Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard.
This thesis is about the human engagements with wildlife in the Anthropocene. Specifically, following the work of Lorimer on encountering and conceptualising wildlife in this putative epoch, it explores the idea of ‘knowing polar bears’ in Svalbard. By this I refer to how, through a succession of di...
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University of Cambridge
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ftunivcam:oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/331045 2024-01-21T10:09:06+01:00 Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. Anderson-Elliott, Henry 2020-11-28 application/pdf https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331045 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78489 eng eng University of Cambridge Trinity https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331045 doi:10.17863/CAM.78489 All Rights Reserved https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/ polar bears conservation animal biography multi-naturalism zoos Svalbard Film Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) PhD in Polar Studies 2020 ftunivcam https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78489 2023-12-28T23:22:49Z This thesis is about the human engagements with wildlife in the Anthropocene. Specifically, following the work of Lorimer on encountering and conceptualising wildlife in this putative epoch, it explores the idea of ‘knowing polar bears’ in Svalbard. By this I refer to how, through a succession of different interactions within a dynamic actor-network, human actants come to understand Svalbard polar bears. I acknowledge that these encounters are not valueless, instead they are culturally, socially, and politically situated in significant disciplinary, epistemological, and technological histories and imaginaries. It is through and between these multi-species entanglements that different ‘becomings’ and ‘worldings’ are produced. Put simply, there are multiple different conceptions of what polar bears are here, produced in relation to the multiple different ‘ways of knowing’. Primarily, I wanted to ground this approach within work on wildlife conservation, to ask how polar bear conservation as a discipline both affects and is affected by the regimes/societies of ‘knowing polar bears’ in Svalbard. This is a question of how the species is framed, purified, narrated, and perceived and also how those conceptions are ‘made to matter’ within the management, legislative, and conservation contexts. To engage with these questions, I propose an ethnographic approach to working with these groups of participants, all of whom make a claim that their work with polar bears impacts or contributes towards conservation and/or environmental aims. At the same time, this work has been deeply influenced by my personal attempts to know one individual Svalbard bear – Misha, Frost, or N23992 depending on who narrates her. This extraordinary bear has emerged in nearly every single context, from Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) datasets to Netflix documentaries and everything in between, demonstrating the extraordinary multiplicity of our engagements with her species even through the life of a single animal. In addition, I propose the ... Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis Norwegian Polar Institute polar bear Svalbard Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository Svalbard |
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Open Polar |
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Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository |
op_collection_id |
ftunivcam |
language |
English |
topic |
polar bears conservation animal biography multi-naturalism zoos Svalbard Film |
spellingShingle |
polar bears conservation animal biography multi-naturalism zoos Svalbard Film Anderson-Elliott, Henry Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
topic_facet |
polar bears conservation animal biography multi-naturalism zoos Svalbard Film |
description |
This thesis is about the human engagements with wildlife in the Anthropocene. Specifically, following the work of Lorimer on encountering and conceptualising wildlife in this putative epoch, it explores the idea of ‘knowing polar bears’ in Svalbard. By this I refer to how, through a succession of different interactions within a dynamic actor-network, human actants come to understand Svalbard polar bears. I acknowledge that these encounters are not valueless, instead they are culturally, socially, and politically situated in significant disciplinary, epistemological, and technological histories and imaginaries. It is through and between these multi-species entanglements that different ‘becomings’ and ‘worldings’ are produced. Put simply, there are multiple different conceptions of what polar bears are here, produced in relation to the multiple different ‘ways of knowing’. Primarily, I wanted to ground this approach within work on wildlife conservation, to ask how polar bear conservation as a discipline both affects and is affected by the regimes/societies of ‘knowing polar bears’ in Svalbard. This is a question of how the species is framed, purified, narrated, and perceived and also how those conceptions are ‘made to matter’ within the management, legislative, and conservation contexts. To engage with these questions, I propose an ethnographic approach to working with these groups of participants, all of whom make a claim that their work with polar bears impacts or contributes towards conservation and/or environmental aims. At the same time, this work has been deeply influenced by my personal attempts to know one individual Svalbard bear – Misha, Frost, or N23992 depending on who narrates her. This extraordinary bear has emerged in nearly every single context, from Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) datasets to Netflix documentaries and everything in between, demonstrating the extraordinary multiplicity of our engagements with her species even through the life of a single animal. In addition, I propose the ... |
format |
Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
author |
Anderson-Elliott, Henry |
author_facet |
Anderson-Elliott, Henry |
author_sort |
Anderson-Elliott, Henry |
title |
Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
title_short |
Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
title_full |
Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
title_fullStr |
Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Knowing Misha the Polar Bear: Multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in Svalbard. |
title_sort |
knowing misha the polar bear: multi-naturalism, biography, and conservation in svalbard. |
publisher |
University of Cambridge |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331045 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78489 |
geographic |
Svalbard |
geographic_facet |
Svalbard |
genre |
Norwegian Polar Institute polar bear Svalbard |
genre_facet |
Norwegian Polar Institute polar bear Svalbard |
op_relation |
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331045 doi:10.17863/CAM.78489 |
op_rights |
All Rights Reserved https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78489 |
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1788700024089083904 |