Julie Cruikshank's book really deals with social and historical concepts and how they do have a correlation to the environmental conditions of a certain place. However, in reading the book the part that honestly provoked the most thought was the title, "Do Glaciers Listen?" because upon reading the title I instantly formed a new perspective on the ways which people and nature interact and engage with one another. In a sense, nature is sort of like a 'thing' or a commodity within current popular culture. There are so many green movements to try and save it from the damage that we have self inflicted on it, and people are really starting to see the horrifying effects of that. Furthermore, because there is this awareness that we need to make changes in order to preserve our natural world people are starting to understand the value embedded in nature and it's utter importance to us as human beings. In that sense, nature has become a sort of commodity-- a truly depressing thought.
In his writings on Aesthetics, the German philosopher Friedrich Schiller expresses his concern that scientific understand is supplanting philosophy as the primary mode of understanding the world. This something that we, now, in the 21st century can also see as being demonstrably true: science is 'real,' whereas other forms of understanding are only subjectively valid. This same dichotomy is explored in both Cruikshank's book and also Herzog's film. In Do Glaciers Listen?, Cruikshank examines what some would consider 'competing' narratives regarding natural phenomenon in the Northwest: oral traditions, travellers journals, and geographical scientists. They all assign different values to the glaciers and understand their development in different ways, but they tell the same stories. Similarly, Encounters at the End of the World does not exclusively focus on the scientific endeavors being undertaken at McMurdo, but rather looks at the lives of the scientists & travels through the things they have chosen to dedicate themselves to.
When you see a glacier in a picture or on television, you never think of them being places where people live. In Do Glaciers Listen?, Julie Cruikshank tells the stories of the people who live in these cold hard places. She also answers the question, "Why would anyone want to live in a place like that?" It is their home and home is where our customs and traditions lie. And sometimes our homes are threatened.
Cruikshank also describes the inevitable fact of living in a place that moves and changes. Just about every story conveyed in the book is about the fight between the people of these regions and nature. This is in stark contrast to the film, Encounters at the End of the World. The film describes the lives and loves of the people who choose to live in this desolate region. There are the scientists who study the animals and the ever changing glaciers as well as the people who are just looking for a new adventure.
Cruikshank’s Do Glaciers Listen?, and Herzog’s Encounters at the End at the World make observations about how people understand glaciers, and how glaciers inform human behavior. While, Cruikshank is more focused on linking concepts of history, language, oral traditions, how Tlinglit tradition views glaciers versus the way European travelers and scientists understood the environment, Herzog’s work is about contemporary Antarctica. Herzog links his various subjects through examining why people choose to live in such a desolate and difficult environment, a place where the night is also the day, and where an entire world exists underneath the ice. His subjects are diverse and include scientists looking for the invisible neutrino, a performance artist who stuffs herself in a bag, a penguin looking to meet his or her demise, seals who make inorganic sounds, and the people of McMurdle, who wear buckets covering their head to train for emergency situations. Cruiksank’s piece compares and contrast Western understanding of nature and glaciers themselves to that of indigenous people of the Tlingit. For the natives, glaciers are sentient, and interwoven to Tlingit oral tradition, while for Western scientists and language, the glaciers are understood as an exterior space to be measured and understood through rationality. As a sentient entity, the landscape of the glacier responds, for example, dislikes grease or is aware of when it is made fun of, or can be seen as a den for a giant animal. I think for Cruikshank, glaciers do listen; it is a question of who is also listening back. Cruikshank analyzes oral tradition and language as a way to provoke understanding glacier and human relationship in a way that is not about distance and science.
Julie Cruikshank’s Do Glacier’s Listen points out how nature and human beings interact with one another. Her focus is primarily on glaciers and how they have been observed throughout history, but she is getting at a bigger idea which is that nature and humans are constantly acting and reacting towards one another. A glacier is at once subject to the environment and constituting it. While human beings may at times feel threatened by the inevitability of events in nature, we must also take into account Cruikshank’s point that people and things are all subject to each other. Historically and presently people believe that glaciers react to human actions. Knowledge and history are created based on how people viewed the relationship or correlation between human lives and natural occurrences. Cruikshank uses instance of social reconfiguration that correlated with big shifts in nature, and attempts to show how knowledge is not just something one happens upon, rather it is produced by context.
