On the boundaries and partial connections between amateurs and professionals

Abstract

This paper explores the boundaries and partial connections between amateurs and professionals in the context of a museum of natural history. It examines how these boundaries are made and unmade, paying particular attention to their materiality and their heterogeneity. My aim is to draw the temporal, spatial and material profiles of amateurs and professionals. In doing so, the paper focuses on the partial connections between amateurs and professionals and shows that, in a sense, amateurs and professionals belong to more than one but less than many social spaces. I will further argue that professionalization and amateurisation are not merely historical processes, but also processes that happen in everyday practices in order to demarcate specific identities. While amateurs can be involved in co-producing science with professionals, they still might resist and avoid translation in order to protect their independence and concentrate their identity as amateur practitioners of science.