Social Sciences Newsblog

Category: Events

SS Talk: Durfee on “Evaluating Conditions for the Development of the Arctic”

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MaryDurfee4:00 p.m. on Friday, February 13th in AOB 201. 

Mary Durfee will present on “Evaluating Conditions for the Development of the Arctic”.

 

ABSTRACT:

The crash in oil prices has changed much of the media’s discussion of the potential for the Arctic. Yet, of course, people live and work there, so the Arctic hardly disappears. Meanwhile the US will be taking over the Chair of the Arctic Council and has announced its themes, which are primarily oriented to technologies to cope with the changing environment. The EU is in the midst of consultation on its policy for the Arctic—despite considerable reluctance on the part of EU member states who are also Arctic states. And, of course, the economic collapse of Russia is in progress even as its policies in the Ukraine continue to provoke concern. This talk will evaluate proposed policy prerequisites made in the past decade about conditions necessary for the “development” of the Arctic.

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SS Talk: Valoree S. Gagnon on “Ethnography and Oral History in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community: Collecting Oral Histories as a Social Experience with Tribal Narrators”

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Valoree12:00 noon on Friday, January 16th in AOB 201. 

Valoree S. Gagnon, Environmental and Energy Policy PhD candidate,  will present on “Ethnography and Oral History in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community: Collecting Oral Histories as a Social Experience with Tribal Narrators”

ABSTRACT:

Several scholars have documented additional considerations for doing research in and for tribal communities to ensure cultural needs and protocols are honored. These guidelines include expanding legal and ethical responsibilities, understandings of memory and storytelling, and knowledge of power dynamics between researchers and tribal communities. This paper shares lessons from the field while currently engaged in ethnography and oral history projects with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, offering an alternative framework for teaching and doing Oral History within and for tribal communities. In the practice of collecting oral histories with tribal narrators, challenges to traditional oral history methods are overcome by using novel approaches. Collecting oral histories as a social experience—sharing stories while cooking, crafting, ‘visiting’, and harvesting together—has been employed. These experiences have the potential to transform and contribute to narrators’ comfort, enriched stories, strong memories, relationship building, and knowledge sharing in more traditional ways for tribal members. Like many other tribal communities, the foundation for protecting Keweenaw Bay Indian Community lifeways and culture depends on revitalizing the nation’s history. Thus, oral history as a social experience can significantly enhance the power of story for tribal nations.

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Baird Presents in Australia

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canberraProfessor Melissa Baird presented two papers at the Association of Critical Heritage Studies biennial conference held in Canberra, Australia at Australian National University.

Baird presented her paper titled “Mining is Our Heritage”: Corporate Heritage Discourse and the Politics of Extraction in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  The second paper presented, co-authored with Rosemary Coombe, is titled The Limits of Heritage:  Corporate Interests and Cultural Rights on Resource Frontiers.

Baird was elected to serve on the governing board of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.

 

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Durfee Lectures in Hungary and Iceland

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MaryDurfeeProfessor Mary Durfee recently gave lectures in Hungary and Iceland.

In Budapest, Hungary at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Durfee presented her lecture titled “Will Russian Cooperation Continue in the Arctic.” Despite the frequent news items on coming conflict in the Arctic, there has been a very high degree of cooperation and law-based behavior in the region. The recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine suggest a different foreign policy coming from Moscow.  Is it likely Russian behavior will change in the far north?  Using primarily geo-political argument, Durfee argues cooperation will continue in the North, though whether the other Arctic countries will separate Russian Arctic behavior from its behavior elsewhere is in doubt.

At the Corvinus Society for Foreign Affairs and Culture in Budapest, Hungary, Durfee presented “The Problem of U.S. Power and a Solution in the Rise of China.” At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. stood as the sole superpower.  But it did not reinforce the institutions it had built with allies after WWII, rather it used its power to undermine many of the institutions and to attempt to change the internal orders of states in the ways the U.S. thought would be best. At the same time, the absence of another power with an alternative view on order meant the U.S. had no reason to evaluate the strength of it’s own political system as a model to others. Ian Clark has said that hegemony is “power with a purpose.” The peaceful rise of China and that state’s new efforts to offer a different hegemonic order may help the U.S. refine its hegemonic purpose.

In the Arctic Circle, Reykjavik, Iceland, Durfee presented “Every Treaty is a Policy:  The Evolution of Norms in the Arctic.” Through an evaluation of Arctic treaties since 1920, Durfee argues there are three key norms:  1) Bend sovereignty where mutual gains are possible 2) Include Indigenous Peoples in decision making 3) Peaceful settlement of disputes (despite large military assets in many Arctic states).

Durfee is on sabbatical as a Fulbright to Hungary in Budapest.

 

 

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MacLennan on Hawai’i’s Sugar Industry

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Beginning of the harvest. Kïlauea Sugar Plantation, Kaua‘i, 1912. H. W. Thomas photograph album. Hawaiian Historical Society
Beginning of the harvest. Kïlauea Sugar Plantation,Kaua‘i,
1912. H. W. Thomas photograph album. Hawaiian Historical
Society

Dr. Carol MacLennan presented to the Hawaiian Historical Society on topics in her new book, Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai’i (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2014),  in Honolulu, Hawaii on October 23, 2014.

