Exploring Polar Bear Research as Ethical Space, Practice and Process of Engagement: Knowledge-land-scape
You are hereby invited into a space I refer to as my knowledge-land-scape, where you can explore my research in an autonomous and performative manner. The insights it has to offer may emerge intra-actively between us as author, audience, and the many more-than-human agents that are part of the larger apparatus I have conducted my research in. However, as the reference to an Ethical Space of “Engagement” itself already suggests, your experience, overall understanding of my work and particular insights will be dependent on your own processes of engagement with this scape. Like navigating community-based research itself, the possibilities for insights on the ethical practice to materialize will depend on your own presence, flexibility and response-ability along the way.
This space is designed as an associative scape. You can start pulling on a thread, or follow a trace that has been left by someone that has come before. You are free to navigate as you please, and within the possibilities of the platform, you are explicitly invited to explore.
Tracks and trails
People that prefer a more guided journey have the possibility to follow along certain cuts across the knowledge-land-scape. There are three cuts that run across this scape, which each correspond to what conventionally would be referred to as a manuscript in a PhD dissertation; i) Voices of Thunder, ii) Aesthetic Action, and iii) Wayfaring the BW project. You are offered a choice to start with tracing one of those cuts- like tracks in the snow, if you will. As each cut runs across the knowledge-land-scape you are either re-directed by the material forces of emergent ice-pressure ridges (a land-based metaphor for the more the more-than-human agencies that intra-act to shape the conditions under which some of this work has taken place), or invited to trail-off on unexpected side-tracks (which afford the possibility of dwelling). To follow a particular cut is to trace it across the scape- something that will be obvious as you start moving. There will be plenty of options to pivot from your chosen path and start following another cut, or trail-off in response to invitations you encounter on the way, if you so choose to.
Invitations and pressure ridges
"Invitations" to trail-off allow readers to wayfare or dwell- to be curious, to divert from previous trajectories, "waste" time and be curious. It is actually the main action that I hope my readers will engage in- and is also the most effective way to encounter "hidden" vistas and landmarks along the way. I advise you to be receptive and open to such invites, as they are the kinds of wanderings that guide you towards the most thought-provoking vistas and meaningful emergent insights. In turn these will help you orient among the different agential forces that de/markate this knowledge-land-scape.
"Pressure ridges" are re-directive agential forces that perform the de/markations of the KLS, and the im/possibilities of how we can move through the KLS. It's a referral to the agential forces and apparatuses at play which mark the extent of possibilities within a particular generative cut - in this case it marks the boundaries of what is included in the KLS, and it also marks the boundaries of the extent that users can make tracing/threading/wayfaring choices. Not everything is possible within a given phenomena- including this KLS.
Emergent imaginaries and insights
Such imaginaries are categorized as either; i) Vista’s, ii) landmarks, iii)Blue house sessions, or iv)the great white beast.
Vistas
Vistas, or ethical principles, function to assist in your orientation as you may seek to ethically engage with some of the work that you encounter along the way. Vistas unveil the ethical outlines on which I have relied to chart my course across the knowledge-land-scape of my research. They are emergent aspirational guidelines that may help guide you along the different tracks and trails you intra-act with. These trails are, after all, shaped by my personal considerations and response-abilities while I navigated this scape.
Landmarks
Landmarks perform emergent insights in response to tracing and threading certain sequential actions or practices. As you are re-redirected by pressure ridges and enticed to trail-off along certain sidetracks, you are presented with certain findings and insights. The landmarks are what will enrich your affective experience across the knowledge-land-scape, they will accommodate your personal journey in the form of coffee breaks, bingo, good food, and small trips around. To the dump for example.
Blue house sessions
Blue house sessions are contemplative moments, that perform a “staying with the trouble”. They present ethical dilemmas around certain events, practices or intra-actions. These dilemmas are “unsolvable”, as they represent moments of decision-making that are particular and place-based. Although there are no right answers- any decision that will be made will contribute to some futurities while it will foreclose others. The blue house, is a building I resided in during my first visit in Gjoa Haven. It was a physically uncomfortable place to stay in, but it also provided a lot of unanticipated possibilities. For example, it made it financially feasible for more students to come up to Gjoa Haven and present on their work. It allowed for the resourcing of an extended stay for me personally. It made facilitating community engagement more easily and it provided a space for creative and logistical production.
The Great White Beast
The great white beast, is a fleeting, shapeshifting figure, that performs the presence of the agential apparatus of (inter)national science-based polar bear conservation, management and monitoring- which the Bearwatch project is entangled within. I am inspired by the figure of the “great white beast”, a moniker that is employed within Inuit custom, to respectfully avoid talking about polar bears, and only refers to them as ‘’great white beasts’’ (Jimmy Qirqut, Gjoa Haven Elder, 2022). In this knowledge-land-scape it is subverted to refer to human exceptionalist thinking and the hegemonical dominance of western Science thas itself for a long time been an unnameable great white beast. A blind spot made invisible by western superiority thinking.
Other points of beginning
Eventually all cuts run into other points of beginning. These are not conclusive endings to this work, but rather perform a cusp of emergence- a story so-far. Some of these points mark the end of funding cycles or research projects, or mark the limitations and scope of this particular Phd dissertation. Others are trails, and tracks that have faded out, as they remained un-revisited. The qualifying indicators of interest to me here, when it comes to ethical space, practice and processes of engagement, are not measurable outcomes or even impacts. They are the degree of animated open-endedness to which certain cuts, tracks and side-trails have provided spaces for intra-active, and emergent insights to be co-authored alongside them, in-between, us. For those “readers” that feel adventurous, or ready to explore, I would suggest jumping in right now. For readers that like to enter more prepared, I will below share a map to help navigate one’s possible journey, and provide an introductory invitation for each cut.