Analyze

Youth's brilliance and their fascination with the wickedness of plastic pollution are forming shoals of abundant possibility and collective futurity amid the rising tides of environmental destruction hitting Bahía de los Ángeles, México. Working in an entangled community with professional scientists, government conservationists, traditional outdoor educators, store owners, school principals, chefs, artists, and family this group of youth (ages 7-17) labor and dream as scientists and cartographers of the future. They voice unpopular questions and concerns, embody lives they mourn leaving behind but understand can't persist, demand more from adults and tourists, labor for imperfect data that they hope will hold community accountability, and (re)map community infrastructure, tracts of refuse, flows of water, chains of fossil fuel transport, food systems, and fishing practices. Despite these undeniable contributions, often adult partners in this work are still slow to take youth thinking and resistance seriously---it is easier to mediate on shortcomings or flaws in youths' epistemologies. Ignoring these sophisticated shoals is a flagrant dismissal of the pluralist thought and perspective required to attend, nonetheless halt, environmental injustices. As adults labor on/for youths' futures there should be a constant disruption of who holds expertise and why and rigorous attention given to youth voice.

Fowler, Kelsie. 2023. "Youth and Community Knowledges Create Thick Shoals of Abundance Amid the Plastiocene." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

When I read the commentary on COVID-19 and Higher Education, it reminded me an article published in the early days of the transition to online teaching. In this article entitled "The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning," the authors emphasize the importance of naming (what we regularly refer as) online teaching as "emergency remote teaching": 

"Online learning carries a stigma of being lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. These hurried moves online by so many institutions at once could seal the perception of online learning as a weak option, when in truth nobody making the transition to online teaching under these circumstances will truly be designing to take full advantage of the affordances and possibilities of the online format."

"Researchers in educational technology, specifically in the subdiscipline of online and distance learning, have carefully defined terms over the years to distinguish between the highly variable design solutions that have been developed and implemented: distance learning, distributed learning, blended learning, online learning, mobile learning, and others. Yet an understanding of the important differences has mostly not diffused beyond the insular world of educational technology and instructional design researchers and professionals. Here, we want to offer an important discussion around the terminology and formally propose a specific term for the type of instruction being delivered in these pressing circumstances: emergency remote teaching."

Let's re-read a quote in the commentary by Robert Pose in the light of above notes: 

"The sudden brutal switch to online learning is the most obvious consequence for higher education of the pandemic. Everyone now accepts online teaching because everyone regards it as necessary to reduce serious health hazards. But after the pandemic recedes, it is likely economic forces will seek to keep online learning in place, because it is far cheaper than education before the pandemic."

I think we need much more nuanced and careful approach to the possibility of continuing online teaching in the aftermath of COVID-19 without reducing the discussion to the terms of economics. Since many universities have shifted to emergency remote teaching without necesarily having the required experience and infrastructure in online teaching, there appear many concerns beyond economics, at least in my university, e.g., the lack of regular communication between students and educators appear as a concern of the authorities beyond of teachers.  

I think the field campus was a great success and showed how it differs from or compliments traditional formats (conferences, workshops, lectures...). The schedule was deliberately intense, but I am glad we could keep up a good pace throughout the three days. However, I agree that shared time to reflect on what we saw and heard each would have been helpful. A lot of this happened in the cars and at the two accommodations, but more collective time would be great for a future campus. On our way back, we discussed several ways to structure such discussions, for example by picking up one of the twelve analytic questions or making an inventory of (types of) people we encountered in the field. I am also interested in what people with experience in doing ethnography thought about showing up at sites in a group vs. being the lone fieldworker, and how that shifted the way you asked questions or interacted with the sites.

In that regard, I found it particularly helpful to meet participants in advance during the Zoom calls and learn about their skills/interests.  The group interview with Tony West was also a great way to prepare not only for the first day but to get a sense of St. Louis as a place. We should definitely think about similar modes to prepare for New Orleans. Also, since I was involved with setting up the final exhibition a GCADD, I am looking forward to discussing more what the exhibit at 4S could look like and what those of you with a background in the arts think about it.

I am working on a digital collection for the quotidian anthropocene theme "civic infrastructure". I am especially interested in free software, open data, digital maps, and other related forms of participation that are either a direct response to the anthropocene or help to render it visible in different ways.

http://disaster-sts-network.org/users/tim-schutz

I will develop a digital presentation of Philadelphia quotidian anthropence and on the theme of climate change adaptation. I will be using this analytic, "Profiling a Climate Policy", which I've created to assess urban adaptation plans. I'll provide more details by next Wednesday April 3rd.

http://disaster-sts-network.org/users/alison-kenner

http://disaster-sts-network.org/user

For me personally, I think the campus was a valuable exercise in learning to think on my feet. Also, if one of the goals of the field campus was to “generate more data than the investigator is aware of at the time of collection,” as Marilyn Strathern has said of ethnography, I’d call it an assured success. The schedule, subject matter, and activities were notably intense, and certainly didn’t leave much room (or energy) for rigorous analysis in situ. So it seems to me that the ultimate value of the field campus is still in the process of production, as we all continue to process, discuss, and relate the significance of our experiences and interactions to our own research sites and areas of expertise over the course of the following months.

Perhaps this was simply a matter of being fresh energized, but I think Day 1 was the most productive and enjoyable. I also think this had to do with the way it was structured; e.g. beginning with Tony's primer, folllowed by the tours, and finally the panel discussion, the day just built up nicely. It also gave us an approachable sampling of the ways a coherent set of anthropocenic sites and practices had been differentially uncovered, recovered, or (more or less figuratively) covered up by diverse stakeholders. And we were given time to critically (if also (mostly) cordially) engage each set of stakeholders as a group, bringing in our own unique insights, questions, and interests.

I really enjoyed the first day’s higher degree of shared attention and designated time for Q&A and discussion. That’s not to say I think every event should be a group tour. Self-guided exploration is useful too, and I realize that part of the idea of splitting up was to facilitate smaller collaborations on diverse group projects. Still, perhaps setting aside a few sessions for group-wide Q&A with stakeholders each day would create that small bit of noise and contingency that helps generate creativity.