Entre fatos científicos e estados de risco: o caso das Baleiras Jubartes

Abstract

This dissertation consists in an ethnographic enterprise focused on the agency of the Humpback Whale Institute, which was observed from its base, located in Caravelas – BA, Brazil. The Institute is a biodiversity conservation project focused mainly at an environmental flagship species (Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae). Through a perspective inspired by the Anthropology of Science I sought to outline part of the network in conservation of the humpback whale, from the local in focus, and, concomitantly, from the analysis of scientific publications related to the institution. Issues related to the collective’s practices, relational modes and ontologies will be addressed, as such the ones that may conflict with it in the various arenas for the conservation of whales in which the technoscientific professionals actively participate. Thus, some issues in concern will be extrapolated to other subjects and forms of relation with these animals. In this material I made an attempt to understand the relations in the field of work of technical and scientific professionals of the Institute with their main subjects-objects of study and protection: the humpback whales. For such purposes, the Institute will be seen initially as a knot of relations between technoscientific spheres, local knowledge, legal, economic, symbolic and emotional aspects related to the species, etc. For analysis purposes, it was distinguished two lines of relations involving the humpback whale concerning the IBJ. These lines were named: formal-textual flux and daily-empirical flux.