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Reason Excoriates Paper On "Glaciers, Gender, and Science" (reason.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Reason.com's Robby Soave criticizes an article published in the journal Progress in Human Geography, for being "utterly incomprehensible," and "the least essential paper ever written." Entitled Glaciers, Gender, and Science--A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change, the article is authored by researchers at the University of Oregon and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Despite being filled with "buzzwords -- colonialism, marginalization, masculinist discourses, etc. -- with such frequency that the entire thing comes off like a joke," the article is accompanied by an enthusiastic press release from the University of Oregon, stating that "glacier research has been intertwined with gender relations, masculine cultures of exploration, geopolitics, and individual and institutional power. That, in turn, led to glacier-related academic and governmental jobs being predominantly filled by men. ... Melting glaciers are today considered a national security risk for numerous countries,' [one of the researchers] said. 'Power and colonialism have shaped the science.' That message is detailed extensively in the paper."
SJW agitprop masquerading as science.
They don't call it cultural marxism for nothing!
Actually Human Geography is how humans create and maintain spacial interactions and how those interactions may form space. It is just a way of dividing geography into different branches (human geography and physical geography). And since I both studied and lectured geography (specializing in human geography and regional econometrics) - I haven't dug through the whole article, but it seems rather legit albeit more about how glaciological knowledge is created and how this knowledge is influenced by gender and how some of the presentation of that knowledge to the public has a strong gender bias.
This is the PI. I'm afraid it looks "legit". https://honors.uoregon.edu/fac...
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Doubt it.
If you actually understand the terms she's using, the paper sounds fine. Or at least well within the normal traditions of feminism in the social sciences.
Men tend to be into very specific areas of interest. Which means they'll research those areas. That's not bad, and none of the individual men involved are doing anything wrong, and women tend to do the same thing. As a personal example, when I talk military history women tend to completely tune me out. When they're talking about things that are objectively speaking pretty important (ie: my immortal soul) that don't fit into my "dudes should be into this" box I tune them out. This also happens in the sciences, but in many sciences (particularly hard sciences with no human element) it's completely irrelevant.
This paper is about glacier-climate change research. And research into climate change frequently involves human elements because you're trying to figure out what can humans do to a) fix, b) mitigate, and/or c) respond to the problem. In those papers, half of what you're talking about is women doing women stuff. And a largely-male researcher base is likely to ignore some things that a female researcher-base would make the main headline of their paper.
Which is pretty much what feminists have been doing in social sciences ever since there have been feminists to be in the social sciences.