5/14: When the opportunity for chatting with Kathryn Samuels arose, recently hired assistant professor at University of Maryland and US-Norwegian Fulbrighter this year in Tromsø, there was no possibility of missing the appointment.

We met at the Fram Centre to discuss Kathryn’s emerging work on the Arctic and energy heritage, for the moment, beginning a project in Svalbard, and just recently having submitted a proposal to the US National Science Foundation. As an anthropologist, she is interested in examining different forms of production in the Arctic, beginning with whale oil harvesting in the previous century, and looking at the constructed remains, discursive and material, that continue to inform the Arctic landscape.

Here is a handsome diptych of Kathryn, below, sipping tea.

Afterward, at University of Tromsø, a fascinating presentation by none other than arctic political scientist, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, talking on her newly published manuscript that branches out to a new region, and on Ashgate press, titled, Understanding Civil-Military Interaction.

The talk was well attended, with fellow colleagues from the sociology/political science department, including Stuart Robinson.

Here, in this image on your right, Gunhild stands beside a powerpoint image to demonstrates the different types of groups involved in civil rebuilding.

She points out that while policy perspectives suggest a “civil-military” dichotomy, on the ground experience often reveals that these boundaries are less transparent, especially by folks living in the area.

University of Tromsø, arriving

The Troms in grand style. We had a delicious panini upon arrival at Kaffebønna downtown troms, then headed over to greet the smart-looking Hege Fokedal who provided an office key to get started.



A quick stop to the library for coffee and oj.


The flight was straight forward and quick. Had us up and working in the latest writer’s grotto before having had a chance to give a second thought.


Just now completing a first draft book manuscript on energy experts who develop Arctic futures, tentatively titled, ENERGY ESTATES: FROM NATURAL MONOPOLY TO A CULTURE OF EXPERTISE.

The weather is marvelous, though indeed, a bit taciturn.

Well, what the heck, with so much sunlight, on average, 16 hours per day, it can snow for 10 hours, and still be gone in a flash.












Images from the Sky Train.







Panini forest.

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Tromsø, Steak, Anthropologists.

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What within six weeks…

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27-31 May –

Pan-Arctic Extractive Industries PhD Programme:
An initiative under the Umbrella of the University of the Arctic, led by Jessica Shadian, Florian Stammler (Arctic Centre, U Lapland), Gunhild Hoogenson-Gjorv, U. Tromsø.

PhD Course/Symposium

Course Website/

Course Info

5/31: Student Presentations.

Elena Nuikina, U Vienna, Vorkuta, Russia, coal mining — superb talk on her work in Russia, great ethnography, looking at development as a process of expansion through efficiencies of scale.

What makes a mono-industrial town located in North of Russia a viable place? How viability is negotiated? (Fluid process; looking at perceptions, strategies and tactics to make Vorkuta a viable place? Viability for whom?). Chapter 2, How international experts, authorities, companies and ordinary residents envision future existence of the town? What were the projects aimed at future viability of the town? How is viability negotiated in changing context? Development Scenarios for Vorkuta. Whether it should be a workers’ camp or “town”.

Shrinkage — Instead of Restructuring — (Industry shrinking, spatial re-organization of the town down to 5 mines from 12; from 200,000 down to 90,000; outmigration of people (via programs + self-driven) — Consequences: Changing economic life in the town; municipal and social services; ghost towns on the margins of Vorkuta; changing social dynamics in the town (mafia, social activism, leadership, social capital, social cohesion). Possibly a positive movement where “development” from shrinkage could result in “higher living standards” — So development, instead of leading toward largess, the concept of development is Progress, whose telos is efficiency. A playground for World Bank, a laboratory for carrying out processes elsewhere. Strategies of efficiency that are utilized by different actors in different ways. Temporality — short term stays as part of the discourse in labor and out-in migration.

Tara Cater is up next, Dept. Geography, Memorial University, talking about High North Canada. Engaging with Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors involved in mining communities. Piotr Graczyk, PhD student, U Tromsø, up now talking about regime frameworks and the relationships between state’s interests, constructivist approaches involving agent-structure interaction, and foreign policy analysis decision making.

5/30 — after lunch: Russian Nickel Industry: Soviet Industrialism, Russian Capitalism and the Environment, Lars Rowe, Fridtjof Nansen Institute. How nickel industry came to be in Northern Norway. Petsamo/Pechenga region. Finnish Corridor: the Tartu (Dorpat) Peace Treaty (1921) — given to Finland because of the desire for an outlet to the (arctic) ocean; Finnish geological investigations (1921-1934), looking for iron, but found nickel instead; Inco (Canada) vs. IG Farben (Germany), considered the biggest find outside of Canada — but without expertise in the Country to develop the ore, and engaged various companies. Nickel concession settles with Inco, which secures Petsamo in 1934; 1934-39, Company town Kolosjoki (Nickel); Power plant at Jäniskoski. Nickel — steel alloys, makes steel – stainless, stress resistant, munitions, armor plates, secure supplies, deny supply to competing powers.

