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A social scientist on Barro Colorado Island

Studying what people think when they observe wildlife

by Eric Jackson

Barro Colorado Island is famous for its reseach in tropical forest biology. So what's a social scientist who specializes in the field of semiotics doing there?

Well, semiotics is about signs and symbols and how people interpret them. One aspect of this is transmediation, wherein a symbol from one context or medium is transferred to another.

So still, what might this have to do with Barro Colorado?

You see, like zoos and parks and safari tours, Barro Colorado attracts all manner of visitors who are not scientists. Some of them come expecting jungle wildlife as in the Tarzan movies or nature films of the Serengeti Plain or the habitat of the highland gorillas.

"You may have heard of some people coming to Barro Colorado Island and being disappointed by the lack of animal close-ups," Dr. Nils Lindahl Elliot of the UK's Center for Media, Culture and Environmental Education told an April 17 audience at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Tupper Center. The semiotician --- a multidisciplinary social scientist with backgrounds in anthropology, sociology and several other fields --- has been looking at the institute's visitor program to see what can be done about making tours of the island more educational and satisfying.

Ah, but that leads to some more fundamental questions and options for the social scientist, who has done similar work for zoos and museums and has taught at the University of the West of England. What cultural role should this biological research station play anyway? What are the peculiarities of the relationships between Panamanian guides and American tourists? Would changes in the way things are presented affect "authenticity," whatever that might be? What is observation, anyway? And those signs with the stylized graphics about the crocodiles --- do they, or should they, mean more than just "take care that you don't get eaten?"

After weeks of observing guides and visitors on the island, and considering the various signs and symbols of the place, the researcher is back home compiling and analyzing what he saw. After that his findings just might change the Barro Colorado Island visitors' program.

WHO addresses health care worker migration issues
People's perceptions when they observe wildlife on Barro Colorado Island

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STRI research on drought sensitivity and tropical forest plant distribution published in Nature

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