Scales of attention in fieldwork: Global connections and local concerns in the Arctic

Abstract

The social sciences face a set of complex challenges in an era of intensifying global connections that seem to undermine their constitutive object. Cultures, nations and even societies are not what they used to be, and the ‘methodological nationalism’ that once qualified the social sciences is no longer self-evident. One of the manifest perforations of local communities comes with the experience of dramatic climate change. Based on fieldwork in northwest Greenland, this article addresses the question of scaling through discussions of conversations, connections and concerns surfacing in the field, yet vastly transcending the local. This enables a new understanding of the inherent complexity of scaling and of the field itself as a plastic space, where the fieldworker’s attention may stretch and bend according to situation and perspective.