Then war comes to the area. Winter war 1939-1940. Moscow Parenthesis 1940-41/ Finland, Germany, and Soviet Union; Molotov’s sudden demand, Finland needs security: Hitler or Stalin? 1941-1944: Germany controls Petsamo; October 1944: Soviet takeover. 3 months after the peace, after Soviet’s give back Petsamo to Finns. But then, they ask the Finns for Petsamo back. In Pechenga: Nickel, Zapolyarnyi (1957); Prirechnyi (1962); Five hydroelectric power plants (1951-1970) – two built by Norwegians, three Finnish, two Russians (a minimum of border crossing by Western personnel); Five new ore deposits; The Norilsk ore [The issue of Western personnel on “Soviet Soil” is something Jonathan Stern disavows in his story of Natural Gas industry technology transfers]

Arn Keeling. Environmental history and extractives. Extractive industries: histories of exploitation, degradation and conflict; Cumulative effects assessment: immanent/future development focus (may include effects of past activities projects on current and future development).

5/29: Stuart Robinson,  is up — U Tromsø, Globalisation as the Expression of Social and Political Change: a Pretext— delivering up great job. Hanging on his every word. Okay, here we go:

What Globalization expresses, social and political change on a fundamental level. How things are made and how economic systems function. Using Globalization as a lens for talking about political problems associated with Marxism as a tradition of thought ostracized through sleights of hand. Marxism, as a word and ism, we mean something different when we talk about racism, rationalism, a pathology — a dismissal and straw man effect.

Hi Leena!!!

The materialist view — the overstatements of dichotomies of liberalism (voluntary actions) versus materialisms of Marx, given that liberalism itself is a materialist position. Not the things themselves, though those are important themselves, but the process of production, that sustains of lifeworlds, creates all kinds of organizational demands and the shaping of social relationships — which is more material, than the view that the actions of individuals and rational action is somehow the nomos of geographies of life.

Making things and cooperation. The production and distribution of goods, organization of market system for distribution — and more profound and complex than the simplicity of what goes on in a factory. Consumption and production in our lives take up so much of our time, as human beings in world that we live in, dynamics of employment. The normalization on the cultural plane, being a cog within an industrial process: Hannah Arendt.

Subsidiarity — the idea of constellation of heterogenous actors, granted autonomy to do what one does best, coordinated — paradoxical decentralization. Autonomy — a body that would operate independently as a good service provider, as operating as a private company, operated with municipality as having controlling interest, and then giving up the interest, merely a regulatory framework, and then becomes a model of competition. A kind of transnational organization that permeates on the policy level and its replication.

Fordism — intensified factory organization (collectivised capital ownership and finance, automation, strengthened hierarchy, scale) combined with political economy of distribution (producer-consumer contract). Changed the dynamic of work, from the natural rhythms of work to the factory assembly line (“not the employer who pays the wages, but the customer who pays the wages”). Marketing — playing on insecurities, worries about aging, worries about being socially accepted; Banking and credit– paying on installments, forms of debt, etc.

PostFordism–  integrated with Fordist practices, growing concentration of capital, centralization of decision making in larger corporations, typically marketing position in markets — living the usual assumptions of free markets, but the reality of most markets are one or more forms of monopoly and oligopoly relationships and even difficult to understand who the actors are, resulting in an increase in a transnational organization. Global factory and the integration of how things are made through collaboration of intra-industry trade, and the relationships whether competitive or collaborative, and the neoliberal classical model assuming an externalization of rational actors meeting in the market place, which may or may not be the case.

The boundary between firms — disguising the influence of monopoly and monopsony (supplier of a good but dependent on another actor who distributes those goods). High tech system of design, and distribution and networked together with the most disgusting sweatshops, and the externalization of sweatshops — what can we say — that these locations are part of the transnational corporation, the phoenix rising of the centrally planned economy, under the guise freedom of contract, free markets, insertion of free market under a heavily centralized production process and the internal operations of a global corporation vertically integrated.

Steering at a distance – autonomy over process but responsibility over results. Control the outcomes, recording the publications and providing rewards effectively discipling the subject. Geo-political marketing, multi-lateral trade through NAFTA, and other investment regimes.

Praxis: Engineered Autonomy — Division of labor/tasks (differentiate, allocate); coordination (compartmentalise, quantify, time); Tutelage (focus decision making, rationalise lines of command, allocate goals and incentives, monitor).

Fabulous stuff

Thanks Stuart!!!

