Mobilizing Inuit knowledge: representation and institutional mediation in the era of global climate change
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the production and mobilization of Inuit knowledge in and beyond the Canadian Arctic in the context of climate change. Drawing on multi-scale, ethnographic research, it focuses in particular on the role of institutions, such as government departments and community-based organizations, in mediating between different understandings of change. Inuit knowledge is increasingly transmitted through land-based programs and supported by grant funding from outside the community. I argue that adaptation to climate change is therefore as much about understanding how to work within political and institutional frameworks as it is about responding to changes in the local environment. I examine how Inuit knowledge, represented in material forms – such as reports, maps, and films – as well as through the work of spokespersons, is mobilized in scientific conferences, bureaucratic office environments, and multilateral governance meetings like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I argue that spokespersons play a particularly significant role in rendering Inuit knowledge palatable for qallunaat (non-Inuit) audiences by selecting particular aspects to emphasize over others, and by translating Inuit observations into the language of science. A variety of factors constrain the mobility of Inuit knowledge and limit its potential to shape territorial, national, and global decision-making about climate change. These include bureaucratic commitments to written documents and hierarchical organization, as well as public narratives that emphasize the vulnerability of Inuit to climate change based on a simplistic conception of Inuit identity as traditional and rooted on the land. Inuit, however, engage with the changing Arctic in a variety of ways, including exploring the potential of oil and gas development in increasingly ice-free waters. Ultimately, I suggest that Inuit knowledge reflects the ability to endure in the face of change—most recently, anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on the comfort and stabilizing force of tradition, it is also informed by and shapes political relations in spaces far from the Arctic tundra.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.032 | 0.034 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.017 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.019 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".