ABSTRACT:  MacLennan focuses on the rise of power among the sugar planters and the ecology of plantation agriculture. It is a story of land and water, community, and politics. By the 1930s, the sugar economy engulfed both human and environmental landscapes. Sugar manufacture not only transformed Hawai‘i but its legacy provides lessons for the future.

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Winkler (SS) and Meldrum (KRC) to Present on Minewater for Geothermal Energy in the Keweenaw

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GreenEnergyLecturesFall2014Flyer 11.05Green Lecture Series:  Issues and Dialog – 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 20 at the MTU Forestry Building, Hesterberg Hall.

Dr. Richelle Winkler,  Assistant Professor of Sociology and Demography, Dept. of Social Sciences at Michigan Tech and Jay Meldrum, Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center will be presenting on “Using Mine Water for Geothermal Energy in the Keweenaw”

Billions of gallons of ‘warm’ water are stored in the mine workings that underlie much of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Michigan
Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center uses this water for geothermal heating and cooling. Could expanding mine water geothermal heating projects to local communities provide a sustainable, affordable, and community-centered source of local energy?

 

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SS Talk: Seth DePasqual on “Where’s the Beach? Revisiting the Archaic Along Isle Royale’s Relict Nipissing Shoreline”

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seth depasqual-112:00 noon on Friday, November 21th in AOB 201. 

Seth DePasqual, NPS Cultural Resource Manager for Isle Royale National Park, will be presenting on “Where’s the Beach? Revisiting the Archaic Along Isle Royale’s Relict Nipissing Shoreline”

His talk, “Where’s the Beach? Revisiting the Archaic along Isle Royale’s Relict Nipissing Shoreline,” presents current archaeological research at the Park focused on the relict Lake Superior shoreline dating to ~5000 BP, and will place the Relict Shoreline Survey Project within the context of the Park’s prehistory and known archaeological resources.
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Langston to Present at FOLK Annual Meeting

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LangstonNancy Langston, professor of environmental history and social sciences, will be speaking about the Binational Forum’s work in the Lake Superior Basin at the FOLK annual meeting on Wednesday, November 19th. Langston is a member of the Great Lakes Research Center and the Binational Forum.

The presentation will take place at the Portage Lake District Library at 6 p.m. Both the meeting and the presentation are open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

From Tech Today.

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SS Talk: Laura Walikainen Rouleau on “Private Spaces in Public Places: Public Restrooms at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”

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Walikainen Rouleau November 1412:00 noon on Friday, November 14th in AOB 201. 

Laura Walikainen Rouleau, Ph.D. will be presenting on “Private Spaces in Public Places:  Public Restrooms at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”.

Abstract:  At the turn of the twentieth century, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration combined to draw Americans out of the private realm of the home and into public spaces. As more people spent long hours in public, they required spaces to cleanse, relieve, and clothe their bodies. In order to accommodate these bodies in public, several spaces emerged at the boundary of the public and the private.
The public restroom, as an example of these boundary spaces, was a site of confluence for issues of the body, space, and privacy in American society at the turn of the twentieth century. In order to become acceptable, these “public comfort stations” were designed to create a sense of privacy in public. This study interrogates the relationship between the physical and social construction of these sites by examining the materiality of these spaces, the bodies and activities that enlivened them, and the society that shaped them. Public restrooms were segregated by gender and race, and these spaces were “classed” as customers were often required to pay to use them. The design, creation, and regulation of these early restrooms reveal how privacy was experienced and defined at this moment of emergence.

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SS Talk: Sean Gohman, Eric Pomber, and Adrian Blake on “Industrial Heritage & Archaeology in the Copper Country, 2014”

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Ft Wilkins 2014_CliffMAP update-212:00 noon on Friday November 7 in AOB 201.  Sean Gohman, PhD candidate, Eric Pomber, MS student, and Adrian Blake, MS student will present on”Industrial Heritage and Archaeology in the Copper Country, 2014″.

Abstract:  Join Industrial Heritage and Archaeology students Sean Gohman, Eric Pomber, and Adrian Blake as they discuss their involvement in two field projects undertaken this summer in Keweenaw County. In May and June, Gohman, Pomber, and Blake continued an ongoing mapping project at the Cliff mine, with a new series of interpretive maps the result. These maps document the rise and fall of an historic mining landscape currently the focus of environmental remediation. These maps are evidence of the evolving nature of mining’s impact on the land, as well as speak to the decisions of mining companies as they tackle illusive mineral deposits and accommodate the domestic needs of their workforce.

In July, the team conducted a Phase II survey of property belonging to Ft. Wilkins, in Copper Harbor. Several features associated with some of the earliest recording mining in the area were documented and in some cases excavated. These features expand the physical bounds of the park’s mission, and offer new interpretive possibilities for the park going forward.

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