I’ll probably be labeled a misogynist pig for even bringing this paper to the attention of our readers, but there are just some things that just deserve to be called “crazy”. When I first saw this, I thought it might be a parody, or an old April Fools joke. Sadly, no. The abstract from this publication Progress in Human Geography reads:
Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research
Abstract
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.
Source: http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/08/0309132515623368.abstract
h/t to Richard Saumarez
Like me, you are probably wondering what a “feminist glaciology framework” is
Through a review and synthesis of a multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging literature on human-ice relations, this paper proposes a feminist glaciology framework to analyze human-glacier dynamics, glacier narratives and discourse, and claims to credibility and authority of glaciological knowledge through the lens of feminist studies. As a point of departure, we use ‘glaciology’ in an encompassing sense that exceeds the immediate scientific meanings of the label, much as feminist critiques of geography, for example, have expanded what it is that ‘geography’ might mean vis-a`-vis geographic knowledge (Domosh, 1991; Rose, 1993). As such, feminist glaciology has four aspects: (1) knowledge producers, to decipher how gender affects the individuals producing glacierrelated knowledges; (2) gendered science and knowledge, to address how glacier science, perceptions, and claims to credibility are gendered; (3) systems of scientific domination, to analyze how power, domination, colonialism, and control – undergirded by and coincident with masculinist ideologies – have shaped glacier-related sciences and knowledges over time; and (4) alternative representations, to illustrate diverse methods and ways – beyond the natural sciences and including what we refer to as ‘folk glaciologies’ – to portray glaciers and integrate counter-narratives into broader conceptions of the cryosphere. These four components of feminist glaciology not only help to critically uncover the under-examined history of glaciological knowledge and glacier-related sciences prominent in today’s climate change discussions. The framework also has important implications for understanding vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience – all central themes in global environmental change research and decision-making that have lacked such robust analysis of epistemologies and knowledge production (Conway et al., 2014; Castree et al., 2014).
Oh.
The funding source didn’t surprise me:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under grant #1253779.
So, the gist of this paper can be summed up in this statement:
Most existing glaciological research – and hence discourse and discussions about cryospheric change – stems from information produced by men, about men, with manly characteristics, and within masculinist discourses. These characteristics apply to scientific disciplines beyond glaciology; there is an explicit need to uncover the role of women in the history of science and technology, while also exposing processes for excluding women from science and technology.
Those darn manly men with their masculinist discourses! But, I digress.
It would seem to me that given a choice of going to a remote and bitterly cold place, where you have to live in harsh minimalist conditions, with little human contact for months, just doesn’t appeal to many women, hence creating this perceived “bias” or lack of “feminine glaciology”. After all, millions of husbands and wives battle over the home thermostat setting daily. However, if somebody wants to break through the “ice ceiling” of glaciology, I nominate my Internet stalker Miriam O’Brien, aka “Sou”/Hotwhopper who could be a groundbreaking icebreaking leader by going to live on a glacier for a year so she can study it. I might actually pay to see that.
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This post and thread reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw, “Women spend more time wondering what Men are thinking than Men spend thinking.”
In today’s PC world, whoever wrote and published this paper has a lot of balls!
‘Glaciers, Gender and Science’. Hmm, sounds like a send-up by Brad Keyes @ur momisugly Climate Nuremberg.
The fact that they got a grant for this “concept” proves that affirmative action is alive and well. It also proves that there’s a whole lot of waste in government that could be used to do real science. I predict there will soon be a grant request submitted to do research on “black glaciology.” When the money is there for the taking, there will always be takers. There just won’t be any science that comes out of it. It will, however, create a whole new field of wasted time and money because there will be a lot of college students taking race and gender studies courses who will be forced to read this crap.
Climate grant insanity has officially jumped the shark, while wearing stiletto heals.
It HAS to fit into this… http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
No way could I be reading something real!
..Sorry, they do exist and it is for real !!
http://phg.sagepub.com/search?author1=Mark+Carey&sortspec=date&submit=Submit
[snip – over the top -mod]
did anyone google the nsf grant?
the abstract of the grant award is weird reading in itself (no mention of feminism!)
on the presumption this is a genuine grant – you Americans really need to look into where your tax dollars go! LOL
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1253779
Kev in UK:
I read the grant proposal. As it is written I see nothing problematic or particularly objectionable – except it is so plain vanilla and mundane. Do you? What I find puzzling is where the article at issue fits into this proposal.
