Researching Extraction, Refusing Extractive Research

• In Event: Transnational STS Media-Making: Producing Films and Videos for Research, Classroom and Beyond

Abstract

Drawing on the concept of refusal, this paper refuses extractive modes of research and instead asks; what does non-extractive research look like? In order to ask this question I consider what shapes the extractive paradigm, bringing together theories of capitalism and colonialism. My research focuses on a video shown in the Royal Ontario Museum produced by Barrick Gold that tells a story about the journey of gold from mine to market place. Reading this video as a colonial archive (McKittrick 2014), I examine both what is shown and what is erased or hidden from view. By focusing on this video I follow Tuck and Yang’s (2014) suggestion to shift the researching gaze away from the pain of the colonized and toward those who cause and benefit from this pain, including those of us in the academy. Through focusing on this video I consider a variety of non-extractive modes of research. I ask what questions different modes of engagement allow me to open up and what avenues they close down. Throughout this process an ethnographic mode of exploration allows me to be reflexive in my engagement with different methods and to think through my role as a settler researcher. In considering this question in a way that refuses extractive research I story board a response to the video, thinking through questions of potential and power, intervention and exhaustion, audience and legibility and the politics of storytelling.

Author

• Merle Davis, York University