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Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard.

了解北极熊米莎：斯瓦尔巴特群岛的多元自然主义、传记和保护。

基本信息

批准号：
ES/W006952/1
负责人：
Henry Anderson-Elliott
金额：
$ 11.96万
依托单位：
University of Oxford
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2022 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW006952%2F1
关键词：
Knowing Misha Polar Bear Multi

项目摘要

My research, "Knowing Misha the polar bear: multi-naturalism, biography and conservation in Svalbard" is an exploration of how humans encounter, understand, and look to conserve non-human life. It is the result of over a year of ethnographic fieldwork, in Svalbard and the UK, with groups of polar bear scientists, filmmakers, photographers, managers, and keepers. It asks how we live with polar bears in the 21st century, how we perceive and encounter them through different digital and political ecologies, and how this shapes how we conceptualise their conservation. What are really conserving, how, and why? It draws upon current work in more-than-human geography and the environmental social sciences about studying, understanding, and conserving animals in the Anthropocene. Building upon the conceptual work that this term does for examining our relationship to the natural world, this thesis follows the proposal that there are multiple natures in place of the antiquated idea of a Nature-Culture divide. In doing so, it shows that our understandings of non-human worlds are also multiple, and contingent on dynamic networks of interactions and engagements. For polar bears, therefore, how humans come to know them is the negotiated product of different types of work, from the purifying tasks of natural scientists, to the 'screen-natures' of documentary filmmakers: their disciplines and technologies. This thesis asks how these different groups, communities, and societies of actors come to know polar bears in Svalbard, and how these conceptions are 'made to matter' for how they come to envisage their conservation. Throughout the last 3 years of research I have been tracing the life of an individual Svalbard bear named Misha. She is an extraordinary animal, inhabiting a local home-range near Longyearbyen and exhibiting novel behaviours amid the atmospheres of her human neighbours. Her proximity has resulted in (and is the product of) her ubiquity within our visual cultures. She appears in nearly every major wildlife documentary about polar bears for the last 9 years (BBC, ITV, Netflix etc) and innumerable photographs. I even found her on a postcard sold in the museum giftshop of my department. She has also been captured 4 times by Norwegian Polar Institute scientists, fitted with tags and radio collars, and her samples and datasets contribute valuable insights into the Svalbard population: their mobilities, diets, and pollutant contamination. Her proximity to humans has shaped her life, and even resulted in the deaths of two of her cubs. Underpinning my research is the development of novel methodological tools to engage with the multiplicity of human-bear relations. I further develop Krebber & Roscher's (2018) work on 'animal biography' to study the multiplicity of human tellings of non-human life, whilst also being attentive to questions of agency, authorship, and affect. My research explores the multiple and contrasting ways that the life of an individual polar bear is told and affected. In doing so, I demonstrate how numerous understandings of polar bears are possible - how they represent different things to different groups. These understandings are themselves situated within significant disciplinary, technological, and political histories/imaginaries. From Cold War diplomacy, to 21st century climate denial, and from the invention of wildlife monitoring equipment, to the image-capture techniques of camera crews, Misha inhabits political and digital ecologies that not only influence our conceptualisation of her species but also affect how her life is lived. Polar bear conservation, and even polar bears themselves, are shaped amid our encounters.This fellowship is a great opportunity to communicate this research to academic and non-academic audiences and to impact the imaginations and practices of polar bear conservation for scholars, practitioners (in Svalbard and the UK), and publics.

我的研究《了解北极熊米莎：斯瓦尔巴群岛的多元自然主义、传记和保护》是一项探索人类如何遭遇、理解和保护非人类生命的研究。这是在斯瓦尔巴特群岛和英国进行了一年多的人种学田野调查的结果，这些人包括北极熊科学家、电影制作人、摄影师、管理者和饲养员。它询问我们在21世纪如何与北极熊生活在一起，我们如何通过不同的数字和政治生态来感知和遇到它们，以及这如何塑造我们对北极熊保护的概念。什么是真正的保护，如何保护，为什么保护？它借鉴了目前人类地理学和环境社会科学中关于研究、理解和保护人类世动物的最新工作。基于这个术语为考察我们与自然世界的关系所做的概念性工作，这篇论文遵循了这样的建议，即存在多重性质，以取代过时的自然-文化分裂的想法。在这样做的过程中，它表明我们对非人类世界的理解也是多元的，并取决于互动和接触的动态网络。因此，对于北极熊来说，人类如何认识它们是不同类型工作的协商产物，从自然科学家的净化任务到纪录片制片人的银幕性质：他们的学科和技术。这篇论文问的是，这些不同的群体、社区和行为者社会是如何了解斯瓦尔巴群岛上的北极熊的，以及这些概念是如何为它们如何设想保护北极熊而起作用的。在过去三年的研究中，我一直在追踪一只名叫米莎的斯瓦尔巴德熊的生活。她是一种非同寻常的动物，生活在朗伊尔宾附近的一个当地牧场，在她的人类邻居的氛围中表现出新奇的行为。她的近在咫尺导致了她在我们的视觉文化中无处不在(也是其产物)。在过去的9年里，她几乎出现在每一部关于北极熊的大型野生动物纪录片中(BBC、ITV、Netflix等)和无数的照片。我甚至在我所在部门的博物馆礼品店出售的明信片上发现了她。她还被挪威极地研究所的科学家捕获了4次，戴上了标签和无线电项圈，她的样本和数据集为了解斯瓦尔巴群岛的种群提供了宝贵的见解：它们的活动能力、饮食和污染物污染。她与人类的亲密关系塑造了她的生活，甚至导致她的两只幼崽死亡。我的研究的基础是开发新的方法工具来处理人与熊关系的多样性。我进一步发展了Krebber&Roscher(2018)关于“动物传记”的工作，以研究人类对非人类生活的讲述的多样性，同时也关注代理、作者和影响的问题。我的研究探索了北极熊个体的生活被讲述和影响的多种不同和不同的方式。在这样做的过程中，我展示了对北极熊的众多理解是如何可能的--它们如何向不同的群体代表不同的东西。这些理解本身就处于重大的学科、技术和政治历史/想象之中。从冷战外交，到21世纪的气候否认，从野生动物监测设备的发明，到摄制组的图像捕捉技术，米莎生活在政治和数字生态中，这些生态不仅影响了我们对她的物种的概念化，也影响了她的生活方式。北极熊保护，甚至北极熊本身，都是在我们的遭遇中形成的。这次奖学金是一个很好的机会，可以向学术和非学术受众交流这项研究，并影响学者、从业者(在斯瓦尔巴群岛和英国)和公众对北极熊保护的想象和实践。