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Abstract
Recent scholarship on vertical geographies has lead to a critical reexamination of the relationship between space and power. In this paper, I develop a vertical geographies approach in an unexplored context and with a less tested method: that of cave explorers and scientists in the field in Venezuela, from an ethnographic perspective. Ethnographic analysis of exploration in practice, viewed in relation to a multi-dimensional environment and the social dynamics, bodies, and technologies involved in traversing it, illustrates the ways vertical geographies are constructed and experienced. For the Venezuelan Speleological Society, a group dedicated to cave exploration and science since 1967, examining these geographies highlights culturally specific ways the tension between sports and science in speleology play out and how new members are socialized in the field. Specifically, attention to verticality highlights the role that age, masculinist heroics, and other embodied dimensions play in the construction of speleological geographies. More broadly, an ethnographic focus on exploration, with humans probing the earth's sinuous contours, guards against thinking of verticality abstractly—doing so risks simplifying and even misrepresenting multi-dimensional and processual engagements among humans, their technologies, and the environment.
Explorando lo vertical: ciencia y sociabilidad en el campo entre los espeleólogos en Venezuela
Los estudios recientes sobre geografías verticales han dado lugar a un nuevo examen crítico de la relación entre el espacio y el poder. En este trabajo, se desarrolla un enfoque de geografías verticales en un contexto inexplorado y con un método menos probado: el de espeleólogos y científicos en el campo en Venezuela, desde una perspectiva etnográfica. El análisis etnográfico de la exploración en práctica, observado en relación a un entorno multidimensional y a las dinámicas sociales, cuerpos y tecnologías implicados en recorrerlo, ilustra las formas en que las geografías verticales se construyen y se experimentan. Para la Sociedad Venezolana de Espeleología, dedicada a la exploración y ciencia de las cuevas desde 1967, el examen de estas geografías destaca culturalmente formas específicas de cómo la tensión entre el deporte y la ciencia en la espeleología juegan y cómo nuevos miembros son socializados en el campo. En concreto, la atención a la verticalidad destaca el papel que la edad, el heroísmo masculino, y otras dimensiones corporales juegan en la construcción de geografías espeleológicas. En términos más generales, un enfoque etnográfico en la exploración, con seres humanos sondeando los contornos sinuosos de la tierra, protege contra el pensamiento de la verticalidad en abstracto–al hacer esto se corre el riesgo de simplificar e incluso de tergiversar compromisos multidimensionales y procesuales entre los seres humanos, sus tecnologías y el medio ambiente.
Exploration du vertical: science et socialité sur le terrain auprès de spéléologues au Vénézuela
Les recherches spécialisées récentes dans la géographie verticale ont mené à un nouvel examen critique de la relation entre l'espace et le pouvoir. Dans cet article, je développe une approche de la géographie verticale dans un contexte inexploré et selon une méthode moins testée: celle de spéléologues et de scientifiques sur le terrain au Vénézuela, dans une perspective éthnographique. L'analyse ethnographique de l'exploration dans la pratique, vue en rapport avec un environnement multidimensionnel et les dynamiques sociales, les corps et les technologies que cela implique, illustre comment la géographie verticale est construite et de quelles manières on en fait l'expérience. Pour la Société de Spéléologie Vénézuélienne, un groupe attaché à l'exploration de grottes et à la science depuis 1967, le fait d'examiner cette géographie met en valeur la tension entre le sport et la science en spéléologie d'un point de vue culturellement spécifique et la manière dont les nouveaux membres sont inclus socialement sur le terrain. Plus précisément, l'attention à la verticalité met en lumière le rôle que l'âge, les exploits héroïques masculinistes et autres dimensions incarnées jouent dans la construction des géographies spéléologiques. De façon plus générale, un approfondissement ethnographique de l'exploration, avec des êtres humains explorant les contours sinueux de la terre, empêche de considérer la verticalité de façon abstraite – la considérer ainsi risque de simplifier et même de donner une image fausse des engagements multidimensionnels et processuels entre les êtres humains, leurs technologies et l'environnement.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to all members of the Sociedad Venezolana de Espeleología for their support for this research. Without Clotilde Pesquera and the Salazar family this work would not have been possible. Karen Culcasi introduced me to the vertical geographies literature. Her comments on this draft were indispensable for refining my arguments.
Notes
1. The names of all living cavers are pseudonyms, except in the case of Carlos Galán, whose publications on Venezuelan speleology are referenced throughout.
2. Bennett's photographs of half-buried bunkers, some slowly being taken over by vegetation in the middle of open fields, made me ponder the experience of bunkerologists locating and travelling to and from these sites (Citation2013a, pp. 503, 512). These images also complicate the classification of bunker exploration as urban exploration.
3. U.S. caver and writer David W. Hughes's book, Vertical Bill: The Story of Bill Cuddington and the Development of Vertical Caving in America, inspired what I have done here with Galán in the context of the northern Monagas karst (Hughes, Citation2008).
4. ‘La Sociedad’ (the Society) is how the members of the Venezuelan Speleological Society refer to their organization among themselves. I like to use the term because it emphasizes the importance of sociality in the history of the group. It also echoes how much la Sociedad was to many a unique space where broader social and civic values were perpetuated or challenged. In this sense, the SVE resembles the ‘civic science’ societies of nineteenth-century Scotland that Withers and Finnegan describe (Citation2003).
5. Of all SVE members, both past and present, Galán is the only one to be hired within a scientific institute (in Spain) that recognizes speleology as one of its specialties.
6. In a 1969 editorial in the group's publication, then SVE president and founder Juan Antonio Tronchoni states:
It sometimes strikes as strange that in our country – rich, generous, and splendid, receptive to all kinds of innovation, idea or modality, regardless of how frivolous or costly it may be – it becomes so difficult to obtain the means through which to publicize the patient and steady work of a group of young men, most of them university students, dedicated team members, without desires of personal aggrandizement and dedicated to the work of exploration, research, and promotion of our vast underground world. (Tronchoni, Citation1969, p. 3)
7. Two Chaima men, inhabitants of the region, guided us and provided support. Elsewhere, I provide detailed analysis of their participation (Pérez, Citation2012).
8. The implications of the recent changes in gender make-up in SVE membership remain to be examined.
9. Evidence of Chaima's earlier exploration lay at the lip of the shaft's opening: we found an empalizada, a set of horizontal logs, about 3–4 metres in length, held by two other logs staked into the ground at either end (Galán, Citation1981).
10. Guácharos or oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis) are a species of nocturnal fruit-eating birds that typically inhabit caves and use echolocation to navigate in darkness. Alexander von Humboldt first studied, described and scientifically named the species during his visit to Guácharo Cave, also located in Monagas, in 1799 (Urbani, Citation1999, Citation2005).
11. This is an illustration of mappings, a concept that emphasizes the ontogenic or emergent nature of maps (Crampton, Citation2010; Del Casino & Hanna, Citation2006; Kitchin & Dodge, Citation2007; Kitchin, Gleeson, & Dodge, Citation2012; Pérez, Citation2013).