Communities In Motion: Rudolph Philippi’s Zoological Circulation Works In Chile (1853 - 1904)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of communities in the generation and circulation of zoological knowledge in Chile in the second half of the 19th. Century and the beginning of the 20th Century. Here we take as a case study the production of zoology texts written by Rudolph Philippi in Chile between 1853 and 1904. From these texts we see how Philippi built knowledge together with individuals located in geographically peripheral sites and spaces linked to the main Governmental institutions of the period. From these texts, on the other hand, the characteristics of such communities are studied, such as their dispersion and heterogeneity. It is hypothesized here that Philippi, together with these communities, constructed a mobile science that circulated zoological knowledge towards national culture. In another sense, the above allows to examine the organization of this knowledge under the various mediations and strategies that the Prussian naturalist articulated during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Keywords: Rudolph Philippi, Networks, Zoology Textual inscriptions, Museums.