From Writhing Lizards to Graphs

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I articulated some aspects of the intricate network of significations that the water technician Karen had developed and that provided the background against which the graph can be said to be meaningful. Because the graph was related to this background, which itself constitutes meaning, it also became associated with meaning. To Karen, the graphs had become part of the lived-in world, an integral part of the natural events that they refer to. How does such graph-related competency develop? What does it take for graphs to become (for particular individuals anyway) transparent windows onto the world that lies beyond? This chapter describes the results of an ethnographic study among ecologists, with a particular focus on Sam, a doctoral student who studied a certain type of lizard at the northern extension of its reaches. Previously, Sam had worked with another professor for a one-year period, but found the isolation of the secluded island where the research was being conducted too strenuous. Thereafter, she had changed to do her Ph.D. work in herpetology, which still required five months of fieldwork every year, but which allowed her to live in a town with regular access to all amenities and within a day’s drive of two major urban centers. The chapter begins with a description of Sam’s reading of the population graph, the one that gave her least trouble. Sam struggled and ultimate misread parts of the graph. This performance is contrasted with a description of the competence related to statistical analysis and graphs that came out of her own work.