Papers by April Warn-Vannini
GeoHumanities, 2020
Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Wa... more Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Waterton Lakes National Park and Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, we present two etho-ethnographic fables that show how a positive coexistence of humans and wild life may be sought after and achieved. The two stories–narrated by animals’ voices–prompt us to rethink the very meanings of wild life and humanity and challenge us to envision and appreciate a new kind of affective relationship between people and non-human animals. By attending to the mutual trust and care inherent in respect-based multi-species entanglements, in this article we attune ourselves to the importance of the relational autonomy of wild animals and generate ideas on what wild life could be when understood from the perspective of relational and Indigenous ontologies.
Social & Cultural Geography, 2018
In 2009 UNESCO's World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Ita... more In 2009 UNESCO's World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Italy under the single Dolomites World Heritage Site (DWHS). Under criterion vii, they were acknowledged by the World Heritage Convention to be 'widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world' with their beauty being 'intrinsic' to the nature of the mountains. In our film and paper we argue for a reconsideration of the 'intrinsic nature' of its beauty in a sense that is much different than that intended by UNESCO. Following a relational line of reasoning we argue that the essence of the distinctive landscape of the Dolomites lies in the entanglements occurring among its inhabitants who, in the course of living there, have historically been and are currently immersed in its formation. We suggest that through such entanglements -sometimes consonant and sometimes dissonant with 'authorized' notions of the heritage landscape -the Dolomitic landscapes exist as manicured landscapes. By drawing from the concept of memoryscape and non-representational ideas we articulate the notion of a manicured landscape.
International Review of Qualitative Research, 2019
Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada's largest and the world's second largest national pa... more Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada's largest and the world's second largest national park. For the last half century, industrial mega projects such as BC Hydro's W.A.C. Bennett Dam first and tar sands oil extraction later have been exhausting the “natural resources” of the park, decimating wildlife, and severing the sacred relations among Indigenous people, their ways of life, and their land. This extractivist regime has led to a point when, in 2014, the Mikisew Cree First Nation—frustrated by the Canadian government's continued unwillingness to listen to their grievances—filed a petition to ask UNESCO to add Wood Buffalo National Park to the list of the world's endangered World Heritage sites. In this article, we describe how such events unfolded and what the current situation signifies for environmental politics, wilderness conservation, and Indigenous relations with settler society within a colonial state.
Space and Culture, 2018
What matter is walking ground made of? And how does such ground matter? What is the relationship ... more What matter is walking ground made of? And how does such ground matter? What is the relationship between walking surfaces and people’s experience of natural landscapes? And how do different ground surfaces enact different meshworks of conservation politics, mobility, and tourism infrastructure? Drawing from nonrepresentational theory and from audiovisual fieldwork conducted in and around Australia’s Cradle Mountain, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, this article and its accompanying video focus on the materials of walking trails to understand the relations among walking, the built environment, and the sensory and affective experience of place. Arguing that trails and trail surfaces—and boardwalks in particular—serve as influential material conduits for variously contested outdoor recreation mobilities, this article develops the argument that pathways are elements in the world’s transformation of itself.
Qualitative Inquiry, 2019
Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship ha... more Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship has not; artisans regularly remain subjects of ethnographic analysis rather than educators or sources of epistemological and aesthetic inspiration for ethnographers. As students of material culture and aesthetic practices, we argue that ethnography has a lot to learn from artisans and advance a vision for an artisan-inspired ethnography. In particular, we ask, “what would an artisanal ethnography be like?” “What can we learn from artisans as ethnographic educators?” “How would the artisanship-inspired ethnographer work?” “What would be his or her styles, tools, goals, and guiding principles?” Through a methodological reflection on the production of our film A Time for Making, we engage with these questions.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2019
Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and w... more Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and wilderness, yet very few researchers have ever asked people: “What does wild mean to you?” In doing so, with our research we aim to understand wildness as a phenomenological and relational entity and aim to make sense of the multiple ways in which personal entanglements with particular places inform contingent and place-based ideas of wildness. Although there are many dimensions to both the experience and the idea of wildness, in this paper we reflect in particular on one: vitality. We draw our data from dozens of interviews held across Canada and base our interpretations on a combination of traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge, relational ontologies, and more-than-representational theories.
Area, 2019
This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World He... more This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World Heritage sites: Gros Morne National Park. UNESCO's criteria for the identification of natural heritage sites and its descriptions of the specific qualities of listed sites are informed by a dualist ontology that sharply separates nature and culture. The result of this separation between nature and culture is the construction of natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2011
This article addresses the social implications of gender verification testing in sport. The autho... more This article addresses the social implications of gender verification testing in sport. The authors ask how sex—gender is contained in mediated public discourses that questioned Caster Semenya’s identity following her success in the women’s 800 m at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championship. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the perception of the case surrounding Semenya along with perceptions of her sex and gender identity. The authors argue that the manner by which Semenya’s body is discursively constructed via news board discussants, scientific and medical communities, and athletic governance policies renders her flesh abject and promotes the interpretation of her body as being “‘disordered,” all in the service of maintaining the rhetoric of “fair play” and “equal opportunity” for female athletes. The authors claim that such tests reproduce existing hegemonic gender ideologies via the categories they reinforce and through...
