIS’, Environment and planning A 30 (1998), p. 1687.