Corrugating Attentiveness

Consumer-capitalist infrastructures and demands endanger many of the systems, beings, and relationships that make possible our human lives and those of our other-than-human kin. Corrugating Attentiveness is grounded in a belief that “crafting better possibilities for shared life” (van Dooren et al., 2016, p. 17) requires deep, committed, and responsible thought in response to this reality. The systems, beings, and relationships that facilitate our lives and livelihoods as humans, also support the research that we do as researchers.

This connection to Land in research may be most easily identified in disciplines such as anthropology, geography, ecology, and others that incorporate fieldwork as a primary research activity. However, as an inorganic chemist for example, if you are ordering chemicals from a supplier, those chemicals are Land, Land from and with which you aim to produce and synthesize knowledge. If you work primarily on a computer, the plastics and metals of which the machine is comprised are Land, as is the electricity that makes it run, from water, sun, wind, or oil, or coal: all Land. And the once-trees-now-post-its… You get the point. How we notice, relate to, and develop new patterns of noticing and new relationships with those systems, beings, and relationships matters, both for our lives and for our research.

Corrugating Attentiveness is simultaneously a methodological and pedagogical project. It began as a project course, Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness, in November of 2020 to facilitate my coming to know the riparian habitats of the Okanagan and Similkameen watersheds. By teaching the practice of attending carefully and repeatedly to Land, whether that’s mostly concrete, a semi-arid shrub-steppe, a city park, or a little bit of this a little bit of that, participants are reminded that, we are supported, that our interests come from somewhere, and that our curiosity exists within responsibility. This process of attentive engagement is a step toward thinking about what it could look like to root research in lively and respectful relations. It strives to live up to the calls of Land protectors and advocates, as well as those calling for infrastructural change both in academia specifically and the wider world of human livelihood and is reflective of where I stand politically, philosophically, and geographically at the time of development (August 2021). Learn more about the pedagogical components of this project below.

Corrugating Attentiveness is also, at its core, an activity of hope. It is a course in presearch methodology: the what, why, and how of preparing to do respectful, relational, and relevant research. This is the work of learning to make and hold time and space to come to know the Land that could facilitate the research we (researchers current and emerging) hope to do. This applies whether that Land is the neighborhood where we live, or far away, delivered by courier to the door of the lab. It applies to the technologies we choose to use and the water we drink while typing. And it applies to where we have come from, where we are now, how we got here, and what responsibilities those stories create. Presearch is the pause-and-look-around before formulating a research question. It is making and holding time and space in which to observe, listen, learn, and develop informed research curiosity that can lead to respectful, relational, and relevant research.

You can engage with the various outputs from this project below.

Writing

Computers are made of rocks.
I’m on stolen land.
To/for/because… research.
Good research.
Good with trees and bugs and humans.
Good for trees and bugs and humans:
Riparian ones.
Must drink tea together.
Deep tea. Repeatedly.
Sometimes read tea leaves.
(Okay, infusion from local plant.)
It’s nice to take pictures to recall and record tea time.
Sometimes tea time is the same,
Though always a little different.
Difference and sameness help us see tea time for what it is:
Relational.
An encounter,
Repeated,
Committed,
Respectful,
Important.
Pictures help us see this too,
In their collection,
Corrugation,
Co-ordination.
One day, dinner time.
Not yet.
Come to tea.
Drink. Stay a while.