This is the best paper on feminist glaciology I have ever read

Seriously. What an analysis.
But why would such a paper be required. I mean, what’s the benefit here?

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.

But ice is just ice, right?

Ha! No!

Many armchair glaciologists make this assumption, creating and perpetuating the oversimplification and misinterpretation of ice as frozen water. And yet, St. Germain, LeGuin, Khan, and many others – from Roni Horn (2009) to Pauline Couture (2005) – approach glaciers from distant and varied disciplinary and artistic spaces compared with glaciologists or even anthropologists studying human-glacier interactions:

…their voices should not simply be disregarded, overshadowed by Western science, or, worse, relegated from policy contexts where, in fact, the human experience with ice matters greatly.
These alternative representations from the visual and literary arts do more than simply offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the cryosphere. Instead, they reveal entirely different approaches, interactions, relationships, perceptions, values, emotions, knowledges, and ways of knowing and interacting with dynamic environments.
They decenter the natural sciences, disrupt masculinity, deconstruct embedded power structures, depart from homogenous and masculinist narratives about glaciers, and empower and incorporate different ways of seeing, interacting, and representing glaciers – all key goals of feminist glaciology.

Indeed.

The full paper Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research by Carey et al. is here for you to read and enjoy.

So, we now know that ice isn’t just ice: that’s just “the way in which colonial, military, and geopolitical domination co-constitute glaciological knowledge”. Well done.

Meanwhile, NIH funding for bioscience research is lower than it was back in 2001.
Just saying.

3 thoughts on “This is the best paper on feminist glaciology I have ever read

  1. I would have rather the NSF invested the money in more or existing satellites to actually further glacier research.

    I skimmed through the paper, plan to read it more carefully later on, but it looks like nineteen pages of “whine” about history. I’m not sure I’ll make it through the entire snooze-fest. Nowhere did I see the work of male glaciologists disputed as substandard. That women were not historically included (big surprise) has no effect on whether they are currently included. The author’s conclusion that “ice is not just ice” has nothing to do with which sex gleaned and processed the data, if the data were accurate, etc.

    I wonder if the NSF would have funded this “team,” had they actually thought of a novel study for actual glacier research.

  2. Working Comment > Yes. I am also of the opinion that the money used to fund this “study” could have been better allocated; either in the glaciology field, or for basically absolutely anything else.

    Stan > I did read the whole thing, yes. I don’t think I need to comment any further.

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