Contribution short abstract:

The presentation explores how my positioning as a parent and parenting itself shaped the epistemology and methodology of my doctoral research on the infrastructural dimension of food sovereignty practices in remote Arctic settlements.

Contribution long abstract:

Many anthropologists who have taken their children to their field sites have already pointed out that the presence of a child in the field makes them focus on specific topics or pushes them to explore certain subjects. In particular, they emphasised that the interaction of their children with informants in the field led to a deeper understanding of local norms, conflict culture, gender, family relations, kinship, maternity and childcare, childbearing, childhood, perceptions of ethnicity in the communities being studied (Brown and Dreby 2013; Butler and Turner 1987; Cornet and Blumenfield 2016:5; Cupples and Kindon 2003:224; Farrelly et al. 2014; Flinn et al. 1998; Korpela et al. 2016; Schrijvers 1993). But what about infrastructure, in particular, transport infrastructure? "Will a researcher's children allow or restrict access to (this sort of) specific information" (Cornet and Blumenfield 2015:3)? Being in the writing phase, I ask myself, how my positioning as a parent and parenting itself impacted my doctoral research devoted to the infrastructural dimension of food sovereignty practices in remote Arctic settlements? Or, to put it more sharply, is there room for the anthropologist's children to explore such a topic in the harsh Arctic environment? Building on my personal experience of doing accompanied fieldwork in remote Chukotkan settlements (the Russian Arctic), I analyse how the presence of my children shaped the focus of the research, provided certain ways of doing research and thinking, and imposed ethical questions.