Cruikshank mentions that in Tinglit culture, the line between sentient beings and things such as glaciers (humans and land features), for example, are not as clear as one would expect. this is certainly different from mainstream america's views of such objects. In stories she has heard glaciers appear as sentient beings in some and in others, purely as dens for animals, etc. In many stories they are given voices, vision, and are able to react to human beings. Certainly nature does interact with people--it does "converse" with them, if you will--these stories are merely anthropomorphising glaciers and land features and expressing in human terms an interaction between man and nature
Julie Cruikshank illuminates the logical relationship the Tinglit have with glaciers. The Tinglit incorporate the glaicers in narratives and I thing it's quite amazing because it is open to interpretation and as a result the each story that is told feels more real and genuine. Contrary to the Tinglit, we (in the west) are obsessed with history as a scientific/empirical fact and aim to continuously uncover new information that will add to our history. The Tinglit way of narration and story telling seems much more compatible with the Tinglit way of life and also more satisfying in a way. Our way of presenting history is never ending whereas the Tinglit is transient, more like life itself.
Werner Herzog explores what brings people to Antarctica. The eccentric cast provides just as much entertainment as it does awareness about the continent. Each eccentric member of the cast described a different relationship with what they encountered in Antarctica. It wasn't a typical scientific documentary but more of an anthropological one. Herzog, I think, wanted to combine the typical with the quirky and the light and the dark elements of the Antarctic landscape.
Cruikshank’s book focuses on the theme of the interaction between glaciers and humans. What I found most interesting was how glaciers influenced storytelling. Storytelling has been an integral part of daily life since the beginning of language, and in my opinion has created the modern model of writing history. The oral traditions of native people living in glacial areas have helped explore climate change throughout history.
The interaction between humans and nature obviously goes on after the first interaction with native peoples. I also enjoyed reading about the romantic poets. They seemed to fantasize (in addition to romanticize) that they were responsive as well as this monstrous being of sorts that could overtake them at any moment.
In Cruikshank's book, I really had a different interpretation based on its title. I thought that it would be about strictly glaciers and how they are in the world. However, after reading it I felt that it was more of a different type of relationship. He focuses a lot on historical facts and individuals in tribes that are extremely into oral traditions. He also talks to some of these individuals to get a sense of how they are and how glaciers influenced their lives. It seemed to be that glaciers provided some sort of comfort and stability in the lives of these tribes. The fact that the core of the glaciers can date back many years proves how much it has been through and how it has been a solid factor throughout time.
I found this book to be an interesting ethnographic discussion of glaciers as sentient, liminal objects that negotiate scientific research on climate change, Aboriginal tradition and beliefs, and European colonial-era exploration as it surrounds the Saint Elias Mountains on the north-western border between the U.S. and Canada. By recounting and examining stories told by these three groups in the three sections of her book, Cruikshank creates a well rounded ethnography of this particular region which heightens the impact of these glaciers as agents, affecting a multitude of aspects of human life, most specifically including social and perceptual order, for a wide range of individuals and groups. This additionally allows her to discuss the nature of encounters as they occur upon the surface of the glacier. A passage from the Introduction sums up the spirit of these encounters as she presents them throughout the book quite nicely. She writes "From the perspective of indigenous residents steeped in familiar places, glaciers provide scaffolding both for close empirical observation and interpretation of the dangers of hubris in a complex and unpredictable world. From the vantage point of the transient explorer immersed in a fin de siecle myth of modernity that segregated nature from culture, matters of locality could be casually dismissed as 'superstition'" (19-20). In this sense, glaciers become a fascinating stage upon which different groups negotiate not only politics and social relationships, but morality; by using this plane to bolster preconceived notions of "us" and "them" while it constantly moves and shifts, forcing reactions that threaten to tear down these seemingly concrete delineations in the face of death.
Though the glaciologist in Antarctica is dealing with an entirely different breed of glacier than the various people (whether scientists or local Tlingit) in Julie Cruikshank's Do Glaciers Listen?, there still exists an animistic intentionality that is acknowledged by all. Glaciers appear solid and dense as land, until they begin to move, spurred either by a careless word thrown into the air, or by some greater impulsion about which we know nothing. The importance of glaciers to the Tlingit people is apparent in their storytelling, a central theme of the book, for "narrators draw on expressive conventions that graft colonial histories onto accounts of environmental change from the same period" (52). Additionally, Kruikshank found herself surprised by the glaciers' "persistant and puzzling appearance in [Tlingit] life stories... these women were often actually talking about larger issues when they spoke about glaciers" (51). Do Glaciers Listen? attempts to create fuzzy the boundaries we believe to exist between man and nature, analyzing public and private discourse in both the realms of science, colonial expansion through history, and the local culture of the Tlingit, softly quilting the actions of men with the actions of glaciers.
