Considerations of Past Research: Methods and Insights

The first week of EV221 focused on environmental history and narratives, as well as past studies. We read William Doolittle's Phytoliths as Indicators of prehistoric maize cultivation, David Seamon's article on Phenomenology, Marion Hordequin's Climate, Collective Action and Individual Ethical Obligations, as well as William Cronon's paper, A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative, describing narratives on the Dust Bowl.

All of these texts have in common the theme of multiple views on environmental issues. In different contexts, and form different backgrounds, environmental historians, as well as researchers and scientists, interpret observations, ethnographic studies, and data differently. Cronon's piece, for example, discusses two books written about the Dust Bowl: Dust Bowl and The Dust Bowl. Despite the similarity of the titles, the content and argument presented in the books could not be more different. Donald Wortser's Dust Bowl portrays the pioneers and homesteaders of the Great Plains as ignorant easterners who do not know how to ecologically manage the fragile environment in which they are farming. Paul Bonnifield's The dust Bowl, on the other hand, glorifies the people of the Dust Bowl, and describes the event as a natural disaster that was not related to farming in the Great Plains. These two different environmental narratives illustrate just how differently humans can perceive of the same events, depending on the beliefs and opinions, as well as research techniques, that they bring to the study.

This can be very problematic, especially when policy makers have to use these studies and opinions to inform future environmental policy. It is also disturbing as a student of environmental science because any article, peer reviewed or not, that I read is inherently subjective. In my own work, therefore, I must use the information gleaned from any article to inform my own opinion, and attempt to use the observations and conclusions of others to form my own research, to be carried out as objectively as possible. The task seems daunting, even insurmountable at times. Environmental Inquiry has prepared me well for confronting and managing with the array of available studies and research. I hope that the skills learned in EV221 will help me through literature review and the process of designing and executing my own research.