Paparazzi Ethnography

10/28: 5 PM. Despite the early start, beginning at 8 AM, and as it appears now, our plans to continue until 8 PM and then break up into groups heading for dinner at restaurants nearby, Aleksanteri conference participants continue to enthusiastically engage their paper presenters on the issues.

Minister of Economic Affairs for the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow, Martin Aberg, seen here smiling as evidence of the continued good mood, posed during a panel discussion on Russian institutional decision-making. A frequently asked question about the role of Putin in the energy industry: “If Putin is not all powerful, then what is he?” In a quick one sentence response, NUPI’s Director of Energy Program, Indra Overland, quipped: “Putin is most powerful person in a system in which he is still required to negotiate among actors in order to realize his interests”. NUPI stands for Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. The consulting firm, based in Oslo, Norway, was well represented here in Helsinki, by Indra and also by Jakub Godzimirski, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies, both of whom were happy to pose in front of our camera in this photo.

I actually met both Indra (on left) and Jakub at the Norwegian Research Council sponsored Petrosam Workshop this past June at the Radisson Hotel located at the Oslo Airport, Norway, where many of the themes taken up today, were also discussed in detail. Missing from the event here in Helsinki this week, but who almost accepted an invitation as a key note speaker, is the famous Russian natural gas guru and Director of Oxford Energy Institute in England, Jonathan Stern, giving the key note speech, in fact, at the Petrosam event in Oslo.

On that day, J. Stern did not fail to disappoint his audience, and in addition to focusing on a set of recent changes to fundamentals, which our Michael Bradshaw, seen here in a jovial mood, also pointed to yesterday, Stern offered a provocative set of comments about the declining state of academic knowledge on the oil and gas industry (but not in Norway), of which we will comment more about at a later date.

We had to chastise Doug Rogers for changing the photo on his university website, where he was seen looking out bravely over a Moscow sky line, but now faces the viewer in a headshot taken in his backyard. But we also cannot deny, especially speaking as anthropologists, that he gave a great presentation today, on the social and cultural faces of oil and gas. Rogers asked how do Russian oil companies legitimize their wealth to a national community that is often skeptical of that wealth? And then proceeded to awe us, despite the power point image projector not working correctly, and participants having to forego the earlier much more comfortable auditorium in exchange for a smaller more stuffy class room where we were now required to seat ourselves on what we can only describe as wooden benches akin to a churchly pew.

Rogers, in a casual style, suggesting a George Clooney-esque sensibility, made three points: (1) social and cultural projects (corporate responsibility) – have been a key way that Russian oil elites can and have aligned themselves with local elites; (2) this alliance often offers a good strategy to alleviate some of the local critiques of oil company wealth and (3) this strategy entails a political economy of public space, meaning that only those areas of oil development actually demand attention, while other areas, without oil resources, require less attention.

10/28: 2PM. Lunch time already? Several of the participants headed downstairs to the graduate commons cafeteria where we could order a variety of hot and cold dishes, including tofu-rice pilaf, which seemed to be a favorite among our group. You probably know everyone in this photo by now (Doug, Florian, Stephan), but there on the far right in front, is a photo of geographer Corey Johnson, who we mentioned having a great pre-conference conversation with about pipeline materiality and nomenclature.

We also had the grateful opportunity to have a very interesting discussion with Master’s student of International Studies at Finland’s University of Tampere, Laura Salmela, who of all things, happens to be doing very nearly the exact same kind of research in Russia that we are doing here at StudioPolar. We thus, had a very long discussion and came up with the idea that what we require is a systematic typology of methods for studying what we call the creation of communities of interpretation within the global energy industry. We have really, so many ideas on this topic, and as I mentioned to Laura, they are lying around in such a state of total fragmentation, but somewhat curiously, always manage to become coherent through inspired and experimental conversation, like a gust of wind that blows a sea of leaves into material structure, only to vanish again. We definitely need to get them down on paper.

