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Problems of abstraction and extraction in cultural geography research: implications for fieldwork in Arctic North America

If methods are how we answer research questions, then theories are how we know what question to ask. Therefore, all research begins with a necessarily high level of abstraction which then informs decisions about the appropriate targets, goals, and scale at which methods are carried out. Numerous critics have argued that fieldwork should not be extractive, meaning it should not collect data for the benefit of the researcher without returning anything to the community. The distinction between the “abstract” and the “on the ground” work done by geographers is thus far from distinct. In this essay, I discuss questions about how to do field-informed research of intellectual value that is neither extractive nor perpetuates colonial imaginaries of spaces of problem and solution. While a single essay cannot answer these questions, I use research involving northern Canadian communities, and in particular, my own focus group research on the cultural politics of diamond mining in Nunavut, to add clarity to these questions. Ultimately, I argue that methods not only should be flexible and tailored to theory but also should be “field informed” in the sense that informants help researchers shape reflexive accounts by highlighting what is unknown, unknowable, or situationally contingent.