Entry #8

Hi all, sorry for the late-ish update! Things are going well with my project. This week I finished the outline for my short story and its theoretical companion piece (well, sort of finished--I've sent it to my advisors for suggestions and criticism, so it's highly likely I'll be making changes to it). I'll probably edit this post with a link to the outline in the next couple days, after I've gotten a chance to speak to my advisor Sarah about it. Or maybe I'll just save that for next week's post, I'm not too sure. In terms of helping Sarah with stuff, she's finished applying for grant aid so there's no more proofreading to be done (for the time being)! She's had me transcribing interviews in English which she recorded a while back for her Confluencecenter project. It's somewhat tedious, but it's alright, and believe it or not I'm seeing a lot of overlaps in subject matter with the book by Lejano, Ingram and Ingram on narratives in environmental networks, which I finished reading and mentioned in my post last week. Originally, as part of that Confluencecenter project, Sarah's plan was to produce a bilingual map of the AZ-Sonora border region, complete with interviews, narratives, and just general fun facts about various places of interest, and which whole thing she was hoping I could help her with (come with her to places on the AZ side of the border, take photos, etc.). However, she's put that on hold for the time being and has instead decided to contribute to a larger map being put together by another organization (I'm not too sure of the specifics at the moment; she just mentioned this to me the end of last week). Either way, I'm still hoping I'll be able to help out with a project like that, combining elements of geography and my recent knowledge of narrative analysis to put together some cool features. It's definitely not set in stone, though, and I'll have to find out more.

What's great though is that I'm right on track with the schedule I wrote, like, three months ago in terms of making on my final product. Starting next week I'll be working on the rough draft of my short story and companion piece--all the theory I've learned so far from my reading and working with Sarah these last two months will culminate in that, so I'm really trying hard to make sure it's my best work. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to writing essays, slaving for hours over tiny details like sentence structure and word choice, so I'm hoping that carries over into my creative writing--obviously, though, not to the extent that I don't manage to finish! I have high hopes for this though and I'll be keeping the blog updated with my various drafts, if any readers are interested in taking a look at my progress (I know you're quite busy with your own projects). Alright then, have an awesome and productive week!

Entry #7

      Hi all, this week I managed to get started on my final product. Might seem a little early, but right now it's just the framework/outline for my short story. I also finished the narratives book I mentioned last week (or at least, the sections of it that are relevant to my project). The main thesis of the book, The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks, by Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, is that focusing on the narratives surrounding environmental networks (often in the form of local knowledges of how certain ecological systems function/came to be) is a useful tool for bridging cultural gaps and conducting more equitable and effective science. The book argues that combining literary analysis with conventional enviro-sciences is helpful in the sense that narratives are inherently interpretative--that is to say, no single reading of a story is necessarily the correct one. Thus, this aspect of interpretation lends itself to a pluralism of options when dealing with ecological proceedings, and hopefully inspiring newfound respect for local knowledge systems, which are more than often attacked by conventional Western science as "backward" or supposedly negative for the environment (despite, in most cases, local coexistence for hundreds if not thousands of years). Either way, it's an interesting read, and yet another example of subtle issues in scientific discourse and its way of dealing with non-conventional epistemologies. The book contains a few key case studies, including one involving researchers' attempts to conduct science on the Arizona-Sonora border. This one was highly elucidating for me in terms of learning about some of the political barriers to ecology in our region, and although not necessarily relevant to my project, it was still really informative and of course an example of the power of constructing a narrative in order to deal with these kinds of struggles.

Also, I think I forgot to mention in my last post, but I went to a lecture at the U of A last week on glacial cycles (of expansion and retreat), by premier geochemist Wally Broecker (of Columbia University!) hoping to gain a more scientific perspective on my topic. Unfortunately, almost all of the information went over my head...the presentation comprised a lot of graphs indicating CO2 levels over 20,000 year periods. Broecker's argument was that CO2 from volcanic eruptions probably had much more of a role than previously thought by geologists in driving these long-term glacial cycles. My project is dealing with the ways in which humans have talked about glaciers (in recent history), so sadly this wasn't too helpful, but still interesting I suppose and also a very clear-cut example of pure, supposedly objective and rational scientific discourse in action.

