David Bond, New School University doctoral student researcher, supervised by Dr. Ann Laura Stoler, will conduct research on the technical expansion of what counts as crude oil in deepwater drilling and the ability of regulators, scientists, and citizens to make informed decisions about that expansion. Well-versed in the complexity of deepwater extraction and the difficulties such complexity poses to regulatory agencies, Bond will investigate the daunting problems federal agencies face in measuring and combating this deepwater oil spill.
Through attending hearings, reading reports, interviewing key officials and marine scientists, and participating in research expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico, Bond's research will provide an ethnographic account of this consequential and as of yet undetermined debate. He will focus on the scientific production and regulatory reception of new knowledge about deepwater oil spills. He will pay particular attention to unfolding questions of evidence in order to: 1) describe the technical constraints of the existing regulatory structure in relation to the complexity of deepwater oil spills, 2) catalogue emerging sources of data on the deep sea movements of crude oil (and/or dispersants) and its effect on ocean ecology, 3) contribute to our understanding of how regimes of evidence are mobilized to define both urgent vulnerability and our responsibility to it.
Bond's research will contribute understanding the possibilities of regulatory success and failure in managing deepwater oil extraction; and to new theories of the relation between a science of science policy and political economy.
." Ethnographic research was conducted along the Gulf Coast and in Washington DC from June 2010 until May 2011. David Bond, a PhD Candidate in Anthropology, conducted the research under the supervision of Dr. Ann Laura Stoler of the New School for Social Research. This project set out to research the scientific response to the BP Oil Spill, especially as it related to the deepwater environment. The BP Oil Spill, unfolding nearly a mile underwater and beyond the pale of easy observation, defied official expectations of what a major oil spill consisted of as well as what could be done about it. As the deepwater quality of this oil spill became clear, the pressing problem was twofold: one, how to measure the full extent of an oil spill that did not just rise to the ocean’s surface but also fractured and dissolved into the ocean; and, two, how to monitor the environmental effects of an oil spill that did not just endanger coastal ecologies but also disrupted the living matter of the ocean itself. The urgent task of determining the size of this spill and the scope of the damages it was causing came to rest on a more basic question: what counts as crude oil? My research centered on the scientific settings and shifting implications of this question. During the spill, I spent June, July, and August in laboratories and meetings where the substance of crude oil was a pressing problem. Solving this problem often focused how deep in the ocean and on how fine of a scale could hydrocarbons be detected and monitored. After the wellhead was capped, I spent 8 months attending hearings and conferences where the implications of new data on dispersed hydrocarbons in the deepwater were worked out. This largely consisted of how the particular findings of marine scientists working in the deepwater during the disaster could be formulated into a standardized understanding of the oil spill and its effects. One of my aims has been to describe how this oil spill problematized the substance of crude oil itself and, subsequently, how marine scientists working in government agencies and research universities struggled (often in differing ways) to redefine crude oil in order to pin down the size and scope of this deepwater oil spill. The obvious conclusion of my research is that crude oil is not a singular thing. Much of my findings, then, are ethnographic descriptions of the scientific and regulatory labor exerted to master the confounding multiplicity of crude oil during the BP Oil Spill, and more analytical reflections on the significance of this labor. My article "The Science of Catastrophe" (Bond 2011a) is salient on this point. My research also contributes to the social sciences engagement with disaster. Towards that end, my findings have commented on how science operates in the exceptional circumstances of a disaster. Much of the presentations (Bond 2010; 2011b; 2011c) and publications (Bond 2011a; Bond forthcoming) that came from this research are reflections on how the generalizing tendencies of science engage with the searing particularities of disaster. In this, I have documented the scientific and regulatory labor that goes into making an unprecedented event amendable to calculation and management (and what gets left out in such a process). During the BP Oil Spill this consisted of standardizing methods for detecting dissolved hydrocarbons in the deepwater and formatting the data from a variety of particular studies into a uniform database mapping the full extent of the oil spill. This process was political through and through. That is to say, it was the outcome of significant disagreement among marine scientists and the collective working out of what to do with new technologies and the data they helped produce. My research has contributed to our understanding of 1) the substance of crude oil; 2) the actual politics of science in times of disaster; 3) and has also aided the education of a graduate student. Publications: Bond, David. 2011a. "The Science of Catastrophe: Making Sense of the BP Oil Spill," AnthroNow (April 2011). Bond, David. Forthcoming. "Putting Nature in its Place: Qualifying Environmental Damages During the BP Oil Spill." Presentations: Bond, David. 2010. "The Science of Catastrophe: Calculation and Mastery in the BP Oil Spill," Presentation, Jumping Scales: Studying and Writing about Transnational Processes, Institute of Public Knowledge, NYU, November 20, 2010. Bond, David. 2011b. "Describing Science During a Disaster: Ethnographic Reflections on the BP Oil Spill," Workshop, Department of Anthropology, New School for Social Research, April 17, 2011. Bond, David. 2011c. "’An Uncontrollable Science Experiment’: The BP Oil Spill the Politics of Disaster Science." Paper delivered at 4S, November 2nd, Cleveland, OH.
