ABSTRACT
This collection of essays started life as a round table on research methods at the World Congress of Environmental History in Guimarães, Portugal, in the summer of 2014. We, the editors of this volume, asked round-table participants to reflect on their research methods that take them outside of archives, as well as on how they communicate that research beyond scholarly books and articles. While archives can be valuable sources of information about the past, there is also a lot they do not tell us, particularly if we are trying to understand the past of other-than-human beings and/or of human beings whose perspectives are difficult to find in stored files. Like the archives, scholarly ways of communicating can obfuscate as well as illuminate, for example by using words such as obfuscate instead of perfectly acceptable alternatives such as confuse. Much to our surprise, given the warm weather and stunning beauty of our
mountainous surroundings, conference attendees packed the room for the round table, making possible and contributing to a rich discussion about the challenges and possibilities of conducting and communicating research on the history of relationships between humans and the rest of the world. Scholars from a diversity of disciplines and inter-disciplines attended the conference, some of them hailing from history and geography departments and conducting their research under the respective banners of environmental history and historical geography. Others work in anthropology, English, and interdisciplinary departments and programmes such as Indigenous studies, cultural studies, environmental studies, gender studies, and science and technology studies. The level of interest in the round table led us to consider the importance of making space and time at conferences to share ideas about the common elements of our work-the how of research and teaching-as well about our more individual research interests and projects. It also motivated us to continue and expand the conversation in book form. Despite their varied intellectual traditions, researchers who seek to compre-
hend the histories of relationships between humans and the more-than-human world take as a starting point that key to understanding the past is paying attention to how humans shaped and were shaped by the world in which they lived. Disciplinary commitments certainly influence the questions scholars ask and the ways they seek out answers, but some methodological challenges go beyond the
boundaries of any one discipline. In this collection, we grapple with such methodological challenges by bringing to bear the insights of a number of scholars working in different geographical and disciplinary areas on questions related to nature, culture and history. The methodological challenges that authors in this collection explore are
inspired by the conversations we had at the round table, and do not have easy solutions. Our aim in collecting these stories is to continue the conversation that began for us at the round table in Portugal, but that we know also takes place in supervisors’ offices, on walks, and online as we grapple to figure out how to answer the questions we pose in our research and how best to communicate what we find out. While we know that this book represents just one part of this broader conversation and that it does not fully reflect the geographical diversity of our shared world, we hope that it offers a promising continuation of the conversation about the ‘how’ of our research and communication. We would like to see this conversation continue over the variety of media available to us today, including in scholarly books such as this one. This book is about the challenges and the possibilities of conducting nature-
culture-history research today. The methodological challenges that authors in the collection examine include: how to account for the fact that humans are not the only actors in history, yet they dominate in archival records; how to decolonize research when archival sources and their embedded narratives are both colonial and colonizing; how to attend to the non-visual senses, to materiality and to affect when traditional sources offer only a two-dimensional, non-sensory version of the past; and how effectively to use sources and means of communication made available in the digital age. The book is divided into sections (or ‘parts’) according to these main challenges, and the chapters within each section consider pieces of the larger methodological challenges addressed within each section. The themes of the sections emerged both from the round table and from abstract proposals submitted by contributors, not all of whom participated in the round table. By emphasizing the research process rather than product, we aim to challenge ourselves and our readers to think creatively and to make use of research tools we might not have considered previously. While the focus on process rather than product sets this collection apart, it is exciting also to think about how different research processes might also lead to innovative research findings and communication strategies. Below, we explain the sections and chapters in further detail.