Okay Q & A…
Florian questioning about the socialist corporation and the company towns of extractive industries. The draconian rules of the gated community for maximizing profit. The issue of trust– marketing and advertising is all about generating feelings of insecurity, that trust has broken down, and a social system of insecurity — a notion that you need to be worried about not socially competitive, about attack….

Industrial transformations — changing the lay of the land — making extractive industries rather cutting edge, and making traditional industries’ cutting edge backward — the need to move into new areas where the networked model of organization is effective — broad church of actors. Product tagging, topography of global economy. The Logic of Capitalism and the logic of society – continuing commodification that stress of society – society. Possibilities of social organization.

Ok. Up now we have Florian Stammler, talking about developments in the Yamburg, working as a consultant for a firm that was given a contract to carry out interviews among community members where oil and gas development is planned to take place.

5/28: Second day. Florian up now. Constant state of justification and crisis as a field. Anthropology has been accused by a number of scholars as the handmaiden of colonialism, used to create passive subjects of rule. Processes of verification are not based on verifiable forms common to the quantitative fields.

How do we grant authenticity and credibility to our findings if we cannot do so with hard numbers. Dealing with the pressure of justification — fieldwork is a powerful tool of establishing the real and verifiable. Very material process, we expose our body to the situation. This experience of exposure we ground credibility of our finding.

How do people use resources in the Arctic. How do people make sense of what folks see out in the Arctic. An environment that you cannot ignore. As anthropologists our task in the sense making exercise — we study how people make sense of the resources.

We benefit from the experience of sense making from our informants. Whether geologists looking at the underground reservoir, or herders, who see a field of symbolic and material formations that give them purposeful approaches.

By examining what people do on the land — focus on what people do on the land, with the resource. How are these approaches similar or different. Engaging materially with the environment. Methods of participant-observation, tensions of subjectivity and objectivity. Acquiring skills as a form of credibility and authority. Creating forms of reflexivity in the field among informants for whom we are learning about their lives. Non-verbal ways of communication in the Arctic, versus verbal forms of communication among expertise, e.g., interviews have limitations.

Arn Keeling, professor at Memorial University, up now talking about geography methods, activities he employs in constituting knowledge in his field, genealogy, historical research, and important parallels with anthropological methods, but special challenges with investigating the past, mobilizing time and duration. Turning now to students to listen to some of their methodologies and problems in the understanding of extractive industries. Piotr Graczyk, political science graduate student, examining institutions in the Arctic Council, and employing an emersion method of knowing folks, over and over again, following the game. Dealing with the personal role that the fieldworker has when engaging them in authentic representations of what they are doing. Florian, Berit Krisstofersson, talking about how to turn limitations into a problematization of analysis. We are speaking now about issues of fieldwork, when we can get access and when we cannot, the concept of theory and how the empirical could contribute to a notion of theory.

After Lunch — Gjert Lage Dyndal, Political challenges to petroleum activity in Svalbard: Extractive Industries, Norway, Canada, Finland, Russia.

Increased Arctic interest from Oil and Gas Industry — largely a political stable and predictable area

A stable region, but still some challenges- Canada-USA delineation; Norway-Russia delineation; common perspective political stable area, all actors adhere to UNCLOS, eager to explore with a positive attitude to the north; waterways, about international straits and control of shipping; Norwegian Greenland delimitation lines were solved in 2006, and the NoRu agreement was signed in 2011.

However, there might arise new and challenging overlapping claims as all nations have delivered their geological claims for extension of their continental shelves–claims to the commission on the limits of the continental shelf; nations adhere to the UN convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); still dependent on regional or bi-lateral agreements in the end.

–Predicting the future of international relations–it is about understanding history and social dynamics, understanding when potential conflicts may arise.
–Why are no licenses awarded around Svalbard — In the opened parts of the Barents Sea and the potential Barents North, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate estimates resources of …
–Licenses to the borders in the south from the Norwegian EEZ, in the West from Greenland and the East from Russia. Svalbard, a special judicial and political case…
–History of Svalbard. Norway had the potential to assert its legitimacy as a sovereign that could enforce the third party rights. Svalbard Fisheries Protection Zone (FPZ).

Hydrocarbon Exploration in the European High North
–The “Soria Moria Declaration” of 2005
–The industry is a powerful political actor
–Norway also has a great tradition for close cooperation and links between industry, unions, and the politicians and bureaucracy (e.g., Seip, Bull, Sejerstad)

• Statoil, established in 1972 (for cultural influence, and state advisor)
• Norwegian strong tradition for “rights of reversion”

Greater trend of nationalization of the oil and gas industry
–From the Seven Sisters to the NOCs era

• In the 1970s approx. 80 percent of the oil and gas companies were owned by western private companies. The industry was totally dominated by the so-called Seven Sisters
• Today, this has turned and national oil companies control approx. 80-90% of market

The Barents and the Disputed Area
The two governments were able to come to agreement — DNV’s Barents 2020 helped to create an agreement for the delineation.

