The book is all about the spaces and places where ecotourism and resource extraction meet, and the challenges, connections and similarities they share. I won't say much more about it here, because you can read the full review free using this link, but I read parts of this on my way to Svalbard in the summer and it was a really good companion in terms of thinking outside the box from the outset.
Just a short post to plug my first journal 'publication': I have written a book review for the Journal of Ecotourism of the excellent collection edited by Bram Büscher and Veronica Davidov: The Ecotourism-Nexus: Political economies and rural realities of (un)comfortable bedfellows.
The book is all about the spaces and places where ecotourism and resource extraction meet, and the challenges, connections and similarities they share. I won't say much more about it here, because you can read the full review free using this link, but I read parts of this on my way to Svalbard in the summer and it was a really good companion in terms of thinking outside the box from the outset.
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I might be in danger of sounding like a broken record, but last month I returned from another great conference and am struck again by the importance of getting out there and presenting my research, but for different reasons. This time, I headed to the very North of Norway for the Barent’s Institute’s "Mining the Arctic: sustainable communities, economies, and governance? Thorvald Stoltenberg Conference. As well as acting as another motivating period of intense analysis and synthesis, I learned a great deal. Given my focus on Svalbard, it was really useful to get a picture of I've recently returned from a short trip to Kirkenes in Northern Norway. I have quite a bit to say about the conference I was attending, but I thought I'd first share some thoughts and stories about the town and area I visited, as it was quite fascinating and was the source of lots of 'firsts' for me...
This week I took part in a two day interdisciplinary, multi-modal research workshop, organised by the ESRC Wales DTC in Cardiff. The aim of the day was to explore the different modes we make meaning and observe with, the affordances of four key media with which we can record ethnographic observations, and the relationship between these modes and media. The event was a great mixture of discussion ad practical fieldwork. We started out discussing and fleshing out the distinctions and crossovers between the ideas of modes and media, building on the paper we had read[1] . Then we discussed the four different media we would be concentrating on in the workshop with the four leaders: field notes (Bella Dicks), still images (Rachel Hurdley), audio (Brett Lashua) and video (Bambo Soyinka). After introducing the research question: How is Gorsedd Gardens made into a meaningful place through the social interactions of people, objects, materials, 'nature', sounds time within it? We were then let loose to explore the Gardens...
At the end of August I attended the Royal Geographic Society (with IBG)'s annual conference in London. In preparation for, during and after the event I did a fair amount of reflecting on what the purpose of taking part in conferences are. I think it's fair to say that academics put a fair amount of time into deciding which conferences to go to, which sessions to apply to contribute to, what we should actually say when we get there and then what to do with it afterwards, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on that sort of thing before the moment passes. Time has flown by since I returned from Svalbard, it's been 2 months already! It has been an interesting and slightly chaotic time. I hadn't really thought about what it would be like having 'done' my fieldwork, except that it meant I ought to get on with analysis and writing and could for a while forget about organising funding and travel details. For the first couple of weeks it felt a bit like coming down from a long holiday - trying to get back into some sort of routine, enjoying the comforts and beauty of home, but missing the excitement of exploring a new place. I wouldn't say I was suffering complete 'post-fieldwork blues', but I can certainly relate to some of the experiences of Michelle Redman's post, especially about loving the 'doing' aspects and instant feedback opportunities fieldwork brings. Being a largely qualitative researcher, it's not that often you'll see that many figures in my work. Sometimes putting a number on things is interesting and can give a good overall picture though, so here are a few random things that you might be interested in, quantified from the recent Svalbard fieldwork trip I'm just back from... As a parting gesture and small payback for all the help people in Svalbard have given me with my research, I thought it might be fun/interesting/fair to subject myself to the same questions I have been asking. As with all the interviews I have undertaken, I start with the general questions I ask everyone. I usually then move on to some more specific, context dependant ones - so, I'll do a couple of answers to common questions, then leave it open for you to ask whatever you want! Enjoy... Svalbard life can seem a little bit bubble like at times, remote and a little world with quirks all of its own, but the bubble has a permeable surface for sure. There is a lot of talk about Svalbard being a future and indeed present hub of the Arctic, usually from a logistics point of view, but not exclusively. Over the last weeks I have witnessed some of this in a variety of ways. Near the beginning of the trip I remember someone finding the idea of a social science department at UNIS a bit silly as there aren't many people up here, what is there to study that you can't study elsewhere? I haven't said much about the landscape round town for some time. To be honest, for a while I got busy and less attentive after the excitement of the ever changing ice-snow situation in the melt a month or so ago. Also, I have felt more and more weird walking round with a camera given the increased number of tourists around, and my emerging identity as some sort of 'non-tourist'. Well, the wheel keeps turning and though it was a bit grey for a while, summer and plants have to act fast around here. Now, there are flowers everywhere. And grass, not just the straggly yellow stuff that was around before, actual green grass :) oh, and some moss. Seems I won't get complete 'landscape shock' when I get home afterall. So I went out especially for you this cloudy evening and tried to look as casual and local as possible with my camera (probably a fail on that count!)...
One of the things we tend to think about when the word 'value' comes up is economic value, how much can we get for our money. In Svalbard the answer is usually a lot less than you might hope for and after a while you have to stop being shocked and grumbling because it gets a bit boring. My mum used to have a saying, 'sometimes you just have to pay up and look rich', ha, never has it been more applicable! So, just how much are we talking here? Well, I've saved up about a months worth of supermarket receipts, so let's see... I've been following the dicussions in the local paper on the changes to the built environment in Barentsburg over the last few months. Having seen the stark contrasts between old and new last year, I could see where these debates were coming from and where the concerns and different view points on cultural heritage value, decent living conditions, and symbolic image projection met, physically on the streets of the town. I wasn't quite prepared for the level of change I saw between last year and this though. ... I have been thinking about ‘waste’ and its value quite a lot while in Svalbard. Pyramiden one might think is an extreme example. However, though teaming with things that are no longer in use for their original purpose, there is a significant amount that is not in fact discarded or unwanted, either being valued as cultural history (for some) and embedded with memories and stories. Or, in the case of metal structures and machinery, being harvested for scrap metal to be sold when shipped out. Which is to say nothing of the relationship or potential conflict between the two… I have just learnt of the sad, sad passing away of an amazing environmental campaigner and perma-culture teacher, advocate and practioner, Paulo Mellet, whom I met and studied with at CAT. It seems more than a happy co-incidence that today I visited the Polar Permaculture project and met an energetic and enthusiastic project leader just at the start of his permaculture journey and already pushing possibilities up here.
After some experimenting the project is running on mainly locally sourced inputs through composting waste materials and concentrating on hardy varieties to limit the energy input needed. This isn't an easy thing to do up here where almost everything is imported, but it is possible! It was great to meet with such positivity and determination, I'm pretty sure Paulo would have loved it. This time I was ready! Last year I arrived the day before midsummer. Surprised and happy I was not finding it THAT cold in Svalbard, I headed down to the midsummer bonfire party on the beach in a normal set of layers. I retreated at 9pm. I have now learnt never to underestimate the chilling power of standing fairly still in cold wind! This time I made it through to midnight, thanks to wearing all the jumpers (literally). ...
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