Constructing Human Versus Non-Human Climate Migration in the Anthropocene: The Case of Migrating Polar Bears in Nunavut, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Critical anthropology is currently awash with research aimed at disabling human exceptionalism, alignment with indigenous knowledge, decolonisation of thought, and the taking of the posthuman turn. Meanwhile states with settler colonial histories, such as Canada, also seek to align policies with indigenous knowledge and seek reconciliation with indigenous peoples. This article examines this trend by analyzing the conflict occurring in Nunavut between the Canadian state and Inuit communities living there, over the migration of polar bears. In this context, indigenous knowledge clashes with the rationalities and policies of the state. Claiming support from biological science, the state argues that the migration of the bears indicates their threatened status, while the Inuit argues it to be an expression of polar bear resilience. What does this clash of rationalities tell us about the integrity of the posthuman turn, given that its legitimacy depends on claims of alignment with indigenous knowledge and interests as well as opposition to western science and colonial state power? States with colonial histories, including Canada, as well as international organisations including the United Nations, are at pains these days to stress the extent to which their policy responses to the climate crisis are informed by indigenous knowledge. However, the construction of indigenous knowledge in the policies of colonial states, as much as in critical anthropology, is rendered problematic by the analysis offered in this article. Were Inuit knowledge and perspectives on the climate migration of polar bears to be taken seriously, different policies and different approaches, based on the privileging of the human over and against the interests of the animal would have to prevail.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".