StudioPolar has a variety of existing and emerging research projects. If you are interested in learning more about these projects and/or getting involved as a researcher, a sponsor, or government/industry partner, please contact Arthur Mason.
Association of Polar Early Career Scientists and Interdisciplinary Workshops
The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) was founded in 2006 to bring together young international researchers pursuing careers in natural and social sciences specific to polar regions. Its inception has been timed to coincide with The International Polar Year 2007-2008 (IPY). We plan to launch APECS through a series of IPY meetings fostering future cross-discipline research. We anticipate the meeting series will comprise of small, half-day round-tables hosted at conferences such as the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS). In addition to the round-tables, APECS is organizing a large IPY workshop with the aim of developing new directions in cross-cutting polar research. A key aim is to increase the sensitivities of young scholars to the needs of northern communities and the importance of knowledge building for shaping policy debates in the future. This project is a collaboration of early career scientists from various disciplines: Andrew Roberts, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska-Fairbanks; Jenny Baeseman, Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University; Arthur Mason, School of Justice & Social Inquiry, Arizona State University; Daniel Pringle, Geophysical Institute & Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks. read more
U.S.-Canada Collaborative Study of the Arctic Natural Gas Industry
This project is an international collaboration of scholars, industry, and government partners who are examining the long-term politics of energy and environmental policy of natural gas development on Alaska’s North Slope, Canada’s Mackenzie Delta, and Norway’s Barents Sea region. Partners of StudioPolar on this project include: Mark Nuttall, Department of Anthropology at University of Alberta; Benoit Beauchamp, Director of the Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary; Doyle Hatt, Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary; Jan Simonsen, Department of Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Kristin Vikland, Studio Apertura, NTNU. Government and industry partners include the State of Alaska, ConocoPhillips Petroleum, and WoodMackenzie Global Consultants. Fieldwork in Alaska and Western Canada is scheduled to begin in summer 2008. read more
Consultation on Mackenzie Delta Natural Gas Pipeline Development
This is a collaborative project between StudioPolar and Carly McLafferty of the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. The research examines the consultation process on resource development in the Northwest Territories between energy corporations, government, and Aboriginal communities. Ethnographic study focuses on questions of voice in environmental impact assessment, the anthropology of public participation, land, entitlement and rights, economic sustainability and political processes.
Energy, Society and Policy Initiative (ESPI)
This initiative places emphasis on social and technological change currently taking place in global energy systems and involves the participation of 20 scholars from Arizona State University. Under this broad topical focus, we are currently pursuing research in three thematic areas: (1) the analysis and management of change in large-scale, socio-technical energy systems; (2) energy, justice, and societal outcomes: lives, livelihoods, and lifestyles; and (3) reflexive governance of energy systems transformation. The project is co-lead by Clark A. Miller, Department of Political Science, and Arthur Mason, School of Justice & Social Inquiry. read more
Polar TV: Public Forum of Critical Analysis and Discussion on Cultural Globalization
This project is designed as an Internet television program that presents an anthropological perspective on “circumpolar cultural change.” It is increasingly clear from our work as anthropologists that the Arctic is undergoing a transition in which communities are becoming interconnected through myriad economic, political, and technological changes. It is also clear that most of these changes are being induced from several centers, especially “the West,” and that this process affects people’s lives and cultures around the Arctic in new and often unpredictable ways. read more [PDF]
ANCSA Education and Oral History Project
This project is intended to provide higher education grants to Alaska Native students who collect oral histories and supporting documentation on the first generation of Alaska Native leaders who participated in the passage of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Grants when they become available will also support upper-level undergraduate and graduate Native students in the fields of social sciences and humanities who write theses related to the founding of the ANCSA. The ANCSA represents a unique experience in mobilizing political identity and engaging indigenous peoples in capitalist enterprises in the United States. The passage of the ANCSA was an important achievement for Alaska Natives to secure autonomy over their land. As part of the ANCSA legacy, not all issues have been resolved, while others are now emerging. Land conveyances and exchanges, resource management, village eligibility and tribal sovereignty are part of these concerns. A new generation of Alaska Native leaders will have to embrace new ethical, economic and political choices on how to manage these complex issues. A crucial part of this decision-making, however, can only be based on an informed understanding of the legacy of the ANCSA. A central resource for understanding the history of ANCSA remains to be uncovered. It involves the documentation of experiences of the first generation of Alaska Native leaders who participated in crafting the ANCSA. The understandings of these leaders about settling land claims through establishment of for-profit and non-profit corporations, their negotiations with the federal government and their perceived role to their communities will provide invaluable information on this unique indigenous rights project.
Traffic in Experimental Goals in U.S.-Canadian Natural Gas Industry
This project examines natural gas restructuring in the context of efforts to transform the United States natural gas industry into a global supply system. Critical elements of this system include tapping new energy supply sources from arctic Alaska and arctic Canada through construction of long-distance pipelines. This research examines the policy and planning of cross-boundary pipeline development and foregrounds the relevance of neglected structures of governance on infrastructural planning in U.S.-Canadian cross-border relationships. These neglected structures reflect a diversity of forces that affect new styles of thinking and acting which impact in unpredictable ways those relations of governance currently under consideration by scholars of U.S.-Canadian affairs.
Energy Systems, Migration, and Civil Society in Europe
This is a pilot project initiated by StudioPolar and Maria Stoilkova, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, and Diana Blank, Harriman Research Center, Columbia University, which will explore links between migration and reliability of energy systems in Europe, including industry liberalization, policy and the development of civil society.
Aquaculture in Norway and Chile
This project reflects an emerging area of research for StudioPolar that will examine regulatory and industry standards of salmon farming in the North and South Polar regions. The project was initiated several years previously on behalf of the State of Alaska as part of an industry and government effort to learn about the increase in market share of farmed salmon. Partners include Luis Hennicke, Agricultural Specialist, Lew Stockard, Agricultural Specialist, USDA, Santiago, Chile.
Of Enlightenment and Alaska Early Moderns
This writing activity and library research project examines the significance to the anthropology of Native North America of citizenship studies and elites. The project examines the workings of social and status reproduction at a critical juncture in Alaska Native history and experience and how it articulates clearly to moments of identification and political recognition via forms of citizenship. In this project, citizenship is social and cultural rather than a bundle of rights that is innocent of the workings of meaning, rank and internal possibilities for those who are recognized or misrecognized.
Arctic Moderns and the Import of Expertise
This writing activity and library research project examines the technologies, knowledge, and social authority, associated with natural gas forecasting, U.S. energy policy, and arctic natural gas development. It examines the knowledge and practice of energy forecasters, government officials, and energy corporate executives, and how they translate arctic natural gas into the object of an image of global gas development. The work examines literature on globalization that reconceptualizes trajectories of power which identify the nation-state as the fundamental horizon of all communal life. The work also investigates the changing role of state control and governance by considering the emergence of a new global dynamics that is replacing social systems as central units of analyses in favor of the concept of flows, scapes, and networks.