The case of Svalbard and hydrocarbon Exploration: The maritime areas around Svalbard should it be regulated by the Svalbard Treaty — If the maritime areas around Svalbard becomes regarded as part of the Svalbard Treaty — Norway must give the citizens and companies of the signatory nations equal rights to the resources– Norway will most likely not be able to adopt a nondiscrimination petroleum management parallel to the fisheries regime based on historical activity. Taxation cannot be higher than needed to administrative Svalbard. No Norwegian Taxation, no Economic Incentive for the State. Norway as a responsible environmental actor: Svalbard, internal political compromise (Svalbard-Lofoten/Vesteraalen).

The Potential influence of the industry — Does this mean that there are no prospects for hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation at Svalbard and in the maritime areas surrounding the islands…
5/27: Getting started here, finally operating with an internet connection so that I can jot down notes along the way…. Gunhild Hoogenson-Gjorv, U Tromsø, giving introductory remarks with Florian Stammler, Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi talking soon more about the theme.

Beautiful day in Tromsø.

10.00-12.00 – Introduction to Cumulative Effects of Extractive Industrial Development
Gunhild walking over some logistics issues, requirements for receiving credit, schedule, university priorities, and all those good et ceteras. Florian now up discussing the goals of U Arctic — to promote a northern voice in the globalizing world that reflects a shared regional identity across all eight Arctic states and among all Northern peoples and cultures. A little bit of history, acknowledging Jessica Shadian‘s input in establishing an Extractive industries Course, Bodø, early 2011, and then again an Arctic Dialogue-Greenland workshop, Sept. 2011, and then, Human Resource Issues in Extractive iIndustries, St. John’s NL, Canada, Sept., 2012. Our meeting is the fourth installment.

Okay. Introductions: Florian, works in the Russian Arctic, Western Siberia and Northwest Russia, oil and gas extraction in the Arctic, on-shore, western Siberia; Gunhild, multi-actor approach to security issues, its meaning in different contexts — Environmental Security in the Arctic, edited volume coming out on Routledge soon; Heather Clarke, PhD graduate student, Memorial University, St. Johns, looking at migrating communities in the North; Tara Cater, also Memorial University, grad student, looking at mining, Nunavut, Canada; Elena Nuykina, working on the Russian North, coal mining community, PhD topic through Vienna [?], viability of community engagement and in migration flow from new megaprojects; Marina Goloviznina, postdoc, working with Gunhild; Piotr Graczyk, PhD student, U Tromsø, looking at Arctic Council governing frameworks, how interests are structured; Daria Burnasheva, Russia, Yakutia, MA thesis on visual representations of the North; Valeria Zamorshchikova, PhD student looking at industrial development in the north through economic and social perspectives; Mercy Oyet examining community transportation; University of Vienna, Gertrud Eilmsteiner-Saxinger, fly in and fly out, conceptualizing normalities, to develop postdoctoral work; Gordon Cook, faculty at Memorial University, examining urban-rural-remoteness.

Lunch.

13.00-17.00 – Environmental Impacts: data from ecology and ecotoxicology
Geir Gabrielsen – Senior Research Scientist, Norwegian Polar Institute, The effects of industrial pollution on Arctic ecosystems and people. 

Introduction: More industry in Northern Hemisphere than Southern, so more Arctic haze, more industrial activity affecting the Arctic. Contributions to climate change. Arctic climate trends: rising temperatures, increasing precipitation, declining snow cover, rising river flows, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, retreating summer sea ice, rising sea level, ocean salinity. The most dramatic event, reduced summer ice on the Arctic, linked to black carbon.

With regard to biology. Animals living in multiyear versus annual ice, but very little ice left in the Arctic basin, 10-20 percent. Only in Northern Canada is multiyear life available. Seals will not be up on the ice, which are food for polar bears, ivory gull, some species will thrive others will die. Atlantic species are moving north. Arctic species are dying. Lower quality food moving into the Arctic, which has implications for mammals in the Arctic. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program has more reports (see website).

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1962); Our Stolen Future, Theo Colborn et al. (1996); Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic, Marla Cone. “Arctic Paradox” — traditional diet of Inuits has health benefits but exposes them to dangerous levels of pollutants. “Inuit never had a word for pollution and now are subject to toxins”. Chemicals, everywhere in everyday life. 110,000 different types of chemicals on the market. The Reach Program — force companies to determine the impact of chemicals. Making consumers aware of the chemicals they consume, “average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born…in 2004 in US hospitals”.

