“To Infinity and Beyond!”: Inner Tensions in Global Knowledge Infrastructures Lead to Local and Pro-active ‘Location’ Information

Abstract

We follow two biodiversity knowledge infrastructures that hold conceptual and practical inner tensions, and we argue that some of these diffi culties emerge from overlooking local information and different understandings of the term location. The ambiguity emerges from two basic concepts of space – exogenous and interactionist – that are both necessary yet readily suggest inconsistent practices – global standardization and local fl exibility – to organize location records. Researchers in both infrastructures fi rst standardized, digitized and globalized their records, then discovered inner tensions, and fi nally alternated between globally interoperable and locally fl exible records. Our story suggests a broader lesson: since both types of ‘location’ information are necessary; and since vast resources were already invested in globalizing knowledge infrastructures; then investing in local knowledge infrastructures and in alternating between both types of memory practices seems the most rational option, and a good way to resist epistemic injustice affl icting local knowledge in peripheral localities.

Keywords: biodiversity, database, epistemic-injustice