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Julie Cruikshank's book really deals with social and historical concepts and how they do have a correlation to the environmental conditions of a certain place. However, in reading the book the part that honestly provoked the most thought was the title, "Do Glaciers Listen?" because upon reading the title I instantly formed a new perspective on the ways which people and nature interact and engage with one another. In a sense, nature is sort of like a 'thing' or a commodity within current popular culture. There are so many green movements to try and save it from the damage that we have self inflicted on it, and people are really starting to see the horrifying effects of that. Furthermore, because there is this awareness that we need to make changes in order to preserve our natural world people are starting to understand the value embedded in nature and it's utter importance to us as human beings. In that sense, nature has become a sort of commodity-- a truly depressing thought.
In his writings on Aesthetics, the German philosopher Friedrich Schiller expresses his concern that scientific understand is supplanting philosophy as the primary mode of understanding the world. This something that we, now, in the 21st century can also see as being demonstrably true: science is 'real,' whereas other forms of understanding are only subjectively valid. This same dichotomy is explored in both Cruikshank's book and also Herzog's film. In Do Glaciers Listen?, Cruikshank examines what some would consider 'competing' narratives regarding natural phenomenon in the Northwest: oral traditions, travellers journals, and geographical scientists. They all assign different values to the glaciers and understand their development in different ways, but they tell the same stories. Similarly, Encounters at the End of the World does not exclusively focus on the scientific endeavors being undertaken at McMurdo, but rather looks at the lives of the scientists & travels through the things they have chosen to dedicate themselves to.
When you see a glacier in a picture or on television, you never think of them being places where people live. In Do Glaciers Listen?, Julie Cruikshank tells the stories of the people who live in these cold hard places. She also answers the question, "Why would anyone want to live in a place like that?" It is their home and home is where our customs and traditions lie. And sometimes our homes are threatened.
Cruikshank also describes the inevitable fact of living in a place that moves and changes. Just about every story conveyed in the book is about the fight between the people of these regions and nature.
This is in stark contrast to the film, Encounters at the End of the World. The film describes the lives and loves of the people who choose to live in this desolate region. There are the scientists who study the animals and the ever changing glaciers as well as the people who are just looking for a new adventure.
Cruikshank’s Do Glaciers Listen?, and Herzog’s Encounters at the End at the World make observations about how people understand glaciers, and how glaciers inform human behavior. While, Cruikshank is more focused on linking concepts of history, language, oral traditions, how Tlinglit tradition views glaciers versus the way European travelers and scientists understood the environment, Herzog’s work is about contemporary Antarctica. Herzog links his various subjects through examining why people choose to live in such a desolate and difficult environment, a place where the night is also the day, and where an entire world exists underneath the ice. His subjects are diverse and include scientists looking for the invisible neutrino, a performance artist who stuffs herself in a bag, a penguin looking to meet his or her demise, seals who make inorganic sounds, and the people of McMurdle, who wear buckets covering their head to train for emergency situations. Cruiksank’s piece compares and contrast Western understanding of nature and glaciers themselves to that of indigenous people of the Tlingit. For the natives, glaciers are sentient, and interwoven to Tlingit oral tradition, while for Western scientists and language, the glaciers are understood as an exterior space to be measured and understood through rationality. As a sentient entity, the landscape of the glacier responds, for example, dislikes grease or is aware of when it is made fun of, or can be seen as a den for a giant animal. I think for Cruikshank, glaciers do listen; it is a question of who is also listening back. Cruikshank analyzes oral tradition and language as a way to provoke understanding glacier and human relationship in a way that is not about distance and science.
Julie Cruikshank’s Do Glacier’s Listen points out how nature and human beings interact with one another. Her focus is primarily on glaciers and how they have been observed throughout history, but she is getting at a bigger idea which is that nature and humans are constantly acting and reacting towards one another. A glacier is at once subject to the environment and constituting it. While human beings may at times feel threatened by the inevitability of events in nature, we must also take into account Cruikshank’s point that people and things are all subject to each other. Historically and presently people believe that glaciers react to human actions. Knowledge and history are created based on how people viewed the relationship or correlation between human lives and natural occurrences. Cruikshank uses instance of social reconfiguration that correlated with big shifts in nature, and attempts to show how knowledge is not just something one happens upon, rather it is produced by context.