Not easy to make a relationship between chemicals and incidence and pattern of diseases in humans– osteoporosis, appears to be related to pollution as with obesity (based on comparisons with seals in the former).Regulation is really helping — Reductions in POPs in breast milk samples from Norwegian woman. “Coming up with findings of bad chemicals affecting animals in the Arctic, which is a hard card on the table to get rid of it from the market”. Consumer info webpages: Kliff.no,  erdetfarlig.no,  gronnhverdag, healthystuff.

Four Aspects of Criteria: Chemicals are accumulating in the food chain, that they are persistent, present in the Arctic, toxic effect. The most difficult part is demonstrating effects on animals (immune system, reproductive system).

Øyvind Ravna, Professor Dr. Juris, U Tromsø – Mining, human rights, and local autonomy in Sápmi
Sami protest against building the dam in the Alta river area, and despite the protests did not manage to stop the dam’s construction. The protests began creating a stir in the Norwegian public sphere. One result is the government began investigating Sami rights. 2005 Finnmark Act– through prolonged use of land and water areas, Sami have collectively and individually acquired rights to land in Finnmark; Act does not interfere with collective and individual rights acquired by Sami through prescription (collective rights results in self determination and individual provides individual rights from the state); a commission should be established to investigate the rights.

Convention on Biological Diversity–Article 8(j) commits Norway to: — “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity”. Article 15 (2) says that in cases where the State retains the ownership of minerals, which is the case in Norway: “governments shall establish or maintain procedures through which they shall consult these peoples, with a view to ascertaining whether their interests would be prejudiced…”…”shall wherever possible participate in the benefits of such activities”. ICCPR Art. 27 — In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right…to enjoy their own culture…

Up now is Natalia Loukacheva, First Visiting Nansen Professor of Arctic Studies, U Akureyri, Extractive Industries and Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ rights to land and natural resources: Diversity in economic development, population numbers — we deal great diversity in geographical location and contact with extractive industries. Permanent participants of the Arctic Council.

5/26: Coming in from the South…w/ wifi en route…

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3-day programme

Epilogue: The course provided exposure to approaches for working out the status of knowledge. One approach was tactical in the form of three exercises. In these exercises, students took on vantage points to situate themselves in relationship to the subject of knowledge:

We actively manipulated the position of the subject: Aase Tveito appeared to us initially in the form of a lecturer on the topic of knowledge sharing in the Arctic. Soon, we transformed her into an informant who was responsive to the practice of science production. That is, she appeared to us as someone who creates lectures intended for consumption outside of Tromsø.

Finally, she makes an appearance as the irreducible nucleus of know-how — in the somewhat ambiguous and ambivalent role of “bare life”. In this role, Aase Tveito exists at the core of an otherwise continuous layering of concentric circles of practice where expertise is that which is endowed with legitimacy in the form of the “political life” of the subject.

Students imitated a subject of knowledge: Each identified with one of the lecturers, and in so doing, took on the anthropology of the subject. They spoke on behalf of a lecturer, and thus momentarily became both spokesperson and embodiment of knowledge (the latter, in the way Vidar Hepsø speaks of embodying “terrain”).

They explained themselves, by a combination of description and performance, e.g., a quote — that was then further analyzed to explore the constitution of commitment. By the end, we identified various positions that lecturers had to their object all within reach of analysis by way of a discussion about distance, authenticity, agency, ethics.

Finally, we participated in a dividing practice, placing some lecturers in the position of data acquisition and others in knowledge dissemination: In the former, we could see how the descriptions of lecturers, their intimacy to data collection, provided a specific course of development — passing from (self-confident) ignorance, to self-reflective consultation, and finally, to genuine understanding (e.g., the hero’s journey narrative). In cases of the latter, students presented themselves as subjects of knowledge. On the last day, we offered specific critiques of presentations revolving around some concept of distance, for example, in direct relationship to the experience of emotion (fear).

We further characterized distance in the testimony of Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv who demonstrates that audience reception provides contexts for conviction as well as the possible erosion of distance between subject and object of knowledge.

A second approach in the course was analytical and accessible through various presentations surrounding the conditions of knowledge production. For example, Vidar Hepsø demonstrated that the “realism” of photography is deceptive of “real” conditions of the oil reservoir, while abstractions that amplify conditions generate authenticity, that is, abstractions bring the subject closer to the condition of interest (predictability, oil extraction).

We then reformulated this dichotomy between realism and abstraction into a generalized framework for considering expertise more generally, in terms of a distinction (without graduation) in the forms of the Kantian and anti-Kantian aesthetic — the former tending toward a rejection of representations of the obvious in favor of principles of the esoteric, and the latter, a preference for the sensual, immediate, and obvious.

Abstractions, we argued facetiously, thus, become preferential, as a classifying scheme, resulting in a population explosion of images that do not make sense on their surface, appearing in all manner of locations where experts live and work, e.g., “artwork” in diplomatic estates, bathrooms, office buildings (receptions, canteens), hotels where conference presentation take place.

