Problems of abstraction and extraction in cultural geography research: implications for fieldwork in Arctic North America

Abstract

If methods are how we answer research questions, then theories are how we know what question to ask. Therefore, all research begins with a necessarily high level of abstraction which then informs decisions about the appropriate targets, goals, and scale at which methods are carried out. Numerous critics have argued that fieldwork should not be extractive, meaning it should not collect data for the benefit of the researcher without returning anything to the community. The distinction between the “abstract” and the “on the ground” work done by geographers is thus far from distinct. In this essay, I discuss questions about how to do field-informed research of intellectual value that is neither extractive nor perpetuates colonial imaginaries of spaces of problem and solution. While a single essay cannot answer these questions, I use research involving northern Canadian communities, and in particular, my own focus group research on the cultural politics of diamond mining in Nunavut, to add clarity to these questions. Ultimately, I argue that methods not only should be flexible and tailored to theory but also should be “field informed” in the sense that informants help researchers shape reflexive accounts by highlighting what is unknown, unknowable, or situationally contingent.

Keywords:

• methods
• historical political ecology
• community-based participatory research
• Indigenous people
• Canada
• geopiracy

Notes

1. A note of clarity—this is an article about cultural geography methods using research in far northern communities as a lens, not the other way around.

2. This was intended as a focus group consisting of an entire family, though had to be broken into two smaller groups. Katie's and Kristin's brother and parents formed a separate group.

3. For full details, see Wainwright (2012).

4. Lorimer (2005) considers this also to be a fruitful way of engaging with nonacademic communities.

5. Though even if not his main purpose, Wainwright (2012, p. 5) does nod in this direction by foregrounding the letter from UNOSJO and describing it as “from the point of view of the research subjects.”

6. While advocates of nonrepresentational theory do not advocate interpreting representations, some do see the act of creating the representation itself as a “practice” worth studying (Simpson 2011). However, this is essentially what Rose (2001), in her important book on methods of studying representation Visual Methodologies, refers to as the site of production of an image. It is, in my opinion, what a fair number of researchers investigating representation have been doing for decades—see, for example, Williamson (1979).

7. Over the past 15 years, Canada has greatly increased its diamond production, often advertising diamonds as pristine alternatives to so-called “conflict diamonds.” Canada has four diamond mines, but the three most relevant to my research are in the Northwest Territories near the border with Nunavut. They are called the Diavik Mine, the Ekati Mine, and the Snap Lake Mine.