And just as we’re putting our final thoughts down, Nicholas Koh has introduced himself to us, coming all the way from Singapore, and having just established at their National University, their very own Energy Studies Institute, which of all things, is interested in arctic natural gas development. Nicholas was kind enough to introduce us to the head of the institute, Dr. Hooman Peimani, speaking tomorrow on Russian energy exports from Central Asia, and who has graciously invited us to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming book sponsored by their institute on arctic energy policy. Here they both are, Nicholas and Hooman.

10/28: 11 AM. This morning began with two separate panels, of which we participated on one titled Coexistence of Russian Hydrocarbon Extraction and Marginalized Livelihoods: Theory and Practice. The panel was chaired and organized by Florian Stammler, anthropologist and Senior Researcher at Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Florian, who is part of the Anthropology Research Team there, which he co-founded, is shown here in this photo, standing on the left next to Stephan Dudek, a social anthropologist and researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt, who is also part of our panel.

I took this photo yesterday, at the beginning of the conference, where I also had the chance to thank Florian for inviting me to participate on his panel this morning. I first met Florian in 2008 in Tromsø, Norway, at the Arctic Frontiers conference, where we also met Simon-Erik Ollus, who I shared a latte with yesterday and mentioned earlier. At the 2008 conference, Florian gave a spectacular presentation on human relationships between reindeer herders in Western Siberia and the local oil workers. It was in front of a full crowd in a beautiful auditorium that was built recently in Tromsø and called the Polar Centre. And we just happen to still have a photo which we took at that event.

Actually, that Arctic Frontiers conference was quite spectacular, if I may digress for a moment. The conference took place at the beginning of International Polar Year, and invited to participate were early career researchers, where after the conference, several newly minted PhDs led by professors at University of Tromsø, boarded a Norwegian Cruiser and spent several days on the fjords, only to land in the beautiful Lofoten Islands, where we spent time at a candle factory discussing our research interests.

It was here in this community, a retreat commonly used by painters, poets and other artists, that with several natural scientists, including Ruth Müller, then post-doctoral researcher at Alfred Wegener Institute for Marine and Polar Research, Germany, that we conceptualized a “coupled-systems” project that would consider cascade effects on biotic as well as socioeconomic systems by potential oil spills and for which we received exploratory funds from Arizona State University in 2008. Here is a photo of Ruth standing on the left with Nazune Menka.

Come to think of it, during this same trip, we even had our own musical entertainment in the form of a very talented trio flown in from Barcelona, who accompanied us, and shared the good times. But the presentations this morning were great, and let us say something about those now.

10/28: 7AM. We want to take a moment and provide a few introductions. We were so taken by our own sense of analysis yesterday that we completely did not comment on all the wonderful conference participants we met yesterday. And this is in part because of the late hour that we began writing. In fact, I did leave the conference reception yesterday with the intention of writing it all up, so-to-speak, when in the lobby of the City Hall, where the evening activities were taking place, I made the acquaintance of two persons, who were indeed quite fashionably dressed. It turned out that they were sisters, one of whom lives in Helsinki, and the other in Baku, Azerbaijan, of all places, and works for the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. This information we discovered before we even exchanged our names.

They were also leaving early, in order to attend a party here in town, for which Samantha and I suddenly and politely suggested that we attend. They immediately and graciously agreed, and finally, we formally introduced ourselves to each other and we snapped a photo of them both, right there in front of City Hall, and that is how we met with Ms. Gulmira Rzayeva and Ms. Esmira Rzayeva, both attendees of the conference. We walked over to a night club named Le Bonk where their friends and friendly acquaintances had gathered to celebrate the departure of a recently graduated MA student in media studies of Helsinki University, who is taking a job in London and whose name is, shown here in the middle, Imir Rashid. Congratulations Imir!

We should like to mention, that just previous to our departure from the City Hall reception, we had the chance for another meaningful exchange with Yale University assistant professor of anthropology Doug Rogers, who we’ve been wanting to meet in person for some time.

 He is shown here on the far right standing next to professor of geography at University of Leicester, Michael Bradshaw, who gave an absolutely wonderful talk yesterday, on the important recent dynamics of natural gas developments, including the glut in the markets as a result of the financial crisis, and the abandoned prospects of exporting LNG to the United States from the proposed Shtokman field.

