From 2016... Glaciers, gendered knowledge, systems of scientific domination, & alternative representations of glaciers: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

From 2016... Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research. Mark Carey et al. Progress in Human Geography, January 10, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515623368

Abstract: Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

Keywords: feminist glaciology, feminist political ecology, feminist postcolonial science studies, folk glaciology, glacier impacts, glaciers and society

VII Conclusions

Ice is not just ice. The dominant way Western societies understand it through the science of glaciology is not a neutral representation of nature. 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. The critique and framework outlined here illuminate experiences and narratives that emerged historically but remain potent today. 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. A new documentary by French filmmaker Luc Jacquet (2015) about the preeminent French glaciologist and geochemist Claude Lorius perpetuates narratives of heroic domination of nature, while, in interesting ways, noting that ‘triumphant man’ is responsible for the global problems that make Lorius’ research so necessary. At the same time, in the midst of extensive coverage of the polar regions in the context of climate change, the New York Times has published articles that foreground the dangerous field in Greenland, thereby validating manly, heroic fieldwork while simultaneously relegating work with models and computers to something like ‘armchair glaciology’ (Davenport et al., 2015; Gertner, 2015). Unlike past narratives, there are subtleties and tensions within these public discourses, especially as they often seek to see scientific work in more detail, a detail that can soften or undercut the individual exertions on display. However, they still privilege stereotypical and masculinist practices of glaciology. Other narratives, however, challenge these practices, thereby generating alternative approaches to ice. Emerging from Australia, the Homeward Bound initiative plans a ‘state of the art leadership and strategic program for 78 women in science from around the globe’ to travel to Antarctica in late 2016, one of its aims being to ‘explore how women at the leadership table might give us a more sustainable future’ (Homeward Bound, 2015). The call for a feminist glaciology is not limited to ice and glaciers, but is a larger intervention into global environmental change (and especially climate change) research and policy. As international negotiations remain stalled and governmental commitments to change and reform are fitful and seemingly ineffectual, those studying environmental change and aware of its significant effects and dangerous potentials continue to search for ways of stemming the tides of change as well as forming just and equitable global structures for addressing it. The feminist glaciology framework articulates with these larger quests in at least two ways. First, it repeats the demands for increased presence of humanities and social science perspectives in global environmental change research, policy, and broader public discourse. Many humanities and social science disciplines and sub-disciplines have given significant attention to these issues, but there remain boundaries between these analyses and those considered central to the environmental change question. The natural sciences that drive and undergird environmental change policy are often asked by decision-makers and the media to speak for society or frame research and policy questions for humanity. But the natural sciences are not equipped to understand the complexities and potentialities of human societies, or to recognize the ways in which science and knowledge have historically been linked to imperial and hegemonic capitalist agendas. Feminist glaciology participates in this broader movement by suggesting richer conceptions of humanenvironment relations, and highlighting the disempowering and forestalling qualities of an unexamined and totalizing science. 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. Struggles over authority and legitimacy play out in many obvious ways in climate change negotiations. Struggles also happen in less obvious ways, such as in the environmental change research underpinning climate politics. Analysts and practitioners must recognize the ways in which more-than-scientific, non-Western, nonmasculinist modes of knowledge, thinking, and action are marginalized. The response to simplistic ‘ice is just ice’ discourse is not merely to foreground or single out women and their experiences – that would simply perpetuate binaries and boundaries and ignore deeper foundations. Rather, it is a larger integration of human approaches and sensibilities with the existing dominant physical sciences. Global environmental change research must pluralize its ontologies, epistemologies, and sensibilities. Though there is ever-increasing evidence to guarantee future temperature increases, what remains uncertain are the human structures and ideas mobilized to cope with environmental changes as well as to forestall potentially worse outcomes. If we constitute glaciological and global environmental change research differently, we can constitute our future, our gender relations, and our international political economic relations more justly and equitably.