Original theories: science and the currency of the local

Abstract

In 1960 the Royal Geographical Society published The making of the Broads: a reconsideration of their origin in the light of new evidence. This monograph, the work of an interdisciplinary team, argued that the shallow lakes of the Norfolk Broads in eastern England had their origins in the medieval peat-digging industry. This paper shows how the origins work can be understood in terms of debates and tensions concerning the cultural authority of science over landscape and the nature of local knowledge, and addresses the implications for the currency of the local within studies of scientific knowledge. Drawing on archival work and oral history, the paper shows how local acceptance or rejection of the theory turned on assertions of scientific or non-scientific cultural authority. First publication of the theory in 1953 triggered angry exchanges in the local press over the next decade; the paper reconstructs these debates in terms of their claims to local knowledge, and the constitution of authority over the field. Science and local knowledge are opposed categories for some but mutually constituted for others, such that science itself becomes a matter of local pride. The paper concludes by considering the relationship between the origins research and debates over the past, present and future of the region.