These were certainly important comments in a day that was rather taken up by a dialogue between general events of uncertainty within Russian energy policy, and the theoretical framework for considering these events, which were ably presented to participants by recently awarded PhD holder and acting professor at Aleksanteri Institute David Dusseault, who appears on the far left of this photo, and is one of the main organizers of this wonderful event. Congratulations on your newly minted PhD David! and thanks for bringing us all together here in Helsinki to discuss such an interesting topic. We have many more introductions we plan to make today, but we’re late now to give our own talk!

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—  Aleksanteri Conference: Fueling the Future —


10/27: At the end of the first day, I met with Simon-Erik Ollus, Finnish economist specializing in Russian electricity development. In 2008, Simon gave a wonderful talk about Russia’s electricity industry at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway.

The Arctic Frontiers conference coincided with the release of a scientific report Assessing Arctic Oil and Gas Development, sponsored by Arctic Council. I still remember the clarity with which Simon spoke, and wanted to meet him in person to discuss how ideas about Russian energy development circulate and shape arctic development. This evening, when we met, he told me he had since quit academia, and went into private sector. He is Vice President, Chief Economist at Fortum Corporation.

We only had a brief time to discuss, as he needed to pick up his daughter. He suggested we grab a coffee. We left the conference slightly before the other participants, who were now all intending to walk to the Helsinki City Hall, for a catered reception. For the world, I did not want to miss the reception! But I did want to speak with Simon-Erik, so I followed him without protest to a nearby coffee shop. As it turns out, it was perhaps the best thing I could do, because within the space of a few minutes, he asked me how my work was going. Specifically, he asked, indeed, that if I examine communities of experts, and that if I study the way they get together and share ideas, what in fact, did I think so far of today’s meeting?

This was a brilliant question. I certainly had not thought about it until that moment. I had no idea what I would have written about in this particular blog right now, had he not asked that question. I was in fact, stunned. I told him that he just asked me an excellent question, and in fact, I was now, in this instant, prepared to provide an answer. We entered the coffee shop, and he treated me to a Finnish-type roll and latte. We sat under a dome, with a red ball hanging down, and there was an echo effect. This is what we told him:

I’ve been studying energy workshops, conferences, executive roundtables and other gatherings for a long time. And so there are certain things I know to look for. For example, the first thing I look for in a meeting is to see what type of venue has been chosen for the gathering. Is it a university? Is it a hotel? Is it a 4 Star hotel? Venue makes a big difference in the way knowledge can be transmitted. Typically, anthropologists don’t think so. We pride ourselves on giving talks at universities where the speaker system doesn’t work well, or where there might be some problem with the image projector. These issues we accept with a feeling that the knowledge will somehow rise above all these petty issues that preoccupy more wealthier (and thus superficial) gatherings. But even for anthropologists, venue matters, otherwise we would hold job talks in New York’s Times Square – and just think how much knowledge would be transmitted then!

In my previous experience, the venues of energy consultants are very high-end. They usually take place in 4 star hotels, like CERAweek, which takes place at the new Hilton in Houston. There, all activities can be orchestrated without a glitch. For example, a lot of electricity needs to be used, and the stream of energy needs to be reliable. There are huge walls screens with Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, speaking. Just think if the venue didn’t have appropriate energy requirements, and electricity back up. Hilary’s time is important, and she probably couldn’t wait the 20 minutes required to boot her back up.

For this reason, I arrived early, before anyone else, to the Aleksanteri meeting space, to take a few photos. As you can see, it’s beautiful. I knew right there and then, that the organizers of this event, had indeed, a few ideas they wanted to convey. That is, they were ambitious with their thoughts. They needed a space to match that ambition. They wanted to make sure their ideas would float comfortably across the room. And that we, the participants, would be comfortably seated, warm, cozy, even receptive to the ideas when they began to float.

The second thing I look for is the attendance list. This is a big indicator of how ideas will circulate at a meeting. When you organize an event, you make a decision about who will attend. You make a conscious selection about who you want to surround yourself with and with whom you want to speak to and with whom you would like to share your ideas with. Such decisions include how many Americans you want in the room. In my experience, Americans always think we’re right and we have the best ideas. And so if you put too many of us in the room together, whether we are natural scientists, politicians, social scientists or even anthropologists, we are going to be the only ones in the room that are right. That’s just my experience.

