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B O O K R E V I E W por_175 228

Review of Biocultural diversity and indigenous ways of
knowing: human ecology in the Arctic, by Karim-Aly S.
Kassam (2009). Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press and
the Arctic Institute of North America. 270 pp., 1 pocket
map. ISBN 978-1-55238-253-0.

The perspective put forth in Human ecology in the Arctic by
K.-A. Kassam, although not one that is fundamentally
foreign to Northern social scientists, is intended to chal-
lenge what I suspect the author considers more orthodox
and less socially aware approaches to research. Focusing
as it does on how Indigenous Northerners learn the envi-
ronment (and how to learn what they learn), this book
has its closest intellectual articulation in Ingold’s
approach to human–environment relations.

The first two chapters, “Relations between culture and
nature: a critical consideration” and “Human ecology
reconceptualized: a lens for relations between biological
and cultural diversity”, are the core of this work. In them,
Kassam calls for a structurally non-dichotomous view of
nature and culture, and, thus, of what constitutes human
ecology as a field of study. To accomplish this his prescrip-
tion requires reorienting research toward the process by
which Indigenous Northerners acquire and contextualize
environmental knowledge. Here, he also begins to detail
how “best” to acquire such information methodologically,
a process that is elaborated upon in chapters 4–6, based
on his own research with the Kola Peninsula Sami,
Ulukhaktok Inuit and Alaskan Inupiaq at Wainwright.
His rendering of Inupiaq knowledge of currents and
winds, and their effect on sea ice, and thus whaling, is
especially illuminating regarding the complex of informa-
tion Wainwright hunters must synthesize.

It is difficult, at least for me, to summarize Kassam’s
belief that a recast human ecology must focus on phronesis
(practical wisdom), if only because he draws his support
from sources as diverse as Aristotle, Dostoevsky and E.O.
Wilson. What is clearer is his view that true human

ecology research can only be achieved through the full
participation of communities in all phases of the research
process. In this way, Indigenous ecological understanding
can become the integrative bridge that moves research
from a privileged to an affective activity.

Although I am generally sympathetic to Kassam’s
endeavour, I would be considerably more sympathetic if
his two core conceptual chapters did not leave me feeling
as if I had just sat through an overly long lecture. In point
of fact, the call here for a biocultural synthesis through
the concepts and methodology he presents strikes me as
not all that different from the ideas and practices already
being applied by cultural ecologists in and beyond the
North.

It is hard to argue against Kassam’s ultimate objective:
to see Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge fruit-
fully integrated, and it is not my intention to make such
an argument. In point of fact, I suspect that very few
Northern researchers, regardless of discipline, reject the
goal of better science that benefits Northerners, and is
benefited by them. At the same time, speaking for myself,
Kassam’s methodological and conceptual vision strikes
me as no less rigid, at least as presented here, than North-
ern science and scientists are (too) frequently accused of
being. In no small sense, characterizing Ulukhaktokmiut
knowledge of animals and plants as phronesis, and scien-
tists’ knowledge about caribou or land-locked Arctic char
as only episteme, seems to be not much more than a novel
way of restating the (again the too oft repeated) argu-
ment that Inuit traditional knowledge is holistic, and that
the knowledge of visiting scientists is “merely” reduction-
ist. (The overall presentation, in my view, also slights just
how valuable long-term participant observation is in
terms of moderating scientific rigidity.)

In the end, although I am sympathetic to Kassam’s
overall aim—to strive for a more integrated science of the
North—I remain firmly in the view that a diversity of
theoretical orientations and methodologies does no harm
to this aim. Moreover, bringing other views about nature
and culture to the North is much more in keeping with
the most important reason to do science: that is, to
achieve an exchange of ideas to the social benefit of all.

Correspondence
George W. Wenzel, Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sher-

brooke Street West, Montréal H3A 2K6, Canada. E-mail: wenzel@

geog.mcgill.ca

Polar Research 29 2010 228 © 2010 the author, journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd228