Casting and Hauling in Nuup Kangerlua, Greenland: Sensory Ethnography for a Study of Inuit Livelihoods and the Body

Sensory ethnography has been employed to proffer anthropological understandings that extend beyond the written word, and in many cases, sensory ethnographers have gravitated toward the study of both contemporary and traditional livelihoods. Yet ethnographic inquiries made outside of textual forms of representation, inclusive of those concerning livelihoods, are projects that are often contested on epistemological grounds. I will show how sensory ethnography may be understood in relation to longstanding concerns about representing the human body and how it bears in mind this history through its work, despite lacking an explicit, written corpus to support it. Recognizing and remaining conscious that the topic of representation in anthropology lies atop contested grounds, I suggest that a paradigm shift toward nontextual sensory ethnography tout court is inopportune, especially in relation to the study of livelihoods. By briefly showing that longline fishing practices in Nuup Kangerlua, Greenland 1 ASC Research Fellow, Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA; [email protected] Snyder, Casting and hauling 286 (the Nuuk Fjord), shape and are shaped by complex environmental, political and technological processes, I seek to problematize the assumption that employing sensory ethnographic methods without the discursive handles of text affords a discernible contribution to the study of livelihoods. Instead, I suggest that sensory ethnography functions productively as a discursive project when circumscribed by textual critique, even if the pith of its anthropological representation exists outside of words. Especially in an ethnographic study of longline fishing livelihoods in Greenland, the site and its socio-political processes demand methodological and representational approaches that remain attentive to how the environment, local and global politics and technology transform and are transformed by bodily or sensory practices. Tags: Greenland, small-scale fishing, representation, point-of view recording, sensory ethnography