This award supported three years of ethnographic field research in two different regions of coastal Alaska, each home to resource development debates framed in terms of risk:  the Bristol Bay region of southwestern Alaska, and the Sitka Sound region of southeastern Alaska.  The project involved the work of mentored research teams that included the PI, a PhD-level consultant, a PhD student research assistant, four Master’s student research assistants, and two local research assistants, college students from the Alaskan communities of Sitka and Dillingham, the project fieldsites.  Ethnographic research was concentrated during two summer field seasons, supplemented by two additional short winter research periods.  The study was facilitated through partnerships with local research institutions, including the Sitka Sound Science Center in Sitka, and the University of Alaska’s Bristol Bay campus in Dillingham.  

Across the two project fieldsites, researchers tracked perspectives and interactions among scientists, activists, state officials, and rural residents to determine how different groups of actors form knowledge about environmental and economic risk, and how this affects their engagement in resource development debates.  Together, the research teams conducted over 150 semi-structured interviews with individuals and groups across the two sites, including ten oral history interviews with thirteen different individuals.  Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed.  Except for the oral histories, real names of research participants were removed in order to protect confidentiality.  The transcripts have been supplemented by field notes taken by the researchers based on ethnographic methods of participant observation.  

Because of ongoing opportunities to track important longitudinal conversations in each fieldsite—including the debate over the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay and changing policy involving the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, as well as relevant commercial fisheries discussions in both regions—the research phase of the project extended for the duration of the entire three-year award.  In the final months of the award period, the researchers developed a comprehensive data-coding rubric flexible enough to accommodate the diverse array of actors and perspectives captured by the multi-sited and multi-part research design.  The entire project dataset is currently being entered into a web-based qualitative data analysis program for further analysis.  The close of the award period marks the completion of active field research and the continuation of data analysis. 

Although project conclusions remain preliminary at this stage, the research has revealed a number of significant results—about the role of scientific expertise in environmental decision making, the changing dynamics of political mobilizations on behalf of the environment, and the lived experience of ecological vulnerability—with relevance for cross-disciplinary conversations as well as policy in rural, resource-dependent regions.  Preliminary findings have been disseminated through conference presentations, invited talks, peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, and blog posts.  Along with academic and professional training, these contributions represent the main project outcomes to date, with additional plans to communicate final results to study communities and policymakers once the data analysis phase is complete.

One major project finding to date involves the increasing centrality of certain forms of scientific knowledge in environmental claimsmaking.  In both research locales, the language and practice of ecological stewardship has become the dominant idiom for establishing risk and demonstrating care in the context of resour...

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