Citizen Seismology, Stalinist Science, and Vladimir Mannar’s Cold Wars

Science, Technology, and Human Values 42 (2):226-256 (2017)
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Abstract

This essay takes a historical view on “citizen science” by exploring its socialist version via the case of a Soviet amateur seismologist Vladimir Mannar. In the wake of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, which coincided with Lysenko’s victory in his campaign against genetics, Mannar launched an aborted campaign for a participatory “socialist seismology.” Mannar co-opted Lysenkoist language of science for the people and gained professional status within professional seismology but was shut out by the experts capitalizing on a “big science” imperative of cold war. Mannar’s personal experiences of navigating competing pulls of cold war seismology and his vision of “people’s seismology,” marginalized within increasingly technical and instrumental cold war science, shed light on oxymoronic nature of citizen science, and the clash between participatory vision of science and an increasing reliance on high-level technical expertise. This case provides a vantage point from which to examine the dual nature of citizen science with its dual loyalties, ambiguities, and the constantly renegotiated status of data—the raison d’être and the most tangible outcome of the initiatives unfolded on the outer fringes of academic science.

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Citations of this work

Can animals predict earthquakes?: Bio-sentinels as seismic sensors in communist China and beyond.Fa-ti Fan - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 70:58-69.
Average rainfall and the play of colors:Colonial experience and global climate data.Philipp Lehmann - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 70:38-49.

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References found in this work

The Lysenko Affair.David Joravsky - 1971 - Studies in Soviet Thought 11 (4):301-307.
Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science.Gwen Ottinger - 2010 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 35 (2):244-270.
Strange Weather, Again.Brian Wynne - 2010 - Theory, Culture and Society 27 (2-3):289-305.

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