Name: Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination
ISBN: 9780774811866

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Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination

Julie Cruikshank

Hardcover

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Do Glaciers Listen? explores the conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and cultural histories are objectively entangled in the Mount Saint Elias ranges. This rugged area, where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet, underwent significant geophysical change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which coincided with dramatic social upheaval resulting from European exploration and increased travel and trade among Aboriginal peoples. European visitors brought with them varying conceptions of nature as sublime, as spiritual, or as a resource for human progress. They saw glaciers as inanimate, subject to empirical investigation and measurement. Aboriginal oral histories, conversely, described glaciers as sentient, animate, and quick to respond to human behaviour. In each case, however, the experiences and ideas surrounding glaciers were incorporated into interpretations of social relations. Focusing on these contrasting views during the late stages of the Little Ice Age (1550-1900), Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than discovered, through colonial encounters, and how it often conjoins social and biophysical processes. She then traces how the divergent views weave through contemporary debates about cultural meanings as well as current discussions about protected areas, parks, and the new World Heritage site. Readers interested in anthropology and Native and northern studies will find this a fascinating read and a rich addition to circumpolar literature.

Book Details

Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Publish Date: May 18th, 2005
Pages: 328
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
EAN: 9780774811866
Categories: • Historical Geography• Native American Studies• Folklore & Mythology

About the Author

Julie Cruikshank is professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Life Lived Like a Story (winner of the 1992 MacDonald Prize); Reading Voices; and The Social Life of Stories.

Praise for this book

In part a work of environmental history juxtaposing orally transmitted tribal memories and knowledge with modern scientific perceptions of climate change and landscape transformation, Cruikshank's text makes a strong case for the privileging of orally constituted local knowledge in present-day management decisions.

--ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Reading this book was as exhilarating as taking a raft trip down the Alsek River...Although this book will particularly delight those familiar with cultures of Alaska and the Yukon, it holds much interest for a broader audience.

--American Anthropologist

Julie Cruikshank's book on the connections between glaciers and human history and imagination could not be more timely... Reading Do Glaciers Listen? is a thrilling and sobering experience. Cruikshank combines splendid scholarship and majestic descriptions in a cross-disciplinary tour-de-force. Readers will come away with a new appreciation of the meaning of glaciers.

--Journal of Folklore Research