Cruikshank mentions that in Tinglit culture, the line between sentient beings and things such as glaciers (humans and land features), for example, are not as clear as one would expect. this is certainly different from mainstream america's views of such objects. In stories she has heard glaciers appear as sentient beings in some and in others, purely as dens for animals, etc. In many stories they are given voices, vision, and are able to react to human beings. Certainly nature does interact with people--it does "converse" with them, if you will--these stories are merely anthropomorphising glaciers and land features and expressing in human terms an interaction between man and nature
Julie Cruikshank illuminates the logical relationship the Tinglit have with glaciers. The Tinglit incorporate the glaicers in narratives and I thing it's quite amazing because it is open to interpretation and as a result the each story that is told feels more real and genuine. Contrary to the Tinglit, we (in the west) are obsessed with history as a scientific/empirical fact and aim to continuously uncover new information that will add to our history. The Tinglit way of narration and story telling seems much more compatible with the Tinglit way of life and also more satisfying in a way. Our way of presenting history is never ending whereas the Tinglit is transient, more like life itself.
Werner Herzog explores what brings people to Antarctica. The eccentric cast provides just as much entertainment as it does awareness about the continent. Each eccentric member of the cast described a different relationship with what they encountered in Antarctica. It wasn't a typical scientific documentary but more of an anthropological one. Herzog, I think, wanted to combine the typical with the quirky and the light and the dark elements of the Antarctic landscape.
Cruikshank’s book focuses on the theme of the interaction between glaciers and humans. What I found most interesting was how glaciers influenced storytelling. Storytelling has been an integral part of daily life since the beginning of language, and in my opinion has created the modern model of writing history. The oral traditions of native people living in glacial areas have helped explore climate change throughout history.
The interaction between humans and nature obviously goes on after the first interaction with native peoples. I also enjoyed reading about the romantic poets. They seemed to fantasize (in addition to romanticize) that they were responsive as well as this monstrous being of sorts that could overtake them at any moment.
In Cruikshank's book, I really had a different interpretation based on its title. I thought that it would be about strictly glaciers and how they are in the world. However, after reading it I felt that it was more of a different type of relationship. He focuses a lot on historical facts and individuals in tribes that are extremely into oral traditions. He also talks to some of these individuals to get a sense of how they are and how glaciers influenced their lives. It seemed to be that glaciers provided some sort of comfort and stability in the lives of these tribes. The fact that the core of the glaciers can date back many years proves how much it has been through and how it has been a solid factor throughout time.
I found this book to be an interesting ethnographic discussion of glaciers as sentient, liminal objects that negotiate scientific research on climate change, Aboriginal tradition and beliefs, and European colonial-era exploration as it surrounds the Saint Elias Mountains on the north-western border between the U.S. and Canada. By recounting and examining stories told by these three groups in the three sections of her book, Cruikshank creates a well rounded ethnography of this particular region which heightens the impact of these glaciers as agents, affecting a multitude of aspects of human life, most specifically including social and perceptual order, for a wide range of individuals and groups. This additionally allows her to discuss the nature of encounters as they occur upon the surface of the glacier. A passage from the Introduction sums up the spirit of these encounters as she presents them throughout the book quite nicely. She writes "From the perspective of indigenous residents steeped in familiar places, glaciers provide scaffolding both for close empirical observation and interpretation of the dangers of hubris in a complex and unpredictable world. From the vantage point of the transient explorer immersed in a fin de siecle myth of modernity that segregated nature from culture, matters of locality could be casually dismissed as 'superstition'" (19-20). In this sense, glaciers become a fascinating stage upon which different groups negotiate not only politics and social relationships, but morality; by using this plane to bolster preconceived notions of "us" and "them" while it constantly moves and shifts, forcing reactions that threaten to tear down these seemingly concrete delineations in the face of death.
Though the glaciologist in Antarctica is dealing with an entirely different breed of glacier than the various people (whether scientists or local Tlingit) in Julie Cruikshank's Do Glaciers Listen?, there still exists an animistic intentionality that is acknowledged by all. Glaciers appear solid and dense as land, until they begin to move, spurred either by a careless word thrown into the air, or by some greater impulsion about which we know nothing. The importance of glaciers to the Tlingit people is apparent in their storytelling, a central theme of the book, for "narrators draw on expressive conventions that graft colonial histories onto accounts of environmental change from the same period" (52). Additionally, Kruikshank found herself surprised by the glaciers' "persistant and puzzling appearance in [Tlingit] life stories... these women were often actually talking about larger issues when they spoke about glaciers" (51). Do Glaciers Listen? attempts to create fuzzy the boundaries we believe to exist between man and nature, analyzing public and private discourse in both the realms of science, colonial expansion through history, and the local culture of the Tlingit, softly quilting the actions of men with the actions of glaciers.
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