Based on casual observation, the ratio of one American to 10 non-Americans creates a healthy balance of idea sharing, where ideas are not drowned out by the confidence that we take with us. That doesn’t sound too analytical, and I won’t go into it more than that right now, but simply to say, at this conference, there are not that many Americans. And the effect has been so far, that no particular set of ideas has dominated the conference, with exception of the ideas that the organizers have put forth, which I will talk about more in a minute.

Another thing I look for on the participant list, is which institutions are attendees coming from. This is another big issue. Often times, academics coming from prestigious named universities bring added-value to an event, precisely because they bring the prestige of the named institution to bear on the various ideas under consideration. I’ve worked at numerous universities, including UC Berkeley, Arizona State University and University of Calgary. I’ve attended Columbia University and University of Alaska. My experience suggests that when I meet another academic from a prestigious university, I tend to promote my affiliation with UC Berkeley and Columbia, instead of the other institutions, as if doing so lends my ideas more credibility. This may not mean much in terms of scientific progress, but it sure means something to a lot of us in academia when it comes to passing judgement about what differentiates great ideas from ideas that are just so-so. In Europe and Russia, this also seems to matter. Without going into too much detail, I noticed that among the few Americans in attendance, one was from Yale, another from Harvard, and myself, representing UC Berkeley. In fact, the four of us found ourselves instantly and comfortably chatting to each other, like bees in a bonnet.

A final point in terms of attendance list is the actual number of attendees. If the number is too small, it no longer can be considered an event but instead, an intimate setting. You need a critical number of persons, to generate a sense of excitement about the feeling that you’re attending a happening. But if the crowd is too large, then there’s no incentive to feel part of a group more generally. Nope, you need at minimum, 100 people, to make everyone feel confident that we’re in this together, but at the same time, to give everyone both enough anonymity so that they feel they’re being watched, but enough intimacy, so that they’re movements can be observed by the same people over a few days stretch, and thus, to create a sense of meaningful behavior among peers. In these three senses then, limiting Americans, highlighting prestigious institutions, and finding the magic number of attendees to create a sense of a happening, today’s conference was an absolute success. And here, I use the word success to refer to creating the kind of context where what can develop is a community of interpretation. I use the phrase community of interpretation to refer to a setting in which, much like a crucible, ideas over a several day period can be forged, launched, tested, honed, and made one’s own. These are the attendance requirements for creating and disseminating a new idea so to speak.

Well, let’s now take a look at the new idea that was being promoted today. Ideas are totally important. Think how much money the recent movie Inception made at the box office. What was that about? Planting an idea so it grows and becomes part of the entire total social phenomena of the person. That’s right. There are so many great examples in the social sciences where ideas are shown to be material forces that structure the individual and society. Both Max Weber and Norbert Elias, two of my favorites on how ideas shaped us as modern individuals, and have left me spinning like that little totem in the movie Inception, spinning around without stopping, yet thinking I’m doing it all on my own volition.

But let’s go on. To create a community of interpretation, in this case, about Russian energy strategy, you need a good idea. The existential requirements of a good idea are pretty straight forward. First, the idea can’t have too many terms and new words and the relations between these terms can not be such, that they need to be committed to memory before walking into the conference. You can dazzle people with complicated stuff and that will work, but if you’re going to move people to a consensus about a new idea, and not just a word or a term, and moreover, have decided to not prep them in advance of the meeting, it’s best to choose something that people can conceive of as an instrument that can be applied to a variety of different but structurally similar empirical examples. Like a can opener. It’s a good idea, no matter how big or small the can is. The only stipulation is, that what can be opened must be a can.

Let’s take the example of an alliance between persons of decision-making power without appropriate knowledge to make decisions (leaders), and persons of knowledge without decision-making power (academics, consultants). You can sell that idea as something that works, because it applies in a wide variety of empirical examples, just so long as you have those two elements, knowledge without position and position without knowledge. Simple. Well, in today’s presentation, there was an elaborated idea about understanding Russian energy strategy in terms of the structuration of energy policy. Right off the bat, people want to know what the story is with structuration, does it have a history? whose history? Giddens? what? You see there. You don’t need to discuss history with an idea like “tipping point” — which by the way is just Threshold. It’s an instrument void of history, or rather, it has transhistorical application, dangerous indeed. Gosh, we have to retire for the evening, we’ll finish this later.

