Dissertation Research: Knowledge and Ethics in the Debate Over Inuit Suicide

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This is a dissertation improvement grant for a modest $12,000 to cover transportation, video supplies for a Youth Video Documentary sub-project, informant honoraria, and a part-time research assistant. Knowledge and Ethics in the Debate Over Inuit Suicide (Knowledge and Ethics) is a long-term (12 month), multi-sited (Iqaluit, Pangnirtung, Toronto) ethnographic research project that seeks to understand how knowledge about suicide is produced in a multi-cultural and post-colonial milieu. Through semi-structured interviews, conversation, archival research, and a youth video project, Knowledge and Ethics proposes to study the social and political implications of western medical, scientific and journalistic knowledge on the subject of Inuit suicide. In addition, Knowledge and Ethics identifies and analyzes the dialog between Inuit ways of knowing and western biomedical knowledge. The divergent responses of psychiatrists, family members and suicidal individuals to research questions concerning human life, the preservation of life (ethics), and the self should provide data about different conceptions of reality and how meaning is created. Through careful discourse analysis the investigators hope to identify new ways of conceptualizing human life that are emerging in the Canadian arctic. Through such analyses, this research proposes to enhance and challenge theoretical discussions on the cultural construction of knowledge, indigenous identity, and the meanings of suicide, as well as, contribute to the ongoing debate about the creation of knowledge amidst upheaval and cultural confrontation.