Important: the erosion of authenticity in each of our examples is a result of greater realism which is understood as providing less visibility of the real conditions (photography does not allow access to understanding the oil reservoir). However, as I demonstrated, authenticity and expertise is based on an opposing pattern. The more ostentatious the conditions of expertise (that is, the less abstract know-how appears to us), the more likely it can emerge as expertise.

The power elite no longer consists of CEOs and politicians, but powerful experts who sit side-by-side with the traditional power elite (whose names are CEO and Politician). I demonstrated that expertise is taking place in wealthy locations, secured environments, surrounded by conspicuous forms of glamour, leisure, etc. And importantly, while knowledge has evolved toward ever increasing forms of abstraction, expertise has moved toward increasing forms of realism in status-recognition, as a form of conspicuous assertions of its authority.


Additional notes taken from speakers:

3/8:

Downloadable pdf of 3-day programme

3/7 Afternoon session: Elena Parmiggiani is up now talking on environmental modeling, production fields on the continental shelf. Each oil well has its own personality  — “a patient” —  Information infrastructure (collection of information from different sources + intelligent distribution towards heterogeneous disciplines) or rather… shared, open heterogenous, evolving socio-technical system. New players — environment as primary actor, mobilization of expert institutions… Problem: investigate how global information infrastructure is established locally, so that it is both meaningful at the local (stakeholders) and yet retains the global system it represents. The standard. And we have a response from Robert Pijpers – draws attention of technologies to agency, then a couple of questions… installation on sea, operated remotely connected.

Kathrine Tveiterås — reacts to Elena, commenting about awareness of interactions among informants and appreciates extraction from coordinated sites, and wants to know what will happen in these different translation moments. Simplifications are required, but something is happening to what is being monitored, and how things will deliver meaning at a later stage. Sidsel Saugestad. What is the paper connected to this course about? Elena wants to wait for the end of the lecture to find out what.

Lena Gross. The good life and the oil industry. Beginning with slides from the Athabasca country. “Lac La Biche”. Statoil– a relatively new actor in the region, ethical oil company, with an office in Calgary. Steam assisted gravity drainage. Concepts of value. How flexible should folks in the region be about development in the region. The concept of trust, continuity, property (who has the right to decide what happens to the land). Concepts of the neoliberal state when corporations step in and provide social services (schools, etc.).

Robert Pijpers. Knowledge Worlds: Sierra Leone. Social economic changes triggered by land investments in rural areas. Land grabbing to produce food, fuels. “Land Acquisition” — very large scale and high capital. History (10 year civil war, ended in 2002). Provinces and Cheifdoms. Parallel governing systems. Centralized systems with decentralized offices. Chiefly system, charismatic authority. Folks making claims at different authorities, “window shopping” testing whether government of chiefly authority has an advantage. Involves personal exchanges, because technological communication is limited.

Glen Smith. Marine Planning in Scotland — the Slightly Lower North. Dissolving boundaries — who knows? how do they know? and who cares? Project background–A lesson in Three Letter Abbreviations (TLAs). Marine Scotland Act 2010: Marine planning, Licensing, Conservation, Seal Conservation, Enforcement, Sea Fisheries. National Marine Plan (NMP): soon to be adopted 2014: develop national and regional marine plans, create marine protected areas. List of groupings surrounding off shore regions. To big to plan in a meaningful way. 1. Membership of marine planning  (who can know)”what the nominee can offer in terms of relevant expertise, skills, knowledge….” 2. Making and using maps (how to know the seas). Internalization as control. Reputational Risk; Dissolving Boundaries– The resource becomes definable, they become experts, democratic principles.

Luciano do valle Garotti — Flow of resources for rigs permeate different sectors with different logics. Moving materials. Utilize, maximize capacity of cargo. Conflict of different sectors. Integrated Operation Initiatives — integration, interaction of logics. What is this collaborative work? Characterize this collaboration. Different assemblages coming together.

Onshore-Offshore; Onshore logistic teams; Onshore logistic-drilling teams. Should they be real planning? Materials for wells, materials for the rigs, backload, transshipment, water or diesel, food. Who is responsible, what gives a logistics team its logic? Assemblages — first team, better results, mature, national interaction, variability. Unpredictable, different types of activities coming together, requiring different kinds of material synchronizations, temporal synchronizations, Labor synchronizations.

Assemblies of different types of synchronization. Material synchronizations overlapping with temporal and labor synchronizations. And these synchronizations are oriented toward achieving particular aims. One might say assemblies of different assemblies of synchronizations.

Contact points — Tasks– consolidate, prioritize, expediting.

