Paper short abstract:

Ethnographically following a sampling expedition, I explore the intense sociality and labour behind environmental data collection. Moving with researchers across European landscapes, this study examines how itinerant work dynamics shape scientific knowledge and challenge ethnographic methods.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the methodological challenges and ethnographic opportunities that emerge when following scientific environmental sampling across landscapes. Drawing on fieldwork with an expedition team in Europe, I examine how the intense social conditions of field sampling—sharing houses, enduring weather conditions, undertaking long drives, and navigating unfamiliar territories—create not only valuable scientific data but also particular forms of ethnographic knowledge and social relationships.

Following scientists on the move, I investigate three key dimensions of the sampling expedition: the challenge of contextualizing while on the go, the intense sociality developing in the compressed temporality of expedition life, and the manual labour of collecting environmental samples that underpin digital databases. While this itinerant practice complicates contextual analysis and rapport building, it simultaneously allows close contact with the intricate social relations and work dynamics of scientific expeditions. By moving alongside sampling teams, I demonstrate how environmental data's value emerges through strenuous physical and emotional labour that becomes increasingly invisible as samples transition from field to laboratory to digital platforms.

This paper examines how movement shapes both the social dynamics under study and the ethnographic practice itself. It shows how following sampling practices allows ethnographers to explore the physical mobility of field teams and the conceptual mobility of samples as they transform from material specimens to digital data. It concludes by illuminating how increasingly digital biosciences depend on—yet simultaneously devalue and render invisible—the intense sociality and labour inherent in field sampling.