While not explicitly connected to the Ottawa River/sonification, it does have useful discussions of feminist environmental theories.
Feminist glaciology:
- The feminist glaciology framework draws attention to those who dominate and frame the production of glaciological knowledge, the gendered discourses of science and knowledge, and the ways in which colonial, military, and geopolitical domination co-constitute glaciological knowledge. Even in a globalized age where the place of women and indigenous people has improved markedly in some parts of the world, masculinist discourses continue to dominate, in subtle and determinative ways.
- Feminist glaciology advocates for a shift of preoccupations in research, policy, and public perceptions from the physical and seemingly natural, to a broader consideration of ‘cryoscapes’, the human, and the insights and potentials of alternative ice narratives and folk glaciologies.
- repeats the demands for increased presence of humanities and social science perspectives in global environmental change research, policy, and broader public discourse
- Second, we reiterate the need not only to appreciate the differential impacts of environmental change on different groups of people – men and women, rich and poor, North and South – but to understand how the science that guides attempted solutions may in fact perpetuate differences because they are, essentially, built on and draw their epistemic power from differentiation and marginalization.
Is ice gendered?
- Public discourse on the cryosphere continues to privilege, quite explicitly, manly endeavours and adventures in the field, and those who conduct their science in the manner of masculinist glaciologists and other field scientists of decades and centuries past
- Feminist glaciology builds on feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology to understand how gender, power, and inequality are embedded in systems of scientific domination (Schiebinger, 2014). Such power structures maintain glaciology as a discipline concentrated in the wealthy developed world, often termed the Global North, with generally weak institutional representation from the developing world or indigenous communities.
- This pattern exists for global climate simulations in general, which are conducted by European and North American scientists with little to no representation from Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia (Edwards, 2011).
- Current climate change discussions, for example, perpetuate power discrepancies through what Israel and Sachs (2013: 34–5) refer to as ‘the centrality of mathematical and technological science…structured by masculinist ideologies of domination and mastery’, thus determining who can or cannot participate in climate science and policy-making.
Cruikshank
- For instance, in Canada’s Yukon Territory, glacier knowledge of elder indigenous women has both a gendered context and offers alternative visions of ice compared to Western sciences. Cruikshank (2005) explains for Northwest North America that knowledge of the landscape is influenced profoundly by culture, gender, age, and the personal experiences of each individual living with glaciers. Additionally, whereas glaciologists may try to measure glaciers and understand ice physics by studying the glacial ice itself, indigenous accounts do not portray the ice as passive, to be measured and mastered in a stereotypically masculinist sense. ‘The glaciers these women speak of’, explains Cruikshank (2005: 51–3), ‘engage all the senses. [The glaciers] are willful, capricious, easily excited by human intemperance, but equally placated by quick-witted human responses. Proper behavior is deferential. I was warned, for instance, about firm taboos against “cooking with grease” near glaciers that are offended by such smells.…Cooked food, especially fat, might grow into a glacier overnight if improperly handled.’ The narratives Cruikshank collected show how humans and nature are intimately linked, and subsequently demonstrate the capacity of folk glaciologies to diversify the field of glaciology and subvert the hegemony of natural sciences.
- folk glaciologies challenge existing power dynamics and cultures of control within glaciology. For instance, in response to Cruikshank’s detailed and highly acclaimed research, geographer Cole Harris suggested instead that Cruikshank attributed too much weight to ‘Native’ stories and non-scientific understandings of glaciers
- **Cruikshank illustrates quite clearly, glaciological mapping and other scientific research existed within and facilitated systems of colonial expansion, capitalist resource extraction, and the subjugation of indigenous peoples in the region (Cruikshank, 2005, 2012a, 2012b).
- Conscious of this position, the feminist glaciology framework asks that researchers accept a plurality of knowledges and recognize embedded systems of domination. The goal is neither to force glaciologists to believe that glaciers listen nor to make indigenous peoples put their full faith in scientists’ mathematical equations and computer-generated models (devoid of meaning, spirituality, and reciprocal human-nature relationships). Rather, the goal is to understand that environmental knowledge is always based in systems of power discrepancies and unequal social relations, and overcoming these disparities requires accepting that multiple knowledges exist and are valid within their own contexts.
**makes me want to look into Feminist Sound Theory