Need to ask yourself what role these different objects play. Why do they fascinate you? What does this process fascinate you? Some paths become flow. Complexity involved in creating an appearance of flow.

3/7: Second day–up now, Gunhild Gjørv, providing an impressive background of her International Polar Year and other funded projects, along with other activities in extractive industries.

Security, the individual and the state. Develops a concept of security that focuses on the individual level, referring to Bentham, security of expectations (present and future). What is so important that we are willing to defend into the future. Prioritizing certain ideas for the purpose of ensuring — security. Borders remain intact even in failed states. But populations are disciplined differently. In the 1990s, human security began to emerge in policy. Security has multiple meanings depending on the level (individual, society, state) depending on the context.

Security as a normative term, is a positive notion. The role of the state.

Up now is Maaike Knol. Planning at the interface of science and politics. Giving us a background on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Management plans. Valuable areas, vulnerable areas. Boundary Instrastructure of particularly valuable and vulnerable areas. Creating maps for the basis of a political process.

The co-production of science and political objects. Mapping practices redirect the controversy to a more political process. The message of impact assessment: Low probability outweighs consequences. Message of the Petroleum Directorate. Management plan: “too little knowledge to conclude on consequences.” Marine scientists: “the conventional risk model is unsuitable”.

There is no ultimate risk reality. Different assessment practices (methods) lead to multiple realities — wider understanding of risk is needed, that includes different forms of expertise, allows for multiple realities embedded within knowledge cultures, dissolves the boundary between facts and values. Before an object is made governable, it needs to be made readable and measurable (implies categorization and classification). Scientists and experts help enact realties. They become the spokespersons of nature. Creation of boundary infrastructures for environmental governance.

Long-term governance transformation and the governance of contradictions: a) Expectation of development and progress (planning to realize) b) Expectations about unintended consequences and possible damage (planning to avoid).

(1) By analyzing the potential solidness and durability of constructed knowledge/expertise, the social scientist takes part in this process of co-production; (2) Thereby, we are also part of shaping the world that we (wish to) live in; (3) What does that imply for our work.

Methods of assessment equate to the basis of values.

AFTER LUNCH:

Peter Stuart. Begins exactly on the point that we wanted to hear, by speaking of the transition away from and contemporary ignorance of Marx, as “relatively unknown” and “thoroughly understood”. Materialist view is the liberalist view (individuals continually seeking gain, astonishingly remorseless in seeking material gain). The process of making goods, what happens when you get together to make things, organizing, partnerships, and in organizing ourselves we are creating fairly obvious social relationships and ones that may change as the way we produce goods changes. The condition of post-modernity – disorganization of production.

Internalization of means-ends thinking. Normalization of forms, related to the way things are organized.

Tips from a new PhD — Problems of Access. Kathrine Tveiterås. Talking now about reflexive practices of relationships with informants and in the field.  (1) If you cannot study inside out, study outside in (define where you are “on the outside” — all the particular location of where you are) — within the process of research, identify informants themselves as capable of disciplining the researcher; (2) Snowballing, moving more toward the object, by becoming more competent and efficient through the controlled observation itself; (3) Avoid performing what you know in order to obtain what the informant knows; (4) Keep levels flat — lift micro levels up and lower macro levels down (flatten things out).

Vidar Hepsø. Working inside a corporate company. No automatic access (computer systems, documents), some of the data becomes available indirectly. Insider by Degree (studying computer engineers, crane operator) — able to study but never be an integral part of the community. When you do meaningful interaction in a community of practice, communities want you to do meaningful work. They give and you give. Exchange of information.A shift from planning to scenarios and foresights. Conceived as such.

Caught in a social field of questions of allegiance and identity. Questions of ethics, neutrality versus interest. Company allegiance — how are you able to combine your role of critical researcher with complying to the standards of the company. Academic allegiance (Making social science matter 2001). Phronetic Anthropology (Fourth question –what can we do with it).

Maaike Knol. Networking tips for case study research. Contacts, informants, a lot of data: (1) Go out and do it (even if it doesn’t feel comfortable) — getting out there even when you feel you are not prepared, without full oversight of the problem, with deliverables to return; (2) Become familiar with the research site; (3) Be flexible. A dynamic project requires dynamic methods; (4) Be guided by content and quality.

3/6: Okay. I gave my introductory comments. Up now is Vidar Hepsø, looking intelligent, moving from nature to culture — to recreate nature through expertise. Title of paper is Conjuring the oil and gas reservoir through socio-material practices.

Showing us images of geological details, writing down, over view of geological structures (in Greenland) — demonstrating how field practices in geology are embodied practices. Climbing, searching, walking. Now in the office. Everything that is embodied and real is re-presented as tools. In the field, the body is an escapable reference point for knowledge. In the office, representation becomes the most important aspect of discovery. Going on field trips is about the “art of becoming” a geologists. Cannot be a geologist without actually having field experience.

