Ignorance and Environmental History: The Opening of an Arctic Offshore Oil Frontier, 1968–1976

Author:

STUHL ANDREW1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Environmental Studies and Sciences Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA 17837, USA

Abstract

Ignorance holds untapped explanatory power for environmental history, in the Arctic and beyond. I define ignorance as a state of limited knowledge, held by groups, and produced through social processes. The case study is the opening of an oil frontier in the Canadian Beaufort Sea between 1968 and 1976. Drawing from a growing body of scholarship on ignorance, as well as newly available governmental and oil industry records, I review three concepts environmental historians can use to analyse the production of ignorance. These concepts are: proprietary knowledge, selective transmission and undone research. Taken together, these concepts make visible a set of political, economic and environmental conditions that allowed ignorance to shape the approval of the first offshore drilling programme in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates that ignorance – like its cousins doubt or uncertainty – has been a resource that extractive industries and governmental regulators have manipulated to navigate evolving requirements of environmental planning.

Publisher

Liverpool University Press

Reference95 articles.

1. About ICC / Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada. 17 December 2018: https://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/about-icc/

2. Obituary;Aird P;The Forestry Chronicle,1978

3. Barnes, P.W., D.M. Schell and E. Reimnitz. The Alaskan Beaufort Sea: Ecosystems and Environments. Academic Press, 1984.

4. Berger, T.R. Northern Frontier Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988.

5. The Canadian Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act: New stresses on the law of the sea;Bilder R.B;Michigan Law Review,1970

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3