Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.02.2019, Qupperneq 42

Books 42The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 02— 2019
Feminist
Glaciology
M Jackson’s new book looks at ice,
climate, culture and gender
Words: John Rogers Photo: Joe Tighe
Book
‘The Secret Lives of Glaciers’ is out
now via Green Writers Press
It seems safe to say that much
of the literature around gla-
ciers and climate change can be
a little dry—no pun intended.
Scientific texts on mass bal-
ance, false ogives, ground lines,
dendrochronology and the cryo-
sphere can be a little heavy for
the glacier-c urious lay man.
This isn’t the case with “The
Secret Lives of Glaciers,” a newly
published book by American geog-
rapher, glaciologist and National
Geographic writer M Jack-
son. The book takes the
unusual tack of report-
ing climate change as a
series of stories told by
M and the people she
meets during her time
sp ent resea rch i ng
glaciers in Höfn. Con-
taining elements of
autobiography and
diaristic accounts
o f t h e g l a c i e r s
alongside conver-
sat ion s, obser-
vations, and an-
ecdotes of all kinds, it ’s
approachable and readable stuff.
As someone coming from an
academic background, this style
was a very intentional choice.
“I thought a lot about this,” she
says, speaking over Skype from
her home in Eugene, Oregon. “I
wrote the first draft in a very
academic style, then put it away.
When I came back to it, the aca-
demic conventions just weren’t a
pleasurable read. My goal is get-
ting as many people as possible to
read this stuff and learn about it.”
What about
everything else?’
M’s approach—the mingling to-
gether of physical and human
geography—comes from a dis-
tinctive sensibility. “I come from
a lens of what can carefully be
called a feminist perspective for
glaciology,” she says. “If we look
at the practice of glaciology, what
knowledge is there and who does
it, it generally tends to
be white west-
ern men who
are well funded.
Ice is difficult
to get out to, and
so there’s a real
specific way that
g l a c i o l o g y h a s
been practised for
a long time, enact-
ing a Western sci-
entific model where
they’re going to mea-
sure, model and pre-
dict ice. That’s how it’s
been for a really long time
and it’s given us good, powerful
knowledge. But it’s also—as it
has zeroed in—it has overlooked,
silenced, or marginalised a lot of
other ways of thinking about ice.”
Whilst we know a lot about the
science of how ice forms, moves
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and disperses, M seeks to explore
other facets of how we understand
glaciers. “We don’t know a lot
about, say, indigenous knowledges
of ice, or how people interact with
ice,” she says. “If you do a literature
review, or start talking to people,
you find out people think another
discipline will cover that, or ‘that’s
not glaciology.’ So you end up with
wall-building or parameterising
what glaciology can be. So from
that base point, the work I do says,
‘This is really good and solid, but
what about everything else?’”
Ice and
gender
Hungry to work in little-studied
areas, M’s work on the glaciers
of Alaska evolved into a move
to Turkey. “It was right before
the Syrian war broke out,” she
says. “I spent a whole year re-
alising that this was not a safe
place for a woman who looks
like I do to wander around in the
mountains during that time. I
wanted to go somewhere where
I blended in, and somewhere I
felt safe. I started asking peo-
ple where I could study glaciers,
people and ice, and be safe. The
Geographic asked if I’d consid-
ered Iceland. It’s safe for wom-
en and there’s a lot of research
that hasn’t been done before.”
She found during her time
in Iceland that when she talked
to women about glaciers, they
would often redirect her to
men. “There’s very little
about gender in the new
b o ok ,” she s ay s . “B ut
when I was talking to women,
they’d often say ‘I don’t have any-
thing to say.’ But when you spend
more time with these women,
they know a whole bunch. It’s just
a different type of knowledge. So
I’m doing a whole new book that’s
just women and just gender.”
Our god is
in the ice
As well as a lack of female perspec-
tives on the ice, M says there’s a
lot of work to be done researching
the relationships of indigenous
people and glaciers. “Nobody’s
going to Uganda and the DRC,”
she says, “where local people say:
‘Our god is in the ice.’ Glaciers
make microclimates, and mos-
quitos have never been able to
come there because of the glacial
microclimate. People there today
say ‘God’s upset at us, so the ice
is melting.’ So now they’re be-
ing punished by exposure to ma-
laria. I could rattle off tonnes of
these examples, but we don’t have
books about how people live with
climate change. This is powerful
stuff about being human today,
but we’re not looking at it yet.”
“The Secret Lives of Glaciers”
is M’s second book. Her first,
“When Glaciers Slept,” is about
how people relate to glaciers in
Alaska. “I was able to interact with
so many different people because
of that book,” she says. “When I
write academic things, three
people read them. The academic
conversation is really powerful,
but it’s not my only audience. If
you write something that’s ap-
proachable, then academics can
access it and the public can access
it too. And maybe that’s where
we need to be right now. I don’t
see a lot of academics doing that,
and academics have such great
knowledge, maybe it would be-
hoove them to do so.”
M Jackson, hanging out with bae

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