I've been making my way through the Fairclough book on discourse analysis, and having just completed the two chapters on analysis methods, I'm hoping to try some of them out on media sources. My advisor informs me that the U of A library probably has a full collection of National Geographic magazines, so that will probably be a great opportunity for analysis, as there are no doubt numerous articles in their on glaciers. It will certainly be interesting to see what kinds of things are uncovered; mainly, I'm looking to see what assumptions are in place governing how humans perceive natural change, based on the types of language used by media in describing glaciers and glacial movement/retreat.

Now, a bit of a jump, but if you're interested in the types of themes my short story will be touching upon (I've already got a pretty good idea of how I'll integrate most of these!) here's a quick list I compiled, with the authors I'm getting these ideas from (formatting might get messed up because I'm copying and pasting from a Word document):
1.     Contesting of dichotomy between internal and external nature: internal nature’s depiction as an inherent human drive to dominate external nature, or external nature’s depiction as strictly an anti-human force
2.    Human monetary desires’ otherizing effect on nature: seeking to confine the environment to a managerial/institutional order so as to “make sense” of it in terms of capital (Harvey)
3.    Cartography as power-laden: choosing to emphasize certain geographic or social features over others speaks to imbedded assumptions people hold about society and nature (rural versus urban, national boundaries prior to natural formations, etc.)
4.    Emergence of a “new history”: one of pinpointing and describing relationships between various chronologies, determining those chronologies’ “interplay of correlation and dominance” by exposing certain relevant grammatical and semantic trends (Foucault)
5.     Finite-ization of language: discourse not as an ever-expanding field of statements but rather a “unity” within which only certain statements can be made and be deemed sensible (Foucault)
6.     Nature and wilderness as human constructions: evidenced by perpetuation of certain imageries found in media, political, scientific, and conversational discourse, and upheld by institutions such as conservation initiatives (Robbins)
7.     Similar construction of natural/ecological disasters: disasters only disasters to the extent that humans interact with natural transformations taking place, yet framed consistently by media as anti-human forces; impoverished areas more prone to disaster due to poor infrastructure, reduced access to aid, etc. (Carey)
8.     “Duality of ecological and social projects”: different narratives surrounding environmental change often follow existing social/political divisions, sustainability debate more about preserving a social order than preserving nature (Harvey, Robbins)
9.     Power of narrative in describing environmental systems: emphasizes interpretive aspect of ecology, allowing for multiple perspectives and more equitable environmental solutions, cf. conventional science’s maintenance of itself as the only valid form of explanation (Lejano, Ingram & Ingram)
10.  Power of ideology in discourse: ideology (coherent set of political and social beliefs) most effective when “naturalized”: ceasing to be viewed as just one possible belief system but rather embodying certain “common-sense” beliefs, concealing its original arbitrariness (Fairclough)

That's all for now! Hope you all had a good week.

Entry #6

Hi all, here's an update on what I've been doing:

It's been more of the same with my advisor Sarah, who is still in the process of applying for grants for her upcoming research. This means a lot of proofreading on my end, helping to make sure they're as clear and effective as possible. In addition, she found a friend who had a copy of a new book that combines discourse analysis (specifically narrative analysis) and political ecology, titled The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks, by Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram and Helen Ingram. (Her friend lent it to Sarah who's lent it to me.) It is indeed quite new, published in 2013, and contains what I've found to be a very useful chapter on methods of narrative analysis--terms for analysis such as emplotment, plurivocity, and characterization--all in the context of ecological systems. Seems really cool, and will certainly be helpful for my upcoming writing project. I plan on starting that this coming week; it's Spring Break and my advisor is gone for part of it, so that will give me a bit of time to finish this narratives book and the Fairclough text, which I mentioned in a previous post, as well as get started on my short story! I'm quite looking forward to it all.

