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POLARPROG-Polarforskningsprogram

Sense Making, Place attachment and Extended networks as sources of Resilience in the Arctic

Awarded: NOK 1.0 mill.

The SeMPER-Arctic project (Sense making, place attachment, and extended networks as sources of resilience in the Arctic) aims to collect local stories of changes, crises and shocks in three Arctic communities in Greenland and Russia. It analyses in an interdisciplinary way how these narratives incorporate notions of resilience. WP2, “Reflexivity in narrative-based resilience science", is led by Anne Bremer and focusses on nurturing reflexivity within the consortium, along the two tasks of WP2: 2.1 and 2.2. The updates of 2022 are as follows: First, for task 2.1 of WP2, Oksana Singh has led a series of 16 interviews of key informants in the field of (Arctic) narrative research, as well as a literature review of key papers on how to undertake narrative research and explore how local narratives are represented in academic literature. Oksana and Anne cooperated tightly on the interview guidelines and to make sure the WP2 tasks are done in a coherent way. Subsequent collaboration has also happened with WP5 member Natalia Doloisio, linking reflexivity and resilience. For the task 2.2 of WP2, Anne Bremer has, on the basis of several reflexive sessions with the consortium members, compiled eight key point on what it means to do narrative research in a responsible and caring way, These points, which will be further elaborated in the final WP2 report, include intercultural competency, respect, curiosity, empathy and deep listening, slow science and aligning one’s own values and research objectives. In addition, WP2 has also organised a one-day consortium meeting focused on reflexivity and synergies within SeMPER-Arctic, to continue to explore the dynamics between reflexive research and (researchers’ and local communities’) resilience. This will also be the topic of our upcoming 3-day consortium meeting, 6-9 December 2022.

Rooting its work in the Arctic, with and for Arctic communities, the SeMPER-Arctic project consortium will be collecting local stories of changes, shocks, upheavals and their aftermaths. The SeMPER-Arctic team members will adopt these narratives as local, and localized, anchoring devices for resilience analysis. Members of three Arctic communities have been involved in the preparation of SeMPER-Arctic and the consortium has committed to work with and for these communities. Their stories of individual and collective ability to fare through shocks, threat, unusually fast changes, will constitute SeMPER-Arctic central corpus. Two broad categories of narratives that are external to communities have been identified as priority area of enquiry : environmental science and public policy and regional development. The consortium will analyse how these narratives interact with local narrative of resilience. This will allow for the assessment of their impacts. The interdisciplinary framework of resilience interpretations will be used to examine the resilience narratives in the light of the dimension that are salient for the members of arctic communities. The consortium will be in a position to take stock of the lessons learned in its three pilot implementation sites. It will have developed a narrative centred, locally rooted, place-based understanding of resilience within arctic communities. This understanding is key for developing tools and strategies to increasing community resilience in other communities. These results will call for sharing the lessons learned with regional planners and policy-makers. The consortium will thus be contributing to the knowledge base on global environmental change through respectful, non-prejudiced, enquiry of what it means to be a resilient arctic community in the 21st century. The results of this analysis will be translated into options for actions, at the local, regional, national and circumpolar levels.

Funding scheme:

POLARPROG-Polarforskningsprogram