Qualitative Inquiry, 2009
Drawing from life history interviews with Coreen Gladuea Cree/Métis woman resident of British Co... more Drawing from life history interviews with Coreen Gladuea Cree/Métis woman resident of British Columbia, Canadathis article uses poetic repre-sentation and visual images to tell stories about Coreen's sense of self and iden-tity, family relations, education, and interpretation ...
This article addresses the social implications of gender verification testing in sport. The autho... more This article addresses the social implications of gender verification testing in sport. The authors ask how sex—gender is contained in mediated public discourses that questioned Caster Semenya’s identity following her success in the women’s 800 m at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championship. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the perception of the case surrounding Semenya along with perceptions of her sex and gender identity. The authors argue that the manner by which Semenya’s body is discursively constructed via news board discussants, scientific and medical communities, and athletic governance policies renders her flesh abject and promotes the interpretation of her body as being “‘disordered,” all in the service of maintaining the rhetoric of “fair play” and “equal opportunity” for female athletes. The authors claim that such tests reproduce existing hegemonic gender ideologies via the categories they reinforce and through...
Space and Culture
Drawing from multisite ethnographic research conducted at four Canadian UNESCO World Heritage nat... more Drawing from multisite ethnographic research conducted at four Canadian UNESCO World Heritage natural sites, this writing focuses on the geosocialities of fossils and argues that fossils are alive: vitalist matter capable of affecting and being affected by the geosocial meshworks in which they are entangled. In the present writing, these relations are explored through more-than-representational ethnographic fragments intended to enliven the geophilia of fossils by underscoring the way they are animated through affect, memory, performance, narrative, possibility, and imagination.
Walking Through Social Research, Apr 11, 2017
Though our arguments and critiques are distinct, they are similarly inspired by that walk with Ch... more Though our arguments and critiques are distinct, they are similarly inspired by that walk with Chris and similarly motivated by our will to rethink the nature of walk-alongs and to reimagine walking as a "wilder" way of knowing. Cinema = movement Phillip Vannini ***The video referenced in the pages below can be seen at https://vimeo.com/129221257 Show, don't just tell! A few years ago I found out about Munro bagging through the fieldwork of Hayden Lorimer and Katrin Lund (Lorimer and Lund 2008). I found this practice fascinating. Driven by a desire to learn more about it, and by the intention to learn more about "wildness" in the context of Scottish hillwalking together with April, I thought of asking Chris (and later two other hillwalkers, Mike and David) to go for day-long walks on the Highlands. Moreover, in an attempt to sense the world of hill-walking differently than Lund and Lorimer had, and in the hope of acquiring a new skill, I brought along video gear. The notion of "wildness" is a tricky one and we ought to be as careful stepping over it as if it were a treacherous and exposed mountain path. In Western culture, notions of the "wild" and "wilderness" have long been reputed to refer to "empty" spaces devoid of culture, signs of civilization and development, and human presence. Yet, as critics have pointed out, these notions are nothing but political myths that have regularly resulted in erasing "Others" (e.g. indigenous people) and in blindly reinforcing an artificial nature-culture binary (for a review see Vannini and Vannini 2016). Peak-bagging, like many other ways in which people strive to "conquer" wild natural environments, is an activity underscored by colonial, androcentric, and anthropocentric ideologies that risk perpetuating the perilous idea that nature is an inert object waiting to be possessed, tamed, and classified (Lorimer and Lund 2008). Nonetheless, mountains and similarly "wild" places around the globe continue to exercise a powerful pull over the popular imagination (MacFarlane 2008, 2009). Whether or not places like the Scottish highlands and their tallest hills and mountains can be objectively considered wild or not is truly not the important point for the throngs of walkers and tourists seduced by their awe-inspiring appeal. As MacFarlane puts it, it is less about the presence of social development and the clear absence of humans and their history and culture from these places, and much more about the subjective feeling of being alive in a place animated by at least a modicum of self-will (the idea at the etymological root of the words "wild") that wildness-as a process rich with vitality and unpredictability-depends. It is in this sense that we set out for a walk in a "wild" place. Cameras, lenses, filters, field recorders, shotgun microphones equipped with wind screens, and related technologies are increasingly becoming recognized as essential tools of the walk-along method. Technologies such as these, as well as GIS, GPS, and other tools which blur the boundaries between arts and sciences are now starting to become incorporated into mobile approaches with promising results (e.g. see Evans and Jones 2011; Jones et al. 2008). These tools have all been used with different intents by different researchers. Phillip Vannini is a Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University and Canada Research Chair in Public Ethnography. Phillip is a transdisciplinary and multimodal ethnographer who studies subjects as diverse as nature-cultures, mobilities, assemblages and the social aspects of human embodiment. Vannini's research interests broadly include material culture, technology and culture, sensory studies and cultural geographies. He is the author/editor of thirteen books, including the recent Non-Representational Methodologies (Routledge, 2015) and Off the Grid (Routledge, 2014). April Vannini is an educator and researcher teaching in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University. Her research interests are diverse and interdisciplinary but primarily focus on critical communication studies, contemporary cultural studies, and cultural theory and philosophy. Her current interest is in architecture, space/place, wilderness, and research-creation as practice. Together with Phillip Vannini she is the author of Wilderness (Routledge, 2016), published as part of the Routledge series on Key Ideas in Geography.