@Bernie
Yes, that’s exactly what I thought also. The first paragraph reads like a potentially ‘serious’ review of the science, but I find no mention of feminism (unless we classify that under Arctic Social Science?) and this paper adds nothing to the science in any way shape or form. Ergo, it’s a waste of money.
Do these people have to produce accounts of their expenditure for public record? Are any papers/research produced then compared to the original proposal? I would really like to know how such stuff gets through peer review too!
Madame Curie rolls violently in her grave.
Does this mean that feminists should be frigid?
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist it)
Premier Kathleen Wynne was holding a campaign-style photo-op Tuesday with Training, Colleges, and Universities Minister Reza Moridi and students at Toronto’s Jarvis Collegiate.
The teens were conducting what is known as the “elephant toothpaste” experiment, mixing hydrogen peroxide with liquid soap to trigger foamy and colourful results
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/03/04/what-kathleen-wynne-was-thinking-when-she-saw-the-now-infamous-pink-blob.html
Boing!
Next there will be “feminist mechanics”
Instead of acceleration= force/mass, which was established by the patriarchy, we will get:
“A particle when acted on by a force will accelerate depending according to what she is feeling at the time”
This law can be analysed from the point of knowledge producers, gendered science and knowledge and systems of scientific domination, particularly where men are concerned. It should be good for grants, or even departments, to rewrite the whole of mechanics and then branch into relativity and the feminist interpretation of Maxwell’s equations.
All I can say is “Brace yourselves, men”!
Those manly men strike again.
My repost on Facebook: No ‘working’ definition of ‘science’ involved here. [My ‘Z’ honorific (Ziploc-after-walkies) can too much be substituted for ‘Dr’ these days. The ‘product’ of a University is a PhD, not an education-and-relevant-career. Not to denigrate Baristas-with-Liberal Arts degrees…et al. It’s a tough market out there. You ‘own’ yourself, no matter what…or whatever.]
Where is Janice when we need her? Janice, you out there?
This is hat we get for our tax $.
But if you want to see absolutely wonderful field science being performed eclusively by accredited women check out the paleoanthopologic dig being carried out by (American) Lee Berger at Wits U in South Africa. Lee exclusively recruited women for the job due to their unique qualifications.
This is earth shaking work which has the potential to turnour understanding or early hominins upside down.
Sorry about the typos, working on a tablet.
Manly glaciers will never retreat !!
hut hut hut.
no iceberg will be left behind
I was surprised to learn that this quote is credited to W.C. Fields
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
Eugene WR Gallun
Hillary Climate
I have no doubt that this women actually thinks that by producing tangential words she is saying something important. Her understanding of the importance of her words is the same understanding of importance that pressured schizophrenics have of their words (perhaps her grammar is better but little else).
Language relates to the environment — except when it doesn’t. Language can give names to things that don’t exist. An example is “the tooth fairy”. The phrase “a feminist glaciology framework” is tooth fairy nonsense. Creating a name does not create a reality (Orwell in 1984 suggests that in an oppressive environment it can or for all practical purposes it can, New Speak being his example).
The woman who wrote this is either an Al Gore or a nut case. I can’t tell which.
Eugene WR Gallun
Not hard at all if we taxpayer suckers allow the feds to hand it out like candy to. . . babes?
Absolute rubbish
I’ve been following the climate hoax for a few years now, and the Men’s Rights Movement for about a year. Just wait until the get a load of this at the National Coalition for Men/A Voice for Men, to say nothing of the Anti-Feminist organizations that are out there.
There’s a certain kind of “envy” Freud attributed to these types.
Err fellas; I am pretty sure I read somewhere that this is a scam paper. A paper of deliberate nonsense to see if nonsense would be detected by peer review or whether it would be passed for publication. It is not meant to make sense or be understood, it is deliberate nonsense, meaningless phrases strung together to sound impressive. Of course the real message is that it did get through peer review and into publication and it is a very sad message indeed.
This is a joke, right? With that much jargon just in the abstract I declare this to be computer generated fake research with a fake computer generated research article.