Engaged acclimatization: Towards responsible community-based participatory research in Nunavut

• Published in: The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien
• Main Authors: Grimwood, B.S.R. (Bryan S. R.), Doubleday, N.C. (Nancy C.), Ljubicic, G. (Gita), Donaldson, S.G. (Shawn G.), Blangy, S. (Sylvie)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: community-based participatory research; engaged acclimatization; fieldwork; methodology; Nunavut; research relationships; inuit
• Online Access: https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/6148; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2012.00416.x

In this article, we consider the formation of responsible research relationships with Inuit communities from an "outsider" researcher perspective. Cautious not to prescribe what counts as responsible, we draw on research experiences in several Nunavut communities to introduce and explain "engaged acclimatization." This neologism refers to embodied and relational methodological processes for fostering responsible research partnerships, and is inspired by the significance of preliminary fieldwork in orienting the lead author's doctoral thesis. As a complement to community-based participatory methodologies, engaged acclimatization facilitates endogenous research by enacting ethics as a lived experience, initiating and nurturing relationships as a central component of research, and centring methods on circumstances within participating communities. After we locate engaged acclimatization within resonant literature and details of interrelated research projects, our article sketches out four aspects of engaged acclimatization: crafting relations, learning, immersion, and activism. In our discussion of each, we integrate specific insights