Emotion, Space and Society
AREA, 2019
This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World Heritage s... more This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World Heritage sites: Gros Morne National Park. UNESCO's criteria for the identification of natural heritage sites and its descriptions of the specific qualities of listed sites are informed by a dualist ontology that sharply separates nature and culture. The result of this separation between nature and culture is the construction of
natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this
site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.
Qualitative Inquiry, 2019
Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship ha... more Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship has not; artisans regularly remain subjects of ethnographic analysis rather than educators or sources of epistemological and aesthetic inspiration for ethnographers. As students of material culture and aesthetic practices, we argue that ethnography has a lot to learn from artisans and advance a vision for an artisan-inspired ethnography. In particular, we ask, “what would an artisanal ethnography be like?” “What can we learn from artisans as ethnographic educators?” “How would the artisanship-inspired ethnographer work?” “What would be his or her styles, tools, goals, and guiding principles?” Through a methodological reflection on the production of our film A Time for Making, we engage with these questions.
GeoHumanities, 2020
Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Wa... more Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Waterton Lakes National Park and Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, we present two etho-ethnographic fables that show how a positive coexistence of humans and wild life may be sought after and achieved. The two stories–narrated by animals’ voices–prompt us to rethink the very meanings of wild life and humanity and challenge us to envision and appreciate a new kind of affective relationship between people and non-human animals. By attending to the mutual trust and care inherent in respect-based multi-species entanglements, in this article we attune ourselves to the importance of the relational autonomy of wild animals and generate ideas on what wild life could be when understood from the perspective of relational and Indigenous ontologies.
International Review of Qualitative Research, 2019
Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest and the world’s second largest national park. For ... more Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest and the world’s second largest national park. For the last half century, industrial mega projects such as BC Hydro’s W.A.C. Bennett Dam first and tar sands oil extraction later have been exhausting the “natural resources” of the park, decimating wildlife, and severing the sacred relations among Indigenous people, their ways of life, and their land. This extractivist regime has led to a point when, in 2014, the Mikisew Cree First Nation—frustrated by the Canadian government’s continued unwillingness to listen to their grievances—filed a petition to ask UNESCO to add Wood Buffalo National Park to the list of the world’s endangered World Heritage sites. In this article, we describe how such events unfolded and what the current situation signifies for environmental politics, wilderness conservation, and Indigenous relations with settler society within a colonial state.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2019
Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and w... more Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and wilderness, yet very few researchers have ever asked people: “What does wild mean to you?” In doing so, with our research we aim to understand wildness as a phenomenological and relational entity and aim to make sense of the multiple ways in which personal entanglements with particular places inform contingent and place-based ideas of wildness. Although there are many dimensions to both the experience and the idea of wildness, in this paper we reflect in particular on one: vitality. We draw our data from dozens of interviews held across Canada and base our interpretations on a combination of traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge, relational ontologies, and more-than-representational theories.
Social Indicators Research Series, 2008
Abstract This chapter examines in detail the process of performing interviews in life history, li... more Abstract This chapter examines in detail the process of performing interviews in life history, life story and narrative research. The authors focus on a set of collabo-rative life history interviews that the first author (April Vannini) conducted with the second author and storyteller ...
In 2009 UNESCO’s World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Ita... more In 2009 UNESCO’s World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Italy under the single Dolomites World Heritage Site (DWHS). Under criterion vii, they were acknowledged by the World Heritage Convention to be ‘widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world’ with their beauty being ‘intrinsic’ to the nature of the mountains. In our film and paper we argue for a reconsideration of the ‘intrinsic nature’ of its beauty in a sense that is much different than that intended by UNESCO. Following a relational line of reasoning we argue that the essence of the distinctive landscape of the Dolomites lies in the entanglements occurring among its inhabitants who, in the course of living there, have historically been and are currently immersed in its formation. We suggest that through such entanglements – sometimes consonant and sometimes dissonant with ‘authorized’ notions of the heritage landscape – the Dolomitic landscapes exist as manicured landscapes. By drawing from the concept of memoryscape and non-representational ideas we articulate the notion of a manicured landscape.
Uploads
Papers by April Warn-Vannini
natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this
site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.
natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this
site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.
Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better - if messier - way forward.
Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes.
Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.