I mentioned last week I'd give a run-down of a sort of discursive "timeline" about glaciers as delineated by Carey's essay How glaciers became an endangered species. Although Foucault explicitly mentions that discursive formations cannot be traced back to particular events--but rather it is the discourse itself that gives rise to other discursive "possibilities" --I still feel it is important to keep in mind a historical context when talking these kinds of trends. Apparently, up until the early 20th century, glaciers were thought of and depicted as sort of a menace; their inevitable creep, often destroying farmland and roads, was used as fodder for apocalyptic tales for hundreds of years. Simply put, (Western) people wished they would go away. This would correspond with the Romantic era of thought, which featured the notion of the sublime--the unfathomable power of nature in relation to man. This view of glaciers changed when the Little Ice Age ended around 1900, and glaciers started to melt. On one hand, despite the glaciers' slow disappearance, this melting was destructive; consequently formed glacial lakes are extremely unstable bodies of water, typically held in by week moraine dams, and often experiencing outburst floods and destroying villages (as was the case throughout the 20th century in Peru). On the other, and as the century progressed, these disappearances started to be viewed as visual markers for global climate change, and media coverage of their melting contributed to widespread knowledge of the phenomenon. In recent years, glaciers have shifted from an objective exemplar of global warming to a sort of "endangered species," as Carey puts it---sort of creatures in need of compassion and respect. This viewpoint is demonstrated by the "Save the Glaciers" discursive trend emphasized by much environmental literature, or the recent Greenpeace nation-building stunt pulled two weeks ago, which I wrote about in my blog post. It's all very interesting, but my questions are: what is the next phase in how we talk about glaciers? what sort of events might lead up to that? and what sort of epistemological repercussions might be brought about by this new narrative/discourse surrounding masses of ice? My creative writing project will touch upon these questions.

Have a good Spring Break!

Entry #5

Hi all, hope you had a great week at each of your internships. As of right now, my advisor is writing applications to receive monetary aid for her upcoming research/field work in South America this summer, so I've been working on proofreading her essays (for both readability and effect), hoping to help her secure some grant donations for her PhD work. Most of these programs are very selective in terms of who they give money to, so altogether it sounds like a highly stressful process! Nevertheless, I'll be trying my best to make sure it works out well for her. We've been moving forward in The Archaeology of Knowledge. An interesting thing about Foucault is that he likes to never refer to things outright; before nearly everything he alludes to there is a sequence of qualifiers distancing himself from the traditional interpretation of a given word. A quick example: instead of just writing the word "science" he'll choose to acknowledge "the region usually known as science"; on one hand this idiosyncrasy can be tiresome, as it leads to a lot of nebulous propositions difficult for the reader to produce hypotheticals for. But on the other hand, from a structural point of view, it makes a lot of sense: Foucault, in his assessments of how language is set up - his analysis of the assumptions, groupings, metaphors, etc. that we as humans tend to absent-mindedly gap-fill - does not want to fall into the same trap of accepting the definitive nature of any given word or phrase ("definitions" of words are something he has a big problem with! See for example his examination of the evolution of the word "madness"). Thus, he wants to keep his distance from these concepts, these bundles of notions and assumptions that may or may not be tied inextricably to the maintenance of power, i.e., the idea of "correctness" in modern society. Foucault's writing style alone, although often critiqued by scholars for its obscurantist terminologies, has provided me with inspiration for my upcoming writing project. How, in conversational discourse, for instance, do we avoid these outright referrals to something definitive? I was reading James Simon Kunen's The Strawberry Statement earlier (a novel about Vietnam war protests) when I came across the following line, which I found to be quite funny, as well as relevant to my project! He writes: "We youths say 'like' all the time because we mistrust reality. It takes a certain commitment to say something is. Inserting 'like' gives you a bit more running room." (The Strawberry Statement preceded The Archaeology of Knowledge by three years, interestingly enough.)

In other recent news (last week or so), the Chilean division of Greenpeace (a massive international environmental NGO) has pulled a pretty bold stunt relating directly to my project: claiming a legal loophole to create a new state within Chile: the "Glacier Republic." This is a means to bring attention to the lack of legal protection for Chilean glaciers, which account for 82% (!) of S American glacier mass. This lack of protection, argues Greenpeace, amounts to an open invitation for mining companies to negatively impact regions reliant on glaciers for water resources, including one of Chile's most populated areas. This stunt, not unlike the NGO forces compelling the Pascua Lama mining project to be suspended last year, indicates a recent and interesting discursive reorientation towards the role of glaciers in modern society, in subtle contradistinction to the ideas put forth in Carey's book In the Shadow of  Melting Glaciers: rather than framing glaciers as potential dangers to humans, in the vein of catastrophes such as glacial lake outbursts and avalanches, the establishment of the Glacier Republic depicts these bodies of ice as more or less endangered (with their destruction, of course, also negatively impacting those who depend on them for water resources). This recent development has compelled me to dive into one of Carey's essays, "How glaciers became an endangered species," which I'll fill you in on next week. This essay, along with his book, will be key to establishing a more or less chronology containing certain events, at which points the discourse surrounding glaciers was irrevocably altered. I've decided that my short story will be a near-future sort of narrative, depicting a new event at which the glaciers have been discursively (and thus, epistemologically) altered. I'm quite looking forward to it!