Critical mass: the creation of Pajarero */Birder communities in Mexico for citizen science

Abstract

Birding (pajareo) precedes the field of citizen science by decades, if not centuries. However, by being incorporated into institutional programs and digital platforms [Invernizzi, N. 2020. “Public Participation and Democratization: Effects on the Production and Consumption of Science and Technology.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 227–253. https://do.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1835225], birding has been inscribed into the logic of data-intensive science [Scroggins, M. J., and I. V. Pasquetto. 2020. “Labor Out of Place: On the Varieties and Valences of (In)Visible Labor in Data-Intensive Science.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6:111–132. https://do.org/10.17351/ests2020.341], with the premise of increasing the number of volunteers to accumulate more and more data. The history of these practices in Mexico is very recent, dating back only about 15 years. The explosion in the number of practitioners since then has been largely the product of institutional arrangements and top-down initiatives carried out by Mexican government environmental agencies. Building on recent STS approaches to public participation that conceive citizen science as a situated and contextual phenomenon, I propose that public policies can be legitimately used to create publics. From the study of interviews, visual materials, participant observation in birding field trips, and other ethnographic materials, I recover the different stories that have led to the creation of brigades, groups, and observation clubs in Mexico. I argue that this approach allows us to go beyond normative positions and present a much more complex reality than the mere instrumental relationship between institutions and communities.