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Attending in Helsinki:

Aleksanteri Conference: Fueling the Future

10/27: Conference registration was quiet for the first hour, but luckily we had a chance for a fascinating one-on-one exchange with geographer Dr. Corey Johnson about distinctions of pipeline politics between the U.S.-Canada grid system and the European network of pipes. I often refer to the North American natural gas pipeline system, a 2 million mile coagulation of steel pipes, as a techno-ontological system.

I use that phrase because, no matter what, those pipes are there, and even after a hundred years, they will still be there in the ground. Just like a Teotihuacan pyramid, pipes have a certain materiality, that remain long after we’re gone, or off to doing something else, but not using those pipes.

An even more interesting fact about our pipeline system —  is that it is constantly being interpreted in different ways. Sometimes the network of pipes is a transportation system, that moves natural gas around. But more recently, it has become a critical system, whose needs, above all, require protection. Thus, there are different ways to think about the materials, as well as the different ways that specialists (e.g., energy analysts), describe its materiality, through the use of graphs, etc.

Pipes.

In contrast to North American pipes, Corey reminds us that in Europe, natural gas pipelines are politicized objects in ways that the very names of pipes are well recognized in the public consciousness. And this doesn’t happen too often in the United States. Sure, some of us can mention TAPS (trans-Alaska pipeline system), but for the most part, ask your neighbor to mention three names of pipelines, or even one natural gas pipeline, and the only thing that will come to mind, is probably the blow-out that burned down several blocks of houses near San Francisco, recently.

If you’re not in the energy business, there’s a strong likelihood that you don’t know the names of natural gas pipes in the United States. And this difference, suggests that in Europe, there is a sort of politico-ontology (my inchoate term). That the materiality is not simply a technical issue, but in fact, a highly political one.

Here is a link for Names of Gas Pipelines in US and Canada.

After speaking with Corey, we scampered over to introduce ourselves to Dr. Ekaterina Novikova, who received her PhD in Finance from Plekhanov Russian Economic University in Moscow and is now affiliated with Northern Dimension Research Centre and currently working on conceptualizing Finland as a hub for intellectual networks and knowledge transmissions between Russia and Scandinavian countries. Fascinating that the topic appears so interesting, and yet, Ekaterina spoke in such an everyday manner, signifying the development has been underway for some time, and a topic that shouldn’t really be surprising to anyone, least of all, us, who have made this kind of research an exploratory endeavor.

10/26: Opening day tomorrow for Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Conference: Fueling the Future —  Your special correspondents here, Arthur Mason, reprising his role as PaparazzI (PI) ethnographer to the not-so-famous, reporting on events, accompanied by the international talent, Samantha Catalyst, StudioPolar‘s Project Coordinator, Photographist and International Travelry Specialist. In this special case… we will be following all those involved in Russian natural gas development in the Barents Sea — We plan to have photos, testimony, etc. posted continually….

It is a toss-up, of course, on whether we should have attended Aleksanteri or the Gazprom VNIIGAZ conference in Moscow, taking place at the same time. The thought reminds us of when we traveled recently to Teriberka (Barents Sea coastal village in Russia), proposed off-loading site of the Shtokman natural gas development project. In June, we attended the 5th Norway-Russia Arctic Offshore Workshop in Murmansk, wherein local entrepreneur and German expat to Russia for the past umpteen years, Ulrich Kreuzenbeck, hosted a fabulous picnic for workshop participants at the former Teriberka High School which he’s remodeling into a hotel. Speaking of valuable events we missed out on recently was NUPI’s Russia, Europe and Energy conference, brought to our attention by former Norwegian Consular General to Murmansk, Russia, Dr. Kåre Hauge, who is on the top of StudioPolar‘s list of valuable mentors for this project. Thanks for your continued support Kåre!

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