The Analogue: It is possible to identify the geological structure under the ocean (on the Norwegian shelf at 3000 meter depth) — above the ocean in Greenland. The development of heuristic devices for constructing analogy. Depicting similarity between stones. One accessible from drilling a well, and another from walking along Greenland. The embodied experience (walking along the hillside) provides intuition to the subsea context — cannot be separated from each other. But in addition to embodied experience, there is helicopter view, and satellite view.

Wow. That’s great!

What he demonstrates is that in the field, the instruments used are completely traditional, hammer, eye glass, pen — and the body is the reference point for its relationship to landscape but also to the body. Sketching. Simplified sketch in draw book. If we use photography, we will lose some of the biggest patterns (meaning, interest). It is visual intelligence. Moving between scales and perspectives. Back at the office, they work with a multidisciplinary team. These tools used, have amplification and reduction practices. Visualization technologies (microscope, amplifying and hiding) — the more hermeneutic they are, the more you have to be trained to capture the object (Weak-Strong program Ihde 1999).

Representing an understanding of porosity and permeability. Of field trips. They translate the terrain, not into a naturalistic picture, but into an abstract eidetic image, representing it through the professional vision of the geological episteme. Simulacrum of the reservoir.

Okay. Up Now is Kathrine Tveiterås. Beginning with Bacalao metaphor. Speaking of Snøvit, requiring different types of knowledge and expertise — a question of composition. Looking for different ways to calibrate and coordinate these different types. You need a development solution, and existing infrastructure enabling the development. Titled, Investment analyses as expertise – economizing Snøhvit LNG. 

Market access — is it profitable? Mega project, is it socially acceptable. Organization– how do we decide? A number of interests and perceptions involved into a project. Net Present Value, becomes an equation for governing over an answer, which then could be backcasted on the project itself. So the NPV forecasts an answer, and then the answer governs what must be extracted from the empirical. Starts out as a representation tool, but then becomes an agency tool, offering insight on what needs to be done. The calculation is able to make a decision. Stands in as a surrogate for progress and deliverables.

Peter Arbo up now, outlining perspectives on futures. Constant increase of contingency (things could be otherwise). Uncertainty and insecurity in late modernity. Planning as a project which requires a decision (Planning- deciding about future decisions/modeling/projections/impact assessments).

2/28: University administrator Marcela Douglas and I went to take a look at the rooms where the Paparazzi Ethnography seminar is going to be held. Because of university scheduling, the three-day affair takes place in several locations.

Interesting from my perspective was that in each room one finds a little bathroom nook.

There, in the corner of each room, one finds soap, paper hand-towel dispenser, water bowl, running water (hot & cold), and a little trash bin for the used wipes.

But it was in the bath-tiled backdrop that created for me the illusion that the space was indeed a toiletry center.

Bath tiles protect the wall from splashing water and steam or perhaps even build up of residue associated with soap misting and mixing with warm water.

I suggested to Marcela that with a little investment, perhaps a curtain draping down from the ceiling along with a small shower spout connected from the sink faucet, with water pipe extending upward– the nook could be expanded to accommodate a very nearly full bathroom setting.

One curious dimension is the lack of vanity, or mirror, where it should be above the hand basin.

In the image on the right, Marcela points to the space where the missing vanity should be hanging on the bathroom tile.

In the image directly above, you can see very clearly, that a space exists specifically for the mirror, but for some reason, the vanity has not been placed there.
One can only conjecture over the missing vanity, a task we rarely carry out here on the Paparazzi Ethnographic blog. But if we were to speculate, might we suggest an efficiency of thought, a truncation of the functional (hand-, face-, teeth-washing) from the premiums of vanity sought through self-reflection. After all, the classroom, in classical literature, is not a space of demagoguery and thus, charismatic authority must be kept under check.

2/25: We have a course soon at University of Tromsø that I completely forgot to mention!

Well. It is not Really a course.

It is more like a workshop, or rather, a symposium of lectures with roundtable discussions and with So many good folks presenting. Vidar Hepsø will be flying in from NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) to give us his take on Statoil-ConocoPhillips anthropological reflections. Here at home, we have two freshly minted PhDs, Maaike Knol and Kathrine Tveiterås, from the College of Fisheries, STS specialists who will talk about their recent work on networking and net-present-value, having to do with Snøvit and Barents Sea production.

There will be expert reflection from the mouths of established senior (though not in age) U Tromsø scholars, Peter Arbo, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Sidsel Saugestad and Stuart Robinson, who will frame in different ways what the juniors (though not in experience) are presenting.

…!

It will be like the First Ever — Paparazzi Ethnographic Roundtable.

Yay!

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